John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel offers a Stoic reading of the Fourth Gospel, especially its cosmology, epistemology, and ethics. It works through the gospel in narrative sequence providing a 'philosophical narrative reading'. In each section of the gospel Troels Engberg-Pedersen raises discusses philosophical questions. He compares John with Paul (in philosophy) and Mark (in narrative) to offer a new reading of the transmitted text of the Fourth Gospel. Of these two profiles, the narrative one is strongly influenced by the literary critical paradigm. Moreover, by attending carefully to a number of narratological features, one may come to see that the transmitted text in fact hangs together much more coherently than scholarship has been willing to see. The other profile is specifically philosophical. Scholarship has been well aware that the Fourth Gospel has what one might call a philosophical dimension. Engberg-Pedersen shows that throughout the Gospel contemporary Stoicism, works better to illuminate the text. This pertains to the basic cosmology (and cosmogony) that is reflected in the text, to the epistemology that underlies a central theme in it regarding different types of belief in Jesus, to the ethics that is introduced fairly late in the text when Jesus describes how the disciples should live once he has himself gone away from them, and more.

Union with Christ in the New Testament is a study of the union between God and those he has redeemed, as it is represented in the New Testament. In conversation with historical and systematic theology, Grant Macaskill argues that the union between God and his people is consistently represented by the New Testament authors as covenantal, with the participation of believers in the life of God specifically mediated by Jesus, the covenant Messiah: hence, it involves union with Christ. Christ's mediation of divine participation of believers in the life of God specifically mediated by Jesus, the covenant Messiah: hence, it involves union with Christ. Christ's mediation of divine presence is grounded in the ontology of the Incarnation, the real divinity and real humanity of his person, and by the full divine personhood of the Holy Spirit, who unites believers to him in faith. His personal narrative of death and resurrection is understood in relation to the covenant by which God's dealings with humanity are ordered. In their union with him, believers are transformed both morally and noetically, so that the union has an epistemic dimension, strongly affirmed by the theological tradition but sometimes confused by scholars with Platonism. This account is developed in close engagement with the New Testament texts, read against Jewish backgrounds, and allowed to inform one another as context. As a 'participatory' understanding of New Testament soteriology, it is advanced in distinction to other participatory approaches that are here considered to be deficient, particularly the so-called 'apocalyptic' approach that is popular in Pauline scholarship, and those attempts to read New Testament soteriology in terms of theosis, elements of which are nevertheless affirmed.

Religions of the Constantinian Empire provides a synoptic review of Constantine's relation to all the cultic and theological traditions of the Empire during the period from his seizure of power in the west in 306 CE to the end of his reign as autocrat of both east and west in 337 CE. Divided into three parts, the first considers the efforts of Christians to construct their own philosophy, and their own patterns of the philosophic life, in opposition to Platonism. The second assembles evidence of survival, variation or decay in religious practices which were never compulsory under Roman law. The 'religious plurality' of the second section includes those cults which are represented as demonic burlesques of the sacraments by Firmicus Maternus. The third reviews the changes, both within the church and in the public sphere, which were undeniably prompted by the accession of a Christian monarch. In this section on 'Christian polyphony', Mark Edwards expertly moves on from this deliberate petrifaction of Judaism to the profound shift in relations between the church and the civic cult that followed the Emperor's choice of a new divine protector. The material in the first section will be most familiar to the historian of philosophy, that of the second to the historian of religion, and that of the third to the theologian. All three sections make reference to such factors as the persecution under Diocletian, the so-called 'edict of Milan', the subsequent legislation of Constantine, and the summoning of the council of Nicaea. Edwards does not maintain, however, that the religious and philosophical innovations of this period were mere by-products of political revolution; indeed, he often highlights that Christianity was more revolutionary in its expectations than any sovereign could afford to be in his acts.This authoritative study provides a comprehensive reference work for those studying the ecclesiastical and theological developments and controversies of the fourth century.

