This is not just a book about the Christianity of the Greco-Roman world; it embraces the entire Middle East through its rare ability to conjure up the imaginative world of the Christians of the Syriac- speaking region. It is a survey of a broad range of early Christian literature in several languages. Particularly important is the way the author contextualizes her discussion in the context of the development and growth of the Christian liturgy. This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first - seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? "Scenting Salvation" argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity.