Introduction: the literary culture of the earliest christianity

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521460835.002

1 - Introduction: the literary culture of the earliest christianity

from A - LITERARY GUIDE

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Edited by

Lewis Ayres and

Assisted by

Frances Young: Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth: Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday: Affiliation:
University of Durham

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Summary

The last 200 years have seen considerable swings in the literary assessment of the earliest Christian literature, including as it does the texts which became the canonized Scriptures of the Church, but not just those. The pendulum has been affected partly by new discoveries, but changing perspectives have also played their part. A series of interrelated questions has emerged from the principal debates:

(1) In what sense are Christian texts ‘literary’? How do they relate to other literature that has survived from antiquity?

(2) Which texts should be included in the category ‘Christian’?

(3) From what social level and cultural milieu did these texts issue? To what extent are they to be assessed as the deposit of an oral and non-literary environment? How is the transition to written texts to be evaluated?

(4) Do peculiarities of language, rhetoric or genre set these texts apart? Or are they typical of the time and circumstances from which they emerged?

(5) How are these texts to be read? Is it enough to evaluate them as historical documents, relating them to the historical circumstances in which they were generated and the literary culture to which they originally belonged?

Some of these questions will be considered in Part I B, but it is an illusion to think that a description of the literature can be offered without essaying some answers.

Keywords

Christian movement Church Scriptures Christian literature anti-heretical literature canon criticism Greco-Roman literary culture

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature , pp. 1 - 10

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521460835.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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1 - Introduction: the literary culture of the earliest christianity

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