To study Christian dialogues means to recognize that the dialogue form, notably employed by Plato and Aristotle, did not exhaust itself with the philosophical schools of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, but emerged transformed and reinvigorated in the religiously diverse world of Late Antiquity. The Christians's use of the dialogue form within religious controversy resulted in a burgeoning activity of composition of prose dialogues, which now opposed a Christian anda Jew, a Christian and a pagan, a Christian and a Manichaean, an orthodox and a heretic, or, later, a Christian and a Muslim. The present work offers the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and in Syriac from the earliest examples in the second century to the end of thesixth century.

• Acknowledgements


• Abbreviations


• Introduction


• Structure of the Work


• Dialogue and Christianity


• Dialogues and Late Antiquity


• The Dialogue Form and Rhetorical Training


• The Dialogue Form and Erotapokriseis


• Towards a Comprehensive Approach?


• A Formal Typology


• Guide to Dialogues


• Index of Dialogues, Erotapokriseis, and Related Texts


• General Index


• General Bibliography

Alberto Rigolio was trained in Classics and Late Antiquity in Milan, Oxford, and Princeton, and is currently Associate Professor in Classics at Durham University. He works on the cultural history of the later Roman world, with particular reference to the transformations of ancient rhetorical and philosophical traditions in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity.