The Earliest Example of Christian Hymnody

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Wellesz
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Musical Notation ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Hymn Singing

From Patristic writings ample evidence can be gathered about the important part which hymn-singing held in Early Christianity. Until recently, however, Early Christian hymnography was known only from documents transmitting the text but not the music. The discovery and publication of a Christian hymn in Greek with musical notation was, therefore, bound to change the whole aspect of studies concerned with the history of Early Christian music. This happened, as is well known, in 1922 when, under No. 1786 of the fifteenth volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri A. S. Hunt edited a fragment of a hymn, dating from the late third century, together with a transcript of the music by H. Stuart Jones. For the first time it became possible to realize what kind of music Greek-speaking Christians in Egypt sang in praise of the Lord.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 2-17
Author(s):  
Risto Uro
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Ritual Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter offers a guide to the reader for understanding the nature of ritual studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field, with particular emphasis on its relevance to the study of the history of early Christianity. Three characteristics are singled out. Ritual studies is distinguished by: (1) a pluralistic approach to the definition of ‘ritual’; (2) an increased interest in theory; and (3) the application of interdisciplinary perspectives on ritual. The chapter also responds to the criticism that has been raised against using the concept of ritual and ritual theory in the study of past rituals and argues that ritual theory enriches historical and textual analysis of early Christian materials in a number of ways. Ritual theory contributes to drawing a more complete picture of early Christian history and offers a corrective to a biased understanding of early Christianity as a system of beliefs and practices. Finally, examples from the present Handbook are taken to demonstrate how the ritual perspective creates a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and integrative approaches which both stimulate new questions and enrich old ones.

The Archaeology of Early Christianity

2019 ◽  
pp. xv-27
Author(s):  
William R. Caraher ◽  
David K. Pettegrew
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
State Of The Field ◽  
The Catholic Church

Since the Renaissance, archaeology has played a significant albeit changing role in illuminating the history of early Christianity. This chapter surveys different historical approaches to archaeological investigations of Christianity, from early efforts to authenticate or disprove the traditions and practices of the Catholic church to the development of the field of early Christian archaeology in continental Europe and through to more recent efforts to reconstruct the social and economic contexts of early Christian sites and landscapes between the first and eighth centuries. This chapter offers a state of the field, highlighting the positive achievements of archaeologists over the last two centuries and drawing attention to problems of method, interpretation, and approach that modern scholars are working to correct. It recommends repositioning the field within the disciplinary framework of archaeology itself while also encouraging fruitful interdisciplinary conversation.

The Shepherd of Hermas

1925 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-280
Author(s):  
Kirsopp Lake
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature

There is no danger that anyone will overlook the importance of Mr. Bonner's article on the Michigan Papyrus of the Shepherd of Hermas in the number of this Review for April, 1925. The publication of a manuscript of the Shepherd of Hermas dating from the third century will be a real event in the history of the interpretation of early Christian literature. But there is one point in his statement which, though it will appeal at once to those who have worked on the Shepherd, is likely to escape the notice of others unless attention be drawn to it.

Ethnicity and Early Christianity: New Approaches to Religious Kinship and Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-227
Author(s):  
Todd Berzon
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Ethnic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Sacred History

This article outlines how recent scholarly interventions about notions of race, ethnicity and nation in the ancient Mediterranean world have impacted the study of early Christianity. Contrary to the long-held proposition that Christianity was supra-ethnic, a slate of recent publications has demonstrated how early Christian authors thought in explicitly ethnic terms and developed their own ethnic discourse even as they positioned Christianity as a universal religion. Universalizing ambitions and ethnic reasoning were part and parcel of a larger sacred history of Christian triumphalism. Christian thinkers were keen to make claims about kinship, descent, blood, customs and habits to enumerate what it meant to be a Christian and belong to a Christian community. The narrative that Christians developed about themselves was very much an ethnic history, one in which human difference and diversity was made to conform to the theological and ideological interests of early Christian thinkers.

scholarly journals Writing Demetrias: Ascetic Logic in Ancient Christianity

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 719-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Male Authority ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
Christian Men ◽  
The Church

In his influential discussion of early Christian ascetic renunciation, Peter Brown announced that “Christian men used women ‘to think with’ in order to verbalize their own nagging concern with the stance that the Church should take with the world.” Brown's statement encapsulates the particular difficulties facing students of the history of women in the early Christian period. The most basic difficulty is that we possess very few texts by women from this period until well into the Middle Ages. We can point to the diary of the third-century martyr Perpetua, the complex and recondite Vergilian and Homeric centos (“stitch-verses”) of the aristocrat Proba and the empress Eudocia, and perhaps one or two other arguable examples. With a dearth of women's own voices, can historians be expected to reconstruct women's lives? This paucity of “first-person” texts is coupled with a more serious theoretical difficulty facing historians of all periods whose main “evidence” consists of literary and rhetorically informed texts. Scholars are much less confident today in our ability to peel back layers of male rhetoric and find the “real” woman concealed underneath. Brown's comment underscores this rhetorical skepticism by asking whether these texts are even “about” women at all. Others following Brown's lead have understood texts that are ostensibly to or about women as concerned primarily with issues of male authority and identity. In Brown's words, women were good “to think with,” but the subject of that “thought” was inevitably male. Despite these technical and theoretical difficulties, however, I do not think we are witnessing the final and absolute erasure of women from ancient Christian history.

scholarly journals Our Common Breath: ‘Conspiration’ from the Stoics to the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.

