The Fourth Century Greek Fathers as Exegetes

1957 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-105
Author(s):  
W. Telfer
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Primary Meaning ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Academic Theology ◽  
Patristic Exegesis

Not long ago, an English New Testament teacher was pressed by a Russian theologian for a straight answer to the question, “Do you teach your students to interpret the New Testament according to the Fathers?” The answer could hardly be Yes. In most Western Universities it would be rare to find references to patristic exegesis in lectures on the Old or New Testaments. So a chasm was disclosed between academic theology as it is understood in the Eastern Orthodox world and its counterpart in the West. It is as big a chasm as any that gapes, doctrinally or ecclesiastically, between the Western Christian denominations and the various branches of the Eastern Church. For the Orthodox, patristic exegesis affords a sure safeguard of right Christian belief, so that the task of the academic theologian is to teach that exegesis. He is not so readily concerned about the primary meaning of the text of Scripture; that is to say, about the meaning it had in the minds of the writers, and that they looked for it to have for their immediate readers. Dr. Zankov, speaking for the Greek Orthodox Church, says, “The Holy Scriptures serve us as a source. The liturgical books, and writings of the Church Fathers, are, so to speak, the rule and line of ecclesiastical consciousness. In both of these the heart and spirit of Orthodoxy are reflected.” This Orthodox concept of Scripture has roots that run back to the first days of Greek Christianity.

NEW CHRONOLOGICAL INFORMATION FROM RADIOCARBON DATING OF HUMAN REMAINS AT JACOB’S WELL, NABLUS, PALESTINE

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Loay Abu Alsaud ◽  
Amer Al-Qobbaj ◽  
Mohammad Al-Khateeb ◽  
Alfonso Fanjul Peraza
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACT Jacob’s Well, located in modern city of Nablus and ancient Shechem (Tall Balata) in the northern West Bank of Palestine, attracts modern day tourists and pilgrims. It is found in the eastern suburbs of the city. Since 333 AD, pilgrims have been writing accounts of the well, and it has been venerated by both Christian and Jewish communities throughout its history. It is believed to be the well referred to in the New Testament, where Jesus conversed with a Samaritan woman, the orthodox saint, Photini. It now forms the central feature in the crypt of the St Photini Greek Orthodox church in the walled grounds of a monastery. In order to gain more information on the chronology of the site, we analyzed human skeletal remains found at the site in 1997. These consist of three skulls and a femur. One of the skulls was found in a sarcophagus alongside the church and the two other skulls and a femur were found in a burial ground alongside the monastery, north of the church, over which a room has now been built. Radiocarbon analysis reveals that the remains date to four historical periods or events: the early Christian period, before structural additions to the well by Constantine the Great in the fourth century; the Samaritan Revolts (AD 529 and 556), the Sassanid Invasion (AD 614–628), and Abbasid rule (AD 750–1258). Dating of one skull suggests it may have been that of Germanus, a fourth century bishop of Nablus, and that there may have been a very early structure, shrine, or burial chamber at the site before the fourth century. We provide contextual information based on historical and contemporary literature.

The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-376
Author(s):  
Mike Duncan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical History ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Rhetorical Force ◽  
Apostolic Church

Current histories of rhetoric neglect the early Christian period (ca. 30–430 CE) in several crucial ways–Augustine is overemphasized and made to serve as a summary of Christian thought rather than an endpoint, the texts of church fathers before 300 CE are neglected or lumped together, and the texts of the New Testament are left unexamined. An alternative outline of early Christian rhetoric is offered, explored through the angles of political self-invention, doctrinal ghostwriting, apologetics, and fractured sermonization. Early Christianity was not a monolithic religion that eventually made peace with classical rhetoric, but as a rhetorical force in its own right, and comprised of more factions early on than just the apostolic church.

scholarly journals Death After Life or Life After Death?

