Excavating Tragical Perspectives in Early Christianity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
The Human Condition ◽  
Christian Tragedy ◽  
Romans 8

This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the monograph by establishing the paucity of actual works of early Christian tragedy, but also the growing Christian recognition of the power of tragedy to convey the vulnerability of the human condition and the subjection of all creation to what the Apostle Paul himself called an existential “vanity” or “futility” (Romans 8:19–23). The Christian reception and reworking of tragedy, however, stood at the end of a long evolution of tragedy and of its role in Greco-Roman civilization, which included strong philosophical criticism of the genre (Plato) and vigorous defense of its cultural utility (Aristotle). Christian polemicists against pagan theatrical art seized on the antecedent philosophical criticism but also developed their own, and included tragedy in their condemnation of the immorality, seductiveness, and irreligion of all pagan entertainment and “spectacle.” Yet Christian thinkers began their own rehabilitation of salvageable elements of tragedy as a literary, rhetorical, and dramatic artform. Some found noble and even theologically enriching passages in the ancient tragedians. Others looked, however, to free the genre to Christian appropriation, and to develop uniquely Christian forms of “tragical mimesis” for the edification of their audiences.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
The Relationship

Between the second and the sixteenth centuries CE, references to the Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria occur exclusively in texts written by Christians. David T. Runia has described this phenomenon as the adoption of Philo by Christians as an “honorary Church Father.” Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and recent investigations of the “Parting of the Ways” of early Christianity and Judaism, this study argues that early Christian invocations of Philo reveal ongoing efforts to define the relationship between Jewishness and Christianness, their areas of overlap and points of divergence. The introduction situates invocations of Philo within the wider context of early Christian writing about Jews and Jewishness. It considers how Philo and his early Christian readers participated in the larger world of Greco-Roman philosophical schools, text production, and the ethical and intellectual formation (paideia) of elite young men in the Roman Empire.

Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udo Schnelle
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Urban Congregations ◽  
Intellectual Level

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

A Taxonomy of Sin in the New Testament Worlds

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Jewish Scriptures

Understanding the contextual worlds within which the New Testament perceptions of sin arose is crucial. The immediate context for early Christianity was the Jewish world out of which Jesus also operated, which included Jewish understandings of sin especially as delineated in the Jewish Scriptures and as addressed within the sacrificial cult of the Jerusalem Temple. But in turning to the Apostle Paul and other later New Testament writers, it is equally important to understand the moral worlds envisioned in Greco-Roman religiosity and philosophy. In this realm, sin as moral failure was much less prominent than sin as ignorance or error in judgment. As Christianity moved into the second century and beyond we find understandings of sin that retain both Jewish and Greco-Roman sensibilities regarding human sin.

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.

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.

Laying Out the Fleece

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Near East ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Different Cultures

Chapter 3 approaches Gideon’s story in three different ways: the role of divine signs in the ancient Near East; the portrait of Gideon as a hesitant solider in need of divine assurance in the biblical stories of Judg 6:36–40, 7:1–8, and 7:9–15; and the ways that early Christian exegetes interpreted Gideon’s requests for divine assurance. The chapter continues to trace how masculinity is constructed in different cultures, including the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity, where men were encouraged to fight spiritual battles rather than physical battles. These interpretations serve as a powerful reminder that masculinity is always “in crisis,” tending toward transformation and change, depending on cultural context.

scholarly journals Ritual, Memory and Writing in Early Christianity

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
RISTO URO
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
Religious Teaching ◽  
Christian Literature

The article examines ways in which the views of biblical scholars as to the transmission of early Christian traditions, especially the Jesus traditions, have been revolutionized by so-called orality/literacy studies since Werner Kelber’s seminal The Oral and the Written Gospel (1983). In the 2000s, an important turn in the study of orality and literacy in early Christianity took place with the discovery of memory. This has given rise to a focus on theories of collective memory and more recently on the cognitive aspects of individual memory, producing fresh new insights into the close intertwining of orality and literacy in ancient literary activity. The last part of the article brings up the role of ritual in the transmission of early Christian traditions, an aspect that has received less attention in the discussion. For purposes of further analysis, three perspectives on the role of ritual in the study of orality and textuality in early Christianity are highlighted and elaborated. The first underscores the need for a fresh analysis of the numerous liturgical passages in the New Testament identified by the generation of form critics. The second focuses on oral-aural (‘liturgical’) aspects of early Christian literature as part of the larger phenomenon of Greco-Roman literary culture, in which literacy was defined by public performance and recitation to a degree that differs substantially from the modern use of printed books. The last perspective highlights the important question of ritual’s capacity to function as an instrument of religious teaching and doctrinal consolidation.

Evil, Suffering, and Original Sin

2016 ◽  
pp. 138-150
Author(s):  
Nicholas E. Lombardo
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Catholic Theological ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
The Human Condition

For early Christians, the revelation of Jesus Christ brought more than hope and ecstatic expectation. It also sharpened their sense of the disjunction between who we are and who we are meant to be. Working backwards from their experience of the risen Christ, they came to see Christ’s death and resurrection as proof not only of God’s love but also of the existential need for a saviour. Gradually, early Christian reflection coalesced into the doctrine of the fall or the doctrine of original sin. The Catholic theological tradition has always embraced this doctrine as a necessary tool for balancing appreciation for the goodness of creation with unblinking realism about the human condition. Its precise theological formulation, however, has varied considerably over the centuries. This chapter discusses the historical origins of Catholic teaching, the classical synthesis solidified by the Council of Trent, and recent developments in theology and magisterial teaching.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Burnham
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Australian Science ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Fiction Writer ◽  
The Human Condition

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on the work of Australian science fiction (SF) author Greg Egan. At the time of this writing Egan has published twelve novels and sixty shorter stories. Over time we can chart a clear career trajectory that any author could be proud of: an early mix of successes and rejections, slowly finding his core themes and audience, getting published regularly, showing up in Year's Best anthologies, getting award nominations, moving from short stories to novels, and winning major awards. There is no doubt that what Egan writes is near the heart of contemporary SF and hard SF. More than any other contemporary science fiction writer, he has set himself a project of raising science's profile through art—to convince people that science is as important and critical to the human condition as romance or religion.

scholarly journals Gender topic in the Corinthian sermons and epistles of the apostle Paul

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-277
Author(s):  
Konstantin Sharov
Keyword(s):  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Culture

In the paper, several well-known passages from the Epistles of the Apostle Paul are studied that raise the women’s issue in Corinth and still cause many discrepancies and contradictory assessments from masculine bias and chauvinism in early Christian preaching to St Paul’s personal misogyny. The author shows that these places should be interpreted as a continuation of the Corinthian sermons of the Apostle, deliberately composed by Paul in the context of non-Christian Greco-Roman culture of Corinth revived by Julius Cæsar. At the heart of this Corinthian culture, there was the famous temple of Aphrodite, sacred prostitution and the exquisitely hedonistic hetæras society.

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