Download or read book Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics written by Jörg Ulrich and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the contributions to a workshop on apologetics in early Christianity which took place at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford in the summer of 2007. The workshop was arranged by scholars from Germany, Finland and Denmark who had for some time worked together in a project on early Christian apologetics. The aim of the workshop was thus to present and discuss some of the results and still unsolved problems which arose from this project. The book presents the contributions to the workshop. Hereby the editors hope to reach a larger audience and thus to be able to further the discussion of the topic of early Christian apologetics.
Download or read book Continuity and Discontinuity written by Morna D. Hooker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-06 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In the course of time the antagonism between Jew and Christian became so bitter that Christians began to behave like cuckoos, or like tycoons who had taken over the company. So concerned were they with their own position in God’s scheme of salvation that they ceased to ask fundamental questions about God’s purpose for ‘Israel according to the flesh.’ They forgot that poignant verse in Romans in which Paul declares: ‘I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen by race.’ For by the time that the church had become a predominantly Gentile community, it had been cut off, not from Christ, but from Paul’s kinsmen. I have been attempting in these lectures to understand the situation of those who wrestled with the problem of relating old and new in the first years of the Christian era: if we wish to understand the origins of our faith, then clearly it is essential to explore the context in which it was first formulated. It may well be that the way in which these men and women related old and new may be of help to Christians today who experience the tension between past tradition and present experience. It may be that a better understanding of what was going on as the Christian community sought to establish its own identity could affect our attitudes to questions concerning Jewish-Christian relationships today.”
Download or read book Continuity and Discontinuity written by Morna Dorothy Hooker and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Jesus to his First Followers Continuity and Discontinuity written by Adriana Destro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Jesus to His First Followers represents the process of transformation that began after Jesus’ death. Continuity and discontinuity between the early groups of followers and Jesus are primarily examined in the religious practices.
Download or read book Continuity and discontinuity in church history written by F. Forrester Church and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Acts of the Apostles and the Rhetoric of Roman Imperialism written by Drew W. Billings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acts of the Apostles is normally understood as a historical report of events of the early church and serves as the organizing centerpiece of the New Testament canon. In this book, Drew W. Billings demonstrates that Acts was written in conformity with broader representational trends and standards found on imperial monuments and in the epigraphic record of the early second century. Bringing an interdisciplinary approach to a text of critical importance, he compares the methods of representation in Acts with visual and verbal representations that were common during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (98-117 CE). Billings argues that Acts adopts the rhetoric of Roman imperialism as articulated in the images and texts from the period. His study bridges the fields of classics, art history, gender studies, Jewish studies, and New Testament studies in exploring how early Christian texts relate to wider patterns in the cultural production of the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Defending and Defining the Faith written by D.H. Williams and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Early Christian Apologetics, D.H. Williams offers a comprehensive presentation of Christian apologetic literature from the second to the fifth century, considering each writer within the intellectual context of the day. Williams argues that most apologies were not directed at a pagan readership. In most cases, he says, ancient apologetics had a double object: to instruct the Christian and to persuade weak Christians or non-Christians who were sympathetic to Christian claims. Traditionally, scholars of apologetics have focused on the context of persecution in the pre-Constantinian period. By following the links in the intellectual trajectory up though the early fifth century, Williams prompts deeper reflection on the process of Christian self-definition in late antiquity. Taken cumulatively, he finds, apologetic literature was in fact integral to the formation of the Christian identity in the Roman world.
Download or read book Worshipping a Crucified Man written by Jeremy Hudson and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the mid-second century Christian writers were engaging in debates with educated audiences from non-Jewish Graeco-Roman cultural backgrounds. A remarkable feature of some of the texts from this period is how extensively they refer to the Jewish scriptures, even though those scriptures were unfamiliar to non-Jewish Graeco-Romans. In Worshipping a Crucified Man, Jeremy Hudson explores for the first time why this should have been so by examining three works by Christian converts originally educated in Graeco-Roman traditions: Justin Martyr's First Apology, Tatian's Oratio and Theophilus of Antioch's Ad Autolycum. Hudson considers their literary strategies, their use of quotations and allusions and how they present the Jewish scriptures; all against the background of the Graeco-Roman literary culture familiar to both authors and audiences. The scriptures are presented as a critically defining feature of Christianity, instrumental in shaping the way the new religion presented itself, as it strove to engage with, and challenge, the cultural traditions of the Graeco-Roman world.
Download or read book Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium written by Geoffrey Dunn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians Shaping Identity explores different ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them to the 12th century C.E. It also illustrates how modern readings of that past continue to shape Christian identity.
