By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing marks of cultural and ideological interests.

In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two currently divided fields.

Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. Reading, Books, and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean: An Introduction, Jonathan Norton (Heythrop College, University of London, UK)
2. The Social Stratification of Scribes and Readers in Greco-Roman Judaism, Lindsey A. Askin (University of Bristol, UK)
3. Aspects of Scripturality in the Community Rule (S): A Key to the History of Qumran Literature, Annette Steudel (Georg-August Universität, Germany)
4. The Making of the Theme of Immortality in the Wisdom of Solomon, Ekaterina Matusova (Eberhard Karls University, Germany)
5. Bookish Circles? The Move toward the Use of Written Texts in Rabbinic Oral Culture, Catherine Hezser (SOAS, University of London, UK)
6. Sympotic Learning: Symposia Literature and Cultural Education, Sean A. Adams (University of Glasgow, UK)
7. Adult Teaching and Learning in Philosophical Schools: The Cases of Epictetus and Calvenus Taurus, Michael Trapp (King's College, UK)
8. The Lone Genius and the Docile Literati: How Bookish Were Paul's Churches?, Jonathan Norton (Heythrop College, University of London, UK)
9. Reading the New Testament in the Context of Other Texts: A Relevance Theory Perspective, Steve Smith (University of Chichester; St Mellitus College, UK)
10. Divine Dissimulation and the Apostolic Vision of Acts, John Moxon, (University of Roehampton, UK)
11. Scriptural Literacy within the Corinthian Church: From the Corinthian Correspondence to 1 Clement, H. H. Drake Williams, III (Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Belgium and University of the Free State, South Africa)
12. Libraries, Special Libraries, and John of Patmos, Garrick V. Allen, (University of Glasgow)
Bibliography
Index