Jesus and his Followers as Healers: Symbolic Healing in Early Christianity

2010 ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Theissen
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Symbolic Healing

Ritual and Healing

2018 ◽  
pp. 443-461
Author(s):  
Gerd Theissen
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Placebo Effect ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Sick Person ◽  
Ritual Healing ◽  
Symbolic Healing ◽  
Social Healing

Pre-modern forms of healing are based on two different cognitive symbolic interpretations: (1) the disease is caused either by a lack of power; or (2) by possession by an evil power. Healings are therefore due to ‘adorcism’ (the good spirits who had previously left the sick person re-enter him) and ‘exorcism’ (the bad spirits who had entered the person are driven out). Early Christianity institutionalized both forms of healing by increasing ritualization. Four theories of pre-modern healings are combined in a theory of effective correspondence: charismatic healing is based on the efficacy of faith (or the placebo effect), social healing on the reduction of social stress, symbolic healing, and ritual healing on the correspondence between internal symbolic and external processes. Embodied rituals are only effective if they are embedded in a social context, with charismatics, cognitive interpretations, and social support.

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.

General Conclusions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Dietary Laws

In the general conclusion, I discuss the consequences of the textual analyses for the overarching theme of the book—how purity and defilement are redefined in early Christianity to support the theology, demonology, and understanding of human nature found in second- and third-century communities, and to construct the identity of these communities. I compare different areas of purity discourse (sexuality, dietary laws, asceticism, baptism), and trace the historical development of purity concepts and ideas through the first three centuries of Christianity, underlining the unique place of Origen and of Jewish-Christian communities in this development.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
The Relationship

Between the second and the sixteenth centuries CE, references to the Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria occur exclusively in texts written by Christians. David T. Runia has described this phenomenon as the adoption of Philo by Christians as an “honorary Church Father.” Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and recent investigations of the “Parting of the Ways” of early Christianity and Judaism, this study argues that early Christian invocations of Philo reveal ongoing efforts to define the relationship between Jewishness and Christianness, their areas of overlap and points of divergence. The introduction situates invocations of Philo within the wider context of early Christian writing about Jews and Jewishness. It considers how Philo and his early Christian readers participated in the larger world of Greco-Roman philosophical schools, text production, and the ethical and intellectual formation (paideia) of elite young men in the Roman Empire.

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