Faculty of Humanities
School of Languages
Department of Ancient Languages
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Three members of the department participated in the Fifth Annual Conference of the Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society, which was hosted during September 2009 by the Tohoku Gakuin University in Sendai, Japan. The theme of the conference was Letters in Early Christianity, and colleagues Hennie Stander (who investigated the Greek Church Father Chrysostom’s views on and uses of letters), Koos Kritzinger (who did the same with the Latin Church Father Jerome) and Phil Botha (who explored the Syrian Church Father Ephrem’s fictitious use of the epistolary form in his writings) read papers that will be published in Scrinium, the mouthpiece of the Société des etudes Byzantines et slaves. Letter-writing was a characteristic feature of early Christianity. This began with the letters of the Apostle Paul, but he had already made use of a long tradition in the Ancient World of employing letters as a form of political, philosophical and polemical communication. This tradition was continued in the Early Church in the form of personal and spiritual communications, but also as a way of informing believers about the authoritative decrees of synods and bishops. Such correspondence proves to be a valuable source for understanding the social, historical, theological, literary, political, cultural, philosophical and psychological dimensions of Early Christianity and the research that was conducted proved to be very interesting and enlightening.
An Australian research associate of the department, Prof Pauline Allen, published a book on a particular early Christian author, namely Sophronius, who lived in Jerusalem during the seventh century of the Common Era. Other aspects of Early Christianity also received attention. Hennie Stander and Koos Kritzinger participated in a joint project with Australian colleagues on poverty in the Early Church and they published articles in accredited journals on economical perspectives in Chrysologus’s sermons on the lost son and theft and robbery in Chrysostom’s time.
Yet another focus area of the department was the production and interpretation of texts in the Hebrew Bible. Phil Botha investigated the use of rhetorical devices in Psalms 24 and 26, while Gert Prinsloo and a Dutch research associate, Dr Raymond de Hoop, together contributed three chapters to a book on textual, literary and delimitation criticism. Their work focused on the segmentation of texts in Early Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, and the implication of such delimitations of units for the exegesis of biblical books.
Another research highlight that should perhaps be mentioned is that members of the department contributed a total of six entries in two prestigious international lexicons. Articles on Dichtung/ Dichten/Dichter, Glaube, Psalmen and Verheissung/Erfüllung appeared in the Lexikon der Bibelhermeneutik published by De Gruyter of Berlin, and articles on Constantius I Chlorus (ca. 250–306) and Constantius II (Flavius Julius Constantius) appeared in the Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization, which was published by Brepols of Belgium.
Contact person: Prof PJ Botha.
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