Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea

This book uses broad synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea in Roman Palestine. It explores the dialectic between intellectual history and history of the book and expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.

Table of Contents:
Contents Illustrations Preface Cast of Characters Introduction: Scholars, Books, and Libraries in theChristian Tradition 1 Origen at Caesarea: A Christian Philosopher among His Books 2 Origen’s Hexapla: Scholarship, Culture, and Power 3 Eusebius’s Chronicle: History Made Visible 4 Eusebius at Caesarea: A Christian Impresario of the Codex Coda: Caesarea in History and Tradition Abbreviations Bibliography Notes Acknowledgments Index

About the Author :
Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. Megan Williams is Assistant Professor of History, San Francisco State University.

Review :
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book is a highly enjoyable and successful collaboration between a distinguished senior scholar and a very bright young historian. Drawing on a wealth of recent writing on the cultural setting of early Christianity (much of it inspired by the seminal work of Peter Brown), Grafton and Williams bring their own distinctive insistence on the centrality of innovations in book production and book distribution to the formation of momentous new patterns of thought...The book succeeds in placing Origen and Eusebius firmly and illuminatingly against a world in which Christianity had not yet triumphed, and they convey vividly the intellectual daring involved in these pioneering attempts to articulate and define Christianity alongside and against the Jewish and the classical worldviews. In the process they provide a reminder--salutary and timely, from a European perspective, in an increasingly aggressive secularist climate--of how much Jewish and Christian thought patterns have contributed to shaping some of the most fundamental assumptions and directions of Western culture. -- Eamon Duffy New York Review of Books 20070329 A fascinating exercise in intellectual history that highlights the crucial role books played in the rise of Christianity...Thanks to the stories so ably told in this work, one realizes that scholarship in the name of truth is a very ancient calling in Christianity. -- Lawrence S. Cunningham Commonweal 20070323 With forays into library history, papyrology, and reception studies, this book is multi-faceted, erudite, and inspiring in its scope. -- Scott Fitzgerald Johnson Bryn Mawr Classical Review 20070601 Grafton and Williams demonstrate how, in late antiquity, when the papyrus scroll and the codex were both being used to create books, Christian scholars Origen and Eusebius pioneered techniques such as the use of parallel columns, multiple colors, and complex tables to create new forms of scholarship that would inspire future intellectuals and in turn lead to the supremacy of the codex. In this lively and accessible volume, readers learn of the conception and execution of Origen's Hexapla, a philological tool in six columns for studying the Hebrew Bible, and how Eusebius used his position as a Christian bishop to develop a major research center at Caesarea, where books were collected, copied, and created. Grafton and Williams argue that rather than ignoring difficult, often conflicting, non-Christian sources, Origen and Eusebius critically engaged and quoted these sources, thereby setting intellectual precedents that would be emulated by later scholars such as Jerome, Bede, and Erasmus. -- T.J. Bond Choice 20070901