Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History (review)

Abstract

Early Greek and Latin Literature: History. By Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli. Translated by Matthew J. O'Connell. 2 vols. (Peabody Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2005. Pp. xxiv, 455; xxvi, 734. $99.95.) Two questions are especially raised by this weighty but finely translated survey. First, what does one mean by Christian Literature? second, what should one make of new subtitle, A History? (The original title, Storia delta letteratura, is equally problematic; and comparable difficulty arises with titles like Histoire litteraire or Literaturgeschichte.) authors suggest (1, xi) that literatures are defined by their languages, whereas literature is defined by its content. They admit that languages used have their own histories and therefore their own effects; but they would not divide literature in first instance according to language. One should note at once authors' deliberate omission of material in Syriac and other languages of Oriens christianus. It is true that earliest texts have to be placed within context of (predominantly Greek) Hellenistic culture, which they modified by their particular approach to sacred texts and sacred rituals, to Hebrew Bible, and sacramental life. Yet impact of languages further east, not to mention Hebrew itself and Aramaic, had become apparent by second century at latest, and continued to grow in importance. It also has to be borne in mind that several elements of early literature survive only in their eastern translations and recensions-which raises immediate question of whether survivals mirror accurately originals. short, is no longer acceptable to fly Greek-and-Latin flag and still lay claim to an inclusive Christianity. I also think an opportunity was lost when authors turned to Latin tradition, in which the importance of Bible . . . was utterly decisive (I, 318). Here new thread could have been identified and pursued; but that does not happen, and in particular there is never an attempt to set down in one place comparison between Greek biblical tradition, so conscious (with time) of both Hebrew and Septuagint texts, and Latin tradition, based essentiaEy (until Jerome) on translation or translations. How odd, also, to confine to chapter on The First Literature of West observation that Christians tried to find in Bible elements that could be matched to standards by which secular texts were usually judged (1, 323)-hardly peculiarity of West. real attempt is, however, made to define history. Literary forms and genres were adapted to needs of new faith, and literary history focuses on development of forms in relation to development of institutions and (I, xiii). other words, institutions, and ideas have certain priority, an explanatory force in relation to texts themselves (even though needs are betrayed to us only in texts). These are brave avowals, but temptation to rest content with textual forms alone is never quite resisted. In literature, authors declare, it is not possible to reach same certainty-or probability-as in interpretation of historical or economic facts (whatever they are, I, 317), which is to overlook their earlier suggestion that two have to go hand in hand: if one lacks security, then so does other. When we come, in second volume, to period after Constantine,we find amore explicit emphasis on rhetoric, which encourages or demands a reading that includes formal structures as part of linkage of literature with its times-which must consist in part, one assumes, in needs, institutions, and ideas. In late antiquity, we learn, reality and rhetoric were closely connected in an indissoluble symbiosis (II, 9). …