Contents

pp v-vi

Notes on Contributors

pp vii-viii

Introduction: Why don't Christians do dialogue?

pp 1-12

PART I - CLASSICAL MODELS

pp 13-14

1 - Fictions of dialogue in Thucydides

pp 15-28

2 - The beginnings of dialogue Socratic discourses and fourth-century prose

pp 29-44

3 - Plato's dialogues and a common rationale for dialogue form

pp 45-60

PART II - EMPIRE MODELS

pp 61-62

4 - Ciceronian dialogue

pp 63-84

5 - Sympotic dialogue in the first to fifth centuries CE

pp 85-114

PART III - CHRISTIANITY AND THE THEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE

pp 115-116

6 - Can we talk? Augustine and the possibility of dialogue

pp 117-134

7 - ‘Let's (not) talk about it’: Augustine and the control of epistolary dialogue

pp 135-148

PART IV - CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL IMPERATIVE

pp 149-150

8 - Christians, dialogues and patterns of sociability in late antiquity

pp 151-172

9 - Boethius, Gregory the Great and the Christian ‘afterlife’ of classical dialogue

pp 173-190

PART V - JUDAISM AND THE LIMITS OF DIALOGUE

pp 191-192

10 - No dialogue at the symposium? Conviviality in Ben Sira and the Palestinian Talmud

pp 193-216

11 - Dialectic and divination in the Talmud

pp 217-241

Bibliography

pp 242-262

Index

pp 263-266