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The output of Christian literature between c.100 and c.400 represents one of the most influential periods of textual oeuvres in world religion. Written mainly in Greek, Latin and Syriac, it emanated from all parts of the early Christian world and helped extend its both Christianity's influence as well as its geographical boundaries.
In recent decades of Patristic literature has undergone a virtual revolution, and is now being widely studied in seminaries and research universities whose past interests were often confined to their immediate tradition.
This History offers a systematic account of that literature and its setting. The work of individual writers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome is considered alongside three general essays that survey the social, cultural and doctrinal context within which early Christian literature arose. Written by elite scholars such as Frances Young and Andrew Louth, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature is comprehensive in scope, and detailed and scholarly in orientation.
This book makes an excellent textbook for college and graduate courses in Patristics, or in any church history survey course. It will also serve as an outstanding supplemental text for those course dealing with the 1st century, but not only Christianity.
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