Download or read book Jerusalem and Babylon written by Johannes van Oort and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although many studies have been devoted to Augustine's City of God and its most important theme, viz. the antithesis between the civitas Dei and the terrena civitas,until now no consensus has been reached concerning the sources of this doctrine. Was Augustine decisively influenced by Manichaeism, by (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa or Philo, by the Donatist Tyconius? Or should we look in another direction and refer to preceding Christian, Jewish, and especially to archaic Jewish-Christian traditions? This lucidly written books opens with a survey of the research carried out so far on the aim, structure and central theme of the City of God. Chapter 2 analyzes the essentials of Augustine's life, of his City of God, and of his doctrine of the two cities. Making use of one of the recently discovered letters of Augustine in Chapter 3 the author describes the City of God as an apology and as a catechetical work. Chapter 4 provides an investigation into the possible sources of Augustine's doctrine of the two cities in Manichaeism, in (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa and Philo, and in the works of Tyconius. The idea of two antithetical cities proves to be present most clearly in writings in which, closely related to Jewish thinking, archaic Christian concepts occupy an important place. In a final chapter some pertinent remarks are made on Jewish and Jewish-Christian influences on pre-Augustinian Christianity in Africa.

Download or read book Pelagius s Commentary on St Paul s Epistle to the Romans written by Pelagius and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pelagian controversy - whether man is saved through predestination or by his own free will - has proved one of the most enduring and fiercely contended issues of the Christian church, and has secured Pelagius a lasting place within its history. Few of Pelagius' writings, however, have been preserved, and until recently none was available in English translation. This volume presents Pelagius' commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans for the first time in English. The commentary, one of thirteen on the Pauline Epistles, dates from the time when Pelagius was active in Rome, before he became embroiled in controversy. But already there are adumbrations of the later debate and signs of different currents of thought in Italy and beyond. In his introduction Theodore de Bruyn discusses the context in which Pelagius wrote the commentary and the issues which shaped his interpretation of Romans. He also takes up questions about the edition of the commentary. The translation is annotated with references to Pelagius' contemporaries. A new recension of Pelagius' text of Romans is presented in an appendix.

Download or read book The Letters of St Jerome written by Saint Jerome and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 1963 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other source gives such an intimate portrait of this brilliant and strong minded individual, one of the four great doctors of the West and generally regarded as the most learned of the Latin fathers.

Download or read book Writings of John Cassian Annotated written by Keith Beasley-Topliffe and published by Upper Room Books. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With: Historical commentary Biographical info Appendix with further readings For nearly 2,000 years, Christian mystics, martyrs, and sages have documented their search for the divine. Their writings have bestowed boundless wisdom upon subsequent generations. But they have also burdened many spiritual seekers. The sheer volume of available material creates a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Enter the Upper Room Spiritual Classics series, a collection of authoritative texts on Christian spirituality curated for the everyday reader. Designed to introduce 15 spiritual giants and the range of their works, these volumes are a first-rate resource for beginner and expert alike. Writings of John Cassian includes a significant sampling of writings by this monk and contemporary of Augustine. Excerpts of Cassian's writings on prayer and commitment continue to speak practically and potently to readers 15 centuries later.

Download or read book Pelagius s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul written by and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Letters 1 99 written by Saint Augustine (of Hippo) and published by New City Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Letters of Jerome written by Andrew Cain and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the centuries following his death, Jerome (c.347-420) was venerated as a saint and as one of the four Doctors of the Latin church. In his own lifetime, however, he was a severely marginalized figure whose intellectual and spiritual authority did not go unchallenged, at times even by those in his inner circle. His ascetic theology was rejected by the vast majority of Christian contemporaries, his Hebrew scholarship was called into question by the leading Biblical authorities of the day, and the reputation he cultivated as a pious monk was compromised by allegations of moral impropriety with some of his female disciples. In view of the extremely problematic nature of his profile, how did Jerome seek to bring credibility to himself and his various causes? In this book, the first of its kind in any language, Andrew Cain answers this crucial question through a systematic examination of Jerome's idealized self-presentation across the whole range of his extant epistolary corpus. Modern scholars overwhelmingly either access the letters as historical sources or appreciate their aesthetic properties. Cain offers a new approach and explores the largely neglected but nonetheless fundamental propagandistic dimension of the correspondence. In particular, he proposes theories about how, and above all why, Jerome used individual letters and letter-collections to bid for status as an expert on the Bible and ascetic spirituality.

Download or read book The Origins of Latin Christianity written by Jean Daniélou and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Women in Late Antiquity written by Gillian Clark and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1994 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although there are many books on women in the ancient world, this is the first to explore in depth what life was like for women in the period of late antiquity (3rd to 6th centuries AD) once Christianity became the dominant religion. It is also unique in focusing on both pagan and Christianlifestyles. Dr Clark provides a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to the basic conditions of life for women: marriage, divorce, celibacy, and prostitution; legal constraints and protection; child-bearing, health care and medical theories; housing, housework, and clothes; and ancient, somestill influential, theories about the nature of women. The author uses a wide range of source material - both Christian and non-Christian writings, art, and archaeology - to illustrate both what life was really like and the prevailing "discourses" of the ancient world.

