Tatian's Diatessaron

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Barker
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Middle Dutch ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Codex Fuldensis

In the late-second century, Tatian the Assyrian constructed a new Gospel by intricately harmonizing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Tatian’s work became known as the Diatessaron, since it was derived “out of the four” eventually canonical Gospels. Although it circulated widely for centuries, the Diatessaron disappeared in antiquity. Nevertheless, numerous ancient and medieval Gospel harmonies survive in various languages. Some texts are altogether independent of the Diatessaron, while others are definitely related. Yet even Tatian’s known descendants differ in large and small ways, so attempts at reconstruction have proven confounding. This book forges a new path in Diatessaron studies. Covering the widest array of manuscript evidence to date, it reconstructs the ancient compositional practices and redactional tendencies by which Tatian wrote his Gospel. Then, by sorting every extant witness according to its narrative sequence, the macrostructure of Tatian’s Gospel becomes clear. Despite many shared agreements, there remain significant divergences between eastern and western witnesses. This book argues that the eastern ones preserve Tatian’s order, whereas the western texts descend from a fourth-century recension of the Diatessaron. Victor of Capua and his scribe used the recension to produce the Latin Codex Fuldensis in the sixth century. More controversially, the book offers new evidence that late medieval texts such as the Middle Dutch Stuttgart harmony independently preserve traces of the western recension. This study uncovers the composition, transmission, and reception history behind one of early Christianity’s most elusive texts.

Problems of the Urbanization of Pompeii: Excavations 1980–1981

1986 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Arthur
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Market System ◽  
Market Activity ◽  
Culture Systems ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
Threshold Point

Excavations conducted in 1980–81 for the Soprintendenza Archeologica at Pompeii, by the writer, revealed considerable information about conditions in and around the forum from the sixth century B.C. onwards. The results are briefly described and used to indicate hypotheses as to the development of the site. Already in the sixth century the whole 63 ha. appear to have been enclosed by a wall circuit. It is argued that the enceinte may have protected a port of trade sited at a threshold point between Greek, Etruscan and indigenous culture systems, and that the forum area, also possibly enclosed or demarcated, represented the site of formal market activity.Towards the close of the fourth century, in a changed political milieu, the fortifications were strengthened and evidence of Black Glaze kiln waste indicates the production of consumer commodities, taking the site a stage further from the simple agricultural and market centre suggested. However, it is not until the late third or second century, with its involvement in the ever more complex and expanding Mediterranean market system, that the evidence is clear enough to allow for the application of the term town to the site.

Excavations at Carthage 1977–8. Fourth Interim Report

1979 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Present Report ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
The North ◽  
New Information ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Harbour Area

SummaryThe present report covers the fourth and fifth seasons of excavation on the Ilôt de l'Amirauté at Carthage. Evidence from a borehole suggests that the pre-fourth-century B.C. sand previously taken for ‘natural’ may be a 5-m. thick fill above a level containing pottery. The later Punic sequence seems to indicate that the island and circular harbour were not made until the construction of the stone shipsheds in the late third or early second century B.C. The earth and timber ramps of these shipsheds were discovered with barnacles and probable ships’ nails lying on their surface. Much new evidence for the superstructure of the shipsheds was also found and an attempt has been made to reconstruct their appearance. Evidence for the Roman monumental rebuilding of the island in c. A.D. 200 has also been increased to the point where reconstructions can be attempted, and a large body of new information has been obtained for the structural sequence on the island from c. A.D. 200 to 700. Uncertainties remain over the interpretation of its function throughout the Roman period, although the rebuilding c. A.D. 200 might be associated with the creation of the African corn-fleet, the Classis Commodiana, in A.D. 186; and the site was possibly known as forum Karthag(inis) in the late fourth century and ‘the maritime agora’ in the time of Justinian.Apart from further small-scale work, the present excavations are concluded; some further study of the early environmental sequence in the harbour area will be carried out in the next two years. A fifth and final interim report is planned to cover the excavations since 1976 at the north side of the Circular Harbour.

The Bride of Christ, the “Male Woman,” and the Female Reader in Late Antiquity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Saint Jerome ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Gender Ambiguity

Christian literature in late antiquity offered contrasting models of female sanctity, emphasizing alternately the gender ambiguity of the young woman dressed as a man, and the nuptial imagery of the bride of Christ. Three texts, the second-century Acts of Paul and Thecla, the fourth-century Letter 22 to Eustochium by Saint Jerome, and the fifth- or sixth-century Passion of Eugenia, illustrate contrasting ways of thinking about how Christian literature could allow a young woman to reinvent herself.

