Churches in Ancient Christianity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Last
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Diversity ◽  
Peter 2 ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
Church Structure ◽  
Analogous Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Associations

The English term, “church,” derives from the Greek, kuriakon (κυριακόν) (“that which belongs to the lord”), and is the traditional English translation for a variety of Greek and Latin terms that were used to designate gatherings of Christ-believers in antiquity, including the eventually-dominant ekklēsia /ecclesia (1 Cor 1:2), as well as synōdos (NewDocs 6.26.19), thiasōtai (Eusebius, E.C. 1.3.12), synagōgē (Jas. 2.2), koinōnia (Origen, Cels. 1.1), hetaeria (Pliny, Ep. 10.96), and corpus (Tertullian, Apol. 39). The reality that these designations also denoted Greco-Roman associations (including Judean synagogues)––and that titles for church offices were already employed by private associations––prompted earlier research to explore terminological convergences between ancient churches and private associations, and to investigate the extent to which ancient churches were modeled after Greco-Roman associations (e.g., Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches) and synagogues (e.g., Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church). Some recent scholarship on ancient churches has abandoned the quest to determine their identity (e.g., as associations, synagogues, philosophical schools), and now consults analogous data for the heuristic purpose of raising new questions about church structure and practices from ancient associations about whose practices we know much more (e.g., Kloppenborg, “Membership Practices in Pauline Christ Groups”). Other researchers continue to speak about the identity of churches as associations (e.g., Alikin, Earliest History of the Christian Gathering) or as unique from associations (e.g., Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum). This bibliography covers ancient churches from the earliest period up to 313 ce––the so-called ante pacem era. In these centuries there was diversity from church to church but some commonalities existed at the foundation of diverse ancient church practices: the earliest churches were gatherings of Christ-believers (and invitees of various kinds) for liturgical activities such as prayer, reading, preaching, teaching, hymns (1 Cor 14:26; Didache 8–10; Justin, Apology 66–67) and social purposes such as eating, drinking, and vying for honor (1 Cor 11:17–34; 2 Peter 2:13; Ignatius, Smyrneans 8:2–4; Pliny, Epistles 10.97; Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 25; Tertullian, Apology 39). It has been suggested that liturgical practices were rather uniform in churches (Salzmann, Lehren und Ermahnen) but this theory has not persuaded most scholars (Rouwhorst, “The Roots of the Early Christian Eucharist”). Likewise, meal practices in early churches, while perhaps deriving from a common Greco-Roman banquet tradition, nonetheless might have been structured differently from church to church (McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists). In terms of architecture, it is traditionally thought that pre-313 ce churches met almost exclusively in un-renovated houses and, later, renovated houses (Filson, “The Significance of the Early House Churches”) but Adams, in his 2013 monograph, Earliest Christian Meeting Places, highlights the usage of rented space and other un-renovated meeting venues––and therefore identifies spatial diversity––in this period.

Private Associations in the Ancient Greek World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Private Associations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Greek World

Private associations abounded in the ancient Greek world and beyond, and this volume provides the first large-scale study of the strategies of governance which they employed. Emphasis is placed on the values fostered by the regulations of associations, the complexities of the private-public divide (and that divide's impact on polis institutions) and the dynamics of regional and global networks and group identity. The attested links between rules and religious sanctions also illuminate the relationship between legal history and religion. Moreover, possible links between ancient associations and the early Christian churches will prove particularly valuable for scholars of the New Testament. The book concludes by using the regulations of associations to explore a novel and revealing aspect of the interaction between the Mediterranean world, India and China.

scholarly journals Fra huskult til basilika

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Bilde
Keyword(s):  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Dwelling House ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dining Room