Scrinium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
David C. Sim
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Gospel Of Luke ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Church

The early Church Fathers accepted the notion of an intermediate state, the existence of the soul following death until its reunification with the body at the time of the final resurrection. This view is common in the modern Christian world, but it has been challenged as being unbiblical. This study reflects upon this question. Does the New Testament speak exclusively of death after life, complete lifelessness until the day of resurrection, or does it also contain the notion of life after life or immediate post-mortem existence? It will be argued that, while the doctrine of future resurrection is the most common Christian view, it was not the only one present in the Christian canon. There are hints, especially in the Gospel of Luke and the Revelation of John, that people do indeed live again immediately after death, although the doctrine of resurrection is also present. These two ideas are never coherently related to one another in the New Testament and it was the Church Fathers who first sought to  systematise them.


Assimilation and Respectability in the 1950s

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Religious Identification ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the Greek Orthodox Church against the background of the 1950s. It highlights the rise in religiosity and the upward social mobility of the Greek American second generation. It also explains how the Greek Orthodox church, which was on the margins of conversations about religion in America, found ways to become more relevant and somewhat mainstream. The chapter analyzes the unexpected development and importance of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the Cold War policies of the United States. It also looks into the combination of powerful causes, such as the Cold War, social dislocation in suburbia, anxieties of the atomic age, and deliberate religious marketing that led to a remarkable spread of religious identification in postwar America.

Church and Patriarchate and the Limits of Americanization

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-246
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
New Era ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Rhetoric of the New Testament

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane F. Watson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Church History ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Western World ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
2 Corinthians ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The 19Th Century

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. In the Western world, its practice is rooted in Greece and Rome where the ability to speak well was essential to political life and perpetuating the power of the upper class. Rhetoric provided the content of secondary and tertiary education as it prepared the sons of the wealthy to take their places in the judicial and political system. Rhetoric was carefully systematized and influenced both oral and written speech. Its use is evident in the New Testament at every turn, including the Gospel writers’ development of the sayings of Jesus into more elaborate pronouncement stories, Luke’s composition of the speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s sophisticated use of argumentation in 2 Corinthians 10–13, and John’s multivalent and emotive use of imagery in Revelation. Rightly, rhetoric has been used intermittently throughout church history to interpret the New Testament. Its use is conspicuous in the writings of the early Church Fathers up to and including Augustine, only to be mentioned sporadically by a handful of scholars during the medieval period. Its use is revived in the Reformation, especially by Philip Melanchthon, and continued to be a vital part of interpretation until the end of the 19th century with a crescendo of works produced in Germany. It plays only a nominal role throughout most of the 20th century, until the mid-1970s when works by Hans Dieter Betz and George A. Kennedy, among others, revived the role of rhetoric in interpretation. In fact, rhetoric is currently one of the more prominent tools used in New Testament interpretation, both as a historical enterprise using Greco-Roman rhetoric and in broader studies using modern rhetoric to understand the functions of rhetoric.

Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Darlage
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

Studies of early modern Anabaptism have shown that many Anabaptists sought to model their communities after the examples of the New Testament and the early church before the “fall” of the church into a coercive, sword-wielding institution through the person of Constantine in the fourth centuryc.e.The Anabaptists claimed that one had to voluntarily choose to become a Christian through believer's baptism and suffer for his or her faith just as the martyrs of old had done in the face of Roman persecution. During the course of the sixteenth century, their Protestant and Roman Catholic enemies did not disappoint, as hundreds of Anabaptists were executed for their rejection of “Christendom.” To the “magisterial” Christians, Anabaptists were dangerous heretics because they denied the God-given power of spiritual and secular authorities.

Recent Eastern Orthodox Interpretation of the New Testament

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-340
Author(s):  
Timothy Clark
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Orthodox Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Eastern Orthodox Church

Interpretation of the Bible in the Eastern orthodox Church has until recently been largely determined by the dogmatic imperatives of the ecclesial institution. in the “last several decades, however, a variety of Orthodox scholars have launched significant investigations of the Bible and particularly of the New Testament using methododolgy modeled on that of the Western scholarly academy, while in some cases continuing to search for a specifically 'Orthodox' approach to biblical study. This article concentrates primarily on developments in New Testament interpretation among orthodox biblical scholars in North america over the last three decades, focusing on the contributions of a generation of researchers responsible for the first significant expansion of Orthodox biblical study into modern academia and looking forward to newer voices and research directions in the orthodox world.

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