Harrison, C. and Humfress, Caroline and Sandwell, I., eds. (2013) Being Christian in late antiquity: a festschrift for Gillian Clark. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199656035.
Abstract
Book synopsis: Honours one of the world's leading scholars of Late Antique Society and ancient religiosity. First volume to tackle the multi-dimensional experience of what it was to be Christian in Late Antiquity, from multi-authored perspectives. Focuses on both the literary construction of early Christianities and the lived experiences of concrete individuals and Christian communities. Analyses and problematizes the particularities of actually living a Christian life in Late Antiquity. Offers an integrated perspective on religious identity, that does not essentialize religious experience. What do we mean when we talk about 'being Christian' in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together sixteen world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honour of the ground-breaking scholarship of Professor Gillian Clark. After an introduction to the volume's dedicatee and themes by Averil Cameron, the papers in Section I, `Being Christian through Reading, Writing and Hearing', analyse the roles that literary genre, writing, reading, hearing and the literature of the past played in the formation of what it meant to be Christian. The essays in Section II move on to explore how late antique Christians sought to create, maintain and represent Christian communities: communities that were both 'textually created' and 'enacted in living realities'. Finally in Section III, 'The Particularities of Being Christian', the contributions examine what it was to be Christian from a number of different ways of representing oneself, each of which raises questions about certain kinds of 'particularities', for example, gender, location, education and culture. Bringing together primary source material from the early Imperial period up to the seventh century AD and covering both the Eastern and Western Empires, the papers in this volume demonstrate that what it meant to be Christian cannot simply be taken for granted. 'Being Christian' was part of a continual process of construction and negotiation, as individuals and Christian communities alike sought to relate themselves to existing traditions, social structures and identities, at the same time as questioning and critiquing the past(s) in their present.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Hall |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Dec 2013 14:14 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:08 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/8838 |
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