Download or read book Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity written by Dennis MacDonald and published by Trinity Press International. This book was released on 2001-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking collection of essays by distinguished scholars that examines the ways in which early Christian writers consciously imitated literary models from the Greco-Roman world.

Download or read book Intertextuality in the Second Century written by D. Jeffrey Bingham and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an appreciation of the value of intertextuality—from Greek, Roman, Jewish, and biblical traditions—as related to the post-apostolic level of Christian development within the second century. Not least of these foundational pillars is the certain impact of the Second Sophistic movement during this period with its insipient influence on much of early Christian theology’s formation. The variety of these strands of inspiration created a tapestry of many diverse elements that came to shape the second-century Christian situation. Here one sees biblical texts at work, Jewish and Greek foundations at play, and interaction among patristic authors as they seek to reconcile their competing perspectives on what it meant to be “Christian” within the contemporary context.

Download or read book Visions and Faces of the Tragic written by Paul M. Blowers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Constantine, this monograph demonstrates the increasing attention of late-ancient Christian authors to the genre of tragedy as a basis to explore the complexities of human finitude, suffering, and mortality in relation to the wisdom, justice, and providence of God. The book argues that various Christian writers, particularly in the post-Constantinian era, were keenly devoted to the mimesis, or imaginative re-presentation, of the tragic dimension of creaturely existence more than with simply mimicking the poetics of the classical Greek and Roman tragedians. It analyses a whole array of hermeneutical, literary, and rhetorical manifestations of " in early Christian writing, which, capitalizing on the elements of tragedy already perceptible in biblical revelation, aspired to deepen and edify Christian engagement with multiform evil and with the extreme vicissitudes of historical existence. Early Christian tragical mimetics included not only interpreting (and often amplifying) the Bible's own tragedies for contemporary audiences, but also developing models of the Christian self as a tragic self, revamping the Christian moral conscience as a tragical conscience, and cultivating a distinctively Christian tragical pathos. The study culminates in an extended consideration of the theological intelligence and accountability of " and tragical mimesis in early Christian literary culture, and the unique role of the theological virtue of hope in its repertoire of tragical emotions.

Download or read book Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature written by Jeremy Corley and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the fundamentals of intertextual methodology and summarizes recent scholarship on studies of intertextuality in the deuterocanonical books. The essays engage in comparison and analysis of text groups and motifs between canonical, deuterocanonical and non-biblical texts. Moreover, the book pays close attention to non-literary relationships between different traditions, a new feature of research in intertextuality.

Download or read book Practicing Intertextuality written by Max J. Lee and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practicing Intertextuality attempts something bold and ambitious: to map both the interactions and intertextual techniques used by New Testament authors as they engaged the Old Testament and the discourses of their fellow Jewish and Greco-Roman contemporaries. This collection of essays functions collectively as a handbook describing the relationship between ancient authors, their texts, and audience capacity to detect allusions and echoes. Aimed for biblical studies majors, graduate and seminary students, and academics, the book catalogues how New Testament authors used the very process of interacting with their Scriptures (that is, the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and their variants) and the texts of their immediate environment (including popular literary works, treatises, rhetorical handbooks, papyri, inscriptions, artifacts, and graffiti) for the very production of their message. Each chapter demonstrates a type of interaction (that is, doctrinal reformulations, common ancient ethical and religious usage, refutation, irenic appropriation, and competitive appropriation), describes the intertextual technique(s) employed by the ancient author, and explains how these were practiced in Jewish, Greco-Roman, or early Christian circles. Seventeen scholars, each an expert in their respective fields, have contributed studies which illuminate the biblical interpretation of the Gospels, the Pauline letters, and General Epistles through the process of intertextuality.

Download or read book The Gospels and Homer written by Dennis R. MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two volumes of The New Testament and Greek Literature are the magnum opus of biblical scholar Dennis R. MacDonald, outlining the profound connections between the New Testament and classical Greek poetry. MacDonald argues that the Gospel writers borrowed from established literary sources to create stories about Jesus that readers of the day would find convincing. In The Gospels and Homer MacDonald leads readers through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, highlighting models that the authors of the Gospel of Mark and Luke-Acts may have imitated for their portrayals of Jesus and his earliest followers such as Paul. The book applies mimesis criticism to show the popularity of the targets being imitated, the distinctiveness in the Gospels, and evidence that ancient readers recognized these similarities. Using side-by-side comparisons, the book provides English translations of Byzantine poetry that shows how Christian writers used lines from Homer to retell the life of Jesus. The potential imitations include adventures and shipwrecks, savages living in cages, meals for thousands, transfigurations, visits from the dead, blind seers, and more. MacDonald makes a compelling case that the Gospel writers successfully imitated the epics to provide their readers with heroes and an authoritative foundation for Christianity.

