Thursday, May 25, 2017

Review of Stroumsa, The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Book Note | The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity (Daniel Picus).
Stroumsa, Guy. The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

The sheer volume of material contained in this slim volume is staggering. Guy Stroumsa leaps between Jewish, Christian, Manichaean, and other sources with ease, quoting texts in various languages. Initially trained as a scholar of Gnosticism, in this book Stroumsa reveals his current interest in the history of religion as both a contemporary phenomenon and a shifting paradigm within the ancient world itself. Not only has our own modern view of religion shifted dramatically, but ancient Jews and Christians, Stroumsa suggests, underwent a dramatic shift in their own understanding of their relation to the divine. ...
It sounds as though there is quite a lot in the book that is relevant to the study of ancient Judaism.