This volume comprises nine studies plus an editorial introduction that, though covering quite different terrains, each pursue a shared central question, namely, how the scholarly fields of philology and theology reflect common intellectual and institutional origins. While the contemporary academy has largely sequestered these disciplines one from the other, this situation potentially belies the extent to which they have been and continue to be mutually informing. Philology, it is often supposed, has long since detached itself from the constraints of a religious past, that is ‘the triumph of objective empirical scientific method over the faith-based beliefs of religion’ (p. 6). To accept this narrative uncritically, however, this volume argues, may leave philologists with blind spots to the many ways in which theological concerns persist in shaping their own methodologies.

To achieve such a re-evaluation, this collection follows several interrelated themes, moving seamlessly between the modern world (especially the nineteenth century) and late antiquity, exploring specific case studies related to the driving question. First, C. Güthenke, in ‘Philology's Roommate: Hermeneutics, Antiquity, and the Seminar’, traces scholarly discourses concerning ‘forms of sociability’ as they arose in German universities of the nineteenth century, which she juxtaposes with two leading scholars of the era, theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and philologist Friedrich Schlegel. Their close relationship – as friends and roommates – is emblematic of institutional developments in Germany and especially of the prominence of ‘Platonic models of knowledge and knowing, and a Platonic language of sociability and transcendence’ (p. 31). Similarly concerned with the lived experience of interactions between theologians and classicists is Goldhill's chapter ‘The Union and Divorce of Classical Philology and Theology’. Focused on England, he demonstrates how the critical scholarly view of the Bible emerged in concert with similar trends in the interpretation of classical texts such as Homer and Livy. The discovery of Codex Sinaiticus and the production of the Revised Version of the Bible expose ways in which philology was deployed by some as a weapon for the battles within Anglicanism. At the same time, however, theology remains an ‘unrecognized inheritance’ for the discipline of philology, the misrecognition of which distorts its self-understanding.

A complementary perspective in Jewish studies is given by T. Dunkelgrün, in ‘The Philology of Judaism: Zacharias Frankel, the Septuagint, and the Jewish Study of Ancient Greek in the Nineteenth Century’. Developments in Greek philology in German research universities coincided with the beginnings of historical-critical approaches to Judaism – Wissenschaft des Judentums –, exemplified especially by Zacharias Frankel, who is the focus of the chapter. While Christian scholars approached Hellenism through the lens of the Eusebian Praeparatio evangelica and Hegelian oppositional constructions of Judaism and Hellenism, some Jewish scholars, as they began to receive training in German universities, successfully overcame such ‘supersessionist narratives’ and reinstated an independent existence for Judaism into the historical landscape of the Graeco-Roman world. And the philology of the Septuagint and the body of Hellenistic Jewish literature was central to this process. New Testament textual criticism, also, as explored in I. Peirano Garrison's chapter ‘Source, Original, and Authenticity between Philology and Theology’, was a dominant point of convergence. She is concerned with the ‘giant of philology’, Karl Lachmann, a scholar who produced critical editions of both the New Testament and Lucretius. As Peirano Garrison observes, Lachmann's work within the history of textual criticism and the mutual influence between biblical and classical studies reveals the extent to which both fields share ‘a religious agenda’. Even though classical philology has come to be envisioned as a ‘secular’ enterprise, its ongoing methodological pursuits of ‘pure, original text’ or textual ‘fidelity’ adumbrate religious, especially Protestant, impulses. In his contribution, ‘Whose Handmaiden? “Hellenisation” between Philology and Theology’, R. Gagné demonstrates that Greek philology was also important for Catholic theology, particularly against the ways in which Protestantism constructed Christian origins in relation to Hellenism. In the wake of Adolf von Harnack, questions concerning whether Hellenism was external to Christianity or ‘a constitutive element’ motivated Catholic theologians such as Johann Gustav Droysen and André-Jean Festugière and, as Gagné argues, culminated in a 2006 address by Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Faith, Reason, and the University’, which takes Hellenism as integral to the Christian religion.