[This] exemplary interdisciplinary approach to Aethelwold and his impart on the cultural, religious and political life of southern England in his own day is to be applauded. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AEthelwold's life and his political and ecclesiastical importance in the 10th-century reformation receive thorough scholarly scrutiny in this appraisal of his life and work. The studies include a comparison of AEthelwold's career with that of other European monastic reformers; a study of AEthelwold's foundation at Abingdon; and of his involvement with the political crises of the 10th century. AEthelwold's skills as a scholar are assessed through surviving Latin and Old Englist texts, and as a teacher from the writings of his pupils. The scholarly work of his foundations is highlighted by a detailed study of the text of the Benedictional of St AEthelwold; other essays look at themusic and sculpture performed and produced at AEthelwold's foundations. Contributors: PATRICK WORMALD, ALAN THACKER, BARBARA YORKE, MICHAEL LAPIDGE, ANDREW PRESCOTT, MARY BERRY, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH

This monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as 'The Exeter Book'. Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed'n 2006), has re-named the manuscript 'The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry'. The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology. God's Exiles and English Verse is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture. The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction. Part One, consisting of three chapters, introduces certain of the book's main themes, addresses matters of date, authorship, audience, and the like, and evaluates hypotheses that have been put forth concerning the origins of the Exeter Anthology in the south of England during the period of the Benedictine Reform. Part Two, the main body of the book, begins with a long chapter, divided into seven sections, that introduces the contents of the Exeter Anthology poem by poem in a more systematic fashion than before, with attention to the overall organization of the Anthology and certain factors in it that have a unifying function. The five shorter chapters that follow are devoted to topics of special interest, including the volume's possible use as a guide to vernacular poetic techniques, its underlying worldview, its reliance on certain thematically significant keywords, and its intertextual versus intratextual relations. The riddles, especially those of a sexual content, receive attention in a chapter of their own. In addition, there is a translation of the popular poem The Wanderer into modern English prose, a folio-by-folio listing of the contents of the Exeter Anthology, and a listing of a number of the poems of the Anthology with notes on their genre, according to Latin generic terms familiar to educated Anglo-Saxons. This book is the first of its kind - an integrative, book-length critical study of the Exeter Anthology.

This is a landmark work, providing the first complete collection of the remaining excerpts from the writings of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia together with a ground-breaking study of the controversy regarding the person of Christ that raged from the fourth to the sixth century, and which still divides the Christian Church. Destroyed after their condemnation, all that remains of the dogmatic writings of Diodore and Theodore are the passages quoted by their supporters and opponents. John Behr brings together all these excerpts, from the time of Theodore's death until his condemnation at the Second Council of Constantinople (553)- including newly-edited Syriac texts (from florilegium in Cod. Add. 12156, and the fragmentary remains of Theodore's On the Incarnation in Cod. Add. 14669) and many translated for the first time-and examines their interrelationship, to determine who was borrowing from whom, locating the source of the polemic with Cyril of Alexandria. On the basis of this textual work, Behr presents a historical and theological analysis that completely revises the picture of these 'Antiochenes' and the controversy regarding them. Twentieth-century scholarship often found these two 'Antiochenes' sympathetic characters for their aversion to allegory and their concern for the 'historical Jesus', and regarded their condemnation as an unfortunate incident motivated by desire for retaliation amidst 'Neo-Chalcedonian' advances in Christology. This study shows how, grounded in the ecclesial and theological strife that had already beset Antioch for over a century, Diodore and Theodore, in opposition to Julian the Apostate and Apollinarius, were led to separate the New Testament from the Old and 'the man' from the Word of God, resulting in a very limited understanding of Incarnation and circumscribing the importance of the Passion. The result is a comprehensive and cogent account of the controversy, both Christological and exegetical together, of the early fifth century, the way it stemmed from earlier tensions and continued through the Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II.

Scholars are divided on the number of gospels to which fragmentary Jewish-Christian gospel traditions should be attributed. In this book Gregory attributes them to two gospels: the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites, with no need for any postulated Gospel of the Nazoraeans. As two distinct texts, each gospel is treated on its own terms, with its own introduction, followed by a text, translation and commentary on each fragment, and further discussion about what we may conclude about the overall character of the text on the basis of the fragments that survive. Yet they share certain common features that warrant them being treated together in one volume with an introduction that discusses certain critical issues that are relevant to them both. One common factor is the partial and indirect way in which these texts have been preserved. No independent manuscript tradition survives for either text, so they have been transmitted only to the extent that they were quoted or discussed by a number of early Christian authors, none of whom claims to be the author of the text from which he appears to quote or to which he appears to refer. This raises a number of questions of a literary nature about how excerpts from these texts may be interpreted. Another common factor is that these gospel traditions are usually referred to as Jewish-Christian, which may raise questions about their historical origins and theological outlook. Any judgment about the historical origins or theological nature of these gospels must rest upon prior examination of what may be reconstructed of their texts, and Gregory is careful to distinguish between what we may conclude from these gospels as texts and how they might contribute to our knowledge of early Christian history. The book also includes a number of appendices in which he discusses issues that have been prominent in the history of scholarship on these texts, but which he argues are not relevant to these two gospels as he presents them. These include claims about an original Hebrew gospel of Matthew, the postulated Gospel of the Nazoraeans and the so-called 'Jewish gospel', as well as what may be known about the Nazoraeans and the Ebionites.

