Early Christian Literature

Title: "And Behold, I Saw the Air Struck with Amazement" (Protoevangelium of James 18:2)
Between Christological Implementation, Hagiographic Fable, and Reappropriation of the Story of Jesus: The Infancy Gospels

In an increasingly consistent manner after the traumatic turning point of the 60s of the first century (with the disappearance of the first apostolic generation, the first dramatic crisis of the imperial mechanism and the astonishing and, at the same time, terrible page of the anti-Roman Jewish insurrection), the Christian communities entrusted writing with the task of preserving what was most relevant to their religious identity. Within the constitution of this depositum, the life of Jesus gained an increasingly growing space.
Initially, the focus was on preserving the memory of Jesus' Easter—central to the Gospel of the Kingdom preached by Christians. However, this focus soon expanded. Instead of concentrating solely on Easter, there was a growing desire to create a "biographical Gospel" that would narrate the entirety of Jesus' life. This shift led to the development of a diverse and expansive body of literature aimed at integrating narratives from both the Synoptic and Johannine traditions.
The "Protoevangelium" of James, which belongs to the first season of this "integrative" evangelical literature, is also one of the most successful texts of the Christian origins.
The development of the course will be divided into three Parts:
I Argumentative Part: the peculiarities of the first Christian writing: from the proto-Christian traditions to the birth of a new "literature" (2nd century AD).
II Argumentative Part: between Christological implementation, hagiographic fable and reappropriation of the story of Jesus: the infancy gospels.
III Argumentative Part: the "Protoevangelium" of James.
The first Part of the course will explore the characteristics of early Christian texts, tracing the development of literary features from proto-Christian traditions to the emergence of a new literature in the 2nd century AD. We will examine the epistemological principles that defined early Christian literature and apply these principles to the analysis of relevant texts.
In the second Part, considering the broad tradition of the so-called "Infancy Gospels", we will reflect on the ways in which Christian communities, continuing to exploit the potential of the evangelical genre, sought to achieve a threefold objective:
1. crystallize, even through narrative, the developments of Christological reflection;
2. consolidate the transition from Easter preaching - centred on the announcement of a crucial event in the development of the history of salvation and, only because of its universal dimension, existentially incisive - to the proposal of a moral model, Jesus, the extraordinary nature of whose life becomes the central topic of a growing hagiographic tale;
3. re-appropriate the entire life of Jesus, even those parts that the first traditions had not described.
Finally, the last argumentative Part of the course will be dedicated to reading and commenting on the "Protoevangelium" of James. Through the analysis of this document, the class will try to apply the critical and exegetical tools already discussed in the first Part of the course, paying particular attention to this text's literary and iconographic fortune.