The Discursive Fight over Religious Texts in Antiquity

Jacobsen (systematic theology, Aarhus U., Denmark) presents the results of a research project engaged with the factors that played a role in the development of a normative corpus of scripture and doctrines in Christianity and Christianity's responses to various interpretations of this canonical corpus. Topics addressed in the text's 13 essays include the process by which texts gain authority and normativity, the impact of debates about the provenance of texts on their normative and canonical status, the impact of rewriting texts as understood through the case of the text Sophia of Jesus Christ, normative structures in Origen's exegesis of the Bible, the date the New Testament was accepted as canon throughout most of the ancient church, the influence of Islam on the formation of a normative Mandaean text corpus, and the influence of Augustine on Bernard of Clairvaux's and William of St Thierry's "mystical theology" (i.e. the union of the soul with God). Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)