Scribal Practices and the Social Construction of Knowledge in Antiquity, Late Antiquity and Medieval Islam

Scribal Practices and the Social Construction of Knowledge in Antiquity, Late Antiquity and Medieval Islam
Author: Myriam Wissa
Publisher: Orientalia Lovaniensia Analect
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2017-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789042933149

Scribal practices across disciplines are often explored through divisions between words, stiches and verses, sections, scribal hands and marks, correction and copying procedures. This volume offers a different perspective: writing as shown here is, at its heart, a deeply social practice connecting narrative to the different categories of knowledge (linguistic, political, administrative, legal, historical and geographic) and literacy. The twelve essays investigate how scribal practices are related to the construction of knowledge and challenge the conventional boundaries. They address various types of knowledge whose potential is triggered by certain needs and values in the context of Antiquity, Late Antiquity and Medieval Islam from al-Andalus through Egypt, Syria to Iraq, Anatolia and Bactria as far afield as Ethiopia. The vast majority of the papers are related thematically and the overall connection between the articles is the salient feature of this volume. The papers also demonstrate how the local context has shaped scribal practices allowing for cross-cultural comparison.

Knowledge Construction in Late Antiquity

Knowledge Construction in Late Antiquity
Author: Monika Amsler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2023-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111010317

Social Studies of the sciences have long analyzed and exposed the constructed nature of knowledge. Pioneering studies of knowledge production in laboratories (e.g., Latour/Woolgar 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981) have identified factors that affect processes that lead to the generation of scientific data and their subsequent interpretation, such as money, training and curriculum, location and infrastructure, biography-based knowledge and talent, and chance. More recent theories of knowledge construction have further identified different forms of knowledge, such as tacit, intuitive, explicit, personal, and social knowledge. These theoretical frameworks and critical terms can help reveal and clarify the processes that led to ancient data gathering, information and knowledge production. The contributors use late-antique hermeneutical associations as means to explore intuitive or even tacit knowledge; they appreciate mistakes as a platform to study the value of personal knowledge and its premises; they think about rows and tables, letter exchanges, and schools as platforms of distributed cognition; they consider walls as venues for social knowledge production; and rethink the value of social knowledge in scholarly genealogies--then and now.

Coptic Culture and Community

Coptic Culture and Community
Author: Mariam F. Ayad
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2024-01-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1649033281

A wide-ranging exploration of the daily lives of ordinary Coptic Christians, from late Antiquity until today This volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to examine aspects of the daily lived experiences of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority from late Antiquity to the present. In doing so, it serves as a supplement and a corrective to institutional or theological narratives, which are generally rooted in studying the wielders of historical power and control. Coptic Culture and Community reveals the humanity of the Coptic tradition, giving granular depth to how Copts have lived their lives through and because of their faith for two thousand years. The first three sections consider in turn the breadth of the daily life approach, perspectives on poverty and power in a variety of different contexts, and matters of identity and persecution. The final section reflects on the global Coptic diaspora, bringing themes studied for the early Coptic Church into dialog with Coptic experiences today. These broad categories help to link fundamental questions of socio-religious history with unique aspects of Coptic culture and its vibrant communities of individuals. Contributors: - Nicola Aravecchia, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA - Mariam F. Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt - Renate Dekker, Leiden, the Netherlands - Lois M. Farag, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA - Ihab Khalil, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada - A.D. MacDonald, Sydney, Australia - Ash Melika, California Baptist University, Riverside, California, USA - Samuel Moawad, Institute of Egyptology and Coptology, Münster, Germany - Helene Moussa, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada - Alanna Nobbs, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia - Carolyn Ramzy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - Christina Thérèse Rooijakkers, Leiden University, Oegstgeest, the Netherlands - Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm, Sweden

Handbook of Stemmatology

Handbook of Stemmatology
Author: Philipp Roelli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 772
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 311068439X

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

A History of Hittite Literacy

A History of Hittite Literacy
Author: Theo van den Hout
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2021-01-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108494889

The first comprehensive overview of the development of literacy, script usage, and literature in Hittite Anatolia (1650-1200 BC).

