Thursday, April 09, 2015

Review of Houston, Inside Roman Libraries

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Houston, Inside Roman Libraries (Brian Leport in Book Notes).
George W. Houston, Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). (Amazon.com)
Excerpt:
The value of this book for the study of Judaism and Early Christianity is that it provides a socio-cultural context with which to compare the book culture of the Jews and Christians to that of the broader Mediterranean. Certain elements, such as the lifespan of a papyrus roll, are directly relevant. ...
As the review observes, this book raises many questions that are relevant to the study of Second Temple Jewish literature.