The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations

ISBN-13: 9781009363389 / Angielski

Mark Letteney

Opis

Traces ancient scholars and the manuscripts they produced, demonstrating that imperial Christianity changed not just what people believe, but how people think.

Recenzje

'Letteney's remarkable new book charts the impact of Christianity not on religion or institutions - the focus of so much work on early Christianity - but rather on the organization of knowledge and the production of meaning in Late Antiquity. Drawing on a range of specialized texts (law codes, technical and bureaucratic treatises, military handbooks, and so on), he demonstrates that the particular forms of meaning-making that emerged in the context of theological and doctrinal dispute became broadly generalized in late-antique thought, and could be found in everything from the writings of the jurists to the Palestinian Talmud. A compelling and sensitive new sociology of knowledge, The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity will be required reading for students of early Christianity and the cultures of Late Antiquity, and will also be of interest to everyone working on the production of knowledge in premodern societies more generally.' Carlos F. Noreña, University of California, Berkeley

Spis treści

1. Christianizing knowledge, or beginning of Late Antiquity; Part I. New readers: 2. A history of Christian fact finding; 3. A methodological revolution in fourth-century theology; 4. A new order of books in the Theodosian age; Part II. New texts: 5. New bookforms; 6. New texts; 7. Christian tools in traditionalist texts; 8. New meanings.