Download or read book The Letters of St Antony written by Samuel Rubenson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revolutionizes our understanding of the life and thought of the great anchorite father of the Egyptian desert. It is a signal contribution to our knowledge of Egyptian Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.—Birger Pearson, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Samuel Rubenson, by means of a fresh analysis of the letters of St. Antony, exposes the distortion of the picture of early Christian monks as unlettered and primitive. Rubenson describes the desert monasteries as centers of theological reflection in Egypt, showing how they combined the speculative philosophy of the Greeks and the biblical tradition. Included in this volume is a new translation of the letters themselves, which are shown to be authentic and an important source for the study of the desert fathers and the early monastic tradition. The later image of Antony is demonstrated to be influenced by church politics of the latter part of the fourth century. Samuel Rubenson is Associate Professor at Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Download or read book Wilderness written by Frances Margaret Young and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-11-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This celebratory volume in honour of Frances Young draws on and develops the multifarious hermeneutical interests evident in the body of her work. Its overall thematic motif, to highlight concerns which impacted on her work, is the symbolic use of 'wilderness.' This multi-disciplinary volume begins with an in-depth analysis of her work by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The first part of the volume has biblical and early Christian literature as the focus, and deals with, among other topics, Jesus' encounter with people of impairment, biblical figures such as Miriam, gospel portrayals of mountains, experience of wilderness in the lives of Maori and Jewish people, the temptation of Jesus as interpreted at different times, and the redefinition of asceticism in Syrian Christianity. The second part of the volume addresses theological concerns, with essays which advocate wisdom as a potential mode for doing theology, engage with the radical Christian writings of 17th and 18th centuries, revisit the problem of sin, highlight the latent Christological motifs in the novels of Tolkien, and draw attention to the significance of the Quranic Jesus.

Download or read book Letters 100 155 written by Saint Augustine (of Hippo) and published by New City Press. This book was released on 2002-01-15 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translation, Introduction and notes by Roland J. Teske, S.J.

Download or read book Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century written by Carolinne White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-18 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friendship was a quality valued highly in ancient Greece and Rome, and was also regarded as highly significant in nascent Christianity. Carolinne White's aim in this study is to describe and compare the ideas about friendship developed by the Christians, whose culture was in many ways dependent upon its pagan background, and thus to develop a coherent picture of how the concept of friendship was understood in the fourth century. The Christian writers discussed are considered against the background of their personal lives and their relations with one another. All of the writers considered had a profound influence on later ages as well as on their own period, which means that the survey provided should be of wide interest both to ancient historians and theologians.

Download or read book The Monk and the Book written by Megan Hale Williams and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructure—a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship. Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history—including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier—Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome’s literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome’s textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university. "[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."—Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books

Download or read book The Origenist Controversy written by Elizabeth A. Clark and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the turn of the fifth century, Christian theologians and churchmen contested each other's orthodoxy and good repute by hurling charges of "Origenism" at their opponents. And although orthodoxy was more narrowly defined by that era than during Origen's lifetime in the third century, his speculative, Platonizing theology was not the only issue at stake in the Origenist controversy: "Origen" became a code word for nontheological complaints as well. Elizabeth Clark explores the theological and extra-theological implications of the dispute, uses social network analysis to explain the personal alliances and enmities of its participants, and suggests how it prefigured modern concerns with the status of representation, the social construction of the body, and praxis vis--vis theory. Shaped by the Trinitarian and ascetic debates, and later to influence clashes between Augustine and the Pelagians, the Origenist controversy intersected with patristic campaigns against pagan "idolatry" and Manichean and astrological determinism. Discussing Evagrius Ponticus, Epiphanius, Theophilus, Jerome, Shenute, and Rufinus in turn, Clark concludes by showing how Augustine's theory of original sin reconstructed the Origenist theory of the soul's pre-existence and "fall" into the body. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book The Gospel According to Thomas written by Antoine Guillaumont and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1959 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This document is a collection of Logia, a harvesting of about 114 "Sayings of Jesus" together with a prologue which stresses the esoteric character of the sayings and attributes their recording and preservation to the apostle Didymus Jude Thomas. Many of the sentences are identical with the Logia of the Synoptic Gospels or are closely related to them. Nevertheless, there are differences of detail which merit discussion and can often be elucidated as due to a particular source or tradition. The other sayings on the contrary are "extra-canonical". Among these are certain "agrapha" which are already known or can now be recognised in ancient or mediaeval literature from patristic, gnostic, Manichean or even Catharist sources. In particular the sayings written in Greek, which are found in more or less mutilated form in three papyri from Oxyrhynchus appear with certain variations but assembled and arranged in similar manner in three different parts of "The Gospel according to Thomas". It is probable that extracts from apocryphal gospels such as the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" and the "Gospel according to the Egyptians" are also preserved in it. Besides this, the collection comprises many Logia which are quite new and have never before been seen.

Download or read book The Early Christian Centuries written by Philip Rousseau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charting the first six hundred years of the Christian movement, THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES carries the reader from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities.With a combination of rare tact and acuity, Philip Rousseau takes the measure of a generation of scholarship on early Christianity and the late Roman world. He stresses the importance of shifting historical consciousness, the continuity and development of ideas, and the urge for social respectability. Paying the greatest attention to the 'inner' components of Christian life, the resulting story captures fully the major figures: Paul, the gospel writers, the early 'apologists', and the great figures of the 'patristic' age, including the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine and Gregory the Great.