Fear of God and the beginning of wisdom : the School of Nisibis and Christian scholastic culture in late antique Mesopotamia / Adam H. Becker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Becker, Adam H., 1972-

Series:

Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Madrasat Naṣībīn.

Church history.

Iraq--Church history.

Iraq.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (315 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2006]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The School of Nisibis was the main intellectual center of the Church of the East in the sixth and early seventh centuries C.E. and an institution of learning unprecedented in antiquity. Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom provides a history both of the School and of the scholastic culture of the Church of the East more generally in the late antique and early Islamic periods. Adam H. Becker examines the ideological and intellectual backgrounds of the school movement and reassesses the evidence for the supposed predecessor of the School of Nisibis, the famed School of the Persians of Edessa. Furthermore, he argues that the East-Syrian ("Nestorian") school movement is better understood as an integral and at times contested part of the broader spectrum of East-Syrian monasticism. Becker examines the East-Syrian culture of ritualized learning, which flourished at the same time and in the same place as the famed Babylonian Rabbinic academies. Jews and Christians in Mesopotamia developed similar institutions aimed at inculcating an identity in young males that defined them as beings endowed by their creator with the capacity to study. The East-Syrian schools are the most significant contemporary intellectual institutions immediately comparable to the Rabbinic academies, even as they served as the conduit for the transmission of Greek philosophical texts and ideas to Muslims in the early 'Abbasid period.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Note on Transliteration, Spelling, and Terlllinology

Chronology

Introduction

Chapter 1. Divine Pedagogy and the Transmission of the Knowledge of God: The Discursive Background of the School Movement

Chapter 2. The School of the Persians (Part 1): Rereading the Sources

Chapter 3. The School of the Persians (Part 2): From Ethnic Circle to Theological School

Chapter 4. The School of Nisibis

Chapter 5. The Scholastic Genre: The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools

Chapter 6. The Reception of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the School of Nisibis

Chapter 7. Spelling God's Name with the Letters of Creation: The Use of Neoplatonic Aristotle in the Cause

Chapter 8. A Typology of the East-Syrian Schools

Chapter 9. The Monastic Context of the East-Syrian School Movement

Conclusion: Study as Ritual in the Church of the East

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages [275]-286) and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812201208

0812201205

OCLC:

899045479