Reading, Writing, and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean

Jonathan D.H. Norton, Garrick Allen, Lindsey A. Askin, Jonathan D.H. Norton, Garrick Allen, Lindsey A. Askin

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350265066
• eBook ISBN: 9781350265042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing marks of cultural and ideological interests. In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two currently divided fields.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. READING, WRITING, AND BOOKISH CIRCLES IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: AN INTRODUCTION
• 2. THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF SCRIBES AND READERS IN GRECO-ROMAN JUDAISM
• 3. ASPECTS OF SCRIPTURALITY IN THE COMMUNITY RULE: A KEY TO THE HISTORY OF QUMRAN LITERATURE
• 4. THE MAKING OF THE THEME OF IMMORTALITY IN THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON
• 5. BOOKISH CIRCLES? THE MOVE TOWARD THE USE OF WRITTEN TEXTS IN RABBINIC ORAL CULTURE
• 6. SYMPOTIC LEARNING: SYMPOSIA LITERATURE AND CULTURAL EDUCATION
• 7. TEACHING AND LEARNING IN PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS OF THE SECOND CENTURY AD: ARRIAN’S EPICTETUS AND AULUS GELLIUS’S CALVENUS TAURUS
• 8. THE LONE GENIUS AND THE DOCILE LITERATI: HOW BOOKISH WERE PAUL’S CHURCHES?
• 9. READING THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF OTHER TEXTS: A RELEVANCE THEORY PERSPECTIVE
• 10. DIVINE DISSIMULATION AND THE APOSTOLIC VISIONS OF ACTS
• 11. SCRIPTURAL LITERACY WITHIN THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH: FROM THE CORINTHIAN CORRESPONDENCE TO 1 CLEMENT
• 12. LIBRARIES, SPECIAL LIBRARIES, AND JOHN OF PATMOS
• Bibliography
• Index of References
• Index of Authors
• Copyright