Download or read book Mimesis in the Johannine Literature written by C. Bennema and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mimesis is a fundamental and pervasive human concept, but has attracted little attention from Johannine scholarship. This is unsurprising, since Johannine ethics, of which mimesis is a part, has only recently become a fruitful area of research. Bennema contends that scholars have not yet identified the centre of Johannine ethics, admittedly due to the fact that mimesis is not immediately evident in the Johannine text because the usual terminology for mimesis is missing. This volume is the first organized study on the concept of mimesis in the Johannine literature. The aim of the study is to establish that mimesis is a genuine Johannine concept, to explain its particulars and to show that mimesis is integral to Johannine ethics. Bennema argues that Johannine mimesis is a cognitive, creative process that shapes the believer's identity and behaviour within the context of the divine family. Besides being instrumental in people's moral transformation, mimesis is also a vital mechanism for mediating the divine reality to people

Download or read book Relating the Gospels written by Eric Eve and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the synoptic problem and argues that the similarities between the gospels of Matthew and Luke outweigh the objections commonly raised against the theory that Luke used the text of Matthew in composing his gospel. While agreeing with scholars who suggests that memory played a leading role in ancient source-utilization, Eric Eve argues for a more flexible understanding of memory, which would both explain Luke's access of Matthew's double tradition material out of the sequence in which it appears in Matthew, and suggest that Luke may have been more influenced by Matthew's order than appears on the surface. Eve also considers the widespread ancient practice of literary imitation as another mode of source utilization the Evangelists, particularly Luke, could have employed, and argues that Luke's Gospel should be seen in part as an emulation of Matthew's. Within this enlarged understanding of how ancient authors could utilize their sources, Luke's proposed use of Matthew alongside Mark becomes entirely plausible, and Eve concludes that the Farrer Hypothesis of Matthew using Mark, and Luke consequently using both gospels, to be the most likely solution to the Synoptic Problem.

Download or read book Early Christianity in Lycaonia and Adjacent Areas written by Cilliers Breytenbach and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-12-11 with total page 1007 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work gives a detailed survey of the rise and expansion of Christianity in ancient Lycaonia and adjacent areas, from Paul the apostle until the late 4th-century bishop of Iconium, Amphilochius. It is essentially based on hundreds of funerary inscriptions from Lycaonia, but takes into account all available literary evidence. It maps the expansion of Christianity in the region and describes the practice of name-giving among Christians, their household and family structures, occupations, and use of verse inscriptions. It gives special attention to forms of charity, the reception of biblical tradition, the authority and leadership of the clergy, popular theology and forms of ascetic Christianity in Lycaonia.

Download or read book Christian Origins and Greco Roman Culture written by Stanley E. Porter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture," Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through the use of Greco-Roman materials and literary forms. Each essay moves forward the current understanding of how primitive Christianity situated itself in relation to evolving Hellenistic culture. Some essays focus on configuring the social context for the origins of the Jesus movement and beyond, while others assess the literary relation between early Christian and Greco-Roman texts.

Download or read book The Biblical Tour of Hell written by Matthew Ryan Hauge and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is difficult to underestimate the significance of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 within the biblical tradition. Although hell occupies a prominent position in popular Christianrhetoric today, it plays a relatively minor role in the Christian canon. The most important biblical texts that explicitly describe the fate of the dead are in the Synoptic Gospels. Yet among these passages, only the Lukan tradition is intent on explicitly describing the abode of the dead; it is the only biblical tour of hell. Hauge examines the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, uniquely the only 'parable' that is set within a supernatural context. The parables characteristically feature concrete realities of first-century Mediterranean life, but the majority of Luke 16:19-31 is narrated from the perspective of the tormented dead. This volume demonstrates that the distinctive features of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus are the result of a strategic imitation, creative transformation, and Christian transvaluation of the descent of Odysseus into the house of hades in Odyssey Book 11, the literary model par excellence of postmortem revelation in antiquity.

