Abstract

The full emergence of Christian book culture in the fourth century was anticipated and prepared for by a series of developments in the second century: by presenting (anachronistically) the early heroes of the Jesus movement as skilled literate communicators; by the emergence of “textual communities” formed around the reading, study, and preservation of books; by valorizing literate culture through the embedding of allusions to books and book culture in Christian documents; and in the very construction of early Christian scriptural documents so as to render them more easily accessible to sub-elite readers.

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