The Historical Jesus and the Speech of Gamaliel (Acts 5.35–9)

1993 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Trumbower
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Many

As a supplement to the careful analysis of early Christian texts, anyone studying the historical Jesus of Nazareth is inevitably drawn to make comparisons between him and other figures from the ancient world in general, and first-century Palestine in particular. Just what type of figure was he? For example, in his book, Jesus the Jew, Geza Vermes emphasizes Jesus' compatibility with the category of Jewish charismatic figures like Honi the Circle-drawer (perhaps a Galilean) and Hanina Ben-Dosa (definitely a Galilean). Morton Smith compares the actions and words of Jesus to the magical papyri and finds remarkable similarities to ancient magicians, thus the title of his book, Jesus the Magician. Smith, like Celsus 1800 years earlier, delights in showing how Jesus was just one of the many fakers and charlatans practising the magical arts in the first-century Mediterranean world. More recently, Burton Mack has argued that Jesus was a cynic sage like those found in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers. In Mack's reconstruction, Jesus' thought was not eschatological, nor did Jesus intend to found a movement or movements devoted to himself; rather, he preached the flaunting of social conventions and criticized his culture in general terms, like other cynic philosophers.

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts: Perspectives from Ancient Near Eastern and Early Christian Contexts

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Educational Needs ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Mediterranean World

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

Educating Jesus: The Search for a Plausible Context

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Literature

AbstractMany reconstructions of the life of the historical Jesus have tended to portray him as being born into illiterate peasant stock. By so doing, significant statements in the Gospels, both canonical and non-canonical, are ignored. While much caution is needed, since there is a tendency to valorize the young Jesus in early Christian literature and to heighten miraculous events surrounding his childhood, nonetheless there are indicators that Jesus' background did not reflect the lowest echelons of Galilean peasantry. Instead, it is suggested that internal Gospel evidence and knowledge of aspects of the social milieu of first-century Judaism give weight to seeing Jesus as a person with what would now be classified as functional on basic literacy levels.

A Symposiastic Background to James?

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter-Ben Smit
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Epistle Of James ◽  
The Way

The Epistle of James is not commonly seen in relation to early Christian common meals. At the same time, the work is preoccupied with the common life of an early Christian community, which in turn was, generally speaking, closely related to the way in which it celebrated its meals. In other words, ethics, ecclesiology, and etiquette were closely related. Based on this consideration, this essay attempts to relate aspects of the epistle to symposiastic conventions as they were known in the first-century Mediterranean world.

scholarly journals Was John the Baptist Raised from the Dead?

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-354
Author(s):  
Nathanael Vette ◽  
Will Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
The Dead

In the vox populi of Mark 6:14-16 (cf. 8:28), we find the puzzling claim that some believed Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. The presentation of John in the Gospel is similar to Jesus: Mark depicts John as a prophetic figure who is arrested, executed, buried by his disciples, and—according to some—raised from the dead. This paper reviews scholarship on the question of whether the tradition concerning John's resurrection—as well as the tradition concerning his death to which it is prefixed (6:17-29)—originated outside of the early Christian community. We examine the possibility that sects or individuals in the ancient world believed John had indeed been raised from the dead—as well as figures supposedly connected to John (Dositheus, Simon Magus). We conclude on the basis of internal evidence from the Gospel that the report in 6:14-16 likely originated in a Christian context. At the same time, it may also provide a glimpse into first-century CE attitudes concerning the resurrection from the dead.

The Book of Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
Book Of Daniel ◽  
The Many

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, or the Apocalypse of John, has been extraordinarily influential in Christian life and theology. For example, because of the many hymns sung by the heavenly host, Revelation has, like Isaiah 6:3, been particularly influential on liturgy and also music, for instance, the setting of Revelation 5:12, “Worthy is the Lamb that was Slain,” in Handel’s Messiah. It is one of two biblical apocalyptic texts (the other being the book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible). Apart from the opening words, a dominant theme of Revelation is prophecy, and its imagery emphasizing what John “saw” on Patmos suggests that the form of prophecy in the first century ce included a significant visionary element, akin to earlier biblical exemplars such as Ezekiel 1:40–48 and Zechariah 1–8. The interpretation and reception of Revelation are closely linked. Like other biblical prophetic books, it became a reservoir for understandings of the future, but alongside it there developed a role as a way of unmasking the imperfections in church and society. This article uses the evidence of its reception to understand the nature and meaning of the book, its theological antecedents, and its relationship to other early Christian writings. Its role as an eschatological guide as well as its importance for political theology, complementing what we find in Daniel, are considered. It has also inspired artists down the centuries, from the time of the first illuminated Apocalypses, and this rich visual tradition captures something of importance about the book itself and the visionary stimulus it has provided.

