The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies

Abstract

Late ancient studies as a relatively discrete discipline is a recent invention.Only since the 1970s have scholars, who in a previous generation might have identified themselves as classicists, church historians, Roman historians, or patristics scholars, come to identify themselves as scholars of ''late antiquity.''But more has changed than just the name.The methods of analysisboth historiographical and literary-of the period (itself newly delineated within academic discourse), its characters and texts, have also changed significantly.The essays in this volume, concentrating for the sake of coherence mainly on Christianity in late antiquity, exemplify those changes.∞ A New Discipline ''Late ancient studies'' designates the study of the civilizations clustered mainly around the Mediterranean from the period between roughly 100 and 700 c.e.The earlier terminus is intended to indicate that New Testament history and literature lie outside the purview of late ancient studies.Although some New Testament scholars publish on noncanonical early Christian texts and even non-Christian materials of later periods, the field of New Testament studies has its own scholarly organs and identity markers: journals, associations, job descriptions.Late ancient studies generally leaves the New Testament and earliest Christian history (for example, the historical Jesus or the social organization of Pauline communities) to others and begins where the study of New Testament history and literature leaves o√.The latter terminus (700 c.e.), on the other hand, is less firm.When Peter Brown published The World of Late Antiquity, one of the first books that helped define the new field, he added ''ad 150-750'' to the title.Averil Cameron, on the other hand, entitled one of her books, with an admittedly narrower focus, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, ad 395-600.

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