Read more
To study Christian dialogues means to recognize that the dialogue form, notably employed by Plato and Aristotle, did not exhaust itself with the philosophical schools of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, but emerged transformed and reinvigorated in the religiously diverse world of Late Antiquity. The Christians's use of the dialogue form within religious controversy resulted in a burgeoning activity of composition of prose dialogues, which now opposed a Christian anda Jew, a Christian and a pagan, a Christian and a Manichaean, an orthodox and a heretic, or, later, a Christian and a Muslim. The present work offers the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and in Syriac from the earliest examples in the second century to the end of thesixth century.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Structure of the Work
- Dialogue and Christianity
- Dialogues and Late Antiquity
- The Dialogue Form and Rhetorical Training
- The Dialogue Form and Erotapokriseis
- Towards a Comprehensive Approach?
- A Formal Typology
- Guide to Dialogues
- Index of Dialogues, Erotapokriseis, and Related Texts
- General Index
- General Bibliography
About the author
Alberto Rigolio was trained in Classics and Late Antiquity in Milan, Oxford, and Princeton, and is currently Associate Professor in Classics at Durham University. He works on the cultural history of the later Roman world, with particular reference to the transformations of ancient rhetorical and philosophical traditions in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity.
Summary
This book addresses a particular and little-known form of writing, the prose dialogue, during the Late Antique period, when Christian authors adopted and transformed the dialogue form to suit the new needs of religious debate. Connected to, but departing from, the dialogues of Classical Antiquity, these new forms staged encounters between Christians and pagans, Jews, Manichaeans, and "heretical" fellow Christians. At times fiction, at others records of, or scripts for, actual debates, the dialogues give us a glimpse of Late Antique rhetoric as it was practiced and tell us about the theological arguments underpinning religious differences.
By offering the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and Syriac from the earliest examples to the end of the sixth century CE, the present volume shows that Christian authors saw the dialogue form as a suitable vehicle for argument and apologetic in the context of religious controversy and argues that dialogues were intended as effective tools of opinion formation in Late Antique society. Most Christian dialogues are little studied, and often in isolation, but they vividly evoke the religious debates of the time and they embody the cultural conventions and refinements that Late Antique men and women expected from such debates.
Additional text
This is a comprehensive and meticulous guide to a fascinating literary genre: Rigolio has done scholarship a great service by opening up the field by allowing the easy comparison of a wide range of texts.
