Collecting Early Christian Letters
From the Apostle Paul to Late Antiquity

The first multi-authored study of New Testament and late antique letter collections, crossing the traditional divide between these disciplines.

Bronwen Neil (Edited by), Pauline Allen (Edited by)

9781107091863, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 February 2015

276 pages, 3 b/w illus. 4 tables
23.1 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.55 kg

Letter collections in late antiquity give witness to the flourishing of letter-writing, with the development of the mostly formulaic exchanges between elites of the Graeco-Roman world to a more wide-ranging correspondence by bishops and monks, as well as emperors and Gothic kings. The contributors to this volume study individual collections from the first to sixth centuries CE, ranging from the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline letters through monastic letters from Egypt, bishops' letter collections and early papal collections compiled for various purposes. This is the first multi-authored study of New Testament and late antique letter collections, crossing the traditional divide between these disciplines by focusing on Latin, Greek, Coptic and Syriac epistolary sources. It draws together leading scholars in the field of late antique epistolography from Australasia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Part I. Introducing Early Christian Letters: 1. Continuities and changes in the practice of letter-collecting from Cicero to late antiquity Bronwen Neil
2. Rationales for episcopal letter collections in late antiquity Pauline Allen
Part II. Collecting New Testament and Early Monastic Letters: 3. The Pauline letters as community documents Ian J. Elmer
4. 2 Corinthians and possible material evidence for composite letters in antiquity Brent Nongbri
5. The letter collections of Anthony and Ammonas: shaping a community Samuel Rubenson
6. From letter to letter collection: monastic epistolography in late antique Egypt Malcolm Choat
Part III. Collecting Early Bishops' Letters: 7. Letters of Ambrose of Milan (374–97), Books I–IX J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
8. The letters of Basil of Caesarea and the role of letter collections in their transmission Anna Silvas
9. The ins and outs of the Chrysostom letter collection: new ways of looking at a limited corpus Wendy Mayer
10. The letters of Theodoret of Cyrrhus: personal collections, multi-author archives and historical interpretation Adam M. Schor
Part IV. Collecting Early Papal Letters: 11. Collectio Corbeiensis, Collectio Pithouensis and the earliest collections of papal letters Geoffrey D. Dunn
12. De profundis: the letters and archives of Pelagius I of Rome (556–61) Bronwen Neil.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]