JULIAN, AETIUS AND ‘THE GALILEANS’

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Moysés Marcos
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Leader ◽  
Similar Substance

By the mid fourth century c.e., violently divergent Christian communities had developed across the Roman empire: Nicene or Homoousian (God and Jesus ‘are of the same substance’), Homoiousian (‘are of similar substance’), Homoian (Jesus is ‘like’ God), Anomoean or Heterousian (God and Jesus ‘are of different substance’) and others. The first emperor to be a strong supporter of traditional cult in more than a generation, Julian ruled over an empire of numerous religious groups that were often at variance with one another, both extra- and intra-communally, and how all of these should be treated was one of the chief problems pressing the emperor upon his accession in late 361. Julian's religious thought and action during his short sole reign (3 November 361 to 26 June 363) has long exercised scholars, its impact on Christians and Christianity in particular. To be sure, Julian tended to be hostile to Christians and Christianity, but he was by no means hostile to all, and he even favoured some Christians, some of whom he counted among his friends and officials. The emperor's Christian policy thus was complicated. One of the best examples of this complexity is Julian's epistle to the Heterousian Christian leader Aetius (Ep. 15 Wright = 46 Bidez). In a shorter note published in this journal, Pierre-Louis Malosse focussed his attention on Julian's letter to Aetius, which dates to early 362 and which is the only such epistle to this future bishop that is extant. As transmitted, Julian's missive to Aetius is critical for the light it helps to shed on the emperor's views and treatments of Christians at the outset of his sole reign, and my conclusions on this missive differ from those of Malosse.

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maijastina Kahlos
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the religious history of the late Roman Empire, focusing on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The groups under consideration are non-Christians (‘pagans’) and deviant Christians (‘heretics’). The period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire. This book demonstrates that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. It looks at everyday life, economic aspects, day-to-day practices, and conflicts of interest in the relations of religious groups. The book addresses two aspects: rhetoric and realities, and consequently delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in late antique sources. We perceive constant flux between moderation and coercion that marked the relations of religious groups, both majorities and minorities, as well as the imperial government and religious communities. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity is a detailed analysis of selected themes and a close reading of selected texts, tracing key elements and developments in the treatment of dissident religious groups. The book focuses on specific themes, such as the limits of imperial legislation and ecclesiastical control, the end of sacrifices, and the label of magic. It also examines the ways in which dissident religious groups were construed as religious outsiders in late Roman society.

Slavery and Sexual Availability

2019 ◽  
pp. 626-644
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Glancy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Morality ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Right

Any investigation of slavery in the Roman Empire must contend with the sexual exploitation of slaves endemic to the system. Given the diversity of ancient Christian attitudes toward sexuality, there is no reason to expect that a slaveholding ethos touched all Christian communities in a uniform fashion. At issue, however, is not whether the wider context of a slaveholding empire affected the formation of Christian attitudes toward sexuality. At issue is how. The purpose of this essay is to question whether early Christian silence on the issue should be construed as wholesale rejection of a system in which social status scripted social morality, or as complicity with that system. In the end, it is difficult to imagine how the churches could have challenged the right of a male slaveholder to exploit his domestic slaves sexually without challenging his right to claim ownership of other human beings.

Phoenicia in the Roman Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-124
Author(s):  
Julien Aliquot
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Traditions

This chapter traces the history of Phoenicia from the advent of Rome in Syria at the beginning of the first century bce to the foundation of the Christian empire of Byzantium in the fourth century ce. It focuses on the establishment of Roman rule and its impact on society, culture, and religion. Special attention is paid to the establishment of Roman rule and its impact on society, culture, and religion. The focus is on provincial institutions and cities, which provided a basis for the new order. However, side trails are also taken to assess the flowering of Hellenism and the revival of local traditions in the light of the Romanization of Phoenicia and its hinterland.

