Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World

Chin, Catherine M.

doi:10.9783/9780812201574

Cited by 148 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As C. Michael Chin observes, late antique grammars are cultural products. 33 Just so for late antique Christian theology. Cultural products are determined by the material conditions of their production: models of property ownership and the protection of these by legal, social, and political structures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For men like Servius, to know the world was to approach it through the stores of divine knowledge available in this textual patrimony to those who knew how to cultivate it. 9 This constant working and re-working of texts was 'circular', in the words of Raffaella Cribiore. 10 One text could be laboured over again and again, like a tilled field, producing new knowledge about the world.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Commentators like Servius linked these texts to other works by the 'ancients' (ueteres ). 11 As they did so, they laid out the subtle connections that revealed a deeper cosmic order subtending these inscribed words. Education in late antiquity was participation in this textual patrimony.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Late Antique Cultures of Breath: Politics and the Holy Spirit

Hunt

2021

The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using sources from the fourth century CE, Thomas E. Hunt analyses how people imagined breath in late antiquity. Breathing was a way to mark out and understand human difference in the complex social world of the late Roman Empire. In this context, a person’s breath was used to judge the quality of their social relationships. Breath also held cosmic import, for when a person drew in air they participated in the wider structure of the universe. Christian writers described the inner life of God by referring to these models of breath and breathing. In this essay, Hunt shows how social and theological accounts of breathy relation reinforced each other.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Late Antique Cultures of Breath: Politics and the Holy Spirit

Hunt

2021

The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On one hand, previous Latin rhetoricians were attempting to construct a grammatical standard for students of rhetoric, 44 who needed a prescriptive linguistic baseline for crafting effective discourse. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that Quintilian, along with others, saw the use of "educated" grammar as an essential part of, in the words of Catherine Chin (2008), "the correct performance of one's educated status" (4). In contrast, for Augustine language is simply a vehicle for communicating the message of the Scriptures.…”

Section: Clarity and Obscurity As Virtues Of Style In De Doctrina Chrmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Stylistic Virtues of Clarity and Obscurity in Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina christiana

Camper

2013

Advances in the History of Rhetoric

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In antiquity, rhetorical treatises generally identified clarity and obscurity as positive and negative qualities of style, respectively. But in the fifth century, Augustine developed a valuation such that both clarity and obscurity could potentially function as equally viable resources for persuasion. While previous rhetorical treatises acknowledged that standards of perspicuity varied with genre, Augustine's stipulations for variability are tied much more closely to the particulars of the rhetorical situation. In a bold vision of the potency of style, Augustine demonstrates how a principle like clarity can be adjusted according to the rhetorical situation.

show abstract

“…In her work on the emergence of Christianity as a conceptual entity among literate Romans of the fourth and fifth century, Catherine Chin observes that particular reading practices produce larger ideological structures and implicit narratives. 49 The list is one such reading practice: "The mechanism of the list has a particular function in pedagogical texts: the conceit of the text is that it conveys knowledge from one figure or group of figures to another figure or group." 50 The opening words of M. Arakhin 1:1 ("All value [others] and are [themselves] valued, vow and are vowed about: priests, Levites, and Israelites, women….")…”

Section: Listing Vowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rewriting‘Arakhin: Women and Tannaitic Vows of Valuation

Kanarek

2016

AJS Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Levitical laws of 'arakhin name only males as those who can actively donate the monetary value of another person to the sanctuary or temple. In contrast, tannaitic texts about 'arakhin explicitly name females among those who can donate the monetary value of another to the temple. However, this legislation of females as valuers should not be attributed to a rabbinic desire to ameliorate the status of women, but rather should be viewed as part of the larger rabbinic project of rewriting Scripture. In this case, tannaitic literature recategorizes 'arakhin with votive legislation instead of sanctuary/temple legislation. Close attention to gender enables us to notice the tannaitic rewriting of 'arakhin and thus investigate the rabbinic reconfiguration of its biblical inheritance, not only for the ways in which rabbinic texts rewrite biblical law concerning gender but also for a richer understanding of the scholastic process itself.Although destroyed more than a century before the Mishnah's redaction, the temple and its ritual retained a central place in rabbinic thought and imagination. Almost the entirety of the mishnaic order Kodashim is dedicated to temple ritual, as are a number of tractates in other orders.1 As recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated, although rabbinic writing on the temple may preserve some kernel of a historical record, its depictions often reflect rabbinic imaginations of temple ritual rather than any historical account of "events as they occurred."2 Approaching the study of gender through the lens of the temple necessitates a similar consideration: mentions of gender in conjunction with the temple likely teach more about rabbinic assumptions about gender than those of the Second Temple period itself.3 This article aims to extend our understanding of the process of I would like to thank Jonathan Pomeranz for inviting me to present some of these ideas at the Yale Ancient Judaism Workshop in 2012, and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University, for sponsoring a Summer Collaboratory in 2015 where I developed these ideas further. I am also grateful to

show abstract

Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World

Cited by 148 publications

References 0 publications

Late Antique Cultures of Breath: Politics and the Holy Spirit

Late Antique Cultures of Breath: Politics and the Holy Spirit

The Stylistic Virtues of Clarity and Obscurity in Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina christiana

Rewriting‘Arakhin: Women and Tannaitic Vows of Valuation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About