Classics

How did Christian communities across time and space engage with religious others? Informed by current debates on global history, the studies in this volume cover Eastern and Western Christian traditions stretching from the second to the twentieth century and portray Christianity as a fluid, relational, and globally entangled religion.

Simon Birol examines the conceptions of Jacob of Serugh regarding the ascetic life, both as a solitary and within the community, and situates them within the development of early Syriac monasticism. The basis for this study consists of two Syriac texts by Jacob, including the work On the Solitaries, here critically edited for the first time.

This volume contributes to the reconstruction of the history of ancient Christians on the basis of an exemplary selection of Greek inscriptions. Fifteen essays discussing inscriptions from Asia Minor and Greece offer striking insights into the lives, beliefs, and diversity of Christian communities that literary sources largely pass over.

In the present volume, the manifold practice of biblical exegesis is taken up methodically and transferred into an integrative overall model of textual interpretation. Students receive the fundamental “tools” for a scholarly, reflective treatment of New Testament texts and their receptions.