scholarly journals In the kingdom everybody has enough – A social-scientific and realistic reading of the parable of the lost sheep (Lk 15:4–6)

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck
Keyword(s):  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Realistic Interpretation ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

This article presents a social-scientific and realistic interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep (Lk 15:4–6). Attention is given to the history of the interpretation of the parable, its integrity and authenticity, and verisimilitude. It is argued that the Lukan-version (Q 15:4–6) of the parable represents the earliest layer of the historical Jesus-tradition. Specific attention is given to the social and economic registers presupposed in the parable, as well as certain cultural norms and values of the first-century Mediterranean world in which Jesus told the parable. The conclusion reached is that the parable exemplifies several aspects of the kingdom of God, aspects that are also present in several other parables that Jesus told about the kingdom.

Memory and Jesus’ Parables

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 156-172
Author(s):  
Ruben Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kingdom Parables ◽  
The Many

This article interacts with John P. Meier’s view concerning the parables that can be shown to be “authentic,” i.e., shown to have been uttered by the historical Jesus. His highly critical and largely negative result (only four parables remaining parables of Jesus) demonstrates once more that historical Jesus research that is intrinsically tied to questions of authenticity has run its course. Such an approach can only lead to minimalistic results and destroys the sources that we have. By contrast, the so-called memory approach tries to understand the process and result of remembering Jesus as a parable teller. Collective memory requires typification and repetition in order to bring the past to mind in a remembering community. Parables as a genre are such media of collective memory that shape and form not only the memory itself, but also the identity of the remembering community. Thus, the many parables of Jesus in early Christian writings are more than ever an indispensable source for historical research on the remembered Jesus, a point that is demonstrated in the final section of this article using kingdom parables as a test case.

Computing Cores for Existential Rules with the Standard Chase and ASP

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Krötzsch
Keyword(s):  
Large Class ◽  
Data Exchange ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Query Answering ◽  
Universal Model ◽  
The Core ◽  
Universal Models ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
The Many

To reason with existential rules (a.k.a. tuple-generating dependencies), one often computes universal models. Among the many such models of different structure and cardinality, the core is arguably the “best”. Especially for finitely satisfiable theories, where the core is the unique smallest universal model, it has advantages in query answering, non-monotonic reasoning, and data exchange. Unfortunately, computing cores is difficult and not supported by most reasoners. We therefore propose ways of computing cores using practically implemented methods from rule reasoning and answer set programming. Our focus is on cases where the standard chase algorithm produces a core. We characterise this desirable situation in general terms that apply to a large class of cores, derive concrete approaches for decidable special cases, and generalise these approaches to non-monotonic extensions of existential rules.

Past

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kellerman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Business Schools ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Lao Tzu ◽  
Leadership And Management ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The Many

The chapter focuses on how leadership was taught in the distant and recent past. The first section is on five of the greatest leadership teachers ever—Lao-tzu, Confucius, Plato, Plutarch, and Machiavelli—who shared a deep belief in the idea that leadership could be taught and left legacies that included timeless and transcendent literary masterworks. The second section explores how leadership went from being conceived of as a practice reserved only for a select few to one that could be exercised by the many. The ideas of the Enlightenment changed our conception of leadership. Since then, the leadership literature has urged people without power and authority, that is, followers, to understand that they too could be agents of change. The third section turns to leadership and management in business. It was precisely the twentieth-century failure of business schools to make management a profession that gave rise to the twenty-first-century leadership industry.

The Many Faces of Socioeconomic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Toye
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
The Many ◽  
Century Development

This book provides a survey of different ways in which economic sociocultural and political aspects of human progress have been studied since the time of Adam Smith. Inevitably, over such a long time span, it has been necessary to concentrate on highlighting the most significant contributions, rather than attempting an exhaustive treatment. The aim has been to bring into focus an outline of the main long-term changes in the way that socioeconomic development has been envisaged. The argument presented is that the idea of socioeconomic development emerged with the creation of grand evolutionary sequences of social progress that were the products of Enlightenment and mid-Victorian thinkers. By the middle of the twentieth century, when interest in the accelerating development gave the topic a new impetus, its scope narrowed to a set of economically based strategies. After 1960, however, faith in such strategies began to wane, in the face of indifferent results and general faltering of confidence in economists’ boasts of scientific expertise. In the twenty-first century, development research is being pursued using a research method that generates disconnected results. As a result, it seems unlikely that any grand narrative will be created in the future and that neo-liberalism will be the last of this particular kind of socioeconomic theory.

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