Labour of Love

In this edited volume, publications from Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, and Tewahdo publishers are taken as crucial witnesses of how these communities rewrite themselves in the lands of migration, taking into account not only the texts as such, but also how physical books accompanied by social media and digital publications are central in a transnational religious practice geared towards transmitting tradition to the next generation. In this, the volume bridges the gap between two burgeoning fields, the anthropology of Orthodox Christianity and the historical study of the major texts that form the backbone of the Oriental religious traditions.

Scholars from a variety of disciplines (including history, anthropology, theology and religious studies), as well as practitioners in the field of education and publishing, have contributed to this volume by bringing in a variety of case studies. Thus they helped to situate the concerns of the ERC project Rewriting Global Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodox Churches in Europe, 1970-2020, in a broader context of the study of the role of texts and traditions in the Oriental Churches, with examples from the North America, Armenia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sweden, France, Belgium and Germany. The volume is opened by an introductory article discussing a few of the underlying themes of the project and the volume (religion, books, learning) and closed by an overview of the communal work of the project in mapping publications and publishing by Oriental Orthodox Churches in Europe, based on the project’s website, https://fourcornersoftheworld.ptrs.ru.nl/.