Terms of Scriptural Interpretation: A Study in Hebrew Semantics

1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gertner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Divine Wisdom ◽  
The Subject

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire: The evidence of Ausonius

1961 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 239-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. K. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Excellent Opportunity

The description Ausonius has given us of his family and of the teachers and professors of Bordeaux in the mid-fourth century is exceptional among our sources because of its detail and completeness. There is no reason to suppose that the picture he gives is untypical of life in the provinces and it makes a welcome change from the histories of aristocratic politics at Rome or Constantinople. It provides an excellent opportunity for a pilot study in which we may see how the conflicting elements of social status were in practice reconciled and applied. In the traditional, and still prevalent view, the society of the Later Roman Empire was ‘crushed … in the iron clamp of castes separated from one another by barriers which could not be passed’. The evidence of Ausonius suggests that this judgement should be qualified. The society of the fourth century may have been stable. It was not static.

scholarly journals Prve kršćanske zajednice / First Christian communities

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-193
Author(s):  
Drago Župarić
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Roman Province ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
New Religion

Christianity, having developed in a Jewish setting, quickly separated from Judaism and opened itself to the aspirations of the Greco-Roman world. This paper will explore the first Christian communities in Jerusalem, Antioch and Rome, from whence Christianity spread to the ends of the Mediterranean basin, that is to say, through the Roman Empire. Each of the aforementioned  communities, which were very well respected, will be discussed with regards to  the date of their foundation, the source material concerning these communities, and their prominent characteristics. In other words, this paper will discuss  the spread of Christianity, with reference to the question of the triumphant  campaign of the young Church from Jerusalem to Rome. After the acceptance of pagans into their communities, Christianity as a new religion began to gain importance, and the number of adherents grew quickly. The Christian community was declared an opposition to imperial government, and was already heavily repressed by the mid-1  century. The communities that survived repression sought peace; that is, collaboration between the  Roman state and the “early Church”, which was seen as a new institution. The  cult opened itself more and more to the outside world and different cultures,  which led to the mingling of Christians and pagans, leading to many theological disputes, especially concerning the “divinity” of Jesus Christ. Between the 1st  and 2nd st  century the beginnings of Christianity should be viewed as an organization in which commissions and administrations are present, as the number of believers grew and the need for better organization arose. The basis of the rapid expansion of Christianity in the old world should  certainly be viewed in its universality. The author of this paper touches upon  the question of the beginnings of Christianity in Dalmatia and Pannonia, side by side with Roman culture. Christianity was not very influential in the Roman province of Dalmatia until the mid-3  century, even though it is likely that there were smaller Christian groups here, as well as organized Christian communities.

The Monk as Christian Saint and Exemplar in St John Chrysostom’s Writings

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 19-28
Author(s):  
Pak-Wah Lai
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Common Features ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

By the time Augustine read the Life of Antony in 386, the biography had already become an international best seller in the Roman Empire. Translated twice into Latin and read in places as far off as Milan and Syrian Antioch, the Egyptian Life also proved to be a significant influence upon hagiographical writing in the late fourth century, the most notable example being the Lives of St Jerome. Consequently, scholars have often taken it to represent the dominant paradigm for sainthood in fourth-century Christianity and the centuries that followed. But is this assumption tenable? The Life of Antony would in all likelihood be read only by the educated elite or by ascetic circles in the Church, and was hardly accessible to the ordinary Christian. More importantly, hagiographical discourse in the fourth century was not restricted to biographies, but pervaded all sorts of Christian literature. This is certainly the case with the writings of St John Chrysostom (c. 349—407), who often presents the Christian monk as a saintly figure in his monastic treatises and his voluminous homilies. Indeed, what emerges from his writings is a paradigmatic saint who is significantly different from that portrayed in the biographies, and yet equally influential among his lay and ascetic audiences. To be sure, Chrysostom’s monastic portraits share some common features with that provided by Athanasius’s Life. Nevertheless, there are also stark differences between the two, and these are the focus of this paper.

How Christianity Parted from Judaism

Early Judaism ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Author(s):  
Adele Reinhartz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community

Although Jesus and his earliest followers had seen themselves as Jews, by the fourth century the Christian community perceived itself as separate. Scholars have offered various views of how that took place. Some think of Christianity as having evolved out of Judaism, while others see them as different components within the same tradition that eventually went separate ways. There is also disagreement as to when the separation took place – whether around the end of the first century as a result of Christians’ understanding of Jesus and their outreach to gentiles or as a consequence of the fourth century Christianization of the Roman empire.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

Amulets and the Ritual Efficacy of Christian Symbols

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Insight Into

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.

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