The Third Lung: New Trajectories in Syriac Studies

The Third Lung: New Trajectories in Syriac Studies
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2023-08-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004537899

No one mentions Syriac, – a dialect of the Aramaic language Jesus spoke –, without referring to Sebastian P. Brock, the Oxford scholar and teacher who has written and taught about everything Syriac, even reorienting the field as The Third Lung of early Christianity (along with Greek and Latin). In 2018, Syriac scholars world-wide gathered in Sigtuna, Sweden, to celebrate with Sebastian his accomplishments and share new directions. Through essays showing what Syriac studies have attained, where they are going, as well as some arenas and connections previously not imagined, flavors of the fruits of laboring in the field are offered. Contributors to this volume are: Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Shraga Bick, Briouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Alberto Camplani, Thomas A. Carlson, Jeff W. Childers, Muriel Debié, Terry Falla, George A. Kiraz, Sergey Minov, Craig E. Morrison, István Perczel, Anton Pritula, Ilaria Ramelli, Christine Shepardson, Stephen J. Shoemaker, Herman G.B. Teule, Kathleen E. McVey.

The Composition and Tradition of Erimḫuš

The Composition and Tradition of Erimḫuš
Author: Kaira Boddy
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004438173

In The Composition and Tradition of Erimḫuš Kaira Boddy analyses the structure of the lexical list Erimḫuš and explains its role in Mesopotamian and Hittite scholarship.

Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone

Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2020-05-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004425616

The transition zone between Africa, Asia and Europe was the most important intersection of human mobility in the medieval period. The present volume for the first time systematically covers migration histories of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia and between Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean in the centuries from Late Antiquity up to the early modern era. Within this framework, specialists from Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval and African history provide detailed analyses of specific regions and groups of migrants, both elites and non-elites as well as voluntary and involuntary. Thereby, also current debates of migration studies are enriched with a new dimension of deep historical time. Contributors are: Alexander Beihammer, Lutz Berger, Florin Curta, Charalampos Gasparis, George Hatke, Dirk Hoerder, Johannes Koder, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, Youval Rotman, Yannis Stouraitis, Panayiotis Theodoropoulos, and Myriam Wissa.

Law, Literature, and Society in Legal Texts from Qumran

Law, Literature, and Society in Legal Texts from Qumran
Author: Jutta Jokiranta
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-02-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004393382

Reflecting the increasing recognition of the importance of legal texts and issues in early Judaism, the essays in this collection examine halakhic and rule texts found at Qumran in light of the latest scholarship on text production, social organization, and material culture in early Judaism. The contributors present new interpretations of long-lived topics, such as the sobriquet “seekers of the smooth things,” the Treatise of the Two Spirits, and 4QMMT, and take up new approaches to purity issues, the role of the maśkil, and the Temple Scroll. The volume exemplifies the range of ways in which the Qumran legal texts help illuminate early Jewish culture as a whole.

Creating Standards

Creating Standards
Author: Dmitry Bondarev
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110635089

Manuscript cultures based on Arabic script feature various tendencies in standardisation of orthography, script types and layout. Unlike previous studies, this book steps outside disciplinary and regional boundaries and provides a typological cross-cultural comparison of standardisation processes in twelve Arabic-influenced writing traditions where different cultures, languages and scripts interact. A wide range of case studies give insights into the factors behind uniformity and variation in Judeo-Arabic in Hebrew script, South Palestinian Christian Arabic, New Persian, Aljamiado of the Spanish Moriscos, Ottoman Turkish, a single multilingual Ottoman manuscript, Sino-Arabic in northwest China, Malay Jawi in the Moluccas, Kanuri and Hausa in Nigeria, Kabyle in Algeria, and Ethiopian Fidäl script as used to transliterate Arabic. One of the findings of this volume is that different domains of manuscript cultures have distinct paths of standardisation, so that orthography tends to develop its own standardisation principles irrespective of norms applied to layout and script types. This book will appeal to readers interested in manuscript studies, sociolinguistics, literacy studies, and history of writing.