This panoramic view of the current state of patristic studies marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Association Internationale des Études Patristiques. In the keynote lecture, ‘Patristic worlds’, Susan Ashbrook Harvey celebrates the rise of Syriac studies which has revealed a literature ‘lush with poetic grandeur and crafted elegance’ (p. 47). Evidence that the study of Christian texts in Greek and Latin is also flourishing is afforded by Martin Wallraff's survey of new editions and translations into many languages; his title ‘Whose Fathers: an overview of patristic studies in Europe’, reminds us of the importance of translations in determining or augmenting the scholarly canon. Marcin Wysocki's contribution on ‘Polish patristic studies after World War II’ records with pleasure that, with the easing of political regulation, ‘patristic studies has become very popular among students and graduate students’ (p. 81). Dennis Trout, reflecting on ‘The state of patristics in North America’, notes that much that is now discussed at the North American Patristics Society does not fall into the category that we typically designate by the term ‘patristic’, and wonders whether the substitution of ‘classical studies’ for ‘philology’ in a sister discipline is a precedent to be followed. Francisco Garcia Bazan provides copious documentation of the growth of ‘Los estudios patristicos en Sudamerica y el Caribe’, above all in his native Argentina, though Brazil and Chile are not far in the rear. Like Satoshi Toda in his review of ‘Patristic studies in East Asia (mainly in Japan)’, he instances the holding of a workshop at the Oxford Patristic Conference as proof that the discipline has reached maturity in a continent outside Europe (pp. 119, 133–4). Bronwen Neil's ‘Patristics in Australia: current status and future potential’ is largely a catalogue of funded projects; on the other hand, Michel Willy Libambu testifies that in Africa, or at least in the Catholic University of the Congo, ‘La Contribution des études patristiques à la théologie Africaine’ has been to promote a deeper inquiry into the principles of the faith.

In Adolf Martin Ritter's history of ‘The origins of AIEP’, the Oxford conference figures once again as the catalyst to the formation of a society which would enable scholars around the world to profit from the burgeoning of patristic studies in Europe. Angelo di Berardino offers an eye-witness account of ‘The development of the AIEP/IAPS’ from its foundation in Paris in 1965 to the creation of a website in 2008, establishing its place in the twenty-first century. In ‘Éditer et traduire les écrits des pères dans Sources Chrétiennes’, Jean-Noël Guinot reviews the production of over 560 volumes for the series at a rate of eight or nine a year, each volume demanding scholarly attainments that match its ‘spécificité’ (p. 231). Even this noble endeavour has yet to catch up with the widening of scholarly interest attested in the next three essays. Averil Cameron, in ‘Patristic studies and the emergence of Islam’ observes that, if the Koran cannot be perfectly understood without the New Testament, the Arab expansion is equally germane to the understanding of John Damascene or Maximus the Confessor. Emanuel Fiano, contemplating ‘The construction of ancient Jewish Christianity’ by Jean Daniélou and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, remarks that, even if this category is as mythical as some now believe it to be, it was an antidote to the more toxic myths underlying scholarly anti-semitism. Timothy Pettipiece shows that new research, detaching Mani from the Iranian milieu to which his ancient detractors assigned him, places this ‘Aramaic speaking prophet’ (p. 309) at ‘The crossroads of Jewish, Christian and Moslem traditions’. Two essays on the divison between the Greek and Latin worlds follow, Columba Stewart arguing (‘Patristics between “East” and “West”’) that it may soon be as common for students of Greek patristics to learn Syriac as for medieval Latinists to learn Arabic, while Barbara Crostini argues that the translation into Latin of a commentary on Leviticus by Hesychius around the year 1050 represents a ‘meeting-point between East and West’ on the eve of the fatal schism.

A sense of the transformation which theology itself underwent in the early Christian era makes it possible, as Christoph Markschies proposes, to reverse the modern severance of ‘Patristics and theology’; Lenka Karfikova maintains that we can escape ‘atemporal’ theories of divine purpose, without consulting Herder or Hegel, if we perpend ‘The fifth theological oration of Gregory Nazianzen and the historical contingency of Revelation’. Eimhin Walsh contends that a renewal of patristic studies in seminaries would promote a ‘theocentric’ understanding of existence, offer guidance in pastoral counselling and ‘advance the oecumenical project’ (pp. 415–17). Reuven Kipperwasser and Serge Ruzer may be furthering this project when they examine shared features of ‘Syriac Christian and Babylonian Jewry narratives’, though one of these is a partisan story about the conversion of a Zoroastrian. Mark Vessey, in ‘La Patristique, c'est autre chose’, contrasts the modernism of the historian Peter Brown with the pious philology of André Mandouze, his senior by a long generation. Dominique Côté’s ‘Les Pseudo-Clémentines et le choix du roman grec’ is a study in the transmutation of a pagan genre; Tina Dolidze informs us that ‘Patristics: as reflected in Georgian spiritual and intellectual history’ is an almost untapped mine of hagiography, hymnography, homiletics, exegesis and dogmatics. Yonatan Moss compares Severus of Antioch and the Babylonian Talmud as exemplars of ‘The rise and function of the holy text in late antiquity’. Robin Jensen finds that artefacts are as polysemic as texts when we address the task of ‘Integrating material and visual evidence into early Christian studies’. Anne Karahan investigates an early case of reception, co-opting Gregory Nazianzen and John Damascene as interpreters of ‘Patristicism and Byzantine meta-images’; Bernard Mulholland concludes that the ‘Identification of early Byzantine Constantinopolitan, Syrian and Roman plans in the Levant’ is still an inchoate science. Eirini Patou's discussion of the Virgin's association with healing water in ‘The Church of Mary in the probatic pool’ completes a kaleidoscopic illustration of the strange diversity of patristic studies.