Divine Guidance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intertestamental Literature ◽  
Divine Guidance

How are claims to God’s guidance to be understood against the background of fears, fundamentalism, and violence inspired by religious belief? But equally, how are acts of humanity, love, and sacrificial service to be understood, when they also claim to be inspired by God? How is healthy religion to be distinguished from unhealthy religion? Questions like these were the subject of lively debate in the first-century world of Corinth, where the views of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and early Christian residents mixed continually, and where Paul established one of the first Christian communities. While their differences were real, there was also common ground and a shared critique of destructive religion. This study looks at how believers and unbelievers confront questions about divine guidance, discernment, delusion, and rational thought. Part I looks at Greco-Roman views, focusing on the archeology of ancient Corinth and the writings of Homer, Virgil, Lucretius, Posidonius, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and others. Part II surveys Jewish attitudes by looking at Philo and Josephus, Qumran, early rabbinic writers, and other intertestamental literature. Part III unpacks Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians to show that issues of divine guidance and discernment are woven throughout as Paul shapes a distinctly Christian approach. Part IV brings the historical strands together and considers religious experience research to draw some conclusions about discernment and delusion today in the hope that rational and mystical need not be mutually exclusive.

Divine Guidance

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-272
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
The University ◽  
Divine Guidance

This chapter compares and contrasts the approaches to divine guidance in the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and early Christian worlds of Paul’s Corinth and their relevance for the present. Their debates about healthy and unhealthy religious life and rational thought remain remarkably contemporary. The chapter considers modern religious experience, both positive and negative, including a seminal event in the life of Martin Luther King. The Religious Experience Research Centre, based at the University of Wales, has collected over 6,000 accounts. The Centre interviewed at length two Eastern Orthodox scholars (Kallistos Ware and Lev Gillet) for their views on discerning the value of such experiences. They are wary of delusion and independently conclude that claims to divine guidance ought to be evaluated by what results they produce. But they and others hope that rational and mystical experience can be held together for the full flourishing of human life.

Subverting Slavery: Philemon, Onesimus, and Paul’s Gospel of Reconciliation

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Bernardo Cho
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Cultural Expectations

The lack of a taxonomic exposition by Paul on the issue of slavery in the Roman Empire has led modern scholars to regard the apostle as a socially disengaged religious figure. However, given the risks of anachronistically employing modern categories to describe Paul’s social stance, it seems imperative that interpreters take seriously the context of the first-century Roman Empire when exegeting Paul’s view of the specific issue of slavery. By taking Paul’s Epistle to Philemon as a case study, this paper examines Paul’s particular request to Philemon in light of the concurrent Greco-Roman sources, and analyses how the apostle’s stance towards slavery intersected with the cultural expectations of his time. The intended outcome of this study is both to elucidate how Paul addressed the problem of slavery in the early Christian communities and to provide modern readers with a theological framework through which to engage their own social struggles.

Jesus and Paul

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-170
Author(s):  
Donald Senior
Keyword(s):  
Literary Form ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Pastoral Letters ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Paul's Letters

The writings of Paul form a major part of the New Testament. This includes not only the so-called undisputed letters of Paul but also other letters attributed to him in antiquity that might have been written by later disciples of Paul citing him as author to evoke his apostolic authority. This chapter describes what we know of Paul’s life, beginning with his strong Jewish identity as well as his roots in the Greco-Roman world. Paul himself cites his inaugural visionary experience of the Risen Jesus as a decisive turning point in his life, leading him ultimately to be an ardent proclaimer of the gospel to the Gentile world. Paul’s letters to various early Christian communities in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world served as extensions of his missionary efforts. Although fashioned in a different literary form than the gospel narratives, Paul’s letters also portray Jesus’s identity as both rooted in Judaism and exhibiting a unique transcendent character and purpose. Paul’s Christology focuses intensely on the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The so-called deutero-Pauline Letters extend Paul’s theological vision; in the case of Colossians and Ephesians, situating the redemptive and reconciling role of Christ within the cosmos, and, in the case of the Pastoral Letters, bringing Paul’s exhortations about the life of the Christian community to some of the developing challenges of the late first-century church.

scholarly journals The New Testament teaching on family matters

2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Women Slaves ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Family

The article shows that first-century urban Christian communities, such as those founded by Paul, brought in both whole families and individual women, slaves, and others. An example of an early Christian family can be seen in the autobiographical details of the Shepherd of Hermas, whether factual or not. The article aims to demonstrate that the New Testament teaching on family gives two very different pictures: the structured harmony of the patriarchal family as presented in the household codes of Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5, over against the warnings and challenges of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels to leave family in favor of discipleship. The developing devotion to martyrdom strengthened the appeal to denial. Another version of the essay was published in Horsley, Richard A (ed), A people’s history of Christianity, Volume 1: Christian origins, 201-220. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.1.

