This book is the first of three volumes containing selected proceedings of the international conference on the theme of Knowledge, Learning and Cultural Change, held at the University of Groningen in November 2001. The contributions in this volume - which tackle the three basic topics of encyclopedic texts, centres of learning, and paradigm shifts - deal with a wide variety of topics, ranging from the Ancient Near East to the Early Medieval West. They bring us into contact with many different cultures and languages: those of Neo-Assyrian, Babylonian and Hellenistic Mesopotamia; of Late-Antique and Medieval Judaism; of the Late-Antique Greco-Roman world; and of Christianity under the Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and Carolingian Empires. The contributions show that the discussion of cultural change in relation to the field of knowledge and learning, and as applied to some of the literary witnesses thereto, is an approach both enriching and rewarding, since it contributes both to the elucidation of the past and also to a better understanding of the present.
The topics treated in this volume, therefore, are not only relevant to specialists in the various fields, but are likely to stimulate much further investigation of comparable or related themes, by demonstrating the approaches to and directions of research which are most fruitful in the study of the complicated questions pertaining to cultural phenomena and their mutation, transformation or development in a continually changing world.