A brief reflection on the genesis of this volume may prove helpful to the reader. This project began in 2014 when I spent three months working with Chris de Wet as a Visiting Professor at the University of South Africa. I had been thinking for some time about the changes that had been taking place in the field of Chrysostom studies and how they were being driven by a new generation of scholars. The work of Chris de Wet exemplifies this phenomenon. At the same time, despite the prolific nature of Chrysostom’s writings and preaching and his centrality in the events of late antiquity at the turn of the fourth century ce, this is a field that remains woefully understudied. Since the origins of modern scholarship, in over four centuries not a single handbook, companion or volume of essays on John and his writings has been produced as an intentional aid to scholars. Associated with this is a trend that I have observed during the course of collating the Chrysostom bibliography.1 While a number of scholars begin their research career immersed in Chrysostom studies, this rarely translates into a life-time focus. This is reflected in the fact that less than 20% of the dissertations on Chrysostom or his corpus produced since 1900 have received publication.
This volume is intended to offset this, while profiling some of the major changes in approach to John Chrysostom and his writings that are occurring. The volume is somewhat unusual in this respect, including as it does a mix of scholars across the career spectrum. Ten of the twenty-one authors were either awarded their doctorate in the past five years or are in the final stages of writing. Including scholars who are at such an early stage in their career is a strategy intended to circumvent the traditional failure of much of the doctoral work in this field to reach public awareness. All of the authors, across the spectrum, have been chosen for the novelty of their research or because their work has significantly reshaped traditional approaches. There are a number of Chrysostom scholars, both senior and junior, throughout the world whose work is equally important and whose work would, without hesitation, have been included otherwise. Their absence is not out of disrespect for their work, but because they pursue more traditional areas of Chrysostom scholarship. While that scholarship is equally vital and important, profiling that is not our purpose. The point of the book is to capture a moment in which the field is renewing and expanding and to highlight the chief trends and research that are leading that renewal. To this end we did not impose a word or page limit on the authors, although they were encouraged to develop their ideas as succinctly as possible, while respecting the need to explain clearly for the reader particularly novel methodologies. Since beginning this project, Chris and I continue to come across new scholars or scholars of whose work we were previously unaware whom we would have liked to have included. Unfortunately, we had to stop somewhere and the current crop of authors and their topics are, for the most part, representative. It is noteworthy that this is the first ever volume of collected essays in the field of Chrysostom studies generated by design and not by a conference. It is fitting that its focus is the field’s renaissance.
It remains to acknowledge the contribution of a number of institutions and individuals, without whom this volume would not have come into production. In 2014 Pieter Botha and Chris de Wet seized a funding opportunity at the University of South Africa to bring me across as a Visiting Professor for a three-month period to Pretoria and the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies at unisa. Negotiating the bureaucracy involved in this new funding source, for which the guidelines kept changing, was no small feat and I am deeply grateful to them for their persistence. During that period not only did I pull together the initial background research for my own essay in the volume, but Chris and I were able to talk through our vision for the volume and map out the logistics. The stimulation by my colleagues there at unisa (especially, in addition to Chris and Pieter, Gerhard van den Heever and Johannes Vorster) and exposure to their deep interest in a variety of theoretical approaches has in many ways been a turning point in my research. Chris’ emerging leadership in the field of Chrysostom studies, particularly in the way he pushes the boundaries theoretically, is something I will always value. It is a pleasure to work alongside him on this project.
Considerable thanks is also owed to the editorial and production staff at Brill, whose professionalism always eases the pulling together and seeing through to publication of an edited volume—with special thanks to Loes Schouten for her willingness to take on such an experimental project. Special thanks, too, go to the large number of peer reviewers. Their rigorous comments on the assembled manuscript and on individual chapters have been invaluable in ensuring the quality of the volume. It has been our intention from the beginning to ensure that essays that attempted novel approaches were reviewed not just by senior Chrysostom scholars but also by scholars outside of the field with acknowledged expertise in the relevant methodology and, wherever possible, this principle has been followed. In some cases individual authors have acknowledged reviewers by name in their footnotes. In many cases the reviewers remain anonymous. In all cases, the essays have been reworked at least once, if not twice, in response to reviewers’ comments and I speak for all of the authors when I say that each of us is deeply grateful for the input. As editors, Chris and I have added another layer of review, especially in the case of junior scholars. The eagle eye of Katherin Papadopoulos, whom those who work in the area of the ps.-Chrysostomica and Severian of Gabala know through her translations and other resources posted on her Academia page,2 has been indispensible in removing typographic errors and normalising formatting throughout the volume. Without her help this volume would have been much further delayed in its publication.
One final comment concerns the lack of division of the essays into sections or categories, although the order of the essays across the book is the result of considered choice. In a variety of ways each essay flows into the next. There are, in any case, many crossovers and intersections. In this respect, our introductory chapter functions as a guide as well as a reflection on the state of the field. That said, we encourage the reader to resist dipping into only those essays that appear interesting from the title or abstract. If one is to discover to the fullest extent what is emerging in this field, this is a book that should be read from end to end.
Wendy Mayer
31 July 2018