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Author: Ismo Dunderberg
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161525674
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
While the early Christian texts discussed in this book are often treated as "gnostic" ones, they are here approached as witnesses to the views of educated Christians engaged in dialogue with philosophical traditions. Following the idea that ancient philosophical schools provided their adherents with ways of life, Ismo Dunderberg explores issues related to morality and lifestyle in non-canonical gospels and among groups that were gradually denounced as heretical in the church. He deals with the soul's progress from material concerns to a life dominated by spirit, the control of emotions, the avoidance of luxury, the ideal "perfect human" as a tool in moral instruction, classifications of humankind into distinct groups based on their moral advancement, and Christian debates about the value of martyrdom. In addition, he offers a critical review of some recent trends and attitudes in New Testament scholarship.
Author: Ismo Dunderberg
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161525674
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
While the early Christian texts discussed in this book are often treated as "gnostic" ones, they are here approached as witnesses to the views of educated Christians engaged in dialogue with philosophical traditions. Following the idea that ancient philosophical schools provided their adherents with ways of life, Ismo Dunderberg explores issues related to morality and lifestyle in non-canonical gospels and among groups that were gradually denounced as heretical in the church. He deals with the soul's progress from material concerns to a life dominated by spirit, the control of emotions, the avoidance of luxury, the ideal "perfect human" as a tool in moral instruction, classifications of humankind into distinct groups based on their moral advancement, and Christian debates about the value of martyrdom. In addition, he offers a critical review of some recent trends and attitudes in New Testament scholarship.
Author: Paul Linjamaa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009441493
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
Since their discovery in 1945, the Nag Hammadi Codices have generated questions and scholarly debate as to their date and function. Paul Linjamaa contributes to the discussion by offering insights into previously uncharted aspects pertinent to the materiality of the manuscripts. He explores the practical implementation of the texts in their ancient setting through analyses of codicological aspects, paratextual elements, and scribal features. Linjamaa's research supports the hypothesis that the Nag Hammadi texts had their origins in Pachomian monasticism. He shows how Pachomian monks used the texts for textual edification, spiritual development and pedagogical practices. He also demonstrates that the texts were used for perfecting scribal and editorial practice, and that they were used as protective artefacts containing sacred symbols in the continuous monastic warfare against evil spirits. Linjamaa's application of new material methods provides clues to the origins and use of ancient texts, and challenges preconceptions about ancient orthodoxy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Author: Lewis Ayres
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110608634
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
The study of the growth of early Christian intellectual life is of perennial interest to scholars. This volume advances discussion by exploring ways in which Christian writers in the second century did not so much draw on Hellenistic intellectual traditions and models, as they were inevitably embedded in those traditions. The volume contains papers from a seminar in Rome in 2016 that explored the nature and activity of the emergent Christian intellectual between the late first century and the early third century. The papers show that Hellenistic scholarly cultures were the milieu within which Christian modes of thinking developed. At the same time the essays show how Christian thinkers made use of the cultures of which they were part in distinctive ways, adapting existing traditions because of Christian beliefs and needs. The figures studied include Papias from the early part of the second-century, Tatian, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria from the later second century. One paper on Eusebius of Caesarea explores the Christian adaptation of Hellenistic scholarly methods of commentary. Christian figures are studied in the light of debates within Classics and Jewish studies.
Author: Andrew Cain
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192662910
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline "renaissance" of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul's epistles. Among them was Jerome, who commented on four epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon) in 386 after recently having relocated to Bethlehem from Rome. His commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the centuries-long tradition of Latin-language commenting on Paul's writings. They also constitute his first foray into the systematic exposition of whole biblical books (and his only experiment with Pauline interpretation on this scale), and so they provide precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early career before he would go on to become the most prolific biblical scholar of Late Antiquity. This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome's opus Paulinum in any language. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, Cain comprehensively analyzes the commentaries' most salient aspects-from the inner workings of Jerome's philological method and engagement with his Greek exegetical sources, to his recruitment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic special interests. One of the over-arching concerns of this book is to explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was absolutely fundamental to Jerome in his fourth-century context: what are the sophisticated mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only on his own terms but also vis-à-vis contemporary western commentators?