It is still an astonishing fact that no material remains of early Christian churches have been found antedating the building in Dura-Europos at the Euphrat River in present day Iraq. It was a usual private dwelling house that in 241 was rebuilt and transformed into a Christian cult place. This building, however, in no way resembled the magnificent Christian basilicas that were built from the time of Constantine the Great (ruling 306/324-337), and only the baptistery in the rebuilt houses proves that it actually was a Christian building. In the present article I briefly scetch the history of the development of the Christian cult building from the private meeting places at the time of the New Testament to the Constantinian basilicas. The main purpose, however, is to discuss the character of the Christian cult house in relation to a number of related earlier and contemporary types of buildings such as the classical Hellenistic-Roman temples, the Jewish synagogue and a number of Graeco-Roman buildings that can be reagrded as historical forerunners of the Christian church building: the Greek counsel hall (bouleutêrion), the hall of initiation (e.g. Eleusis), the lecture hall (such as gymnasium and stoa), the Greek and Near Eastern cult theatres, the roman basilica and the Roman mithraeum. From the beginning, obviously, the Christian cult building  was a meeting house like the Greek counsel hall, the roman basilica and the Jewish synagogue. But it was also a dining room, and, at least from 241, with thebatistery in Dura-Europos, it also became a hall of initiation. Thus, the Christian cult building developed by uniting a number of eatlier types of buildings, secular and sacred, and from the time of Constantine, the Christian basilica united the secular Greek meeting house, which was continued and further developed in the Jewish synagogue, the Greek hall of initiation, and the classical Graeco-Roman Temple.

scholarly journals Diakonos and prostatis: Women’s patronage in Early Christianity

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
Patronage System

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life.

scholarly journals Origen of Alexandria and the History of Racism as a Theological Problem

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-195
Author(s):  
Matthijs den Dulk
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Location ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Modern Racism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Origen Of Alexandria ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature

Abstract Despite important work on the Greco-Roman antecedents of modern racism, very limited attention has been paid to early Christian literature in this connection. This is remarkable not least because modern Western racism took shape initially in a European context heavily influenced by Christianity. The present essay contributes to addressing this lacuna by analysing statements about ‘other’ ethnicities in the work of Origen of Alexandria, one of the most important thinkers of the first three centuries ce. It argues that Origen defends a number of positions that exhibit substantial similarities with later racist modes of thinking. Earlier scholarly accounts that portray Origen as a champion of human equality and as engaged in anti-racist efforts therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny. Origen disparages certain ethnic groups and develops arguments that connect ethnic identity and geographical location with various degrees of sinfulness. His work offers clear evidence that theories of ethnic inferiority have a long history within the Christian matrix that stretches considerably beyond the modern and medieval periods.

Philosophers, Scribes, Rhetors … and Paul? The Educational Background of the New Testament

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Riley Estep
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
History Of

Of increasing interest to New Testament scholars is the educational background of Paul and the early Christians. As evangelical educators, such studies also engage our understanding of the Biblical and historical basis of Christian education. This article endeavors to ascertain the early Christian community's, and particularly Paul's, assessment of education in first-century A.D. Greco-Roman culture as one dimension of the interactions between the early Christian community and its culture. It will (1) provide a brief review of passages in the New Testament that reflect or interact with the educational community of the first-century A.D., (2) Conjecture Paul's assessment of education in Greco-Roman culture, with which early Christians interacted, (3) Itemize implications of Paul's opinion on Greco-Roman education for our understanding on the formation and history of Christian education, and finally (4) Address the need for further study of the subject.

An Early Christian Church in the Tropics: Excavation of the N.ª S.ª da Conceição, Cidade Velha, Cape Verde

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER EVANS ◽  
MARIE-LOUISE STIG SØRENSEN ◽  
KONSTANTIN RICHTER
Keyword(s):  
Cape Verde ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northern Side ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
The Town ◽  
East West

This chapter concerns what is arguably one of the first European-built Christian churches in the Tropics, the N.a S.a da Conceição, in Ribeira Grande (now known as Cidade Velha), the former capital of the Cape Verde Islands. It briefly covers the early history of the town and then proceeds to consider its earliest church. The evidence of historical documents is first outlined, and thereafter the results from the first explorative archaeological investigations focussed on the physical remains of the building are summarised. The excavations were successful in locating the early church, which can now be reconstructed as a large, one-and-a-half or two storey high, east‐west oriented building with a vaulted side-chapel on its northern side and buttressed corners on its western façade. Two tombstones found in situ within the floor confirm that the building dates to, at least, the early 16th century.

