For much of history, from the dawn of Greek historiography to the postmodern 1970s, genealogy has been synonymous with continuity of origins and blood identity, and therefore closely connected with the concepts of the classic and the canon. Yet, during the last half century, specially thanks to the Nietzschean and Foucauldian philosophical deployment, it has shed its narrative garb to become an agent of discontinuity, and thus the nemesis of the classic and the canon. Many scholars have analyzed the modern development of genealogies after Nietzsche’s alleged foundational statement and its Foucauldian reception. But none of them has provided a systematic history of the trajectory of this concept, from antiquity to the present. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by providing a history of the concept of genealogy and its associated ideas, delving specifically into its historiographical uses, and connecting it to the four previous concepts discussed in the book. I will, specifically, emphasize its polysemy, try to locate what has remained and what has changed in this long trajectory, and explain the (only recently) radically opposed nature (nemesis) between the concepts of genealogy and canon – and the implications that this opposition brings to historiography.

Seminal iconographic innovations in early Christian images of the divinely inspired evangelists reflect fundamentally changed attitudes toward the authenticity and authority of sacred texts. These portraits depart significantly from relevant pagan and Jewish imagery in that they emphasize the accurate documentation of the revealed texts in writing. The early Byzantine iconography of divine inspiration substantiates visually claims of Christianity being the only “true religion” that were expressed by late antique theologians and are also manifest in imperial legislation.

After Iconoclasm, portraits of the inspired evangelists continue to clearly dominate in number among depictions of biblical authors receiving divine revelations. This chapter’s textual and visual analysis reveals a hierarchy among biblical authors that applies even to those of the canonical Gospels: John is the only evangelist whose divine inspiration is particularly highlighted in the hagiographical literature, and his privileged role is also strongly reflected in art.

The New Testament, like the Old, offers exemplary models for the conjugation of poetry and prose working together in order to make poetically possible a revelation of the divine. The beatitudes, liturgical hymns like the Magnificat, and prayers like the Pater noster communicate lyrically a sense of salvation to those who experience the Christ and believe. Such lyric core texts provide a basis for expansion into the full-blown historical narrative of the Bible. The synergy of poetry and prose is crucial in the process of memorialization of a life-transforming love followed by the death of the beloved and the glorification of the beloved person in an afterlife. The experience of Christ by his disciples, as crystalized in the New Testament, proves in these respects to prefigure Dante’s experience of Beatrice, as recorded and interpretively actualized in the Vita nuova. Dante’s book opens penetrating insight into the indispensable role of literary construction in the theological revelation of its progenitor text, Holy Scripture, especially the Gospels.

Provides an analysis of historical Jesus studies and the key interpretative issues scholars seek to address. Surveying scholarship from the eighteenth century on, Fowl disentangles the guiding assumptions of historical Jesus research in its quest for a dispassionate assessment of historical ‘facts’ and interpretative frameworks. As case studies, Fowl compares the major accounts of Jesus offered by John Dominic Crossan, N. T. Wright and Luke Timothy Johnson.

McCarthy builds on a trend in the theology of scripture according to which the truth of the text is discovered in the ‘performance’ of the text in the lives of individuals and communities. On this basis, he offers a series of cameos in which the ‘exegesis’ of a gospel text takes biographical form, and the lives of saints and martyrs become a kind of extension of the scriptural canon.

Frances Young explores the changing relationship in the history of the early church between the gospel texts and the determination of true doctrine. She shows that, even when the four gospels had been accepted as canonical, what shaped doctrine most was the overarching sense of what scripture as a whole was about, epitomized in the ’Rule of Faith’ and the creeds.

Studies the ‘afterlife’ of the gospels into the public realm – the realm of morality and politics. According to Bader-Saye, the gospels are misunderstood if they are confined to the realm of the personal. Rather, the gospels are a summons to a moral life expressive of shared ‘deep themes’ of liberation, dispossession and love. He elaborates on this through a critical appreciation of the way these gospel themes have been taken up in modern discussions of ethics and politics from Immanuel Kant to Romand Coles.

Examines the reception of the canonical gospels and of their ‘effects’ in particular times and places. Here, the first part gives an account of reception history as a relatively new discipline in gospel studies, while the second part offers as a case study some of the ways in which the synoptic stories of the women who visit the tomb of Jesus have been represented in the visual arts.

The role of Christian worship and devotional practices in making the gospels come alive in ever-changing historical circumstances and across ecclesial traditions is explored. Among the arts, attention is paid to the signal contribution of music (J. S. Bach, Black gospel music, and hymns) to the appreciation and appropriation of gospel texts.