My 5 Favorite Books in (Almost) Two Years of Doctoral Research
One of the things I enjoy most about the research process is the wide range of literature you need to consume in order to produce quality scholarship. Here and there, a few books have stood out. Some of them were particularly interesting or outright fun, while others simply made a measurable contribution to their respective fields.
I thought it would be fun to do a write-up of my five favorite books that I have read since I began doctoral work at Aberdeen in 2021. My thesis topic deals with pedagogy, literary features, and Christian intellectual identity in Clement of Alexandria, so some of my choices below will inevitably be skewed in a particular direction.
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have read any of these books!
Clement of Alexandria and the Shaping of Christian Literary Practice: Miscellany and the Transformation of Greco-Roman Writing
J. M. F. Heath
Cambridge University Press, 2020. Available from CUP here.
This book easily takes first for me—in large part because it is the necessary ground-clearing needed in order for my thesis topic to exist. In Clement of Alexandria and the Shaping of Christian Literary Practice, Jane Heath offers an interdisciplinary masterclass by balancing classical and theological points of interest in Clement while also shedding light on weaknesses of Clementine scholarship as a discipline.
Heath does a great job providing her reader with the necessary classical and Christian contexts for interacting with Clement’s texts, and in doing so assembles a project that feels whole—a rare feat when tackling a project as broad in scope as this one.
Heath’s familiarity with the literature makes this a great read for those interested in the formation of Christianity’s distinct intellectual and literary identity in antiquity, and her skill in wedding multiple disciplines together makes it worth the attention of those scholars disinterested in the topic.
Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts
Peter Struck
Princeton University Press, 2004. Available from PUP here.
I read Birth of the Symbol early in my program after my supervisor continued to reference it in passing during Zoom meetings or while talking to other students. (I am almost certain he told me directly at some point that I needed to read it, but I do not remember being too eager about it.)
I did not expect to have so much fun reading this book. In it, Struck weaves together the history of allegorical/symbolic reading as a discipline. Trying to situate the allegorists among ancient literary critics (over against the wishes of Aristotle), Struck makes a compelling case to treat the allegorical, symbolic, and enigmatic reading of texts as a legitimate way to interact with literature—and perhaps even as normative in some cases!
His work in painting a picture of these interpretative reading communities throughout a wide range of history has been a good model as I seek to trace pedagogical themes in both the Classical and Imperial eras.
This work won the 2007 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the Society of Classical Studies for a good reason.
Visions of Politics: Regarding Method (Volume 1)
Quentin Skinner
Cambridge University Press, 2002. Available from CUP here.
This was another one I read very early in my program, for similar reasons to the Struck book. My supervisor kept mentioning and suggesting it, so it felt appropriate to pick up a copy for myself.
This book is the first in a trilogy, mostly made up of essays Skinner wrote over four decades of his career. While much of Skinner’s work revolves around intellectual history, political thought, and the history of ideas, this volume is primarily an exploration of hermeneutics: how do we interact with texts, and how do we understand their force? It is reminiscent of Wittgenstein but much more digestible for most readers.
There is not much else to say here other than this meme I tweeted recently, which reads “I am once again quoting Quentin Skinner in something I wrote” . . . because it is true. I always end up doing it for some reason.
Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of its Development from the Stoics to Origen
George Boys-Stones
Oxford University Press, 2001. Available from OUP here.
I think this one is the shortest on the list—it is fewer than 200 pages if you exclude the bibliographic info at the end. But it would be a mistake to let its size fool you: Boys-Stones packs a great punch in this overview of how philosophy developed in the first few centuries, often casting special attention to its interaction with emergent Jewish and Christian theologies.
At the time I read this, I was planning to do a lot with Clement and Origen’s presentation of Moses, so I was particularly interested in the final two chapters (“The Invention of Hebraeo-Christian Orthodoxy” and “The Dependency Theme”). Still, I think this book is a really good read for those interested in a starting place for thinking about how Christianity interacted with the philosophies surrounding it. Boys-Stones is a clear communicator; the book feels relatively complete to me even though it focuses on a few specific sources and threads within the post-Hellenistic era.
From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries
Peter Lampe
Fortress Press, 2003. Available from FP here.
Technically, I read this when I was preparing a paper on Irenaeus and still feeling around for my thesis topic. But, still, I walked away really impressed by this book.
I will be the first to admit that archeology and its intersection with social history are not my primary research interests, so I have little context for how this book was received in its broader scholarly community; however, it reads like a magnum opus that reconstructs an image of the early church’s fractionated state in Rome. You very well may disagree with Lampe’s “fractionation thesis,” or his analysis of the findings, but it feels relatively safe to say he upholds both the unity and diversity of the Christian community at Rome in this timeframe—and he tries to support it with archeological evidences rather than literary ones. That is a nice change of pace from literary social reconstructions.
I have recently begun to hope for someone to write the version of this book for Alexandria, as I think it is really the only other major city that could replicate this study methodologically. (Of course, there are archeological limitations . . . but a boy can dream, right?)
Lastly, for those who are interested, I have a few exciting things on the horizon.
My proposal for SBL was accepted this year—my first time there, ever! It will be part of the unit “Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, and Material Contexts,” and it will be a distillation of my thesis’s first main body chapter. If you plan to be there, I would love to meet you, and I welcome your feedback on it.
I am working behind the scenes to try to plan something exciting for the NAPS gathering in 2024 . . . I am not at liberty to spill more info now, but stay tuned!
I am still chipping away at my volume for Fontes Press’s Patristics Essentials series. As of now, I will be doing the volume on Clement of Alexandria with an introduction from a senior scholar (who I am very excited about!).