The Letters appearing here in translation were written approximately between the years 410 and 420. This period in Augustine's life coincides with the ending of the long controversy with the Donatists and the spread of the Pelagian errors concerning nature and grace. When compared with earlier letters there is more emphasis in these letters on intellectual and doctrinal matters. Perhaps the most important, and certainly the longest in this collection, (pp.141-190) is letter 185 addressed in 417 to the tribune Boniface. It gives a vivid description of the crimes committed by the Donatists against Catholics. Augustine writes: ""Some (Catholics) had their eyes put out; one bishop had his hands and tongue cut off; some were massacred. I say nothing of the inhuman beatings, of the looting of homes in nightly raids, of fires set not only to private homes but even to churches; and into these flames some even cast the sacred books"" (chapter 30). The civil authorities eventually intervened in these disturbances and at times with coercive measures. Finally on January 30, 412 the Emperor Honorius made the profession of Donatism a criminal offense and ordered clerics and ministers of such heretics removed from the African soil which they had polluted by sacreligious rites. Though initially opposed to coercion, Augustine changed his view.

This book is the first publication of a very early set of Christian monastic rules from Roman Egypt, accompanied by four preliminary chapters discussing their historical and social context and their character as rules. These rules were found quoted in the writings of the great Egyptian monastic leader Shenoute. Designed for a federation of monks and nuns who banded together about 360 CE-forming the so-called "White Monastery Federation"-the rules date back to the fourth and fifth centuries. New historical evidence is presented for the founding of the Federation. Providing almost the earliest evidence for Christian communal (cenobitic) monasticism, the rules depict many intimate aspects of ascetic practice. Details of monastic daily life are mentioned in passing in the rules, and the author uses these details to describe their picture of monastic life under five general topics: the monastery as a physical plant, the human makeup of the community, ascetic observances, the hierarchy of authority, and the daily liturgy. The book includes a clear English translation of the rules accompanied by the original Coptic text, amounting to five hundred and ninety-five entries.

Who were the Gnostics? And how did the Gnostic movement influence the development of Christianity in antiquity? Is it true that the Church rejected Gnosticism? This book offers an illuminating discussion of recent scholarly debates over the concept of "Gnosticism" and the nature of early Christian diversity. Acknowledging that the category "Gnosticism" is flawed and must be reformed, David Brakke argues for a more careful approach to gathering evidence for the ancient Christian movement known as the Gnostic school of thought. He shows how Gnostic myth and ritual addressed basic human concerns about alienation and meaning, offered a message of salvation in Jesus, and provided a way for people to regain knowledge of God, the ultimate source of their being. Rather than depicting the Gnostics as heretics or as the losers in the fight to define Christianity, Brakke argues that the Gnostics participated in an ongoing reinvention of Christianity, in which other Christians not only rejected their ideas but also adapted and transformed them. This book will challenge scholars to think in news ways, but it also provides an accessible introduction to the Gnostics and their fellow early Christians.

Luigi Gioia provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; discussion of 'Arian' logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so called 'psychological analogies'. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely 'know thyself'.

The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto was one of the most widely read and disseminated Greek hagiographic texts during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. To this day it remains, alongside Athanasius' Life of Antony, one of the core primary sources for fourth-century Egyptian monasticism as well as one of the most fascinating, yet perplexing, pieces of monastic hagiography to survive from the entire patristic period. However, until now it has not received the intensive and sustained scholarly analysis that a monograph affords. In this study, Andrew Cain incorporates insights from source criticism, stylistic and rhetorical analysis, literary criticism, and historical, geographical, and theological studies in an attempt to break new ground and revise current scholarly orthodoxy about a broad range of interpretive issues and problems.

