Contents: Preface; Introduction: the social presence of Greek in Eastern Christianity, 200-1200 CE; Sextus Julius Africanus and the Roman Near East in the third century, William Adler; Ethnic identity in the Roman Near East, AD 325-450: language, religion, and culture, Fergus Millar; Bilingualism and diglossia in late antique Syria and Mesopotamia, David Taylor; The private life of a man of letters: well-read practices in Byzantine Egypt according to the Dossier of Dioscorus of Aphrodito, Jean-Luc Fournet; Dioscorus and the question of bilingualism in sixth-century Egypt, Arietta Papaconstantinou; Palestinian hagiography and the reception of the Council of Chalcedon, Bernard Flusin; The Christian schools of Palestine: a chapter in literary history, Glanville Downey; Embellishing the steps: elements of presentation and style in The Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus, John Duffy; The works of Anastasius of Sinai: a key source for the history of seventh-century East Mediterranean society and belief, John Haldon; Greek literature in Palestine in the eighth century, Robert Pierpont Blake; Greek culture in Palestine after the Arab conquest, Cyril Mango; Some reflections on the continuity of Greek culture in the East in the seventh and eighth centuries, Guglielmo Cavallo; From Palestine to Constantinople (eighth-ninth centuries): Stephen the Sabaite and John of Damascus, Marie-France Auzépy; The Life of Theodore of Edessa: history, hagiography, and religious apologetics in Mar Saba monastery in early Abbasid times, Sidney Griffith; Why did Arabic succeed where Greek failed? Language change in the Near East after Muhammad, David Wasserstein; From Arabic to Greek, then to Georgian: a life of Saint John of Damascus, Bernard Flusin; Greek - Syriac - Arabic: the relationship between liturgical and colloquial languages in Melkite Palestine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Johannes Pahlitzsch; The liturgy of the Melkite Patriarchs from 969 to 1300, Joseph Nasrallah; Byzant