Christians Reading Philo

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Two Factors

It is widely assumed amongst scholars that Clement of Alexandria’s citations of Philo demonstrate continuity between Philo’s Jewish community and early Christians in ancient Alexandria. This chapter argues that the assumed continuity between Jewish synagogue and Christian church in Alexandria is problematical. This is due to two factors. The first is the Jewish uprisings against Rome under Trajan and Hadrian at the beginning of the second century and the second the mobility of people and texts in the Roman Empire. The frequent copying and easy circulation of texts among students of philosophy in the Roman world suggests that Clement may have encountered Philo’s writings in a philosophical school rather than via transmission in an institution such as a Jewish-Christian synagogue or catechetical school.

Caligula, the Church of Antioch and the Gentile Mission

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Nicholas H Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis study examines such data as are available regarding the impact of the crisis which confronted Jewish communities in many parts of the Roman Empire during the reign ofGaius Caligula (3 7-41 CE). Particular attention is given to Antioch on the Orontes, and to the Christian community which emerged there and was to become a major force both in the spread of Christianity and in the conversion of Gentiles to a hitherto Jewish movement. It is argued that the crisis was a major catalyst in changing the character of the Christian church in Antioch, so that it acquired an identity distinct from that of the Jewish community. The reappraisal of eschatological expectations occasioned by the crisis led to the conviction that Gentiles must be included in the Church before the parousia of Christ.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Adrych ◽  
Robert Bracey ◽  
Dominic Dalglish ◽  
Stefanie Lenk ◽  
Rachel Wood
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Ancient Religion ◽  
The Many ◽  
Material Record

This chapter focuses on two marble tauroctony statue groups that are now in the British Museum’s collection. Both are thought to be originally from Rome and date roughly to between the end of the first and the second century AD. In this opening chapter, we look at several of the many interpretations that have been offered for the tauroctony and discuss the image’s development in the Roman world. At the heart of all such interpretations lies the problem of how to reconstruct an ancient reality based on scant remains. These carefully constructed compositions, painstakingly restored in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, simultaneously present us with the characteristic representation of Mithras in the Roman Empire, yet also show the difficulties in reconstructing ancient religion from a fragmented material record.

Building a Roman Funeral Pyre

Antichthon ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 30-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Noy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Cultural Homogenisation ◽  
Over Time

Until the second century A.D., the bodies of most people who died at Rome and in the western provinces of the Empire ended up on a funeral pyre, to be reduced to ashes which would be placed in a grave. The practical arrangements for this process have attracted some attention from archaeologists but virtually none from ancient historians. In this paper I shall try to combine literary and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the pyre was prepared. I hope that this will provide a fuller background than currently exists for understanding the numerous brief references which can be found in Roman literature and the two surviving representations of a pyre (other than an emperor's) in Roman art. Cremation had different traditions in different areas, e.g. as an elite practice in parts of Gaul, even if ultimately it ‘may have been thought of as a sign of allegiance to Rome.’ There clearly were local differences, not just between provinces but between places quite close together, as well as changes over time, but many of the rites of cremation appear to have been similar throughout the Western Roman Empire, illustrating what Morris calls ‘a massive cultural homogenisation of the Roman world at a time when political and economic regionalism was increasing’.

Oasis Forts of Legio III Augusta on the Routes to the Fezzan

1954 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 56-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Military Architecture ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Made In

The two well-preserved Roman fortresses to be described in this paper have been known for many years. They were first brought to European notice by the British-sponsored geographical expeditions of the nineteenth century, when Tripoli was the spring-board for repeated attempts to find a route into Central Africa. Although important discoveries have been made in one of these forts (Bu Ngem) in more recent years, no detailed ground-plans have previously been published.The following notes and illustrations are primarily intended to fill this lacuna in the documentation of the African limes; but it is hoped that they may also serve to increase our knowledge of early third-century trends in Roman military architecture. The European frontiers of the Roman Empire have yielded, and are still yielding, numerous examples of first- and second-century forts, and equally numerous examples of the forts erected during the later-third and early-fourth centuries, when barbarian invasion threatened the whole Roman world.

Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Nega‘im

AJS Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Balberg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Medical Rhetoric ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Roman World

The second century CE has long been recognized as a time of intense preoccupation with medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world. Medicine had always been a part of the Greek paideia, and acquaintance with it was traditionally required of every aristocrat, but it was during the second Sophistic period that a new form of medical self-presentation emerged in which the knowledge of medicine was hailed not only as one of the apices of the intellectual habitus, but also as indispensable to everyday life. As Michel Foucault observed, the literature of this period placed an enormous emphasis on the body not just as a tool to be used but also as an end in itself, and the classic philosophical ideal of “caring for the Self” (epimeleia heautou) came to entail unrelenting attention to one's health and physical well-being. In this setting, the doctor—the bearer of medical knowledge and the ultimate caretaker of the Self—was seen as offering more than physical relief: The doctor was both a healer and a mentor, and functioned as a watchperson and a guide to right living. Indeed, it is in this period that we first come across the appellations iatrophilosophos (doctor-philosopher) and iatrosophistes (doctor-sophist). Medical knowledge had thus become a most esteemed form of knowledge during the Antonine period of the Roman Empire, and doctors, as its guardians, interpreters, and practitioners, were invested with substantial power and authority.