A Commerce of Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of

A Commerce of Knowledge: Trade, Religion, and Scholarship between England and the Ottoman Empire, c.1600–1760 tells the story of three generations of Church of England chaplains who served the English Levant Company in Aleppo, Syria, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book reconstructs the careers of its protagonists in the cosmopolitan city of Ottoman Aleppo, and brings to light the links between English commercial and diplomatic expansion and English scholarly and missionary interests: the study of Middle-Eastern languages; the exploration of biblical and Greco-Roman antiquities; and the early dissemination of Protestant literature in Arabic. Early modern Orientalism is usually conceived as an episode in the history of scholarship. By shifting the focus to Aleppo, A Commerce of Knowledge draws attention to connections between the seemingly aloof world of the early modern university and spheres of commercial and diplomatic life, tracing the emergence of new kinds of philological and archaeological enquiry in England back to a series of real-world encounters between the chaplains and the scribes, booksellers, priests, rabbis, and sheikhs whom they encountered in the Ottoman Empire. Setting the careers of its protagonists against a background of broader developments across Protestant and Catholic Europe, the book shows how the institutionalization of English scholarship, and the later English attempt to influence the Eastern Christian churches, were bound up with the international struggle to establish a commercial foothold in the Levant. It then argues that these connections would endure until the shift of British commercial and imperial interests to the Indian subcontinent in the second half of the eighteenth century fostered new currents of intellectual life at home.

The Early Codex Book

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-398
Author(s):  
Timothy Stanley
Keyword(s):  
History Of The Book ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Sacred Literature ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Made In

In 1933 Frederic Kenyon was one of the first to note the early Christian addiction to codex books. As later scholars confirmed, Christian communities reproduced their sacred literature in a way that differed from the largely scrolled Greco-Roman bibliographic cultures of the first centuries of the Common Era. Book historians and scholars of biblical literature alike have developed a range of competing theories in order to better understand this peculiarity. By evaluating their claims, a number of clarifications can be made in order to demonstrate the codex’s sensitivity to Jewish scribal practices as well as its capacity to include a cosmopolitan diversity of texts. Through these clarifications the codex book form itself can provide vital interpretative insights into early biblical literature and the longer history of the book today.


Philippians

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Reuman
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Social World ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
The Social

In Philippians John Reumann offers both classical approaches and new methods of understanding this New Testament book. With fresh commentary on the social world and rhetorical criticism, and special focus on the contributions of the Philippian house churches to Paul’s work and early Christian mission, Reumann clarifies Paul’s attitudes toward and interactions with the Philippians. Departing from traditional readings of Philippians in light of Acts, Reumann allows Paul to speak in his own right. His three letters from Ephesus shed new light on relationships, and we come to see how he approves some aspects of the dominant “culture of friendship” in Greco-Roman Philippi while disapproving others. He seeks to help the Philippians discern how to be citizens of the heavenly kingdom and also Caesar’s state, though there is an undercurrent of “Christ vs. Caesar.” Scholars, students, and general readers alike will find much of interest in John Reumann’s deeply researched and insightful new volume.

The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hellenistic Poetry ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy

This volume brings together twenty-nine junior and senior scholars to discuss aspects of Hesiod’s poetry and its milieu and to explore questions of reception over two and half millennia, from shortly after the poems’ conception to Twitter hashtags. Rather than an exhaustive survey of Hesiodic themes, the Handbook is conceived as a guide through terrain, some familiar, other less charted, examining both Hesiodic craft and later engagements with Hesiod’s stories of the gods and moralizing proscriptions of just human behavior. The volume is divided into four sections: “Hesiod in Context,” “Hesiod’s Art,” “Hesiod in the Greco-Roman Period,” and “Hesiod from Byzantium to Modern Times.” Topics of the chapters range from the “Hesiodic question” to the archaeology and economic history of archaic Boiotia, to Hesiod and Indo-European poetics, and from discussions of style to Hesiod’s vision of the supernatural in the Theogony, to questions of performer and audience interactions in the Works and Days. Looking at both poems together, other chapters explore tensions between diachronic and synchronic temporalities and varying portrayals of female figures. Reception studies range from Solon to comic books, with chapters in between on Hesiod and the pre-Socratics, Orphism, archaic art, Pindar, tragedy, comedy, Plato, Hellenistic poetry, Hellenistic philosophy, Virgil and the Georgic tradition, Ovid, Second Sophistic and early Christian authors in the Greco-Roman period, Byzantine and Renaissance writers and editions, Christian humanism and Milton, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Nietzsche, Freud and structuralism, and contemporary art and literature in postclassical times.

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