WHAT IF PAUL HAD TRAVELLED EAST RATHER THAN WEST?

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
North And South

AbstractFor first-century Jews the eastern disapora was at least as important as the western. When Paul returned from Arabia (Nabatea) to Damascus, his intention was to travel east from Damascus to Mesopotamia, where the synagogue communities, descendants of the original exiles of both northern and southern tribes of Israel, would have been his starting point for mission to the Gentiles of the area. But when he escaped arrest by the Nabatean ethnarc, Nabatean control of the trade routes south and east of Damascus left him no choice but to travel to Jerusalem, where he re-thought the geographical scope of his mission. Had Paul travelled east, the Christian communities of both north and south Mesopotamia might have flourished already in the first century and Paul's writings might have had more influence on Syriac theology. Considering how Christianity in the Roman Empire would have developed without Paul entails rejecting such exaggerated views of Paul's significance as that Paul invented Christianity or that without Paul Christianity would have remained a Jewish sect. The Gentile mission began without Paul and took place in areas, such as Rome and Egypt, which were not evangelized by Paul. Without Paul much would have been different about the way the early Christian movement would have spread across the Roman Empire, but it would still have spread, with much the same long-term effects.

Sin in the New Testament

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Message

This book examines what the different New Testament writings have to say about sin within the broader historical and theological contexts of first-century Christianity. These contexts include both the immediate world of Judaism out of which early Christianity emerged, as well as the larger Greco-Roman world into which Christianity quickly spread as an increasingly Gentile religious movement. The Jewish sacrificial system associated with the Jerusalem Temple was important for dealing with human sin, and early Christians appropriated the language and imagery of sacrifice in describing the salvific importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Greco-Roman understandings of sin as error or ignorance played an important role in the spreading of the Christian message to the Gentile world. The book details the distinctive portraits of sin in each of the canonical Gospels in relation to the life and ministry of Jesus. Beyond the Gospels the book develops how the letters of Paul and other early Christian writers address the reality of sin, again primarily in relation to the revelatory ministry of Jesus.

Neither Jew nor Greek

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-251
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Divine Guidance

This chapter shows how issues of decisions, divine guidance, discernment, and delusion are woven throughout 1 Corinthians. Paul’s community was shaped by Greco-Roman and Jewish views, but he presents a distinctive new way based on the Cross. As he himself told them, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Identification with the crucified and risen Christ gave access to the Spirit and a life of communion with God in various ways: through the scriptures (reinterpreted in the light of Christ), the liturgical life of the community (especially baptism and the Lord’s Supper), tradition, preaching, apostles and community leaders, service, co-suffering, and, above all, love. But this does not eclipse individual divine communion, calling, and discernment. Nor does it exclude rational thought, which in Paul’s approach is equally illumined by divine guidance to integrate rational and mystical.

scholarly journals Radiocarbon Dates from the Jewish Catacombs of Rome

Radiocarbon ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V Rutgers ◽  
Arie F M De Jong ◽  
Klaas van der Borg
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ams Dating

This paper reports on the first chronological assessment of the Jewish Catacombs of the ancient Rome performed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of small-size charcoal fragments scattered in the mortar used for sealing off the graves in the Villa Torlonia Catacomb complex. The significance of the obtained 14C readings has been carefully evaluated by taking into consideration the known technologies of quicklime production during Roman and recent times. The new data are of great concern for providing evidence that the Jewish catacombs were used for burial since the first century AD, thus some two centuries prior to the period traditionally believed to be the starting point of burial in the Jewish catacombs of ancient Rome. Such a significant aging of the Jewish catacombs could result in a deep re-examination of the current understanding of the beginning and the evolution of the custom of catacomb burial in both Jewish and early Christian communities in Rome.

'The Roman Family' in Recent Research: State of the Question

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beryl Rawson
Keyword(s):  
Family Relationships ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Cultural Differentiation ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
The City

AbstractIn the past two decades of rapid expansion,the study of ‘the Roman family’ has developed from its early focus on the city of Rome and on legal, literary and epigraphical sources to a wider geographical canvas and to more extensive use of archaeological material. The whole range of sources is now being applied to particular problems, providing different perspectives and a better chance of contextualising specific details. Of the new methodologies available, demography and the archaeology of domestic space are proving most productive. Questions most frequently debated are the Romans’ concept of ‘the family’ and the nature of family relationships. There is a growing recognition that regional and cultural differentiation must be taken into account: generalisations about ‘the Mediterranean world’ or even ‘Greco-Roman culture’ are seldom useful. Similarly, regional differentiations in early Christianity are being recognised: Christian communities were likely to share many of the characteristics of the city or area in which they were developing. This makes the growing dialogue between Romanists and Early Christian scholars profitable and stimulating, and topics of particular fertilisation are those of family relationships and domestic space.

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.

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