Stefaniw, Blossom. Junior Professor, Ethics in Antiquity and Christianity, Faculty of Protestant Theology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Abstract:
This lecture surveys five key methodological and theoretical problems connected to the Tura Papyri. These are:
1) Ancient Christian Textualities
2) Ancient Scholarship and Chronography
3) Knowledge and Narrative
4) Contingency and the Archive
5) Modern Scholarship and Imagination
I will inquire about how the textual history of Christianity looks if we uncouple it from universalism, from eurocentric 19th century historiography, and from foundationalist epistemology, all of which we might denote under the term 'colonialism'. What happens if we untangle Christian texts from the models of readers, texts, and knowledge which correlate with those framing discourses? What happens if we construe ancient Christianity not as a march towards Europe, or indeed America, but as part of a diffuse, contingent, fragile, and particular history of reading?