Download or read book Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Intention des Kolosserbriefs written by Angela Standhartinger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-04-09 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the Epistle to the Colossians as a pseudepigraphic letter. It is concerned with how different traditions associated with Paul and his thought were appropriated by Pauline communities in the aftermath of his death. Extensive attention is paid to the possibility of Colossians' interaction with oral traditions, which includes consideration of the oral context for Paul's own correspondence and ministry. In recovering these traditions, Colossians creates a heavenly letter and a testament, designed so as to assure readers of the apostle's ongoing aid and to interpret the theological significance of his death. The analysis of different literary and rhetorical characteristics of Colossians (pseudephigraphy, orality, etc.) is placed within the context of both contemporaneous Jewish (esp. Sapiential) traditions and the traditions of the Greco-Roman philosophic schools. One chapter deals with the origin and purpose of the 'Haustafel'.
Download or read book Performance Criticism of the Pauline Letters written by Bernhard Oestreich and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Receiving a letter from Paul was a major event in the early churches. Given the orally oriented culture of the time, a letter was designed to be read out loud in front of an audience. The document was an intermediate state for the local transport of the message, but the actual medium of communication was the performance event. This event was embedded in the written text in a manner comparable to a theater script. After careful preparation because of high expectations from ancient audiences, a presenter embodied the message with his voice, gazes, and gestures and made it not only understood but jointly experienced. After presenting a short history of performance criticism, this book clarifies what is meant by the highly ambiguous term "performance" and develops steps to analyze ancient texts in order to find and understand the embedded signals of performance. This leads to a critical assessment of the potential of performance criticism as a method. Then, the method is applied to the Pauline Epistles and other early Christian letters. It proves to be highly rewarding: difficult passages become comprehensible, new aspects come to light, the text's impact on the audience is felt--in short, the texts come alive.
Download or read book Reflections on Religious Individuality written by Jörg Rüpke and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume will concentrate its search for religious individuality on texts and practices related to texts from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity. Texts offer opportunities to express one’s own religious experience and shape one’s own religious personality within the boundaries of what is acceptable. Inscriptions in public or at least easily accessible spaces might substantially differ in there range of expressions and topics from letters within a sectarian religious group (which, at the same time, might put enormous pressure on conformity among its members, regarded as deviant by a majority of contemporaries). Furthermore, texts might offer and advocate new practices in reading, meditating, remembering or repeating these very texts. Such practices might contribute to the development of religious individuality, experienced or expressed in factual isolation, responsibility, competition, and finally in philosophical or theological reflections about “personhood” or “self”. The volume develops its topic in three sections, addressing personhood, representative and charismatic individuality, the interaction of individual and groups and practices of reading and writing. It explores Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin texts.
Download or read book Theology and Practice in Early Christianity written by Troy W. Martin and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Christianity did not originate in a vacuum but in a world of linguistic, social, religious, and cultural richness and diversity. The twenty-two seminal essays in this volume - some previously published, some newly written - represent almost three decades of research by Troy W. Martin to understand how early Christianity developed in the ancient world. The broad-ranging investigations in these essays give attention not only to the linguistic and rhetorical features of early Christian texts, but also to the social, philosophical, physiological, and medical contexts in which these texts were written. The essays provide new understandings of early Christian conceptions of salvation and of the virtues of faith, hope and love that characterized early Christian communities. They include new medical and physiological explanations of early Christian sacraments, pneumatology, and eschatology and furthermore investigate early Christian communal life and practice, including the veiling of women, male/female relationships, and time-keeping. The essays include reception histories that describe their influence on subsequent research and place them within the context of contemporary research and scholarship. Those familiar with the well-trodden ground of New Testament studies will find in these essays new insights and previously unexplored comparative material for understanding early Christianity and the world in which it originated.
Download or read book The Making of Christian Morality written by David G. Horrell and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume David Horrell focuses on themes of community, ethics, and ecology in Paul, moving from the concrete social circumstances in which the earliest Christian communities gathered to the appropriation of Paul’s writings in relation to modern ethical challenges. Often questioning established consensus positions, Horrell opens up new perspectives and engages with ongoing debates both in Pauline studies and in contemporary ethics. After covering historical questions about the setting of the Paul-ine communities, The Making of Christian Morality analyzes Paul-ine ethics through a detailed study of particular passages. In the third and final section Horrell brings Pauline thought to bear on contemporary issues and challenges, using the environmental crisis as a case study to demonstrate how Paul’s ethics can be appropriated fruitfully in a world so different from Paul’s own.
Download or read book The Collected Biblical Writings of T C Skeat written by Theodore Cressy Skeat and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of a collection of papyrologist T.C. Skeat's articles related to the production of New Testament manuscripts and to textual criticism. J.K. Elliott introduces the essays and assesses Skeat's importance in these fields.
Download or read book Paul And His Opponents written by Stanley E. Porter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were Paul's opponents? Were they one or were they many, depending upon the church concerned? These questions continue to be of interest to Pauline and other New Testament scholars, and are addressed in this volume of collected essays. Some of the essays are on specific books, such as Galatians, the Corinthian letters and Romans, while others treat broader issues in Paul's world.
Download or read book Colossians BNTC written by Paul Foster and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foster provides the commentary on Colossians in this renowned series of biblical commentaries, under the General Editorship of Professor Morna D. Hooker (Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity Emerita in the University of Cambridge, UK). As with other volumes in the series, the key questions for scholars are scrutinised thoroughly - questions of historicity, the use of historical traditions and sources, the relationship of Colossians to the rest of the New Testament in particular the Pauline letters, authorship, and setting. Foster examines these issues in such a way as to present the heart of the academic debate to a wider audience, as befitting to the series reputation for rigorous commentary, which not only advances the knowledge of students and pastors, but also makes a contribution to the academic discourse in its own right.
