Justin Martyr and Tatian

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyun Jin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Justin Martyr

This chapter explores the mid-second century AD Christian reactions to Roman persecution and Greek cultural chauvinism. Early Christians were exposed to two different types of pressure: first, the Roman state brutally oppressed their faith and subjected them to physical violence of which Justin Martyr, the earliest Christian apologetic writer, was a victim. Second, dominant Greek culture of the Mediterranean dismissed Christian beliefs as crude, “barbarian” superstition, indulging in cultural imperialism toward the nascent religion. Christian reaction to these pressures was to adopt the barbarians’ position, i.e. of non-Greeks, and to identify themselves with a cultural tradition they claimed was superior and more ancient than the Greeks’: that of the Hebrews. Early Christian apologetic writers such as Justin and Tatian challenged the orthodoxy and anteriority of Greek culture and began the process of Christianizing the Roman intellectual elite, which would culminate in the Christianization of the Roman empire itself in the fourth century.

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.

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).

Defining the Boundaries of Orthodoxy: Eunomius in the Anti-Jewish Polemic of his Cappadocian Opponents

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-723
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Christian Leaders

Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. The cultural and theological significance of the strong anti-Judaizing rhetoric contained within these Cappadocian authors’ anti-Eunomian treatises, however, remains largely unexamined. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the critical role of anti-Judaizing rhetoric in the arguments that early Christian leaders Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem of Nisibis used against “Arian” Christian opponents in the middle of the fourth century, and the implications of this rhetoric for understanding early Christian-Jewish and intra-Christian relations. Scholars have yet to recognize, however, that anti-Judaizing rhetoric similarly helped to define the terms and consequences of the anti-Eunomian arguments made by Basil, Gregory, and Gregory in the decades that followed. The anti-Judaizing rhetoric of their texts attests to the continuing advantages that these leaders gained by rhetorically associating their Christian opponents with Jews. By claiming that Eunomius and his followers were too Jewish in their beliefs to be Christian, and too Christian in their behaviors to be Jewish, Basil, Gregory, and Gregory deployed anti-Judaizing rhetoric to argue that Eunomians were significantly inferior to both true Christians and Jews. The Cappadocians’ strategic comparisons with Jews and Judaism rhetorically distanced their Eunomian opponents from Christianity and thus strengthened the Cappadocians’ own claims to represent Christian orthodoxy.

scholarly journals Brooches from the Cemetery of Opushki and Their Role in Costume (According to the 2003–2020 Excavation Materials)

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Anastasia А. Stoianova
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cervical Vertebrae ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Archaeological Cultures

This paper presents a review of the brooches from the cemetery of Opushki located in the central area of the Crimean foothills. The cemetery was used from the first century BC to the fourth century AD by peoples of various archaeological cultures. 72 of 318 graves excavated there contained brooches. The total number of complete and fragmented brooches discovered there is 190. The largest group comprises one-piece bow-shaped brooches with returned foot and the brooches with flattened catch-plate from the first to the first half of the third century AD. There is a series of brooches made in the Roman Empire, with the most numerous group of plate brooches. There are a few violin-bow-shaped brooches, highly-profiled brooches of the Northern Black Sea type, two-piece violin-bow-shaped brooches with returned foot, and brooches with curved arched bow (P-shaped): great many pieces of these types occurred at other sites from the Roman Period in the Crimean foothill area. In Opushki, brooches appeared in all types of burial constructions, and mostly in the Late Scythian vaults from the first century BC to the second century AD. They accompanied graves of women, men, and children. In the overwhelming majority of cases, one burial was accompanied with one and rarely two brooches; there is only one burial of a child with three clasps. Most often brooches occurred at the chest, in rare cases on the shoulder, near the cervical vertebrae, pelvic bones, or outside the skeleton. It is noteworthy that a great number of brooches was found in the burials of children of different ages, from 1- to 8-12-year-old. Apparently, brooches as a part of the child’s costume were used throughout the child’s life from the very infancy. Generally, the brooch types from the cemetery of Opushki, their distribution in the assemblages and location on the skeletons correspond to the general pattern typical of barbarian cemeteries in the Crimean foothill area dated to the Roman Period.