The rise of early Christianity has been examined from a myriad of perspectives, but until recently ritual has been a neglected topic. Ritual and Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis argues that ritual theory is indispensable for the study of Christian beginnings. It also makes a strong case for the application of theories and insights from the Cognitive Science of Religion, a field that has established itself as a vigorous movement in Religious Studies over the past two decades. Risto Uro develops a 'socio-cognitive' approach to the study of early Christian rituals, seeking to integrate a social-level analysis with findings from the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Ritual and Christian Beginnings provides an overview of how ritual has been approached in previous scholarship, including reasons for its neglect, and introduces the reader to the emerging fields of Ritual Studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion. In particular, it explores the ways in which cognitive theories of ritual can shed new light on issues discussed by early Christian scholars, and opens up new questions and avenues for further research. The socio-cognitive approach to ritual is applied to a number of test cases, including John the Baptist, the ritual healing practiced by Jesus and the early Christians, the social life of Pauline Christianity, and the development of early Christian baptismal practices. The analysis creates building blocks for a new account of Christian beginnings, highlighting the role of ritual innovation, cooperative signalling, and the importance of bodily actions for the generation and transmission of religious knowledge.

In this work, Karl Shuve provides a new account of how the Song of Songs became one of the most popular biblical texts in medieval Western Christianity, through a close and detailed study of its interpretation by late antique Latin theologians. It has often been presumed that early Latin writers exercised little influence on the medieval interpretation of the poem, since there are so few extant commentaries from the period. But this is to overlook the hundreds of citations of and allusions to the Song in the writings of influential figures such as Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine as well as the lesser-known theologian Gregory of Elvira. Through a comprehensive analysis of these citations and allusions, Shuve argues that contrary to the expectations of many modern scholars, the Song of Songs was not a problematic text for early Christian theologians, but was a resource that they mined as they debated the nature of the church and of the virtuous life. The first part of the volume considers the use of the Song in the churches of Roman Africa and Spain, where bishops and theologians focused on images of enclosure and purity invoked in the poem. In the second part, the focus is late fourth-century Italy, where a new ascetic interpretation, concerned particularly with women's piety, began to emerge. This erotic poem gradually became embedded in the discursive traditions of Latin Late Antiquity, which were bequeathed to the Christian communities of early medieval Europe.

The Life of Saint Helia, a late ancient Latin hagiography of uncertain provenance, is a remarkable and virtually unknown text, of which a critical edition and English translation appear here for the first time, accompanied by an introduction and commentary. Written predominately in dialogue format, the Life records a lengthy and highly polemical debate between a young girl Helia and her mother regarding the relative merits of virginity and marriage, followed by a dialogue between Helia and a bishop and a debate between Helia and a judge. The arguments both for and against virginity are biblically based, and the text is notable for its citational density and exegetical creativity. The dramatic narrative that frames the dialogue appears to have been influenced by the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, while the speeches suggest familiarity with the virginity apologetics of Ambrose and Jerome; because the Life has is preserved in only two medieval manuscripts, both from northern Spain, a Priscillianist context of composition is possible. This lively work will be of great interest to students of hagiography, asceticism, women's history, and biblical exegesis.

After resolving to become a Catholic Christian, Augustine spent a decade trying to clarify his understanding of 'contemplation,' the interior presence of God to the soul. That long struggle yielded his classic account in the Confessions. This study explores Augustine's developing understanding of contemplation, beginning with his earliest accounts written before his baptism and ending with the Confessions. Chapter One examines the pagan monotheism of the Roman Platonists and the role of contemplation in their theology. Augustine's pre-baptismal writings are then considered in Chapter Two, tracking his fundamental break from pagan Platonism. Chapter Three then turns to Augustine's developing understanding of contemplation in these pre-baptismal texts. Chapter Four concentrates on Augustine's thought during the decade after his baptism in 387, a period that encompasses his monastic life in Thagaste, and his years first as a presbyter and then as a bishop in Hippo Regius. This chapter follows the arc of Augustine's thought through these years of transition and leads into the Confessions, giving a vantage point to survey its theology of contemplation. Chapter Five concentrates on the Confessions and sets its most famous account of contemplation, the vision at Ostia from Book IX, into a larger polemical context. Augustine's defence of his transcendental reading of scripture in Confessions XII is analysed and then used to illuminate the Ostian ascent narrative. The book concludes with observations on the importance of Augustine's theology of contemplation to the emergence of Christian monotheism in late antiquity.

