This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mowle, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Peter Brown is one of the world's most respected historians.

He currently serves as the Philip and Buella Rollins Professor of History

Emeritus at Princeton University. A native of Ireland, Professor Brown taught at

Oxford University until 1975 and was a fellow of All Souls College.

He joined the Princeton faculty in 1986 after teaching at the University of London

and the University of California at Berkeley.

He's been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Melon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award.

Professor Brown is credited with having created an entire field of academic study, referred to as late antiquity, covering the years from 250 to 800

AD. His latest work is Through the Eye of a Needle, Wealth, The Fall of Rome, and the Making of

Christianity in the West 350 a.

D.

Professor Brown when I think of your work I think first of all of the fact that you have

basically invented an entire new field of history how did you come up with this

designation of of late antiquity.

I tell you why, I mean, you know, I'm obviously not the only person.

I simply use it as a title of a book at a time when it had been used but it hadn't

been you know turned into a major concept.

I was concerned largely because,

...