Reviewed by:

• Christian Reading: Language, Ethics and the Order of Things by Blossom Stefaniw
• Philip Rousseau

This is a very personal book—one might almost say experimental in its tone. I am not sure that the experiment has been entirely successful; but that is in no way a reason for not taking the work seriously. The author makes points that are still too easily forgotten or ignored, yet still vital to our understanding of how texts are read—hence the “reading” in the title— and of how readings change from setting to setting.

The personal element resides chiefly in how the author sees herself now in relation to the ancient texts she is concerned with; how so many of us in the 2020s are immediately inclined to define them in certain ways, seek within them what we imagine to be their essence, arrange them in familiar ranks in appropriate rooms and buildings, which more than hint at the probably limited uses to which we think we can put them, and narrow above all the perceived character of what they contain.

This worthy and not entirely novel conviction prompts a degree of self-flagellation that can at times include readers in its radius and arouse impatience as well as sympathy. Let this stand, nevertheless, as an evident virtue of the argument. [End Page 161] When we open the volumes available to us today, we have to be ruthless in schooling ourselves, in opening our eyes wide, to see them, as far as is possible, the way their creators saw them; at least to be alert to the unexpected, to what might be disastrously missed.

So, volumes of what? The book is about the Tura Papyri and Didymus the Blind—something the title might have made clearer, although its breadth is justified by the time you read the final pages. The Tura Papyri, of course, were asleep for a long time—more than a millennium—from the late sixth century until their rediscovery in 1941. Oddly, perhaps, that makes them better grist for Stefaniw’s mill: they have been less messed about by intervening readers, bringing us closer to the Alexandria of Didymus and to Arsenius, who lugged them further south to his desert retreat in the first quarter of the fifth century.

It is the fresh complexity of the corpus, therefore, that has awakened the author’s ardor. And what is the excitement? Crucially, Didymus was a grammarian: that is the core of the argument. The Tura Papyri offer us a unique clue: they include students’ questions and show us Didymus answering them specifically, even when they appear to interrupt the flow of the discourse. Indeed, the flow is as much in the minds of those learning as it is in the teacher’s. That means that we are able to eavesdrop on a class in session; a class natural to a grammarian’s basic task. These are not commentaries on Scripture, as we might think of such. The questioners do not seek exegetical analysis or moral guidance: they want to know how you handle language and make it work for you.

Grammarians provided that information: it was their fundamental responsibility in the preparation of youth for civic life. What makes the Tura dossier different, of course, is that Didymus takes his examples from Scripture, not from the pagan classics. If Homer can teach you how to be handy with words in the public sphere, then so can Ecclesiastes. Stefaniw makes the point count heavily, and I agree that it proves Didymus more than an exegete. I would argue, however, that a deep change is represented here, since Didymus was part of a generation intent on redefining the church, weaning itself from the perceived inadequacies of Constantine’s vision, and intent upon instilling a civic etiquette more suited to a reformed respublica Christiana. The author comes much closer to saying as much in a later chapter.

So, here we have two major chapters: the first describing the fortunes of the dossier across time...

审核人：

• 基督教读物：布鲁姆·史蒂芬妮（Blossom Stefaniw）的《语言，伦理与事物的秩序》
• 菲利普·卢梭

这是一本非常个人化的书，几乎可以说是实验性的。我不确定该实验是否完全成功；但这绝不是不认真对待工作的原因。作者提出的观点仍然很容易被遗忘或忽略，但对于我们理解文本的阅读方式（因此标题中的“阅读”）以及阅读方式如何随设置而变化仍然至关重要。

个人因素主要在于作者相对于她所关注的古代文献如何看待自己。在2020年代，我们中有多少人立即倾向于以某种方式对其进行定义，在其中寻找我们想象的本质，将它们以熟悉的等级安排在适当的房间和建筑物中，这不仅暗示了它们可能有限的用途，我们认为可以放置它们，并且首先将它们包含在其中的所有可感知特征范围内。

这种值得而不是完全新颖的信念会引起一定程度的自我鞭flag，有时可能会引起读者的不满，引起读者的不耐烦和同情心。然而，让这一立场成为该论证的明显优点。[完第161页]当我们打开今天提供给我们的书籍时，我们必须狠狠地学习自己，睁大眼睛，尽可能地看到他们的创作者看待他们的方式。至少要对意外情况保持警惕，对可能会造成灾难性损失的事件保持警惕。

那么，量是多少？这本书是关于图拉·帕皮里（Tura Papyri）和盲人迪迪姆斯（Didymus）的-尽管书的广度在您阅读最后几页时是合理的，但书名可能更清楚了。当然，从六世纪末到1941年重新发现之时，Tura Papyri睡了很长时间（一个千年以上），直到奇怪的时候，这才使他们成为Stefaniw磨坊的更好主角：读者的介入，使我们更靠近迪迪姆斯亚历山大（Alexandria）和阿森纽斯（Arsenius），后者将他们拉向更南的位置，直到公元五世纪第一季度的沙漠撤退。

因此，正是语料库的新鲜复杂性唤醒了作者的热情。兴奋是什么？至关重要的是，迪迪姆斯是个语法学家：这是论点的核心。Tura Papyri为我们提供了一个独特的线索：它们包括学生的问题，并向我们展示了Didymus专门回答的问题，即使它们似乎打断了话语流程。的确，在学习者心中的流动与在老师心中的流动一样多。这意味着我们可以窃听会话中的课程；对于语法师的基本任务而言自然而然的一类。这些不是圣经的注释，正如我们可能会想到的那样。发问者不寻求训analysis分析或道德指导：他们想知道您如何处理语言并使之为您服务。

语法学家提供了这些信息：这是他们为青年人做好公民生活准备的基本责任。当然，使图拉档案变得与众不同的是，迪迪姆斯以圣经为例，而不是异教经典。如果荷马可以教您如何在公共场合使用单词方便，那么传道书也可以。Stefaniw非常重视这一点，我同意这证明了Didymus不仅仅是一个受训者。但是，我要说的是，这里发生了深刻的变化，因为迪迪姆斯是一代人的一部分，其意图是重新定义教堂，摆脱君士坦丁愿景的不足之处以及意图灌输更适合于改革后的共和国的公民礼节克里斯蒂安娜（Christiana）。作者将在后面的章节中讲更多的话。

因此，这里有两个主要章节：第一章描述了整个档案材料的时运...