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Books > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > General
Christian Reading shifts the assumption that study of the Bible
must be about the content of the Bible or aimed at confessional
projects of religious instruction. Blossom Stefaniw focuses on the
lesson transcripts from the Tura papyri, which reveal verbatim oral
classroom discourse, to show how biblical texts were used as an
exhibition space for the traditional canon of general knowledge
about the world. Stefaniw demonstrates that the work of Didymus the
Blind in the lessons reflected in the Tura papyri was similar to
that of other grammarians in late antiquity: articulating the
students' place in time, their position in the world, and their
connection to their heritage. But whereas other grammarians used
revered texts like Homer and Menander, Didymus curated the cultural
patrimony using biblical texts: namely, the Psalms and
Ecclesiastes. By examining this routine epistemological and
pedagogical work carried out through the Bible, Christian Reading
generates a new model of the relationship of Christian scholarship
to the pagan past.
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