Exploring the religious link between hemispheres
Religious studies professor Dr. Jason Zaborowski spent last year studying ancient teaching methodologies used by early Christians.
11/19/2014 11:41 AM
By Anna Huffman ‘17
Religious studies professor Dr. Jason Zaborowski spent last year studying ancient teaching methodologies used by early Christians. The sabbatical project at Lund University in Sweden, analyzed the Monastic Paidea — the Christian use of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy to teach the faith.
Zaborowski analyzed and transcribed Arabic translations of the Apophthegmata Patrum or “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.” This text consists of wise maxims monks taught and shared with each other to convey Christian wisdom. The various collections of sayings were the center of Monastic education and have been translated into nearly every language.
From a religious studies perspective, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” are important collections shared between Western and Middle Eastern Christianity. Zaborowski emphasizes that the Christian traditions have developed differently between East and West, but Western Christians were influenced by their Middle Eastern counterparts, a fact that is frequently overlooked. The Arabic texts he analyzed are also relevant to Early Christian texts, study of Christian theology, and wisdom literature.
“The first component of my research was transcribing Arabic texts to be included in a software program that displays the text’s translations in parallel columns,” Zaborowski said. “The software is useful because it stores the parallels between Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Coptic and others. Therefore, scholars are able to analyze the contrasts in language between each Christian culture and how each culture made the axioms applicable to their understanding.”
Zaborowski is also writing a book focused on how the Arabic version adapted ancient Christian wisdom to the Arabic culture.
“The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” has served as an inspirational piece for many cultures. Christians, not just religious intellectuals, look to this text for biblical application in their daily lives, and this text is an example of Christianity as a multicultural religion.