Astutely reading the writings of early Christianity as part of the lively conversation of the Graeco-Roman world, Robert M. Grant helped reshape the study of the New Testament and early Christianity for scholars in the United States and Europe. Reading Religions in the Ancient World honors his work with sixteen essays by his colleagues and students, arranged under the headings of Classical Studies, New Testament Studies and Patristic Studies. These essays reflect and extend the research interests of the honoree; signal the breadth and depth of Professor Grant's own scholarly interests...

Ascetic Culture honours Philip Rousseau's pathbreaking work on early Christian asceticism in a series of essays exploring how quickly the industrious and imaginative practitioners of asceticism, from the early fourth through the mid-fifth century, adapted the Greco-Roman social, literary, and religious culture in which they had been raised. Far from rejecting the life of the urban centres of the ancient world, they refined and elaborated that life in their libraries, households, and communities.

The volume begins with a discussion of Egyptian monastic reading programs and the...

Evagrius of Pontus (ca. 345-399) was a Greek-speaking monastic thinker and Christian theologian whose works formed the basis for much later reflection on monastic practice and thought in the Christian Near East, in Byzantium, and in the Latin West. His innovative collections of short chapters meant for meditation, scriptural commentaries in the form of scholia, extended discourses, and letters were widely translated and copied. Condemned posthumously by two ecumenical councils as a heretic along with Origen and Didymus of Alexandria, he was revered among Christians to the east of the...