The Origins of Kalᾱm

1980 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Cook

That the dialectical technique of Muslim kalām is a borrowing from Christian theology is no secret. Its extra-Islamic origin has indeed been asserted by van Ess with great forthrightness in the context of his recent publication of an early kalām text. The text in question is an anti-Qadarite polemic ascribed to al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (d. c. 100 A.H.); it lacks a title, but may conveniently be designated Questions against the Qadarites. Van Ess accepts the ascription, and dates the tract to the 70s of the first century of the Hijra. Since the text contains no contemporary historical reference or colour, and. the ascription rests on the sole authority of the Zaydī imāam al-Hādī (d. 298), the case for so early a dating rests heavily on the theological style and content of the tract. Many of the arguments advanced by van Ess are questionable, and the result could not be said to constitute proof. But it would be churlish to reject the case for an early dating out of hand, and difficult to sustain one later than the first half of the second century. The text is thus an archaic one, and provides an appropriate starting-point for an inquiry into the origins of kalām.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detty Manongko

The research of exploring the Church History have not been many studies done in Indonesia. Though this field is related to the theology, especially the development of Christian Theology for centuries. One area of Church History that needs to be examined are the Christian Thought of the Church Fathers from first to third centuries. The field is often called “Patrology” which is the study of Church Fathers from first to third centuries. Who are they, what are the results of their work, why they have produced such theological thoughts, and what they thoughts are still influencing to the contemporary theologians in Indonesia?The main problem in this research is how does the perception of contemporary theologians in Indonesia to the Chruch Father’ s theological thoughts? Through a literature review of Soteriology, Christology, and Eschatology, then this research has yielded important principles concerning to the Church Fathers’s theological thoughts at the Early Church period. And then through the field research has proven that the majority of contemporary theologians in Indonesia have a positive perception to the Church Fathers’s theological thought from first to the third centuries. Therefore, the reasons of why this research is conducted and how it is done are described in the first chapter of these book. The second chapter of this writing contains a literature review of the theological thoughts of the church fathers from the first century to the third. There are four groups of Church Fathers from the first century to the third. There are four groups of Church Fathers that are described in this chapter, i.e., The Apostolic Fathers (from the first to the middle of second century), The Aplogists (second century), The Anti-Gnostic Fathers (second and third century), and The Alexandrian Fathers (third century). The third chapter discusses the quantitative methods used in this research including statistical models to prove the validity and reliability of the data acquisition method that is used in the field of this research. It desperately needs accuracy and diligence in order to display a quality and useful research reports for the development of Church History studies. Discussion of the results of this study, along with the evidence that reinforces the result of this research is presented in the fourth chapter. Finally, the fifth chapter of this study elaborates the main thoughts that are generated in this study, which also expected to be important principles in conducting futher research.The results obtained in this study are not yet maximal on account of various constraints, such as limited time, facilities, funding, and so forth. However, the writer wishes that the results achieved in this study will give a valuable contribution to all readers of this writing and that it will be a motivation for a further research in the field of Church History in the future.


Britannia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 259-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Wallace

ABSTRACTIn order to study the possibility that some samian (terra sigillata) vessels remained available and/or in circulation for quite some time, a review has been made of closed groups (especially grave-assemblages), as a useful starting point. This paper argues that it is reasonable to expect some complete first-century samian vessels to have survived into the second century; also that some second-century vessels had survived into the fourth century at least throughout Roman Britain.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-262
Author(s):  
Deborah Forger

AbstractBecause later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary opposites, distinguished largely by their views on God’s body, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on earth. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria often operates as the quintessential representative of a Jew who stressed God’s absolute incorporeality. Here I demonstrate how Philo also presents a means by which a part of Israel’s God could become united with human materiality, showing how the patriarchs and Moses function as his paradigms. This evidence suggests that scholarship on divine embodiment has been limited by knowledge of later developments in Christian theology. Incarnational formulas, like that found in John 1:14 were not the only way that Jews in the first and second centuryCEunderstood that God could become united with human form.