Author: Michael Labahn
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048535123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
This collection of essays investigates signs of toleration, recognition, respect and other positive forms of interaction between and within religious groups of late antiquity. At the same time, it acknowledges that examples of tolerance are significantly fewer in ancient sources than examples of intolerance and are often limited to insiders, while outsiders often met with contempt, or even outright violence. The essays take both perspectives seriously by analysing the complexity pertaining to these encounters. Religious concerns, ethnicity, gender and other social factors central to identity formation were often intertwined and they yielded different ways of drawing the limits of tolerance and intolerance. This book enhances our understanding of the formative centuries of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. It also brings the results of historical inquiry into dialogue with present-day questions of religious tolerance.
Author: Todd D. Still
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567715469
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
This volume examines the use of Paul's writing within the work of ante-Nicene apologetic writers. It takes apologetics as a broad genre in which many early Christian writers participated, offering rhetorical defenses for emerging aspects of doctrine, rooted in understanding of the scriptures, and often specifically the writings of Paul. The volume interacts with the writings of many significant 'apologetic' writers, including: Melito of Sardis, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Cyprian. The chapters examine how these early Christian writers used the letters of Paul to develop their own philosophical ideas and defenses of aspects of the emerging Christian faith. The internationally renowned contributors have all been specially commissioned for this volume, and an afterword by Todd D. Still considers the question of whether or not Paul was an 'apologist' himself.
Author: M. David Litwa
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567703894
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
M. David Litwa tells the stories of the early Christians whose religious identity was either challenged or outright denied. In the second century many different groups and sects claimed to be the only Orthodox or authentic version of Christianity, and Litwa shows how those groups and figures on the side of developing Christian Orthodoxy often dismissed other versions of Christianity by refusing to call them “Christian”. However, the writings and treatises against these groups contain fascinating hints of what they believed, and why they called themselves Christian. Litwa outlines these different groups and the controversies that surrounded them, presenting readers with an overview of the vast tapestry of beliefs that made up second century Christianity. By moving beyond notions of “gnostic”, “heretical” and “orthodox” Litwa allows these “lost Christianities” to speak for themselves. He also questions the notion of some Christian identities “surviving” or “perishing”, arguing that all second century "Catholic" groups look very different to any form of modern Roman Catholicism. Litwa shows that countless discourses, ideas, and practices are continually recycled and adapted throughout time in the building of Christian identities, and indeed that the influence of so-called “lost” Christianities can still be felt today.
Author: M. David Litwa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843999
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
Ancient theories of posthuman transformation can shape, chasten, and reform modern (biotechnical) theories of posthuman enhancement.
Author: Samuli Siikavirta
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161540141
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Baptism, for Paul, is a christological event that he also uses in his ethical argument. The discussion of the relationship between Paul's theology and ethics has made use of the terms 'indicative' and 'imperative' since Wernle and Bultmann. As subsequent discussion has shown, these terms are problematic not only because of their rigidity and ambiguity. In this study, Samuli Siikavirta focuses on Romans 6-8, the key text for the interplay between Paul's theological and ethical material. He brings the discussion back to what he sees as central to this interaction: baptism and its cognition. Both elements are examined in their Jewish and Stoic settings. Death to sin, slavery to God, holiness and the indwelling of the Spirit are all seen as integral parts of the baptismal state that is deeply christological rather than symbolical. Paul's cognitive language is then viewed in light of his desire to remind his addressees of who and whose they are because of their baptism.
Author: Juliette Day
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317051785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Places and spaces are key factors in how individuals and groups construct their identities. Identity theories have emphasised that the construction of an identity does not follow abstract and universal processes but is also deeply rooted in specific historical, cultural, social and material environments. The essays in this volume explore how various groups in Late Antiquity rooted their identity in special places that were imbued with meanings derived from history and tradition. In Part I, essays explore the tension between the Classical heritage in public, especially urban spaces, in the form of ancient artwork and civic celebrations and the Church's appropriation of that space through doctrinal disputes and rival public performances. Parts II and III investigate how particular locations expressed, and formed, the theological and social identities of Christian and Jewish groups by bringing together fresh insights from the archaeological and textual evidence. Together the essays here demonstrate how the use and interpretation of shared spaces contributed to the self-identity of specific groups in Late Antiquity and in so doing issued challenges, and caused conflict, with other social and religious groups.