Georges Florovsky is the mastermind of a 'return to the Church Fathers' in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. His theological vision-the neopatristic synthesis-became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology and the golden standard of Eastern Orthodox identity in the West. Focusing on Florovsky's European period (1920-1948), this study analyses how Florovsky's evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources. Paul Gavrilyuk offers a new reading of Florovsky's neopatristic theology, by closely considering its ontological, epistemological and ecclesiological foundations. It is common to contrast Florovsky's neopatristic theology with the 'modernist' religious philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. Gavrilyuk argues that the standard narrative of twentieth-century Orthodox theology, based on this polarization, must be reconsidered. The author demonstrates Florovsky's critical appropriation of the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood. The distinctive features of Florovsky's neopatristic theology Christological focus, 'ecclesial experience', personalism, and 'Christian Hellenism' are best understood against the background of the main problematic of the Renaissance. Specifically, it is shown that Bulgakov's sophiology provided a polemical subtext for Florovsky's theology of creation. It is argued that the use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology represents Florovsky's theological signature. Drawing on unpublished archival material and correspondence, this study sheds new light on such aspects of Florovsky's career as his family background, his participation in the Eurasian movement, his dissertation on Alexander Herzen, his lectures on Vladimir Solovyov, and his involvement in Bulgakov's Brotherhood of St Sophia.

This volume examines the use of the image of the Jewish temple in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon theologian and historian, Bede (d. 735). The various Jewish holy sites described in the Bible possessed multiple different meanings for Bede and therefore this imagery provides an excellent window into his thought. Bede's Temple: An Image and its Interpretation examines Bede's use of the temple to reveal his ideas of history, the universe, Christ, the Church, and the individual Christian. Across his wide body of writings Bede presented an image of unity, whether that be the unity of Jew and gentile in the universal Church, or the unity of human and divine in the incarnate Christ, and the temple-image provided a means of understanding and celebrating that unity. Conor O'Brien argues that Bede's understanding of the temple was part of the shared spirituality and communal discourse of his monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow, in particular as revealed in the great illuminated Bible made there: the Codex Amiatinus. Studying the temple in Bede's works reveals not just an individual genius, but a monastic community engaged actively in scriptural interpretation and religious reflection. O'Brien makes an important contribution to our understanding of early Anglo-Saxon England's most important author, the world in which he lived, and the processes that inspired his work.

Melania the Younger: From Rome to Jerusalem explores the richly detailed story of Melania, an early fifth-century Roman Christian aristocrat who renounced her staggering wealth to lead a life of ascetic renunciation. Hers is a tale of "riches to rags." Born to high Roman aristocracy in the late fourth century, Melania encountered numerous difficulties posed by family members, Roman officials, and historical circumstances in disposing of her wealth, property (spread across at least eight Roman provinces), and thousands of slaves. Leaving Rome with her entourage a few years before Alaric the Goth's sack of Rome in 410, she journeyed to Sicily, then to North Africa, finally settling in Jerusalem-all while founding monasteries along the way. Towards the end of her life, she traveled to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in an attempt to convert to Christianity her still-pagan uncle, who was on a state mission to the eastern Roman court. Throughout her life, she was accustomed to meet and be assisted by emperors and empresses, bishops, and other high dignitaries. Embracing a fairly extreme asceticism, Melania died in Jerusalem in 439. A new English translation of her Life, composed by a long-time assistant who succeeded her in the direction of the male and female monasteries in Jerusalem, accompanies this biographical study.

Ezekiel is one of the few books of the Ethiopic Old Testament of which no critical edition has hitherto existed, and the aim of this work is to fill that gap. It provides a critical edition of the oldest accessible text of the Geez version and is based on a collation of fifteen manuscripts. The Ethiopic version is a daughter version of the Septuagint, and the work sheds light on the character of the original translation and on its subsequent history. The latter included the revision of the translation in the early mediaeval period, which was in part influenced by a Syriac-based Arabic version, and a further revision of the translation based on the Masoretic text.