Download or read book Reading the Gospels Wisely written by Jonathan T. Pennington and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook on how to read the Gospels well can stand on its own as a guide to reading this New Testament genre as Scripture. It is also ideally suited to serve as a supplemental text to more conventional textbooks that discuss each Gospel systematically. Most textbooks tend to introduce students to historical-critical concerns but may be less adequate for showing how the Gospel narratives, read as Scripture within the canonical framework of the entire New Testament and the whole Bible, yield material for theological reflection and moral edification. Pennington neither dismisses nor duplicates the results of current historical-critical work on the Gospels as historical sources. Rather, he offers critically aware and hermeneutically intelligent instruction in reading the Gospels in order to hear their witness to Christ in a way that supports Christian application and proclamation.

Download or read book Ancient Apologetic Exegesis written by Stuart Parsons and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Testament scholarship uncovers much about first-century Christianity. Early Christian masters such as Origen and Augustine draw great attention to the third and following centuries. Yet oddly, despite this flood of attention to both the first century and to the third and later centuries, the second century often escapes notice, this despite its almost living memory of Jesus and his apostles from only a generation or two prior. A distinctive biblical exegesis was used by those second-century apologists who challenged Greco-Roman pagan religionists. Along with introducing the general shape of this ancient apologetic exegesis, Ancient Apologetic Exegesis aims at its recovery as well. Current literature often misunderstands or dismisses second-century exegetical approaches. But by looking behind anachronistic views of ancient genre, literacy, and rhetoric, we can rediscover a forgotten form of early Christian exegesis.

Download or read book Irenaeus Joseph Smith and God Making Heresy written by Adam J. Powell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy seeks both to demonstrate the salience of “heresy” as a tool for analyzing instances of religious conflict far beyond the borders of traditional historical theology and to illuminate the apparent affinity for deification exhibited by some persecuted religious movements. To these ends, the book argues for a sociologically-informed redefinition of heresy as religiously-motivated opposition and applies the resulting concept to the historical cases of second-century Christians and nineteenth-century Mormons. Ultimately, Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-Making Heresy is a careful application of the comparative method to two new religious movements, highlighting the social processes at work in their early doctrinal developments.

Download or read book The Gospel According to Homer and Virgil written by Karl Olav Sandnes and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fourth century C.E. some Christians paraphrased the stories about Jesus' life in the style of classical epics. Imitating the genre of centos, they stitched together lines taken either from Homer (Greek) or Virgil (Latin). They thus created new texts out of the classical epics, while they still remained fully within the confines of their style and vocabulary. It is the aim of this study to put these attempts into a historical and rhetorical context. Why did some Christians rewrite the Gospel stories in this way, and what came out of this? On the basis of these Christian centos, it is natural to address the view held by some scholars, namely that New Testaments narratives are imitations of the epics.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha written by Gerbern S. Oegema and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha addresses the Old Testament Apocrypha, known to be important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches, non-canonical for other churches, and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, essays focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook acts as an authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time carves out future directions of study. This Handbook offers an overview of the various Apocrypha and relevant topics related to them by presenting updated research on each individual apocryphal text in historical context, from the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods to the early Roman era. The essays provided here examine the place of the Apocrypha in the context of Early Judaism, the relationship between the Apocrypha and texts that came to be canonized, the relationship between the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, Qumran, the Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, as well as their reception history in the Western world. Several chapters address overarching themes, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, theology and ethics, gender and the role of women, and sexual ethics.

Download or read book Reverberations of the Exodus in Scripture written by R. Michael Fox and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inner-biblical studies is a blossoming field. Within this growing specialization, Reverberations of the Exodus in Scripture is a unique and refreshing contribution. Unlike most studies in this area focusing either solely on how Old Testament passages interact with other Old Testament texts or on the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, this volume examines how a central and paradigmatic biblical event--the exodus from Egypt--resurfaces time and again in both testaments. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of this project has allowed specialists to construct each chapter. Readers of Reverberations of the Exodus in Scripture will gain a better understanding of the role of the exodus throughout the biblical canon and a deeper appreciation for its place in biblical theology.