Author: Yair Furstenberg
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004321691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Jews and Christians under the Roman Empire shared a unique sense of community. Set apart from their civic and cultic surroundings, both groups resisted complete assimilation into the dominant political and social structures. However, Jewish communities differed from their Christian counterparts in their overall patterns of response to the surrounding challenges. They exhibit diverse levels of integration into the civic fabric of the cities of the Empire and display contrary attitudes towards the creation of trans-local communal networks. The variety of local case studies examined in this volume offers an integrated image of the multiple factors, both internal and external, which determined the role of communal identity in creating a sense of belonging among Jews and Christians under Imperial constraints.
Author: Judith Lieu
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199291427
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This book is a highly original exploration of how a sense of being 'a Christian', or of 'Christian identity', was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. Contemporary discussions of identity provide the background to a careful study of early Christian texts from the first two centuries. Judith Lieu shows that there were similarities and differences in the ways Jews and others were thinking about themselves, and asks what made early Christianity distinctive.
Author: Natalie B. Dohrmann
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245334
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
This volume revisits issues of empire from the perspective of Jews, Christians, and other Romans in the third to sixth centuries. Through case studies, the contributors bring Jewish perspectives to bear on longstanding debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity.
Author: Terence L. Donaldson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467459550
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 748
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Book Description
Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, “gentile” soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of “the parting of the ways,” the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity’s legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome’s imperial ideology. Drawing on social identity theory and ethnography, Terence Donaldson offers an analysis of gentile Christianity that is thorough and highly relevant to today’s discourses surrounding identity, ethnicity, and Christian-Jewish relations. As Donaldson shows, a full understanding of the term “gentile” is key to understanding the modern Western world and the church as we know it.
Author: Anna Collar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.
Author: William S. Campbell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567184242
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
In the dominant interpretation of the Antioch incident Paul is viewed as separating from Peter and Jewish Christianity to lead his own independent mission which was eventually to triumph in the creation of a church with a gentile identity. Paul's gentile mission, however, represented only one strand of the Christ movement but has been universalized to signify the whole. The consequence of this view of Paul is that the earliest diversity in which he operated and which he affirmed has been anachronistically diminished almost to the point of obliteration. There is little recognition of the Jewish form of Christianity and that Paul by and large related positively to it as evidenced in Romans 14-15. Here Paul acknowledges Jewish identity as an abiding reality rather than as a temporary and weak form of faith in Christ. This book argues that diversity in Christ was fundamental to Paul and that particularly in his ethical guidance this received recognition. Paul's relation to Judaism is best understood not as a reaction to his former faith but as a transformation resulting from his vision of Christ. In this the past is not obliterated but transformed and thus continuity is maintained so that the identity of Christianity is neither that of a new religion nor of a Jesus cult. In Christ the past is reconfigured and thus the diversity of humanity continues within the church, which can celebrate the richness of differing identities under the Lordship of Christ.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900470440X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The second century is a crucial period for the formation of both Judaism and Christianity, but remains in important ways terra incognita. This volume brings together specialists in Jewish studies and Christian studies, two closely related disciplines that nonetheless continue to operate in relative isolation. Taking into consideration the full panoply of Jewish and Christian identities, the volume proposes fresh ways to map the interrelated histories of Jews and Christians. Contributions by leading scholars offer new insights into this period informed by a rich variety of perspectives, including theoretical, literary, thematic and material approaches.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004435409
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 723
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Book Description
In Israel in Egypt scholars in different fields explore what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world. For generations of Jews from antiquity to the medieval period, the land of Egypt represented both a place of danger to their communal religious identity and also a haven with opportunities for prosperity and growth. A volume of collected essays from scholars in fields ranging from biblical studies and classics to papyrology and archaeology, Israel in Egypt explores what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world.
Author: Naftali S. Cohn
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 1951498992
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 775
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Book Description
This volume brings together the latest scholarship on Jewish literary products and the ways in which they can be interpreted from three different perspectives. In part 1, contributors consider texts as literature, as cultural products, and as historical documents to demonstrate the many ways that early Jewish, rabbinic, and modern secular Jewish literary works make meaning and can be read meaningfully. Part 2 focuses on exegesis of specific biblical and rabbinic texts as well as medieval Jewish poetry. Part 3 examines medieval and early modern Jewish books as material objects and explores the history, functions, and reception of these material objects. Contributors include Javier del Barco, Elisheva Carlebach, Ezra Chwat, Evelyn M. Cohen, Naftali S. Cohn, William Cutter, Yaacob Dweck, Talya Fishman, Steven D. Fraade, Dalia-Ruth Halperin, Martha Himmelfarb, Marc Hirshman, Tamar Kadari, Israel Knohl, Susanne Klingenstein, Katrin Kogman-Appel, Jon D. Levenson, Paul Mandel, Annett Martini, Jordan S. Penkower, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Shalom Sabar, Raymond P. Scheindlin, Seth Schwartz, Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Peter Stallybrass, Josef Stern, Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, Elliot R. Wolfson, Azzan Yadin-Israel, and Joseph Yahalom.
Author: Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000417735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
This book challenges the popular use of ‘Valentinian’ to describe a Christian school of thought in the second century CE by analysing documents ascribed to ‘Valentinians’ by early Christian Apologists, and more recently by modern scholars after the discovery of codices near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. To this end, Ashwin-Siejkowski highlights the great diversity of views among Christian theologians associated with the label ‘Valentinian’, demonstrating their attachment to the Scriptures and Apostolic traditions as well as their dialogue with Graeco-Roman philosophies of their time. Among the various themes explored are ‘myth’ and its role in early Christian theology, the familiarity of the Gospel of Truth with Alexandrian exegetical tradition, Ptolemy’s didactic in his letter to Flora, the image of the Saviour in the Interpretation of Knowledge, reception of the Johannine motifs in Heracleon’s commentary and the Tripartite Tractate, salvation in the Excerpts from Theodotus, Christian identity in the Gospel of Philip, and reception of selected Johannine motifs in ‘Valentinian’ documents. Valentinus’ Legacy and Polyphony of Voices will be an invaluable and accessible resource to students, researchers, and scholars of Early Christian theologies, as well as trajectories of exegesis in New Testament sources and the emerging of different Christian identities based on various Christologies.
