From the very beginning Christianity was a religion of booksa lived, but also a written faith. The essays in this collection focus on the ways in which books were produced, used, treasured, and conceptualized in the early Christian centuries (AD 100600). During this crucial period, just after the New Testament writings were composed, Christianity grew from the religion of a tiny minority in the eastern Roman Empire to the religion of the empire itself, and beyond. To no small extent, this success was based on the power of its books.

With increasing interest in early Egyptian (Coptic) Christianity, this volume offers an important collection of essays about Coptic language, literature, and social history by some of the finest authors in the field. The essays range broadly through the areas of Coptic language and literature, examining the origins and history of the Coptic community in its formative years. The Jewish content and connections of earliest Christianity in Egypt are explored, as is the survival of pagan religion in a later, increasingly Christian world. Studies of Egyptian monasticism range from investigations of...

Flourishing from the inland cities of Syria down through the Tigris and Euphrates valley, Syriac speakers in late antiquity created a new and often brilliant expression of Christian culture. Although the origins of their traditions are notoriously difficult to trace, authors of fourth-century Syrian communities achieved sophisticated forms of expression whose content little resembles the Christian culture of their neighbours to the west. From the fourth through the seventh centuries they achieved religious works of great beauty and complexity. Increasing interest in Syriac Christianity has...

"The contributions for this volume emerged out of an expert seminar on the theme of the Church Fathers and Catholic social thought held in Leuven in 2007." -- p.vii.

Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus offers a collection of cutting-edge research on one of the leading figures in the early church. Long recognized as a chief architect of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and the definitive articulator of the doctrine of the Trinity, Gregory the Theologian has been strangely neglected in modern patristic research. In recent decades Gregory has become the subject of careful study by scholars in a variety of humanistic disciplines, including theology, church history, classics, art history, and literature, and has attracted the renewed attention of Eastern and Western...

This collection of sixteen new critical essays offers fresh persepectives on the Book of Steps, adding greater detail and depth to our understanding of the works intriguing picture of early Syriac asceticism as practiced within the life of a local church and community.

To understand the past, we necessarily group people together and, consequently, frequently assume that all of its members share the same attributes. In this ground-breaking volume, ?ric Rebillard and Ji??rg Rpke bring renowned scholars together to challenge this norm by seeking to rediscover the individual and to explore the dynamics between individuals and the groups to which they belong. Instead of taking religious groups as their point of departure, the authors in Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity address the methodological challenges attached to a rescaling of...

Based on a multi-year consultation in the Society of Biblical Literature, The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology brings new insights to the relationship between patristic exegesis and current strategies of biblical interpretation, specifically with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As it developed a distinctive character of its own during the first six centuries of the common era, Christianity was constantly forced to reassess and adapt its relationship with the Jewish tradition. The process involved a number of preoccupations and challenges. The essays in this volume were developed within this broad field of inquiry.

This book serves two purposes: first, it celebrates the career of the late Maureen Tilley; second, it provides a "state of the field" look at some of the latest scholarship on Christian North Africa in late antiquity. The chapters, written by both senior scholars and the next generation of North African researchers, fills gaps in some of our understandings of the colorful people, places, and disputes that arose in the unique environment of Christian North Africa. The book centers around Augustine, Donatist studies, and North African biblical interpretation, representing Tilley's major areas...