The Reading ‘Who Wished to Enter’ in Coptic Tradition: Matt 23.13, Luke 11.52, and ‘Thomas’ 39

2006 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-591
Author(s):  
TJITZE BAARDA
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Late Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Egyptian

Two Middle Egyptian Coptic texts of Matthew, published by the late Professor Hans-Martin Schenke, namely the Scheide Codex and the Schøjen Codex, are of great interest, not only for Coptisants but also for New Testament textual critics. These manuscripts probably belong, respectively, to the fifth and fourth century. So they may tell us something about form and character of the Greek text in the fourth or perhaps even third century in Egypt, at least if we assume that these manuscripts were copies of older Coptic texts. Moreover, the two texts are also important for our knowledge of the language technique and competence of early Coptic translators. This knowledge may be significant for the question of which form of the Greek text might ‘shine through’ in Coptic texts. In a review of Schenke's magnificent edition of the Schøjen text I have dared to criticize his attempt to give a reconstruction of the Greek text that underlies this Coptic text. The history of such ‘retranslations’ teaches us that they are sometimes utter failures, which might easily mislead those who use them without any knowledge of the languages of these versions.

The Date of the Muratorian Fragment

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-172
Author(s):  
John F. Lingelbach
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Church History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
First Time ◽  
Objective Methodology

Three hundred years after its discovery, scholars find themselves unable to determine the more likely of the two hypotheses regarding the date of the Muratorian Fragment, which consists of a catalog of New Testament texts. Is the Fragment a late second- to early third-century composition or a fourth-century composition? This present work seeks to break the impasse. The study found that, by making an inference to the best explanation, a second-century date for the Fragment is preferred. This methodology consists of weighing the two hypotheses against five criteria: plausibility, explanatory scope, explanatory power, credibility, and simplicity. What makes this current work unique in its contribution to church history and historical theology is that it marks the first time the rigorous application of an objective methodology, known as “inference to the best explanation” (or IBE), has been formally applied to the problem of the Fragment’s date.

scholarly journals Die tekskritiek van die Nuwe Testament (1): Die huidige metodologiese situasie

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-275
Author(s):  
L. D. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Methods ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Current State ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Textual Critic

The textual criticism of the New Testament (1): The current methodological Situation This first article in a two-part series on the textual criticism of the New Testament focuses on the current state of affairs regarding textcritical methodology. Majority text methods and the two main streams of eclecticism, viz moderate and rigorous eclecticism, as well as statistical methods and the use of conjectural emendation, are reviewed with regard to their views on method as well as the history of the text. The purpose is to arrive at a workable solution which the keen and often not so able textual critic, translator and exegete can use in his handling of the Greek text of the New Testament.

scholarly journals Mogontiacum: czynniki rozwoju

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Mrozewicz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Military Base ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Real City

The history of Mogontiacum spans the period from 17/16 BCE to the end of the fourth century CE. It was a strong military base (with two legions stationed there in the first century) and a major settlement centre, though without municipal rights. However, the demographic and economic development, as well as the superior administrative and political status enabled Mogontiacum to transform – in socio-economic and urbanistic terms – into a real city. This process was crowned in the latter half of the third century with the construction of the city walls.

scholarly journals ‘I Have Come to Abolish Sacrifices’ (Epiphanius,Pan.30.16.5): Re-examining a Jewish Christian Text and Tradition

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-110
Author(s):  
Simon J. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
History Of

TheGospel of the Ebionitesis a ‘text’ that only exists as fragments cited in and extrapolated from the heresiological writings of Epiphanius (Pan. 30). LikeRecognitions1.27–71, theGospel of the Ebionitesis one of a number of second- and third-century Jewish Christian sources, texts and traditions alleging that Jesus rejected animal sacrifice. In this article, I seek to review the history of research on this particular text and tradition and explore its significance as a case study in the use of non-canonical gospel traditions in New Testament studies.

The Provincial List of Verona

1923 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Bury
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

§ 1. The exact measure of the originality of Diocletian's statesmanship has not yet been taken. ‘Like Augustus,’ said Gibbon, ‘Diocletian may be considered the founder of a new empire’ and these words express the accepted view. In the whole work of pulling the Empire together, which went on from A.D. 270 to 330, the three outstanding actors were Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine, and the part played by Aurelian was indispensable for the restitutio orbis. It was he who destroyed the Principate, notwithstanding the negligible episode of Tacitus. It was he who founded the autocracy; Diocletian who regularized and systematized it. Two new things Diocletian certainly did, one of which was a success and the other a failure though not a fruitless one. His division of the Empire into Dioceses was permanent for nearly three hundred years. His throne system led to disaster and disappeared; yet the territorial quadripartition which it involved was afterwards stereotyped in the four Prefectures, and Nicomedia pointed to Constantinople. But in many of the other changes which distinguished the Empire of Constantine from the Empire of Severus and which have generally been regarded as inventions of Diocletian, it is becoming clear that he was not the initiator but was only extending and systematizing changes which had already been begun. The separation of civil from military powers in provincial government had been initiated by Gallienus (the importance of whose reign has in recent years been emerging). Some of the characteristics which mark the military organization of the fourth century had come before Diocletian's accession. Mr. Mattingly's studies in the numismatic history of the third century have been leading him, as he tells us, to similar conclusions.