To Cast the First Stone

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Knust ◽  
Tommy Wasserman
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Greek East

The story of the woman taken in adultery features a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over whether the adulteress should be stoned as the law commands. In response, Jesus famously states, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” This book traces the history of this provocative story from its first appearance to its enduring presence today. Likely added to the Gospel of John in the third century, the passage is often held up by modern critics as an example of textual corruption by early Christian scribes and editors, yet a judgment of corruption obscures the warm embrace the story actually received. The book traces the story's incorporation into Gospel books, liturgical practices, storytelling, and art, overturning the mistaken perception that it was either peripheral or suppressed, even in the Greek East. It explores the story's many different meanings. Taken as an illustration of the expansiveness of Christ's mercy, the purported superiority of Christians over Jews, the necessity of penance, and more, this vivid episode has invited any number of creative receptions. This history reveals as much about the changing priorities of audiences, scribes, editors, and scholars as it does about an “original” text of John. The book calls attention to significant shifts in Christian book cultures and the enduring impact of oral tradition on the preservation—and destabilization—of scripture.

Material Culture and Historical Analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Laura Salah Nasrallah
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship

This chapter outlines and argues for the vital importance of material culture in our historiographies of early Christianity in four parts. The chapter begins by defining material culture and then shows that material culture has long been included in the history of scholarship of the New Testament. Next, it surveys some of the key trends in the use of material culture for the study of women, gender, and sexuality in antiquity, and, finally, it suggests ways in which feminist materialist philosophy and history leads us to think more expansively about what is meant by material culture, focusing on the “matter” within it and harnessing theories of materiality to deepen our historical analysis of the context for the first production and reception of New Testament and other early Christian texts.

scholarly journals Review of: Aristotle and Early Christian Thought. London: Routledge, 2019. (Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity; 6). 226 p. ISBN 978-11-38-69799-7

2021 ◽  
pp. 366-374
Author(s):  
Дометиан Курланов
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Early Christian Studies

Данная книга представляет собой историко-философское исследование о начальном периоде освоения Аристотеля христианами и является шестым изданием, вышедшим в молодой (с 2013 г.) серии «Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity» лондонского издательства Routledge. Автор книги (он же один из редакторов упомянутой серии) — тьютор по богословию колледжа Christ Church и профессор раннехристианских исследований факультета Теологии и религии Оксфордского университета М. Эдвардс — известен в первую очередь благодаря своим популярным работам по истории раннего христианства и патристической философии. This book is a historical and philosophical study of the early Christian reception of Aristotle and is the sixth edition of the young (since 2013) series Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity published by Routledge, London. The author (who is also one of the editors of the series), M. Edwards, the theology tutor at Christ Church College and professor of Early Christian Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at Oxford University, is known primarily for his popular works on the history of early Christianity and patristic philosophy. DOI Название объекта Название объекта в переводе ФИО автора / список авторов Место работы автора ORCID Ключевые слова Аннотация

scholarly journals Contribution of Yu. A. Kulakovskyi to the development of antique archeology in the Nestor Chronicler Historical Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1(16)) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Oksana Hrytsiuta
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time

In the history of Ukrainian archeology there are many names of outstanding researchers who have devoted their lives to the study of our antiquity. Among them – Yulian Kulakovskyi, a well-known domestic historian and archeologist. For many years of his life he devoted to the scientific and pedagogical activity at the Kyiv University of St. Vladimir, where he had worked at the Faculty of History and Philology. After moving to Kyiv, Yu. A. Kulakovskyi began interesting in the late Ancient Christian archeology of the Crimea. In 1883 Yu. A. Kulakovskyi had joined the Nestor Chronicler Historical Society. Since that time, his life and career have been closely linked to this scientific union. For many years he represented the Nestor Chronicler Society at the All-Russian Archaeological Congresses. In 1905, for his extraordinary merits, Yu. A. Kulakovskyi was admitted to the Honorary Members of the Society, and from 1907 to 1911 performed the duties of its President. Kulakovskyi's presidency was one of the most productive periods of the Society's activity, meetings and public lectures were held during which scientific reports were read. The fascination of Yu. A. Kulakovskyi with archeology began after his move to Kyiv. For many years he was an active participant in archaeological research in the outskirts of Kerch, near Mithridat mountain. The results of these studies have been dedicated to a series of reports published on the pages of “Readings in the Nestor Chronicler Historical Society”. It is possible to consider that he initiated the direction of research in the field of Late Antique archeology of the Crimea in the Society. For the first time in the history of Bosporan archeology, the researcher not only conducted excavations of the most valuable early Christian funeral sites, but he also explored much of the necropolis, discovered unique burial sites, some of them are known for their wall paintings. Thanks to the efforts of the scientist it was possible to solve important questions of the borders of the ancient necropolis, chronology and cultural identity of the ancient population of Crimea. The researches of Yu. A. Kulakovskyi made it possible to begin systematic excavations of the ancient Panticapeus, which allowed to preserve the unique archaeological materials, which later became the subject of careful study of modern scientists.

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