Language And Identity In Ancient Narratives

When a Christian writer refers to Jesus as the Lord, what does it signify? Is it primarily a way of making a political or theological statement, or might social concerns have had more influence on the writer's choice of words? Studies of early Christianity regularly depend on a nuanced understanding of lexical significance, but current research often fails to consider social aspects of what words mean. Julia A. Snyder argues that methodological improvements are needed in how lexical significance in ancient Greek texts is determined, based on an analysis of the relationship between speech patterns and addressee identity in the Acts of the Apostles, Acts of John, and Acts of Philip. She also illustrates how sociolinguistic variation contributes to characterization and the construction of Christian identity in the narratives, how it sheds light on the rewriting of ancient texts, and how it informs the question of whether apostolic narratives were produced for evangelistic purposes.

The Greek romance was for the Roman period what epic was for the Archaic period or drama for the Classical: the central literary vehicle for articulating ideas about the relationship between self and community. This book offers a reading of the romance both as a distinctive narrative form (using a range of narrative theories) and as a paradigmatic expression of identity (social, sexual and cultural). At the same time it emphasises the elasticity of romance narrative and its ability to accommodate both conservative and transformative models of identity. This elasticity manifests itself partly in the variation in practice between different romancers, some of whom are traditionally Hellenocentric while others are more challenging. Ultimately, however, it is argued that it reflects a tension in all romance narrative, which characteristically balances centrifugal against centripetal dynamics. This book will interest classicists, historians of the novel and students of narrative theory.

This book introduces sociolinguistic criticism to New Testament studies. It utilizes a wide range of sociolinguistic theories, principles, and concepts in treating the language and sociolinguistic contexts of the New Testament, social memory, orality and literacy, and the oral traditions of the Gospels, and various texts and genres in the New Testament.

In The Language and Literature of the New Testament, a team of international scholars assemble to honour the academic career of New Testament scholar, Stanley E. Porter.

In this volume Joshua Paul Smith challenges the long-held assumption that Luke and Acts were written by a gentile, arguing instead that the author of these texts was educated and enculturated within a Second-Temple Jewish context. Advancing from a consciously interdisciplinary perspective, Smith considers the question of Lukan authorship from multiple fronts, including reception history and social memory theory, literary criticism, and the emerging discipline of cognitive sociolinguistics. The result is an alternative portrait of Luke the Evangelist, one who sees the mission to the gentiles not as a supersession of Jewish law and tradition, but rather as a fulfillment and expansion of Israel’s own salvation history.

Open Access for this publication was made possible by a generous donation from Segelbergska stiftelsen för liturgivetenskaplig forskning (The Segelbergska Foundation for Research in Liturgical Studies). In a seminal study, Cur cantatur?, Anders Ekenberg examined Carolingian sources for explanations of why the liturgy was sung, rather than spoken. This multidisciplinary volume takes up Ekenberg’s question anew, investigating the interplay of New Testament writings, sacred spaces, biblical interpretation, and reception history of liturgical practices and traditions. Analyses of Greek, Latin, Coptic, Arabic, and Gǝʿǝz sources, as well as of archaeological and epigraphic evidence, illuminate an array of topics, including recent trends in liturgical studies; manuscript variants and liturgical praxis; Ignatius of Antioch’s choral metaphor; baptism in ancient Christian apocrypha; and the significance of late ancient altar veils.

This book examines a range of royalist women’s cultural responses to war, dislocation, diaspora and exile through a rich variety of media across multiple geographies of the archipelago of the British Isles and as far as The Hague and Antwerp on the Continent, thereby uniquely documenting comparative links between women’s cultural production, types of exile and political allegiance. Offering the first full length study to therorize the royalist condition as one of diaspora, it chronologically charts a series of ruptures beginning with initial displacement and dispersal due to civil war in the early 1640s and concludes with examination of the homecoming for royalist exiles after the restoration in 1660. As it retrieves its subjects’ varied experiences of exile, and documents how these politically conscious women produce contrasting yet continuous forms of cultural, personal and political identities, it challenges conventional paradigms which all too neatly categorize royalism and exile during this seminal period in British and European history.

David Alan Black has been one of the leading voices in New Testament studies over the last forty years. His contributions to Greek grammar, textual criticism, the Synoptic problem, the authorship of Hebrews, and many more have challenged scholars and students to get into the text of the New Testament like never before and to rethink the status quo based on all the evidence. The present volume consists of thirteen studies, written by some of Black's colleagues, friends, and former students, on a number of New Testament topics in honor of his successful research and teaching career. Not only do they address issues that have garnered his attention over the years, they also extend the scholarly discussion with up-to-date research and fresh evaluations of the evidence, making this book a valuable contribution in itself to the field that Black has devoted himself to since he began his career.