Chapter 3 - The Union and Divorce of Classical Philology and Theology

Summary

This chapter investigates the disciplinary formation of Classical Philology as an especially privileged subject in the nineteenth-century university, and the degree to which it overlapped happily with theology. It looks at how the two fields, both committed to the study of antiquity, shared methodology, ideology and an approach to education. It investigates how particular scholars straddled both fields in a way that subsequent historiography and disciplinary silos have worked to conceal – and how specific books became the site for shared intellectual perspectives. The chapter explores this through the career of Benjamin Jowett, as an exemplary figure who straddles both fields. Finally, it considers how twentieth-century historiography and the self-representation of scholars in theology and philology have enacted an increasingly sharp divide between the two disciplines, and explores its reasons and consequences.