God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts - Softcover

Nongbri, Brent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300248601 ISBN 13: 9780300248609

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2020

Synopsis

A provocative book from a highly original scholar, challenging much of what we know about early Christian manuscripts

In this bold and groundbreaking book, Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian manuscripts and demonstrates that much of what we thought we knew about these books and fragments is mistaken. While biblical scholars have expended much effort in their study of the texts contained within the earliest Christian manuscripts, there has been a surprising lack of interest in thinking about these books as material objects with individual, unique histories. We have too often ignored the ways that the antiquities market obscures our knowledge of the origins of these manuscripts.
 
Through painstaking archival research and detailed studies of the most important collections of early Christian manuscripts, Nongbri vividly shows that the earliest Christian books are more than just carriers of texts or samples of handwriting. They are three-dimensional archaeological artifacts with fascinating stories to tell, if we’re willing to listen.

About this title

About the Author:

Brent Nongbri is an Honorary Research Fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and the author of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept and numerous articles on the paleography and codicology of early Christian manuscripts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0300248601
• ISBN 13: 9780300248609
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416