The Histories Against the Pagans of Orosius, written in 416/7, has been one of the most influential works in the history of Western historiography. Often read as a theology of history, it has been rarely been set against the background of ancient historiography and rhetorical practice in the time of Orosius. Arguing for the closeness of rhetoric and historiography in Antiquity, this book shows how Orosius situates himself consciously in the classical tradition and draws on a variety of rhetorical tools to shape his narrative: a subtle web of interextual allusions, a critical engagement with traditional exempla, a creative rewriting of the sources, and a skilled deployment of the rhetoric of pathos. In this way, Orosius aims at opening the eyes of his adversaries; instead of remaining blinded by the traditional, glorious view of the past, he wishes his readers to see the past and the present in their true colours. The book paints a more complex picture of theHistories, and argues against the tendency to see Orosius as a naive apologist of the Roman empire. In fact, he can be shown to put the Church at the heart of view of Roman history. Setting Orosius in the context of contemporary historiography and literature, it sheds new light on the intellectual life in the early fifth century AD.

How did people think about listening in the ancient world, and what evidence do we have of it in practice? The Christian faith came to the illiterate majority in the early Church through their ears. This proved problematic: the senses and the body had long been held in suspicion as all too temporal, mutable and distracting. Carol Harrison argues that despite profound ambivalence on these matters, in practice, the senses, and in particular the sense of hearing, were ultimately regarded as necessary - indeed salvific -constraints for fallen human beings. By examining early catechesis, preaching and prayer, she demonstrates that what illiterate early Christians heard both formed their minds and souls and, above all, enabled them to become 'literate' listeners; able not only to grasp the rule of faith but also tacitly to follow the infinite variations on it which were played out in early Christian teaching, exegesis and worship. It becomes clear that listening to the faith was less a matter of rationally appropriating facts and more an art which needed to be constantly practiced: for what was heard could not be definitively fixed and pinned down, but was ultimately the Word of the unknowable, transcendent God. This word demanded of early Christian listeners a response - to attend to its echoes, recollect and represent it, stretch out towards it source, and in the process, be transformed by it.

This volume offers a full analysis of one of the more intriguing works by a figure who is central to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Christianity: the translator, exegete, and controversialist Jerome (c.347-419/20AD). The neglected text of the Vita Malchi - or, to use Jerome's title, the Captive Monk - recounts the experiences of Malchus, a monk abducted by nomadic Saracens on the Eastern fringe of the fourth-century Roman Empire, in what today is the border region between southern Turkey and Syria. Most of this short, vivid, and fast-paced narrative is recounted by Malchus in the first person. The volume's introduction provides background information on the author, Jerome, and the historical and linguistic context of the Life, as well as detailed discussion of the work's style and its reception of earlier Christian and classical literature, ranging from its relationship with comedy, epic, and the ancient novel to the Apocryphal Apostolic Acts and martyr narratives. An exposition of the manuscript evidence is then followed by a new edition of the Latin text with an English translation, and a comprehensive commentary. The commentary explores the complex intertextuality of the work and provides readers with an understanding of its background, originality, and significance; it elucidates not only literary and philological questions but also points of ethnography and topography, and intellectual and social history.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the work of an otherwise shadowy figure, John Climacus (meaning of the Ladder), abbot of St. Catherine's, Sinai (ca. 579-649 CE), is one of the most popular and enduring classics of Greek ascetic spiritual direction. Hailed as the great synthesis of early ascetic writings, the Ladder presents a spirituality self-consciously rooted in the literary and theological tradition of the Desert Fathers and the Great Old Men of Gaza. Despite its incredible popularity among monastic and lay readers, the Ladder is virtually unknown in scholarship. In this work, Jonathan L. Zecher offers a sustained study of the Ladder's spiritual vision, which is contextualized within an equally sustained genealogical survey of Climacus' own tradition. The Ladder is built up through the 'memory of death', a term referring to admonitions of early authors to remember one's inevitable but unknowable death and to contemplate the divine judgment which would follow to cultivate particular ascetic, Christian, lifestyles in their readers. In the literature that formed Climacus, every aspect of the 'memory of death' varied considerably, but Climacus draws these together in the Ladder so that death and the judgment which follows defines a symbolic framework within which monks reflect on their past and approach the future. Climacus also took up metaphorical practices of dying to oneself and others to craft an idea of spiritual progress in the imitation of Christ taking into account failure and frailty. At the heart of this study is the abiding question of how tradition forms, and in the Ladder is an outstanding example of how unflinching fidelity to tradition results in a creative, synthetic achievement.