Download or read book Philodemus and the New Testament world electronic resource written by John Thomas Fitzgerald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteen essays in this volume, rooted in the work of the Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity Section of the SBL, examine the works of Philodemus and how they illuminate the cultural context of early Christianity. Born in Gadara in Syria, Philodemus (ca. 110-40 BCE) was active in Italy as an Epicurean philosopher and poet. This volume comprises three parts; the first deals with Philodemus' works in their own terms, the second situates his thought within its larger Greco-Roman context, and the third explores the implications of his work for understanding the earliest Christians, especially Paul. It will be useful to all readers interested in Hellenistic philosophy and rhetoric as well as Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.
Download or read book Slaves in the New Testament written by James Albert Harrill and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting new analysis of slaves and slavery in the New Testament, Harrill breaks new ground with his extensive use of Greco-Roman evidence, discussion of hermeneutics, and treatment of the use of the New Testament in antebellum U.S. slavery debates. He examines in detail Philemon, 1 Corinthians, Romans, Luke-Acts, and the household codes.
Download or read book Apostle Paul written by Udo Schnelle and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive introduction to the life and thought of Paul combines historical and theological analysis.
Download or read book A Cosmic Leap of Faith written by Vincent A. Pizzuto and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the array of christologies embodied within New Testament literature, the so-called "hymn" of Colossians 1: 15-20 offers a unique and invaluable contribution to contemporary theological and inter-religious discourse. This is because it conveys what is arguably the highest christological affirmation within the canon. Pizzuto contends that the hymn is a creative and faith-filled composition by the same deutero-Pauline author of the Colossians epistle itself and demonstrates that there is an inextricable relationship between the chiastic structure of Col 1: 15-20 and a proper understanding of its provenance, authorship and theology. Although the hymn echoes theological motifs consistent with Second Temple Judaism and loosely reflects a number of syncretistic influences, it is fundamentally the novelty of the "Christ-event," - the historical impact of Jesus of Nazareth - that has been most influential in determining the christological categories of Col 1: 15-20 and its larger epistolary framework. Pizzuto thus defends the overall integrity of the hymn against those who would assert that it reflects a pre-Christian or pre-Colossians origin. He concludes that Col 1: 15-20 represents something of a "leap" beyond Pauline christology into a new and unequivocal conviction of the cosmic implications of the Cross.
Download or read book The Making of Paul written by Richard I. Pervo and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The influence of the apostle Paul in early Christianity goes far beyond the reach of the seven genuine letters he wrote to early assemblies; Paul was reveredand fiercely opposedin an even larger number of letters penned in his name, and in narratives told about him and against him, that were included in our New Testament and, far more often, treasured and circulated outside it. Richard Pervo provides an illuminating and comprehensive survey of the legacy of Paul and the various ways he was remembered, honored, and vilified in the early churches.
Download or read book The Pseudepigraphal Letters to the Thessalonians written by Marlene Crüsemann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marlene Crüsemann examines the Thessalonian letters in the context of Jewish-Christian social history; building upon her analysis of 1 Thessalonians, Crüsemann comes to the conclusion that it is post-apostolic epistolary communication, and questions whether it is a letter of Paul and indeed whether it is an early letter. This analysis in turn adds weight to the thesis, propounded by some previous scholars, that the letter is somewhat out of place and may be a later work by another author. Crüsemann subsequently illustrates that 2 Thessalonians, by contrast, revokes the far-reaching social separation from Judaism that characterizes 1 Thessalonians, and thus aims socio-historically at a solidarity with the entire Jewish people. Analysing the concept of the Jews as supposed enemy, the future of the Greek gentile community, and the relationship between the two letters, Crüsemann concludes that the discussion about a "divergence of the ways of Christians and Jews" in early Christian times needs to be realigned.
Download or read book Ancient Education and Early Christianity written by Matthew Ryan Hauge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the relationship of ancient education to early Christianity? This volume provides an in-depth look at different approaches currently employed by scholars who draw upon educational settings in the ancient world to inform their historical research in Christian origins. The book is divided into two sections: one consisting of essays on education in the ancient world, and one consisting of exegetical studies dealing with various passages where motifs emerging from ancient educational culture provide illumination. The chapters summarize the state of the discussion on ancient education in classical and biblical studies, examine obstacles to arriving at a comprehensive theory of early Christianity's relationship to ancient education, compare different approaches, and compile the diverse methodologies into one comparative study. Several educational motifs are integrated in order to demonstrate the exegetical insights that they may yield when utilized in New Testament historical investigation and interpretation.
Download or read book Resetting the Origins of Christianity written by Markus Vinzent and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know what we know about the origins of the Christian religion? Neither its founder, nor the Apostles, nor Paul left any written accounts of their movement. The witnesses' testimonies were transmitted via successive generations of copyists and historians, with the oldest surviving fragments dating to the second and third centuries - that is, to well after Jesus' death. In this innovative and important book, Markus Vinzent interrogates standard interpretations of Christian origins handed down over the centuries. He scrutinizes - in reverse order - the earliest recorded sources from the sixth to the second century, showing how the works of Greek and Latin writers reveal a good deal more about their own times and preoccupations than they do about early Christianity. In so doing, the author boldly challenges understandings of one of the most momentous social and religious movements in history, as well as its reception over time and place.
Download or read book The Mission of the Church In Paul s Letter to the Philippians in the Context of Ancient Judaism written by J. Patrick Ware and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illumining the Jewish context of early Christian mission, this study through close exegesis of Paul's letter to the Philippians reveals the crucial place of the mission of the church in Paul's thought.
