2. Inventing the saints

Author(s):  
Simon Yarrow

Sainthood took on its most familiar forms from the death of Jesus c.33 ce to the decades following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 ce. The early Christian church was an urban diaspora spread around the Mediterranean littoral, Hispania, Gaul, Asia Minor, North Africa, and Palestine. But who among these diverse communities were saints? ‘Inventing the saints’ describes the earliest saints as apostles who were ‘sanctified’ through their common associations with Jesus Christ. It outlines persecution, early Christian martyrdom, Donatism, asceticism, monasticism, and eremeticism, and introduces St Paul and St Antony. By the end of the 5th century the martyr, the ascetic, and the confessor had become the most important forms of Christian sainthood.

Open Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 238-247
Author(s):  
Kitty Bouwman

Abstract The Book of Ben Sira was popular in the early Christian church and influenced the Church Father Augustine (354–430). He adopts the person of Wisdom as a divine mother and adapts her within the context of the early Christian church. He links to Mother Wisdom a wisdom theology, in which Jesus is her envoy. Augustine describes Mother Wisdom as an eternal nourishing divine mother. She has a permanent revelatory status by continuously giving life-giving power, which she mediates through Jesus of Nazareth. He presents her grace which she has prepared for the competentes (the candidates for Baptism), who are working towards initiation into Christian Faith. Mother Wisdom serves as hostess in biblical Wisdom literature. For Augustine, Jesus Christ has taken this place. Mother Wisdom serves instead the angels and the spiritual persons as a representative of divine nourishment.


1970 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Harley McGowan

Christianity, and the instrument of Jesus’ death, the cross, remains the pivotal, and universally recognised, symbol of the Christian Church. Yet pictorial representations of the death of Jesus are conspicuously rare in the earliest Christian art. Moreover, the earliest surviving images  of Jesus’ Crucifixion do not depict  him dead on the cross, but defiantly alive – a visual interpretation of the event that incorporates both the means of his execution and his subsequent victory over death in the Resurrection. This article examines the iconography of a small ivory plaque, carved in Rome in the early fifth century, whereon the Crucifixion is juxtaposed with the suicide of Jesus’ betrayer, Judas Iscariot (Matthew 27 3:5) to effect a powerful visual interpretation of Jesus’ death. As the earliest surviving visual narration of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection, the ivory will be shown to preserve critical information regarding the interpretation of Christ’s death in the early Christian church - incorporating symbols and visual motifs from pagan funerary sculpture, while illustrating the development of a specifically Christian visual language for the representation of Jesus’ death.


Starinar ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 103-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Djuric ◽  
Jasmina Davidovic ◽  
Andreja Maver ◽  
Harald Müller

The project work in 2006 season included the analysis of stone monuments held at the Museum of Srem as well as their documentation. For limestone used at Sirmium at least two sources were established: Lithotypes I and III came from the Dardagani quarry along the Drina River, while Lithotype II most probably came from the wider area of Pannonia along the Danube. White marble was coming to Sirmium from the 1st to the 3rd century predominantly from the Eastern Alps (Gummern, Pohorje), from the end of the 3rd century also from the Mediterranean (Luni, Paros, Dokimeion, Proconnesos), while colored marble, tied to the imperial architecture at Sirmium, was being imported from imperial and other quarries across the Mediterranean (North Africa Italy, Asia Minor, Greece).


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie John ◽  
Richard I. Vane-Wright

We report a recent observation of D. c. chrysippus f. 'alcippus' in Cyprus, a variant of the Plain Tiger or African Queen butterfly infrequently seen in the Mediterranean, especially in the east of the region. D. c. chrysippus f. 'alcippus' appears to have been recorded from Cyprus on just one previous occasion, by R. E. Ellison, in 1939. However, a specimen of the similar f. 'alcippoides' collected by D. M. A. Bate in Cyprus in 1901 could perhaps be the source of Ellison's otherwise undocumented claim. These records are assessed in relation to the known distributions of the various forms of D. chrysippus across the Mediterranean, North Africa and Middle East, and more briefly with respect to the vast range of this butterfly across much of the Old World tropics and subtropics. The ambiguity and potential confusion caused by using an available name to designate both a geographically circumscribed subspecies or semispecies, and a genetically controlled phenotype that can be found far beyond the range of the putative subspecies or semispecies, is also discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-15
Author(s):  
Kevin J. Brown ◽  
Gaynor Yancey

The start of the early Christian church is recounted in the book of Acts.  In Acts 2 (NKJV) shares that after the outpouring of the Spirit of God, over 3,000 believers gather themselves together, where they “held everything in common, shared their resources, and that each person’s needs were met (Acts 2:42, The Message). The following article takes a bird’s eye view that assists us, as social workers, in understanding the importance of community practice. Community calls us to a sense of belonging and inclusion with a group of people.  Community also calls us to consider again our shared values and resources.  This article grounds us in the Biblical narrative, moves to our social work skills and knowledge base, and then concludes with thoughts that encourage us to address the “wicked problems” by being disruptive forces in the planned change process which is at the heart of community practice.


Author(s):  
Sherene Nicholas Khouri

Was Jesus crucified on the cross? Did Jesus die by crucifixion? This topic generates so much emotion and conflict in Christian-Islamic dialogue as many theories have developed to prove one side of the equation. While several methods can answer Islamic objections against the biblical belief, the evidential Apologetics is the best method to provide evidence for the Christian claims. Evidential Apologetics is one of the methods that seeks to prove the truthfulness of the Christian worldview by showing historical and scientific evidences. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to use the evidential method to answer three major objections that Muslims raise against the crucifixion of Jesus: Jesus was never crucified, the swoon theory, and the substitute theory. The paper will conclude that there are surmounted historical and scientific evidences that support the event of Jesus’s crucifixion.


Isis ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Lindberg

Data in Brief ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1588-1593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted L Gragson ◽  
Victor D. Thompson ◽  
David S. Leigh ◽  
Florent Hautefeuille

1939 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 288
Author(s):  
Ernest Cadman Colwell ◽  
Martin Dibelius ◽  
Frederick C. Grant

JAMA ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 255 (20) ◽  
pp. 2757
Author(s):  
William D. Edwards
Keyword(s):  

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