The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 61-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Scheidel ◽  
Steven J. Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Domestic Product ◽  
Total Output ◽  
Total Income ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Different methods of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that élites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income, while middling households (perhaps 10 per cent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.

scholarly journals The Influence of Christianity upon the Roman Empire

1909 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-49
Author(s):  
Arthur Cushman McGiffert
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Moral Standard ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Good For ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
Great Advance

It has commonly been taken for granted that Christianity must have had a great and beneficent influence upon the Roman Empire, within which it had its origin and whose official religion it finally became. This not unnatural assumption is, however, very difficult to substantiate. One may recognize that the religion of Christ was a great advance upon the paganism of antiquity, and that its final victory was a blessing to the world, and yet find it far from easy to show how and to what extent the Roman world was benefited by it. It is simple enough to point to individual lives within the Christian church that were purified and helped. But to prove that the common level of life within the Empire was raised, that society at large was bettered, that the general moral standard was elevated, that political principles and civil institutions and economic ideals were improved by its influence, is altogether another matter. It is not enough to content ourselves with the assumption that Christianity being in itself a good thing must have been good for the Roman world; it is incumbent upon us to show that it actually proved so.

Caligula, the Church of Antioch and the Gentile Mission

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Nicholas H. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis study examines such data as are available regarding the impact of the crisis which confronted Jewish communities in many parts of the Roman Empire during the reign of Gaius Caligula (37-41 CE). Particular attention is given to Antioch on the Orontes, and to the Christian community which emerged there and was to become a major force both in the spread of Christianity and in the conversion of Gentiles to a hitherto Jewish movement. It is argued that the crisis was a major catalyst in changing the character of the Christian church in Antioch, so that it acquired an identity distinct from that of the Jewish community. The reappraisal of eschatological expectations occasioned by the crisis led to the conviction that Gentiles must be included in the Church before the parousia of Christ.

scholarly journals Św. Justyn – „sprawiedliwy pośród narodów”

Vox Patrum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 751-761
Author(s):  
Justyna E. Wróblewska
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Patristic Literature ◽  
New Type ◽  
True Knowledge

This article refers to St. Justin, who was one of the Church Fathers, one of the first Christian philosophers and Greek apologists and also a martyr for the Christian faith when this was spreading throughout the Roman Empire. In the preface, it is shown that a hostile attitude existed at the time of both the Roman Empire and the Jews towards Christianity at its very beginning. Christians were being stultified and sentenced to death. Each part of the article shows Justin in a different cultural role. First, we can see the beginnings of his life. Justin lived in the second century after Christ. He was born in Samaria, which was firmly hellenised and that is why he was well prepared to live in a multinational empire in those times. As a Christian philosopher Justin was entering into relations with the Jews and pagans, always seeking the truth. The next part is about Justin – as a philosopher. He was also the most popular and the most outstanding Christian philosopher of the second century after Christ. He kept a positive attitude towards philosophy. He valued Stoics, Platonics, Socrates and Plato in some areas, so that he could notice elements of truth in the teachings of Greek philosophers. But Justin was against religious syncretism. We owe to Justin the demonstration of Christian true faith through pagan philo­sophical concepts. He was looking for dialogue between Christianity and pagan philosophy and used its terms to show others the only true wisdom which he had got to know by himself. Since the mid-second century the pastoral purpose of patristic literature was changing to become a means of defence of Christianity against attacks from out­side and inside – meaning heretics. He also started the new type of discussion with heretics. Then Justin as a theologian – he refers many times to the Old Testament and Prophets announcing the coming of Jesus – Logos, whose grain of truth Justin noticed in every ancient teaching. Justin also refers to the parallel between Socrates and Christ, something we can find everywhere in the Apology of Justin. He also left us the oldest descriptions of the sacrament of Baptism and the Eucharist. He is the person who created the dialogue between faith and intellect. Another part speaks about apologies which first of all were to demand equa­lity with other religions and philosophies. Then as an apologist – he defended Christianity from unfounded accusations by Roman emperors and cultural elites. He defended the Christian faith through the use of rational arguments. He wanted to show universal truth via rational discourse. Finally Justin as the righteous man , which we can say he was called because of his name (Lat. iustinus – righteous) and which was the way he acted in his life. He was searching for the truth in his life, the true knowledge. He founded a philosophical school in Rome in which he taught one true wisdom and as a true philosopher he did this free of charge. He was accused of being a Christian and brought before the judge, because he did not accept the pagan gods, and did not obey the Emperor. The best apology for Christians was their readiness for martyrdom. As a Christian philosopher he ended his life and sealed it by shedding his blood shed for Christ. He is regarded as one of the early Church Fathers. This early witness of Tradition became one of the first who tried to bring Christian thinking closer to Greek philosophy; Justin became a something of a keystone which linked antiquity with the novelty of Christianity. In conclusion, Justin brought Christianity closer to philosophy by explaining it using philoso­phical language.

What Graeco-Roman Grammar Was About

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. H. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Secure Place ◽  
Present Understanding

This book explains how the grammarians of the Graeco-Roman world perceived the nature and structure of the languages they taught. The volume focuses primarily on the early centuries AD, a time when the Roman Empire was at its peak; in this period, a grammarian not only had a secure place in the ancient system of education, but could take for granted an established technical understanding of language. By delineating what that ancient model of grammar was, the book highlights both those aspects that have persisted to this day and seem reassuringly familiar, such as ‘parts of speech’, as well as those aspects that are wholly dissimilar to our present understanding of grammar and language.

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