The Date of the Muratorian Fragment

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-172
Author(s):  
John F. Lingelbach
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Church History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
First Time ◽  
Objective Methodology

Three hundred years after its discovery, scholars find themselves unable to determine the more likely of the two hypotheses regarding the date of the Muratorian Fragment, which consists of a catalog of New Testament texts. Is the Fragment a late second- to early third-century composition or a fourth-century composition? This present work seeks to break the impasse. The study found that, by making an inference to the best explanation, a second-century date for the Fragment is preferred. This methodology consists of weighing the two hypotheses against five criteria: plausibility, explanatory scope, explanatory power, credibility, and simplicity. What makes this current work unique in its contribution to church history and historical theology is that it marks the first time the rigorous application of an objective methodology, known as “inference to the best explanation” (or IBE), has been formally applied to the problem of the Fragment’s date.

The Roman Martyrs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the ‘peace of the Church’ (c. 312). Some of these Roman martyrs are universally known — SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example — but others are scarcely known outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones, which vary in length from a few paragraphs to over ninety, is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature. The Roman passiones martyrum have never previously been collected together, and have never been translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425 x 675, by anonymous authors who who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs’ remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the huge explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of pure fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. But although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. And because certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between (say) the second century and the fifth, the passiones throw valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. Above all, perhaps, the passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, since they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried. The book contains five Appendices containing translations of texts relevant to the study of Roman martyrs: the Depositio martyrum of A.D. 354 (Appendix I); the epigrammata of Pope Damasus d. 384) which pertain to Roman martyrs treated in the passiones (II); entries pertaining to Roman martyrs in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (III); entries in seventh-century pilgrim itineraries pertaining to shrines of Roman martyrs in suburban cemeteries (IV); and entries commemorating these martyrs in early Roman liturgical books (V).

How Greek Is the Greek Romance?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century

In the light of the findings of this book, the ‘Hellenocentric’ romances of Chariton and Xenophon look less like a point of origin for the Greek romance and more an exception against the larger backdrop of an ongoing interest in cultural blending and intermarriage. This chapter looks briefly at Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon (second century CE) and Heliodorus’s Charicleia and Theagenes (fourth century CE), reading them in terms of continuation of the intercultural themes found in earlier, Hellenistic ‘novels’.

Hesiod and Comedy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Cultural Currency ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

Comic dramas, attested as early as the later sixth century bce in Sicily and from ca. 486 bce in Attica, reflect familiarity with Hesiodic poetry from the time our actual documentation begins in the 470s for Sicily and 430s for Attica and into the mid-fourth century bce. Comic poets engaged with Hesiodic poetry at the level of specific allusion or echo and (more frequently) with Hesiodic stories, thought, themes, ideas, and style, now common cultural currency. They also engaged with the poet and his poetic persona, whether bracketed with Homer as a great cultural authority, distinguished as the anti-Homer in subjects or style, or showcased as an emblematic persona of poet and (didactic) sage. Aristophanes, for one, adopted elements of the Hesiodic persona in fashioning his own.

Milesian Measures: Time, Space, and Matter

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. White
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Complementary Problems

Any attempt to trace the origin of Greek philosophy faces two complementary problems. One is the fact that evidence for the early philosophers is woefully meager. The other problem raises a question of what is to be counted as philosophy. Yet neither problem is insuperable. This article proposes to reorient the search for origins in two ways, corresponding to these two problems. First, rather than trying to reconstruct vanished work directly, this article focuses on a crucial stage in its ancient reception, in particular, the efforts by Aristotle and his colleagues in the latter half of the fourth century to collect, analyze, and assess the evidence then available for earlier attempts to understand the natural world. The other shift in focus this article makes is from philosophy to science; or rather, it focuses on evidence for the interplay between observation, measurement, and explanation in the work of three sixth-century Milesians.

Capital Scripts

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-97
Author(s):  
David Wright
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Augustan Era

This chapter surveys capital letterforms, which have been in use from the second century BC until the present day. It defines two types of capitals in use since the Augustan Era: formal Square Capitals and informal Rustic Capitals, and traces the development of Rustic Capitals as a text hand in manuscripts of classical authors until the sixth century AD as well as the use of Square Capitals until the late fifth century AD. It closes with a look at the use of Rustic Capitals in rubrics of eighth-century manuscripts from England, and Rustic and Square Capitals found in Carolingian contexts.

Parting Ways or Rival Siblings? A Review and Analysis of Metaphors for the Separation of Jews and Christians in Antiquity

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-204
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Gabrielson
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Parting Ways ◽  
Jewish Christians ◽  
Parting Of The Ways

Since the early 1990s, ‘the parting of the ways’ has become academic shorthand, especially in anglophone scholarship, for the separation of Jews and Christians in antiquity. Often it is associated with a onetime, global break that occurred by the end of the second century, particularly over one or more theological issues. This model has been challenged as being too tidy. Other images have been offered, most notably that of ‘rival siblings’, but the ‘parting’ model remains supreme. Consensus has shifted in other ways, however. The ‘parting’, or better, ‘partings’, is now understood to be a localized, protracted, and multifaceted process that likely began in the second century and continued into or past the fourth century. It is also suggested here that the current debate covers five distinguishable topics: (1) mutual religious recognition, (2) the continued existence of ‘Jewish Christians’, (3) religious interaction, (4) social concourse, and (5) outsider classification.

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