Kevin of the Scull requested my participation the latest meme. Here are the rules:
- List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.
- Books from the Bible are off limits unless you really want to list one, I certainly will not chastise you for it.
- Finally, choose individual works if you can. This will be more interesting than listing the entire corpus of Cicero as one of your choices.
For now I’ll simply list the texts (an impossible task in itself) and later post on why I chose each one. So here’s my list:
- Didache
- Mishnah
- Josephus’s Antiquities
- The Progymnasmata (I know, not a single work)
- Gospel of Thomas
Now, these are five sources that I have found particularly helpful for my own work or very interesting. I must admit, however, that compiling such a list is an awful task. Where are the sectarian writings from Judean Desert? Philo? The Hellenistic Moralists? The Epistle of Barnabas, or other apostolic fathers? The Pseudo-Clementines? As a classicist, how could I have left out the epics or the dramas? So, while I’m focusing on these five, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the most important. I trust that people’s lists will vary widely.
As part of my duty, I tag Mike Whitenton, John Anderson, Rob Kashow, Daniel Kirk, Alan Bandy, and Nick Norelli.
I’m glad to see the AF getting some air time. The Mishnah is such an important work, though a bit tricky in the dating of individual strands of tradition.
I’ve presently been thinking about rhetoric in Luke-Acts. I read Parsons “Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist” which focused on rhetoric and primarily on Theon as proof of Luke’s familiarity with rhetoric. I have to say though, I’m having difficulty determining what influence this observation has on the actual interpretation of the text.
Reporting for duty here:
http://kashow.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/a-meme-of-the-5-most-influential-primary-resources/
@ Mike W., did you not know that the Misnah was given to Moses on Mt Sinai with the 10 commandments?
Yes, the Mishnah is a tricky book, especially using it to illuminate Palestinian Judaism. Nonetheless, I think it’s still useful and I hope to address the problem in a future blog post.
@ Jeremiah. I haven’t read Parsons’s book so I can’t answer to any of his claims. I imagine that he concentrates mostly on the speeches in the book of Acts, am I right?
It is a difficult subject in general when one argues that this or that rhetorical handbook was influential on the biblical authors. I think they are best used as heuristic devices, but still definitely important to help us better understand how the ancient authors made arguments and how they approached their writing and speaking. Again, like the Mishnah and the other sources, I plan to write a post on the Progymnasmata.
Thanks for the tag. I just noticed it today, but it was worth responding to.