[Rezension von: Nongbri, Brent, 1977-, God's library : the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts]
Unusually, I want to begin this review with a confession. Several years ago, I was staying at Fondation Hardt in Geneva when a mutual friend put me in touch with Brent Nongbri. Nongbri was conducting research a few blocks away at Fondation Martin Bodmer. We had never met prior to this virtual introd...
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 89, Issue: 2, Pages: 752-756 |
| Review of: | God's library (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2018) (Walsh, Robyn Faith)
God's library (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 2018) (Walsh, Robyn Faith) God's library (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2018) (Walsh, Robyn Faith) |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Unusually, I want to begin this review with a confession. Several years ago, I was staying at Fondation Hardt in Geneva when a mutual friend put me in touch with Brent Nongbri. Nongbri was conducting research a few blocks away at Fondation Martin Bodmer. We had never met prior to this virtual introduction. We exchanged pleasantries, yet never managed to have that cup of coffee. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself: what on earth is someone who writes about Paul doing at the Bodmer?I publicly admit my ignorance because it illustrates the degree to which, as Nongbri notes in the epilogue to this marvelous book, “scholars need to take a more serious interest in ‘museum archaeology’” (271). Nongbri’s impressively researched and careful work reveals that passively accepting the claims of previous generations when it comes to the provenance and dating of ancient manuscripts has resulted in wildly skewed understandings of the significance of these artifacts. Add to this a general lack of training among early Christian scholars on how to approach such documents, as well as certain ambiguities in method, and we are left with corpora susceptible to the whims and vagaries of the field—including, crucially, the tendency to seek evermore early or “original” evidence for the use and existence of early Christian literature in the ancient Mediterranean world. As another reviewer notes, this book represents a “cold shower for text-critics, papyrologists, paleographers, and codicologists” (Harry Gamble, Church History 89 (1): 154), and it is a welcomed corrective for the field of Christian studies as well. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfab039 |