Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts

(Hardback)

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This volume explores the idea of the unruly book, from books now known by their titles alone to books that subverted structures as of power and gender. The contributors show how these books functioned as sticky objects, and examines the story of what such books signified to the people who wrote, read, discussed, yearned for, or even prohibited them. The books examined are those of the first millennium of the Common Era, and the writings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and related traditions. In particular the contributors examine the bounty of books within this period that are hard to pin down whether extant, lost, or imagined books that challenge modern scholars to reconceptualize our notions of books [biblical or otherwise], religion, manuscript culture, and intellectual history. Through the critical analyses presented in this volume, the contributors negotiate the diverse stories told by unruly books and show that by listening to the stories that books tell, we learn more about the worlds that imagined and discussed them.

Author Bio

Esther Brownsmith is Assistant Professor at the University of Dayton, USA. Liv Ingeborg Lied is Director of MF CASR at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway Marianne Bjelland Kartzow is Professor of New Testament Studies at the of University of Oslo, Norway