Yuliya Minets – författare

This Element is a study in cultural history, focusing on ancient Mediterranean religious traditions during the second to the early seventh centuries CE and their attempts to provide theologically sound explanations for the existence of multiple languages. The goal is to deliver a concise but balanced and, as far as possible, comprehensive treatment of the ideas about languages, linguistic diversity, and foreign language speakers across religious traditions in Late Antiquity. Therefore, this Element assumes a comparative perspective. Besides taking into account the inner heteroglossia of early Christianity, we examine sources associated with Greco-Roman polytheism, various forms of Judaism, Manicheism, and other hybrid religious forms during the late Roman and early post-Roman eras.

This Element is a study in cultural history, focusing on ancient Mediterranean religious traditions during the second to the early seventh centuries CE and their attempts to provide theologically sound explanations for the existence of multiple languages. The goal is to deliver a concise but balanced and, as far as possible, comprehensive treatment of the ideas about languages, linguistic diversity, and foreign language speakers across religious traditions in Late Antiquity. Therefore, this Element assumes a comparative perspective. Besides taking into account the inner heteroglossia of early Christianity, we examine sources associated with Greco-Roman polytheism, various forms of Judaism, Manicheism, and other hybrid religious forms during the late Roman and early post-Roman eras.

This is the story of the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The metaphor of Babel stands for the magnificent edifice of classical culture that was about to reach the sky, but remained self-sufficient and self-contained in its virtual monolingualism - the paradigm within which even Latin was occasionally considered just a dialect of Greek. The gradual erosion of this vision is the slow fall of Babel that took place in the hearts and minds of a good number of early Christian writers and intellectuals who represented various languages and literary traditions. This step-by-step process included the discovery and internalization of the existence of multiple other languages in the world, as well as subsequent attempts to incorporate their speakers meaningfully into the holistic and distinctly Christian picture of the universe.

This is the story of the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The metaphor of Babel stands for the magnificent edifice of classical culture that was about to reach the sky, but remained self-sufficient and self-contained in its virtual monolingualism - the paradigm within which even Latin was occasionally considered just a dialect of Greek. The gradual erosion of this vision is the slow fall of Babel that took place in the hearts and minds of a good number of early Christian writers and intellectuals who represented various languages and literary traditions. This step-by-step process included the discovery and internalization of the existence of multiple other languages in the world, as well as subsequent attempts to incorporate their speakers meaningfully into the holistic and distinctly Christian picture of the universe.