Patristic philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Peter Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
New Members ◽  
Intellectual Discourse ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Greek East

Early Christian writers used terminology and ideas drawn from Graeco-Roman philosophical literature in their theological writings, and some early Christians also engaged in more formal philosophical reflection. The term ‘patristic philosophy’ covers all of these activities by the ‘fathers’ (patres) of the Church. The literature of nascent Christianity thus contains many concepts drawn from Graeco-Roman philosophy, and this early use of classical ideas by prominent Christians provided an authoritative sanction for subsequent philosophical discussion and elaboration. Early Christians were drawn to philosophy for many reasons. Philosophy held a pre-eminent place in the culture of the late Hellenistic and Roman world. Its schools provided training in logical rigour, systematic accounts of the cosmos and directions on how to lead a good and happy life. While philosophical movements of the period, such as Neoplatonism or Stoicism, varied widely in their doctrines, most presented accounts of reality that included some representation of the divine. These rationally articulated accounts established the theological and ethical discourse of Graeco-Roman culture. As such, philosophy had a natural appeal to Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian thinkers. It provided a ready language in which to refine ideas about the God of the ancient Hebrew scriptures, and to elaborate the trinitarian God of Christianity. It also helped to bring conceptual coherence to the ideas found in the scriptures of both religions. Finally, it provided the common intellectual discourse that those communities required in order to present their central tenets to the majority culture of the Roman empire. To a considerable extent, the notion of ‘philosophy’ suggested to the ancients a way of life as much as an intellectual discipline. This too drew Christians to the teachings of the philosophers. While there were doctrines and prescriptions of behaviour specific to the major schools, philosophers in general tended to advocate an ethically reflective and usually rather ascetic life, one which conjoined intellectual with moral discipline. This ethical austerity was prized by early Christians as an allied phenomenon within Graeco-Roman culture to which they could appeal in debates about the character of their new movement. The tacit validation that philosophy offered to the Christian movement was thus multifaceted, and, while it was sometimes thought to be associated with unacceptable aspects of pagan religious culture, philosophy provided some educated Christians with a subtle social warrant for their new life and beliefs. It should be noted that ancient Christianity was itself a complex movement. Like Graeco-Roman philosophy, Christianity included a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices. Thus those early Christians who developed their beliefs with reference to philosophy endorsed a wide range of metaphysical and ethical doctrines, ranging from materialism to extreme transcendentalism, from asceticism to spiritual libertinism. Yet, while diversity is evident, it is also true that the Christian movement came to develop a rough set of central beliefs and some early forms of community organization associated with those beliefs. This incipient ‘orthodoxy’ came to value some sorts of philosophy, especially Platonism, which seemed best suited to its theological agenda. This tacit alliance with Platonism was fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty, and it was never a reciprocal relationship. Nonetheless, in the second and third centuries a type of Christian philosophical theology emerged which owed much to the Platonic school and became increasingly dominant among orthodox Christian authors. It was this trajectory that defined the character of patristic philosophy. Early Christian thought had its origins in Hellenistic Judaism, and its initial character was defined by the dominant patterns of that tradition. This early phase extended through the first half of the second century ad, as Christianity began to define its distinctive themes associated with the nature and historical mission of Jesus Christ. Throughout the second century, Christianity became increasingly a movement made up of gentile converts; some of these new members had educations that had included philosophy and a few were even trained as philosophers. Thus Christian thought began to show increased contact with the Graeco-Roman philosophical schools, a trend no doubt reinforced by the critical need for Christians – as a proscribed religious minority – to defend their theology, ritual practices and ethics in the face of cultural and legal hostility. This so-called ‘age of the apologists’ lasted throughout the second and third centuries, until Christianity began to enjoy toleration early in the fourth century. However, it would be a mistake to consider Christian philosophical thought in that period as primarily directed towards the surrounding pagan society. In many respects philosophy, as the intellectual discourse of Graeco-Roman culture, offered gentile Christians a means to clarify, articulate and assimilate the tenets of their new faith. This process of intellectual appropriation appears to have been of considerable personal importance to many Graeco-Roman converts. Christian philosophical theology helped them to recover ideas familiar from their school training and to find unfamiliar concepts defended with the rigour much prized within Graeco-Roman culture. After Christianity became a licit religion in the fourth century, philosophical activity among Christians expanded. The task of theological self-articulation became increasingly significant as Christianity grew in the fourth and fifth centuries towards majority status within the Empire, with imperial support. In this later period the range and sophistication of Christian thought increased significantly, due in part to the influence of pagan Neoplatonism, a movement that included a number of the finest philosophers active since the classical period of Plato and Aristotle. Later patristic philosophy had a defining influence upon medieval Christian thought through such figures as Augustine and Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, establishing both the conceptual foundations and the authoritative warrant for the scholasticism of the Latin West and Greek East.

