The Interaction of Early Christianity with Classical Literature
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 2746
Special Issue Editor
Interests: the manuscript tradition and text criticism of Greek and Latin authors; the reuse of the Greek and Latin Classics in early Christian Greek and Latin literature; and anti-pagan and anti-Christian polemical literature
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to propose a contribution on the topic "The Interaction of Early Christianity with Classical Literature". The relationship of Greek and Latin patristic literature with the pagan cultural tradition is fundamental from several points of view—rhetorical, literary, lexical, exegetical, theological, and philosophical, just to give a few examples. Understanding one or more of these aspects is very important for better knowledge of ancient Christian literature and, more generally, Christianity of the first centuries.
This Special Issue aims to study the forms and contents with which the Greek and Latin Christian authors of the first centuries reworked the classical pagan tradition. This re-elaboration is not always explicit; more often, it is voluntarily hidden, so it is the task of the modern scholar to trace the many ways in which the classical tradition has been re-read and re-elaborated in patristic literature.
Themes, words, expressions, and ideas of the classical tradition have often been taken up without particular modifications or completely distorted depending on the new context in which the Christian authors operated.
In any case, the nascent Christian literature has always interacted with the previous pagan production. More than a few times, this interaction was the opportunity to seek arguments in the controversy against the pagan world contemporary to Christian authors or to fuel the doctrinal controversies that developed in the first centuries of Christianity.
Therefore, it is this interaction that this issue intends to examine according to the plurality of approaches that each contributor wants to offer.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Religion and literature;
- Theology;
- Religion and linguistics;
- History of religions;
- Thoughts, ideologies, and philosophies.
We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, Prof. Alessandro Capone (alessandro.capone@unisalento.it), and CC the Assistant Editor, Margaret Liu (margaret.liu@mdpi.com), of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.
We look forward to receiving insightful contributions.
Prof. Dr. Alessandro Capone
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Christianity
- pagan tradition
- literature
- religion
- theology
- philosophy
- controversy
- philology
- lexicon
- holy scripture
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