The Late Roman Agora and the State of Civic Organization

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. VLADKOVA
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Civic Organization ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman

The second half of the third century marks an important period in the history of Lower Moesia and the Balkans. It coincides with the economic and political crisis which spread across the Roman Empire and affected all levels of society. This chapter reviews the evidence for the character of the agora in Nicopolis ad Istrum during the late Roman and early Byzantine periods. First, it explains the historical context and then describes the epigraphic finds — which cease with the reign of Aurelian. It also details the coins that were discovered and their implications for continued use of the agora during the fourth century and on into the fifth and sixth centuries. Even so, archaeological excavations have demonstrated that there is no reason to believe that the agora served its original purpose beyond the middle of the fifth century, when flimsy structures were erected over the remains of the former civic centre. Occupation is still attested during the first half of the sixth century before the remaining buildings were destroyed by fire.

Erasmus’s Biblical Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-635
Author(s):  
Henk Nellen ◽  
Jan Bloemendal
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Immediate Response

The history of the immediate response on and later reception of Erasmus’s ‘New Testament Project’ is an eventful one. The Project consisted of three innovations in biblical scholarship: the first printed edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, a revised version of the Latin Vulgate, and a philological commentary that accounted for the many textual changes the translator had made. The article discusses the polemics Erasmus’s edition provoked immediately after publication in 1516, and sheds light on the influence his Project exerted in later centuries. Special attention is given to biblical passages that played an important role in the discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity, such as Rom. 9,5; 1 Joh. 5,7–8 (the famous Comma Johanneum), and 1 Tim. 3,16. In questioning these passages as convincing, irrefutable proof-texts of Christ’s divinity, Erasmus made himself vulnerable to accusations of reviving Arianism, an old anti-Trinitarian heresy.

The Innocence of Pontius Pilate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
History Of Empire

The gospels and ancient historians agree: Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, the Roman imperial prefect in Jerusalem. To this day, Christians of all churches confess that Jesus died 'under Pontius Pilate'. But what exactly does that mean? Within decades of Jesus' death, Christians began suggesting that it was the Judaean authorities who had crucified Jesus—a notion later echoed in the Qur'an. In the third century, one philosopher raised the notion that, although Pilate had condemned Jesus, he'd done so justly; this idea survives in one of the main strands of modern New Testament criticism. So what is the truth of the matter? And what is the history of that truth? David Lloyd Dusenbury reveals Pilate's 'innocence' as not only a neglected theological question, but a recurring theme in the history of European political thought. He argues that Jesus' interrogation by Pilate, and Augustine of Hippo's African sermon on that trial, led to the concept of secularity and the logic of tolerance emerging in early modern Europe. Without the Roman trial of Jesus, and the arguments over Pilate's innocence, the history of empire—from the first century to the twenty-first—would have been radically different.

Cynics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Bracht Branham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Dominant Ideologies ◽  
History Of

Cynicism (originating in the mid-fourth century bc) was arguably the most original and influential branch of the Socratic tradition in antiquity, whether we consider its impact on the formation of Stoicism or its role in the Roman Empire as a popular philosophy and literary tradition. The self-imposed nickname ‘Cynic’, literally ‘doglike’, was originally applied to Antisthenes and to Diogenes of Sinope, considered the founders of Cynicism, and later to their followers, including Crates of Thebes and Menippus. It emphasizes one of the most fundamental and controversial features of Cynic thought and practice – its radical re-examination of the animal nature of the human being. Their decision to ‘play the dog’ revolutionized moral discourse, since humans had traditionally been defined by their place in both a natural (animal → human → god) and a civic hierarchy. By calling such hierarchies into question, Cynicism re-evaluated the place of humankind in nature and the role of civilization in human life. Cynicism includes an innovative and influential literary tradition of satire, parody and aphorism devoted to ‘defacing the currency’ (that is, the dominant ideologies of the time). It proposes a new morality based on minimizing creaturely needs in pursuit of self-sufficiency (autarkeia), achieved in part by physical training (askēsis), and on maximizing both freedom of speech (parrhēsia) and freedom of action (eleutheria) in open defiance of the most entrenched social taboos; and an anti-politics which sees existing governments as a betrayal of human nature, and traditional culture as an obstacle to happiness. In their place, Cynics advocated an immediate relationship to nature and coined the oxymoron kosmopolitēs or ‘citizen of the cosmos’. However the literary, ethical and political elements of Cynicism are interrelated, all are most easily defined by what they oppose – the inherited beliefs and practices of classical Greek civilization. The virtual loss of all early Cynic writings means that the history of Cynicism must be reconstructed from much later sources dating from the Roman Empire, the most important of which is Diogenes Laertius (third century ad).

Stronger than Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Krans
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theological Controversy

The eventful career of the ‘Velesian readings’ constitute an instructive chapter in the history of New Testament exegesis. Around 1570, Pedro Fajardo, Marquis of los Vélez, jotted down some 2,000 variant readings in a printed New Testament, giving later researchers the impression that these annotations resulted from a persistent perusal of Greek manuscripts. The original annotated book was never found, but the Velesian readings found their way into many editions, for example Walton’s 1657 Polyglot. Eventually, the readings were shown to be retranslations from Latin into Greek, intended to vindicate the Latin Vulgate against the received Greek text. This chapter traces the role scholars played in their unmasking. It shows that variant readings were of paramount importance in theological controversy.

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