Sacred Languages and Sacred Texts

Sacred Languages and Sacred Texts is the first comprehensive study of the role of languages and texts in the religions of the Greco-Roman world, including Judaism and Christianity.
It explores bilingualism, language learning, literacy, book production and translation, as well as some of the more explicitly religious factors, including beliefs about language, missionary zeal, ritual, conservatism and the power of a priestly establishment.
Sacred Languages and Sacred Texts sheds new light on the role of the power of words, spoken and written, in religion.

Professor John Sawyer, formerly Head of Religious Studies at Newcastle University, is now Senior Research Fellow in Hebrew and Biblical Interpretation at Lancaster University. He is the author of The Fifth Gospel. Isaiah in the History of Christianity (1996) and the Religion Editor of the ten-volume Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics (1994).