The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity

The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity

by Yuliya Minets
The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity

The Slow Fall of Babel: Languages and Identities in Late Antique Christianity

by Yuliya Minets

Hardcover

$120.00 
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Overview

This is the story of the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The metaphor of Babel stands for the magnificent edifice of classical culture that was about to reach the sky, but remained self-sufficient and self-contained in its virtual monolingualism – the paradigm within which even Latin was occasionally considered just a dialect of Greek. The gradual erosion of this vision is the slow fall of Babel that took place in the hearts and minds of a good number of early Christian writers and intellectuals who represented various languages and literary traditions. This step-by-step process included the discovery and internalization of the existence of multiple other languages in the world, as well as subsequent attempts to incorporate their speakers meaningfully into the holistic and distinctly Christian picture of the universe.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781108833462
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 12/09/2021
Pages: 400
Product dimensions: 6.18(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

Yuliya Minets is an Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Jacksonville State University.

Table of Contents

1. Meeting the Alloglottic Other: The Socio-Linguistic Landscape of the Ancient Mediterranean and the Spread of Christianity; 2. Languages and Identities in Greco-Roman and Jewish Antiquity; 3. The Tower of Babel and Beyond: Primordial Linguistic Situation, Original Language, and the Start of Linguistic Diversification; 4. Speaking in Tongues in Christian Late Antiquity; 5. Foreign Languages and the Discourse of Otherness; 6. The Languages of Saints and Demons.
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