1960 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. Barnard

The message of Stephen and its relationship to flrst-century Judaism and early Christian theology has recently been the subject of several studies. It is, I suppose, universally agreed that Stephen was a hellenistic Jew of the Diaspora who came into acute conflict with other Diaspora Jews of a more conservative kind domiciled in Jerusalem and that these took the initiative in effecting his arrest and trial. But that is as far as agreement goes. The attempt to understand further Stephen's message and influence has produced the widest divergence of opinion. To some he is the originator of the mission to the Gentiles and Christian universalism whose conception of Christianity was adopted by later preachers and teachers with momentous consequences for Christian history. To others he remained in essence a Jew, albeit of a liberal kind, even after his conversion, whose aim was to propagate a type of Judaism which was strongly anti-Temple and anti-cultus. On this view Stephen stands in the line of Nathan, Hosea, Trito-Isaiah, the Rechabites, some Essene circles and the Ebionites, as pictured in the Pseudo-Clementine writings, in asserting a non-material form of worship, independent of the Temple cultus, as being authentic Judaism. Still others believe that Stephen cleverly preached Jesus in his interpretation of Joseph, Moses and Joshua; on this view he is a typologist whose aim is to show that Jesus' passion has been pre-figured in the persecutions which God's righteous servants have always had to endure. It is not our purpose here to examine and criticize these conflicting opinions in detail but to seek to answer two questions, namely (i) Was Stephen's position an isolated ine in first-century Judaism and in the early Church? (ii) And, if so, is it yet possible to trace his influence on Alexandrian Christianity when it comes into historical perspective in the early second century of our era?


Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman

This chapter argues that the Writings was an evolving collection of scripture used in a wide variety of ways by the Dead Sea Scrolls community at Qumran (second century bce to first century ce). Though the Hebrew word Ketuvim (Writings) does not occur in the Scroll material, all but one (Esther) of the books contained therein are found. The plentiful and varied textual evidence at Qumran, and occasionally other Judean desert sites, is presented with special attention to the number of biblical and other manuscripts and place found; textual comparisons with the biblical Masoretic text and others (e.g., Septuagint); citations; and other interpretive uses in sectarian documents. The importance of the books in the Writings for the life of the late postexilic community of Qumran and the nature of the Dead Sea Scrolls biblical collection are, together, a constant focus of the study.


1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.


1959 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Owen

The Second Coming (otherwise called the Parousia)1 of Christ constituted a serious problem for the apostolic Church. One of the earliest of Paul's Epistles (1 Thessalonians) shows how quickly his converts became discouraged when some of their number died before the Lord's appearing. In reply Paul repeats his promise that the Lord will soon return, although in his second epistle he has to give a reminder that Antichrist must first make a final bid for power (1 Thess. 4.15–18, 2 Thess. 2). Similarly the author of Hebrews, writing to a disillusioned and apathetic group of Christians some decades later in the first century, recalls the words of Habakkuk that ‘the Lord will come and not be slow’ (10.37). Finally 2 Peter, the latest book of the New Testament (written, perhaps, as late as the middle of the second century), continues to offer the hope of an imminent Parousia to be accompanied by the world's destruction and renewal (ch. 3). If Christians are tempted to despair they must remember that the word of prophets and Apostles is sure (v. 2) and that with God ‘a thousand years are as one day’ (v. 8).


2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Christine Trevett

In the close-knit valleys communities of South Wales where I was brought up, some fingers are still pointed at ‘the scab’, the miner who, for whatever reason, did not show solidarity in the strike of 1984-5, cement the definition between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In trouble-torn Palestine of the twenty-first century, or among the paramilitary groups of Northern Ireland today, suspected informers are summarily assassinated. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee continues its work in the post-apartheid era. In second-century Rome and elsewhere, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who made up the fictive kinship groups – the churches – in the growing but illicit cult of the Christians were conscious both of their own vulnerability to outside opinion and of their failures in relation to their co-religionists. The questions which they asked, too, were questions about reconciliation and/or (spiritual) death.


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