Download or read book The Cross or Prosperity Gospel written by Kwaku Boamah and published by Langham Publishing. This book was released on 2022-05-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Christians meant to experience suffering? This question has long been a contentious one within the church. Christ is risen, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, yet sickness, poverty, and persecution continue to be daily realities for Christians around the world. In this study of martyrdom and persecution in the early church, Rev. Dr. Kwaku Boamah reminds us that there is no Christianity without a cross and that suffering has played a prominent role in church theology and tradition since the time of Christ. Examining second- and third-century apologetic texts and martyr narratives, he utilizes a systematic comparative approach to create a holistic picture of the extreme challenges facing Christians under the Roman Empire. Drawing parallels to the history of persecution and martyrdom in his homeland of Ghana, Boamah locates the experience of African Christianity firmly within the larger narrative of church history, reminding Christians that they are not alone in their suffering but are members of a global, unified whole.
Download or read book Divine Deliverance written by L. Stephanie Cobb and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does martyrdom hurt? The obvious answer to this question is “yes.” L. Stephanie Cobb, asserts, however, that early Christian martyr texts respond to this question with an emphatic “no!” Divine Deliverance examines the original martyr texts of the second through fifth centuries, concluding that these narratives in fact seek to demonstrate the Christian martyrs’ imperviousness to pain. For these martyrs, God was present with, and within, the martyrs, delivering them from pain. These martyrs’ claims not to feel pain define and redefine Christianity in the ancient world: whereas Christians did not deny the reality of their subjection to state violence, they argued that they were not ultimately vulnerable to its painful effects.
Download or read book The Philosophy of the Few against the Christians written by Pier Franco Beatrice and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-13 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives us a new perspective on the Philosophy according to the Chaldean Oracles by Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232/305 CE), demonstrating that much of what we thought we knew about this work and its fragments is mistaken. Here, for the first time, the attempt is made at reconstructing the original text by following the vicissitudes of its reception and transmission from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to modern scholarship. The extensive and painstaking study of the surviving fragments leads to the radically innovative conclusion that this encyclopedic treatise, written by Porphyry in the last decades of the 3rd century CE, consisted of fifteen books organized in various sections. After an initial discussion of the nature of theurgy and of its subordinate role with respect to philosophy, Porphyry describes the entire history of Greek philosophy from Homer up to his own teacher Plotinus, to then go on to present “introductions” to the seven encyclical disciplines whose study is required for the comprehension of theosophy, that is, the esoteric speculation on the three parts of philosophy: anthropology-ethics, physics, and metaphysics-theology. By harmonizing the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and the Chaldean Oracles, Porphyry intends to present the complete and definitive philosophic system, with the aim of showing the universal way for the liberation of the souls of initiates and of contextually fighting the final battle of the Greco-Roman civilization against Christianity.
Download or read book Eusebius and Empire written by James Corke-Webster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a radical new reading of how Christian history was rewritten in the fourth century to suit its circumstances under Rome.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law written by Pamela Barmash and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major innovations have occurred in the study of biblical law in recent decades. The legal material of the Pentateuch has received new interest with detailed studies of specific biblical passages. The comparison of biblical practice to ancient Near Eastern customs has received a new impetus with the concentration on texts from actual ancient legal transactions. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state of the art analysis of the major questions, principles, and texts pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among scholars working in biblical law.
Download or read book Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire written by Jared Secord and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in the third century, a small group of Greek Christians began to gain prominence and legitimacy as intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Examining the relationship that these thinkers had with the broader Roman intelligentsia, Jared Secord contends that the success of Christian intellectualism during this period had very little to do with Christianity itself. With the recognition that Christian authors were deeply engaged with the norms and realities of Roman intellectual culture, Secord examines the thought of a succession of Christian literati that includes Justin Martyr, Tatian, Julius Africanus, and Origen, comparing each to a diverse selection of his non-Christian contemporaries. Reassessing Justin’s apologetic works, Secord reveals Christian views on martyrdom to be less distinctive than previously believed. He shows that Tatian’s views on Greek culture informed his reception by Christians as a heretic. Finally, he suggests that the successes experienced by Africanus and Origen in the third century emerged as consequences not of any change in attitude toward Christianity by imperial authorities but of a larger shift in intellectual culture and imperial policies under the Severan dynasty. Original and erudite, this volume demonstrates how distorting the myopic focus on Christianity as a religion has been in previous attempts to explain the growth and success of the Christian movement. It will stimulate new research in the study of early Christianity, classical studies, and Roman history.
Download or read book The Apology of Justin Martyr written by David E. Nyström and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his Apology, Justin Martyr uses some major apologetic strategies to defend Christianity. These are the 'logos doctrine', the 'theft theory', the 'proof from prophecy' and the arguments from demons. David E. Nyström analyses them in order to create a picture of how they work together, rhetorically and literarily, in Justin's grand argument.
Download or read book Worshippers of the Gods written by Mattias P. Gassman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worshippers of the Gods shows how fourth-century Latin writers rethought traditional religion during Christianity's rise. Through five interlocking studies of inscriptions, laws, senatorial papers, and Christian polemics, it traces shifting conceptions of paganism from the Tetrarchic persecution, through Constantine's reign, to the 'disestablishment' of the Roman cults in the 380s.
