Aphrahat and Judaism

Aphrahat and Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900450897X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description

Aphrahat and Judaism

Aphrahat and Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900450897X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description


Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine

Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226576527
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
With the conversion of Constantine in 312, Christianity began a period of political and cultural dominance that it would enjoy until the twentieth century. Jacob Neusner contradicts the prevailing view that following Christianity's ascendancy, Judaism continued to evolve in isolation. He argues that because of the political need to defend its claims to religious authenticity, Judaism was forced to review itself in the context of a triumphant Christianity. The definition of issues long discussed in Judaism—the meaning of history, the coming of the Messiah, and the political identity of Israel—became of immediate and urgent concern to both parties. What emerged was a polemical dialogue between Christian and Jewish teachers that was unprecedented. In a close analysis of texts by the Christian theologians Eusebius, Aphrahat, and Chrysostom on one hand, and of the central Jewish works the Talmud of the Land of Israel, the Genesis Rabbah, and the Leviticus Rabbah on the other, Neusner finds that both religious groups turned to the same corpus of Hebrew scripture to examine the same fundamental issues. Eusebius and Genesis Rabbah both address the issue of history, Chrysostom and the Talmud the issue of the Messiah, and Aphrahat and Leviticus Rabbah the issue of Israel. As Neusner demonstrates, the conclusions drawn shaped the dialogue between the two religions for the rest of their shared history in the West.

The Ways That Never Parted

The Ways That Never Parted PDF Author: Adam H. Becker
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451403437
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
* The first paperback edition of the hardcover published by Mohr Siebeck in 2003 * Startling, state-of-the-art essays on Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity * Includes a new preface by the editors discussing scholarships since 2003

Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-century Persian Mesopotamia

Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-century Persian Mesopotamia PDF Author: Naomi Koltun-Fromm
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781463201562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Was there an active Jewish-Christian polemic in fourth-century Persia? Aphrahat's Demonstrations, a fourth-century adversus Judaeos text, clearly indicates that fourth-century Persian Christians were interested in the debate. Is there evidence of this polemic in the rabbinic literature? Despite the lack of a comparable Jewish or rabbinic adversus Christianos literature, there is evidence, both from Aphrahat and the Rabbis that this polemic was not one sided.

Hermeneutics of Holiness

Hermeneutics of Holiness PDF Author: Naomi Koltun-Fromm
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019988997X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Hermeneutics of Holiness , Naomi Koltun-Fromm examines the ancient nexus of holiness and sexuality and explores its roots in the biblical texts as well as its manifestations throughout ancient and late-ancient Judaism and early Syriac Christianity. In the process, she tells the story of how the biblical notions of "holy person" and "holy community" came to be defined by the sexual and marriage practices of various interpretive communities in late antiquity. Koltun-Fromm seeks to explain why sexuality, especially sexual restraint, became a primary demarcation of sacred community boundaries among Jews and Christians in fourth-century Persian-Mesopotamia. She charts three primary manifestations of holiness: holiness ascribed, holiness achieved, and holiness acquired through ritual purity. Hermeneutics of Holiness traces the development of these three concepts, from their origin in the biblical texts to the Second Temple literature (both Jewish and Christian) to the Syriac Christian and rabbinic literature of the fourth century. In so doing, this book establishes the importance of biblical interpretation for late ancient Jewish and Christian practices, the centrality of holiness as a category for self-definition, and the relationship of fourth-century asceticism to biblical texts and interpretive history.

Slandering the Jew

Slandering the Jew PDF Author: Susanna Drake
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812208242
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
As Christian leaders in the first through fifth centuries embraced ascetic interpretations of the Bible and practices of sexual renunciation, sexual slander—such as the accusations Paul leveled against wayward Gentiles in the New Testament—played a pivotal role in the formation of early Christian identity. In particular, the imagined construct of the lascivious, literal-minded Jew served as a convenient foil to the chaste Christian ideal. Susanna Drake examines representations of Jewish sexuality in early Christian writings that use accusations of carnality, fleshliness, bestiality, and licentiousness as strategies to differentiate the "spiritual" Christian from the "carnal" Jew. Church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Hippolytus of Rome, Origen of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom portrayed Jewish men variously as dangerously hypersexual, at times literally seducing virtuous Christians into heresy, or as weak and effeminate, unable to control bodily impulses or govern their wives. As Drake shows, these carnal caricatures served not only to emphasize religious difference between Christians and Jews but also to justify increased legal constraints and violent acts against Jews as the interests of Christian leaders began to dovetail with the interests of the empire. Placing Christian representations of Jews at the root of the destruction of synagogues and mobbing of Jewish communities in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, Slandering the Jew casts new light on the intersections of sexuality, violence, representation, and religious identity.

Son of God

Son of God PDF Author: Garrick V. Allen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1646020081
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
In antiquity, “son of god”—meaning a ruler designated by the gods to carry out their will—was a title used by the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors as a way to reinforce their divinely appointed status. But this title was also used by early Christians to speak about Jesus, borrowing the idiom from Israelite and early Jewish discourses on monarchy. This interdisciplinary volume explores what it means to be God’s son(s) in ancient Jewish and early Christian literature. Through close readings of relevant texts from multiple ancient corpora, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greco-Roman texts and inscriptions, early Christian and Islamic texts, and apocalyptic literature, the chapters in this volume engage a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christianity and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays in this collection demonstrate that divine sonship is an ideal prism through which to better understand the deep interrelationship of ancient religions and their politics of kingship and divinity. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Richard Bauckham, Max Botner, George J. Brooke, Jan Joosten, Menahem Kister, Reinhard Kratz, Mateusz Kusio, Michael A. Lyons, Matthew V. Novenson, Michael Peppard, Sarah Whittle, and N. T. Wright.

Aphrahat Demonstrations 1

Aphrahat Demonstrations 1 PDF Author: Aphraates (the Persian sage)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611435726
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
Kuriakose Valavanolickal presents here in two volumes the first English translation of the twenty-three Demonstrations by Aphrahat, the fourth century Persian Sage, who is one of the earliest authors of the Syriac tradition.

Exegesis and Hermeneutics in the Churches of the East

Exegesis and Hermeneutics in the Churches of the East PDF Author: Society of Biblical Literature. Meeting
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433104954
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exegesis and Hermeneutics in the Churches of the East contains the proceedings of the Bible in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions unit of the Society of Biblical Literature's (SBL) 2007 meeting in San Diego, California. Biblical professors and scholars from the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox traditions (the latter including Aramaic, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Georgian, and Coptic, among others) gathered to engage in critical study of the role of the Bible in eastern Christianity, past and present. The collection of articles in Exegesis and Hermeneutics in the Churches of the East examines the latest scholarly findings in the field of the utilization and interpretation of the Bible in the Christian communities in the East during the first five centuries of Christianity. They offer critical evaluations of the early church's hermeneutical and exegetical tools and methodologies.

Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy

Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy PDF Author: Christine Shepardson
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813215366
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
A critical reading of Ephrem's numerous poetic writings demonstrates that his sharp anti-Jewish and anti-Judaizing language helped to solidify a pro-Nicene definition of Christian orthodoxy, cutting off from that community in the very act of defining it his so-called Judaizing and Arian Christian opponents, both of whom he accused of being more like Jews than Christians. Through carefully crafted rhetoric, Ephrem constructed for his audience new social and theological parameters that reshaped the religious landscape of his community.