Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries

Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries PDF Author: Donghyun Jeong
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110791382
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This monograph provides an alternative model for looking at the old question about Paul and the mysteries in a new light. Specifically, this study compares rituals—baptism in the Pauline communities and the initiation rituals of the mysteries—through the lens of cultural anthropology and the sociology of religion. Three research questions lead the project: What benefits does each initiation ritual promise its participants? What are the underlying messages or structures that guarantee the efficacy of those rituals? How and to what extent is the initiation ritual connected to the participants’ cognition and ethics beyond initiation itself? Taking those questions as the analytical framework, this study substantiates two points: first, in terms of ritual messages, baptism in the Pauline communities is a ritual analogous to mystery initiation, and second, Paul is an innovative interpreter of ritual who recalibrates the messages of preexisting rituals for his theological and ethical program, seeking to radically extend the implications of initiation to the embodied life of every Christ-believer. Students and scholars of New Testament, early Christianity, classics, and ritual studies will benefit from engaging this volume.

Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries

Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries PDF Author: Donghyun Jeong
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110791382
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph provides an alternative model for looking at the old question about Paul and the mysteries in a new light. Specifically, this study compares rituals—baptism in the Pauline communities and the initiation rituals of the mysteries—through the lens of cultural anthropology and the sociology of religion. Three research questions lead the project: What benefits does each initiation ritual promise its participants? What are the underlying messages or structures that guarantee the efficacy of those rituals? How and to what extent is the initiation ritual connected to the participants’ cognition and ethics beyond initiation itself? Taking those questions as the analytical framework, this study substantiates two points: first, in terms of ritual messages, baptism in the Pauline communities is a ritual analogous to mystery initiation, and second, Paul is an innovative interpreter of ritual who recalibrates the messages of preexisting rituals for his theological and ethical program, seeking to radically extend the implications of initiation to the embodied life of every Christ-believer. Students and scholars of New Testament, early Christianity, classics, and ritual studies will benefit from engaging this volume.

Baptism and Resurrection

Baptism and Resurrection PDF Author: Alexander J. M. Wedderburn
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 161097087X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
The assumption that Romans 6 and 1 Corinthians 15 reflects a borrowing of ideas from Graeco-Roman mystery initiations is not the likeliest explanation of these texts nor does justice either to recent studies of the mysteries nor to the difficulty in reinterpreting resurrection to refer to a spiritual state which the baptized enjoyed in the present. Spiritual phenomena may have shown early Christians in the Graeco-Roman world that they had life, but not resurrection. Dying with Christ has other roots than the mysteries and the latter should not be interpreted in the light of Paul, but dying and coming to life again is a theme common to a great many rites of passage.

The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan

The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan PDF Author: Kilian McDonnell
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 9780814653074
Category : Baptism
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This systematic study isolates those themes with which the early Church proclaimed and celebrated the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan.

From Death to Life

From Death to Life PDF Author: Randall D. Chesnutt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1850755167
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This monograph, the first in English on any aspect of Joseph and Aseneth, examines Aseneth's conversion as narrated in this important but neglected apocryphal Jewish romance. An extensive history of research on Joseph and Aseneth and an analysis of key issues such as text, original language, character, provenance, date, and genre, precede and inform the study of conversion. The story of Aseneth's conversion has too often been understood on the basis of premature and superficial comparisons with other paradigms of conversion and initiation in the Hellenistic world. As a corrective, Chesnutt assigns priority to descriptive over comparative analysis. He draws comparisons and contrasts with other models of conversion and initiation only after he has carefully examined Aseneth's conversion in its own right within the literary context of Joseph and Aseneth and the social context which the document itself reflects. The attention not only to conversion but also to much broader social and religious dimensions of Judaism in antiquity makes this book important for specialists in Christian origins, Greco-Roman religions, women's studies, and patristics, as well as the history of Judaism>

Rereading Paul Together

Rereading Paul Together PDF Author: David E. Aune
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 080102840X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Provides a contemporary reassessment of the Pauline doctrine of justification from both Protestant and Catholic perspectives.

The Ritualized Revelation of the Messianic Age

The Ritualized Revelation of the Messianic Age PDF Author: Stephen Richard Turley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567663876
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Turley begins by surveying the history of the interface between ritual studies and Pauline scholarship, identifying the scholarly gaps in both method and conclusions and a ritual theory adequate to address such gaps. The focus of the work is then on the two rituals that identified the Pauline communities: ritual washings and ritual meals. Turley explores Galatians and 1 Corinthians, two letters that present the richest spread of evidence pertinent to ritual theory. By exploring Paul's reference to ritual washings and meals with a heuristic use of ritual theory, Turley concludes that rituals in early Christianity were inherently revelatory, in that they revealed the dawning of the messianic age through the bodies of the ritual participants. This bodily revelation established both a distinctly Christian ethic and a distinctly Christian social space by which such an ethical identity might be identified and sustained.

The Jesus Legend

The Jesus Legend PDF Author: Paul Rhodes Eddy
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 0801031141
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Confronts the "legendary Jesus" case, showing how the Synoptic Gospels are the most historically probable representation of the actual Jesus of history.

Paul's Letter to the Romans

Paul's Letter to the Romans PDF Author: Ben Witherington III
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802845047
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Witherington gleans fresh insights from reading the text of Paul's epistle in light of early Jewish theology, the historical situation of Rome in the middle of first century A.D., and Paul's own rhetorical concerns.

The Ritual World of Paul the Apostle

The Ritual World of Paul the Apostle PDF Author: Michael Lakey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567663744
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Michael Lakey explores the theological significance of the rituals of Baptism and the Lord's Supper in Pauline theology, with the argument culminating in an analysis of the significance of ritual dining in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22 and the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. By contrast with 'social world' forms of comparison between rituals in the Pauline communities and other communities in antiquity, this study focuses primarily upon the theologically integrating function these rituals perform in relation to Paul's theology and ethics. Lakey builds upon Clifford Geertz's systemic understanding of religion by showing how, for Paul, Baptism and the Lord's Supper facilitate specific connections between his metaphysics on the one hand, and the form or pattern of life he enjoins upon his churches on the other. This volume considers precisely what - given his theological and ethical premises - Paul's underlying beliefs regarding these ritual events may have been, allowing for a preliminary discussion of specific lines of post-interpretation in the early patristic period.

Drudgery Divine

Drudgery Divine PDF Author: Jonathan Z. Smith
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780728601581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.