Happy Reading: Textual Self-Consciousness and Human Flourishing in the Macarisms of Lk 11.28, Gos. Thom. 79.2, and Rev. 1.3

Abstract

Scholars are rediscovering how early Christian texts addressed questions of human flourishing and exploring how textualization may have affected interpretation. These two trends intersect in the beatitudes or macarisms of Lk 11.28, Gos. Thom. 79.2, and Rev. 1.3, which attribute “flourishing” to obedient hearers of a divine word mediated by Jesus. I argue that early Christ followers may have understood these macarisms to promise flourishing to those who receive Luke, Thomas, or Revelation as a written divine word from Jesus. Many early “readers” would have encountered these texts aurally, creating a link between “hearing the word of God” and hearing the written text read aloud. Moreover, these works exhibit “textual self-consciousness” in which they acknowledge their own existence as written documents, present themselves as messages from or about Jesus, and suggest that they should carry authority. Because the “word(s)” extolled in the macarisms are Jesus’s words, and the works are presented as Jesus’s words, hearers could have connected the works themselves with the divine word(s) that enable flourishing. Such a connection may have reinforced the practice of reading and hearing these texts, encouraged further textual transmission of the works, and affected how Christ followers perceived God spoke to them through written works.