What kinds of ancient social formations supported gospel reading? New Testament scholars have struggled to articulate answers to this question that account for the gospels' place in both Greco-Roman book culture and in the early Christian movement. Teaching the Gospel reframes the debate by situating the Synoptic Gospels alongside other intellectual disciplinary traditions in the ancient Mediterranean. The book explores how the authors and first audiences of the Synoptic Gospels participated in patterns of pedagogical reading and writing that were prevalent during the Roman imperial period. Two central claims form the "axle" of the book's thesis. First, the Synoptic evangelists encode their readers as students. When they address their readers most directly, the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke employ stratagems and tools typical of ancient educators. The second claim follows from the first: that the didactic and educational posture the evangelists take towards their readers implies their audiences' participation in networks of pedagogical reading. Teaching the Gospel analyzes a wealth of comparative data for other ancient pedagogical reading networks in the Roman period. The book offers a new account of “gospel communities” that sits intelligibly within the social matrices of imperial-period intellectuals and teachers.