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13 - Scriptures and Interpretations in Early Christian History

from Part III - Contested Heritage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2023

Bruce W. Longenecker
Affiliation:
Baylor University, Texas
David E. Wilhite
Affiliation:
Baylor University, Texas
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Summary

Early Christians and their Scriptures existed within a complex ecosystem. Christians across all sectors of late ancient Roman society encountered their collections of sacred writings in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. We detect a spectrum of dispositions, activities, and projects in their engagements with these texts. Their message was continuously adapted to new and disparate forms of life. And discourses quickly emerged around these Scriptures that were sometimes heated – as a central religious artifact, they not surprisingly became the subject of important controversies. Early Christian leaders pronounced increasingly sophisticated accounts of their subject matter, functions, and readers, but often hidden from our sight were the different venues, such as homes, schools, churches, and libraries, that diversely configured an array of textual activities. And, of course, Bibles were themselves pluriform. They circulated in different materials and formats, and their contents – from readings of individual words to the number and order of books they transmitted – were often highly discrepant.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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