The subsequent three chapters pursue case studies within late antiquity wherein the relationship between philology and theology plays out at critical moments in cultural history. First, S. Elm, in ‘Julian the Emperor on Statues (of Himself)’, observes that Julian framed his opposition to Christianity as a restoration of Greek paideia, that is, ‘the correct use of Greek for the purpose of worshipping the Greek gods correctly, from rejection and pollution by Christians’ (p. 126). It is within this process, she argues, that Julian constructed the divine status of the emperor. While scholars sometimes suggest that the honorific titles (divus, sacer, hagios etc.) applied to emperors had lost their religious valence by the fourth and fifth centuries, she seeks to understand how in fact they functioned within the context of Christianity, especially Trinitarian theology and the practice of the Eucharist. Julian's self-presentation as a child of Zeus presented himself as Hercules, an alter Christus and a ‘divine man sent to save the oikoumenē through his own hard labours prior to his return to the gods that had sent him’ (p. 137). M. Vessey, in ‘Boethius in the Genres of the Book: Philology, Theology, Codicology’, calls for a re-evaluation of how literary genres have been constructed and, more fundamentally, of the ‘myth of the western classic’. Standard literary histories of the twentieth century have functioned, even if unintentionally, as ‘apologias for the culture of the West’ (p. 160), reinscribing Christian notions of providence within the secular academy. For Vessey, Boethius provides a useful starting point to challenge such grand narratives, as his works defy generic categorisation as well as the religious boundaries with which they are often associated. Conybeare's ‘Virgil, Creator of the World’ considers Macrobius’ construction of Virgil as a divine author. If, as was argued by A. Cameron, the Saturnalia is dated to the 430s, she maintains that new resonances with Christianity arise. Although the speakers of Macrobius’ dialogue are silent regarding Christianity, his text should be understood as a response to the veneration of the Bible. As such, she argues, the Saturnalia embodies a central issue for philology that this volume sets out to address: ‘the occlusion of the religious context in which [philology] is pursued’ (p. 198).

The final contribution by E. Gunderson, ‘Theology's Shadow’, a bookend corresponding to the editorial introduction ‘Philology's Shadow’, provides an incisive, occasionally polemical, account of the status quaestionis in literary theory regarding author and intention. As illustrative of Latin philology, he surveys the works published in the monograph series ‘Roman Literature and Its Contexts’, which ran from 1993 to 2016. In spite of decades of concerted efforts, classical philologists have not sufficiently detached themselves from commitments to the ‘author’, and it is precisely here where the legacy of theology resides: ‘A figure like Plato's Demiurge provides a necessary fiction at a variety of levels. This divine author is written up as something that makes the world legible’ (p. 201). As with the creator of the cosmos, so also authors of texts persist even if only as articles of faith. And readers of this volume will be left to decide for themselves whether hope remains for the possibility of secular scholarship or if in the end all philologists are simply doing theology.

This volume is well conceived and timely. With the ascendency of reception studies and at a time of growing expectations for interdisciplinary scholarship, the contributions present readers with several points of departure, opening up productive avenues for further inquiry. The volume makes no claims towards exhaustive coverage, and one might hope that similarly self-reflective inquiries might be pursued in the future to fill gaps and expand into adjacent areas. So, for instance, the geographical purview of the historical survey is especially concerned with the universities of Germany and England (and in the latter, Oxbridge, in particular). In North America, where the institutional arrangements have evolved differently, how have the interactions between philology and theology advanced accordingly? Such analysis is in fact urgent given the ways in which ‘classical studies’ has been increasingly appropriated within religious institutions for various illiberal purposes. Complementary perspectives could also be added from other sub-fields wherein classics and theology overlap, such as, archaeology, art history, theatre and liturgy. It is also worth noting that Classical Philology and Theology is a book by philologists and for philologists. Might this be an invitation for theologians and classicists to return again to seminars they once shared?

Above all, in a moment when a global pandemic has sent us all not merely separated into our disciplinary silos, but locked down in our homes, this volume is a salutary reminder that intellectual and institutional progress requires genuine human interaction: sociability, conviviality, conversation. And that is something philologists and theologians have always held in common.