Education and Religion in Late Antiquity: Genres and Discourses in Transition
(13-15 June 2013)

Can or should education – grammar, rhetoric, philosophy – play a role in religious affairs, and if so, to which extent? This long-standing question was the topic of a lively debate in late Antiquity: between the fourth and the seventh century, Christians adopted and adapted pagan educational traditions, religious topics underwent a literary reworking, and normative texts like the Bible or Plato’s writings were subjected to critical exegesis. This workshop explores how the relation between education and religion was transformed in various genres and discourses. It focuses in particular on monastic education and the reception of classical and hellenistic philosophy in Syriac Christianity, on the transformation of ancient rhetoric for the purpose of debates concerning religious questions, and on the development of Christian hagiography, based on pagan as well as biblical models.

The public lecture at the start of the workshop analyses the ambivalent attitude of elite young men to the attractive careers in Roman administration which their education opened up for them: whilst some saw great dangers in a worldly career and chose to flee to the desert, they hardly ever lost contact with the world. Internationally renowned scholars present papers on these and other aspects of the dynamic relationship of education and religion in late Antiquity. The workshop is held in cooperation with the Courant Research Centre „Education and Religion From Early Imperial Roman Times to the Classical Period of Islam“ (EDRIS), founded in 2009 at the University of Göttingen. Workshop programme

Monks as Hippies - Tuning in and Dropping out of the Fourth Century Imperial System

Public lecture with Prof. Dr. Edward Watts, 13 June 2013, 8:00 p.m.
Lichtenberg-Kolleg / Historic Observatory, red hall