Monumental Writing and the Expansion of Roman Society in the Early Empire

1996 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 22-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Woolf
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Latin Epigraphy ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Subsequent Rise

The vast majority of surviving Roman inscriptions originated in a cultural phenomenon that is characteristic of, and in some senses defines, the early Roman Empire. At the end of the last century B.C. — roughly co-incident, then, with the transition to autocracy, the Roman cultural revolution, and the formative period of provincial cultures throughout the Empire — an epigraphic boom occurred, in Italy and in every province of the Empire. That explosion of new inscriptions, and the subsequent rise and fall of an epigraphic culture, was experienced by eastern and western provinces alike, in Greek as well as in Latin epigraphy. Many regional epigraphies remain to be characterized in terms of their chronology, but such local studies as have been done strongly suggest that, although there was certainly some inter-regional variation in the scale, rate, and timing of this phenomenon, in its broad outlines this pattern was very widespread. Across the entire Empire, the number of inscriptions set up each year began to rise from the Augustan period and increased more and more steeply through the second century. In every region that has been examined in detail, the majority of extant inscriptions were produced in the late second and early third centuries. The peak or turning-point seems to have been reached at slightly different times in each area. But everywhere the subsequent decline was much faster than the original rise, reaching a new low between the middle and the end of the third century A.D. Epigraphy does survive into the fourth century — in most areas of the Empire, if not in most cities — but late imperial inscriptions are very much rarer and differ markedly from early imperial examples in genre, form, and style.

scholarly journals Our Common Breath: ‘Conspiration’ from the Stoics to the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.

Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Shaner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Feminist Rhetorical Criticism

Slaves were ubiquitous in the first- and second-century CE Roman Empire, and early Christian texts reflect this fact. This book argues that enslaved persons engaged in leadership roles in civic and religious activities. Such roles created tension within religious groups, including second-century communities connected with Paul’s legacy. Archaeological materials, epigraphy, and literature from Ephesos and environs illustrate these power struggles with clarity. Enslaved persons were religious specialists, priests, and leaders in cultic groups, including early Christian groups. Thus, the book paints a complex picture of enslaved life in Asia Minor to illustrate how enslaved persons enacted roles of religious and civic significance that potentially upended social hierarchies which privileged wealthy, slaveholding men. Yet even as the enslaved engaged in such authoritative roles, Roman slavery was not a benign institution nor were early Christians kinder and more egalitarian toward slaves. Both early Christian texts (such as Philemon, 1 Timothy, and Ignatius’s letters) and archaeological finds from Ephesos defend, construct, and clarify the hierarchies that kept enslaved persons under the control of their masters. This book brings together archaeological materials and literary texts using feminist rhetorical criticism. In doing so, it shows how archaeological materials attempt to persuade viewers, readers, and inhabitants of the city. Early Christian texts similarly attempt to persuade readers that slaves should not hold leadership positions. Thus the book illustrates a historical world in which control of slaves must continually be asserted. It demonstrates that master-slave hierarchies were unclear, disjointed, and even subverted in everyday religious activities.

The Heresy of Tatian—Once Again

1968 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Justin Martyr ◽  
The One ◽  
Spiritual Pilgrimage ◽  
Christian History

Tatian, the second century Christian apologist, is something of an enigma to students of early Christian history and doctrine. How far was he influenced by his teacher Justin Martyr? What caused him to become an extreme exponent of the encratite heresy? Did his heretical views only develop after Justin's death, and were these the cause of his leaving Rome? or were these views only a development of tendencies which existed from the beginning? The answers which we give to these questions will largely depend on the view we take of, and the date we assign to, the one apologetic work of his which is extant—his Oration to the Greeks, a violent polemic against Graeco-Roman culture in the course of which Tatian reveals, in somewhat cryptic manner, his own theological views and gives a brief account of his own spiritual pilgrimage.

Ethik als Ausweis christlicher Identität bei Justin Martyr

2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Jörg Ulrich
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
External Reason ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Justin Martyr ◽  
Christian Apologetics ◽  
The One

Abstract Ethics have Iong been a neglected matter in schalarship on early Christian apologetics. However, a closer Iook at the composition of the texts of Justin Martyr teaches us how important the references to Christi an ethics actually are in the run of his argument. The external reason forthat lies in the fact that Justin wants to prove the legal proceedings against the Christians in the Roman empire to be unjust and absurd. The inner reason is that he interprets Christianity as »true philosophy«: in view of the understanding of »philosophy~< in his pagan environment, this brings about fundamental ethical implications. Both his apologies and the dialogue with Trypho show how Justin employs ethical convictions as a criterio for Christian identity and as a trait of difference between Christianity and Paganism on the one hand, and between Christianity and Judaism on the other.

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