The Origins of Christianity Between Orality, Writing, and Images: A Mediological Analysis

This article investigates the period of the origin of Christianity, namely that of the first century, the phase in which the emerging “Christianity” was being formed. It is a phase that has been much studied from many angles. The angle adopted in this article approaches the topic from a mediological framework. It relates to the Toronto School and the theses of Marshall McLuhan, for whom a medium is not only a communication channel but constructs the message and determines a way of reasoning. In this sense, the question arises as to how much, in the period of the birth of the new religion, the “media”, here understood as “environments”, had an influence: orality, writing, images, and spectacular performances cooperated in the construction of a multimedia religion that also drew from this richness a specific strength with which to impose itself over time. In particular, the following will be examined: the oral message of the “Rabbi” of Nazareth; the invention of the epistles of Paul of Tarsus; the conception of the Gospels as a written narration of the salvific event, capable of transforming the figure of Jesus into Christ; and the Apocalypse of John as the Christianization of a traditional genre.