Читать книгу Rethinking the Origins of the Eucharist - Martin D. Stringer - Страница 7

Acknowledgements

When I sat down to write my book on the Sociological History of Christian Worship (Stringer 2005), I fully expected the first chapter, on the first 300 years of Christian worship, to be the easiest to write. Many other scholars had explored this field, the texts were clear and well known, there was I thought a general consensus on what the text meant and therefore the writing should have been easy. I ended up, however, spending months, if not years, on the first 150 years and probably had to give less time to the following 1850 years than I would have liked. The more I looked at the texts, at what other scholars had written and at the possible interpretations of the material, the more convinced I became that our understanding of this period is severely limited and that much more work still needed to be done. I knew at that time that if I was ever to do it justice I needed to produce a whole book on this material not just 20 pages. Whether I do manage to achieve that within this text is, however, for others to decide.

Having recognized that much more work needed to be done I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to present elements of the main argument of this book as papers for the Oxford Liturgy Group, the Society for Liturgical Study and the Instituut Voor Liturgische en Rituele at Utrecht University. The discussions and arguments that followed these presentations proved very formative for the final text. I am also very grateful to many colleagues with whom I shared elements of the work and whose questions and critiques proved invaluable. In particular, I would like to thank Juliette Day, Charlotte Hempel, David Parker, David Taylor, Phillip Tovey and Markus Vinzent. I also want to thank Natalie Watson and all her colleagues at SCM Press who have been extremely helpful in the production of this text. Finally, I have to thank David whose gentle pressure and prodding has ensured that the text did eventually get written despite so many other calls on my time.