As it developed an increasingly distinctive character of its own during the first six centuries of the common era, Christianity was constantly forced to reassess and adapt its relationship with the Jewish tradition. The process involved a number of preoccupations and challenges: the status of biblical and parabiblical texts (several of them already debatable in Jewish eyes), the nature and purposes of God, patterns of prayer (both personal and liturgical), ritual practices, ethical norms, the acquisition and exercise of religious authority, and the presentation of a religious "face" to the very different culture that surrounded and in many ways dominated both Christians and Jews. The essays in this volume were developed within that broad field of inquiry, and indeed make their contribution to it. For, among the many issues already mentioned, there was also that of persons. What was Christianity to do, not just with Adam or Noah, say, but with Abraham, David and Solomon, the great prophetic figures of Jewish history-and, of course, with Moses? As we move, chapter by chapter, across the early Christian centuries, we see Moses gradually changing in Christian eyes, and at the hands of Christian exegetes and theologians, until he becomes the philosopher par excellence, the forerunner of Plato, the archetype of the lawgiver, the model shepherd of the people of God-yet all on the basis of a scriptural record that Jews would still have been able to recognize. Written by a range of established scholars, younger and older, many of them highly distinguished, The Christian Moses will appeal to graduate and senior students, to those rooted in a range of disciplines-literary, historical, art historical, as well in theology and exegesis-and to everyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations in this early era.

With Increasing Interest in early Egyptian (Coptic) Christanity, this volume offers an important collection of essays about Coptic language, literature, and social history by the very finest authors in the field. The essays explore a wide range of topics and offer much to the advancement of Coptic studies. Readers interested in the emergence of Christianity in Egypt and its later development in the Coptic Church will find much of interest in these pages. The essays range broadly through the areas of Coptic language and literature, examining the origins and history of the Coptic community in its formative years. The Jewish content and connections of earliest Christianity in Egypt are explored, as is the survival of pagan religion in a later increasingly Christian world. Studies of Egyptian monasticism range from investigations of the later literature and history of the important Upper Egyptian communal movement of Pachomius to the identity of a class of monks disparaged by Cassian and Jerome. One finds here a new translation and analysis of a letter of Evagrius of Pontus addressed to a monk enmeshed in difficult family relationships, and a careful study of the 4th-5th century monastic leader Shenoute's discourse I am Amazed, illustrating the significance of his role in the developing opposition to the Council of Chalcedon. Other studies include an important examination of the rhetorical structure of Coptic sermons (with numerous examples), a study of the complex manuscript tradition of the Coptic ecclesiastical history, and a fascinating application of modern information theory to the analysis of Coptic grammar. Written in honor of David W. Johnson, S.J., professor emeritus of Semiticand Egyptian languages at the Catholic University of America, the book features essays by Monica Blanchard, Daniel Boyarin, Leo Depuydt, David Frankfurter, James E. Goehring, Tito Orlandi, Birger Pearson, Philip Rousseau, Mark Sheridan, Janet A. Timbie, and Robin Darling Young.