Christianity, Judaisna and Other Greco-Roman Cults. Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, edited by J. NEUSNER (Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Vol. XII): Part I: New Testament, XI and 330 p.; Part II: Early Christianity, VII and 227 p. ; Part III : Judaism Before 70, VII and 248 p. ; Part IV : Judaism After 70. Other Greco-Roman Cults. Bibliography, VII and 241 p., E. J. Brill, Leiden 1975, cloth respect. f84,_, f72,_, f78,_ and f64,_

1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-210
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Greco Roman

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.

Crucifixion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Granger Cook ◽  
David W. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
The New Testament

Crucifixion and related bodily suspension penalties were widely employed in Antiquity for the punishment of criminals and in times of war. Jesus of Nazareth is the most famous victim of the cross, and many scholars of crucifixion approach the topic with interest in Jesus’ death; however, scholarship on crucifixion also provides insights into (among other fields) ancient warfare, criminal law, political history, and cultural imagery. Invariably, such a subject requires multidisciplinary study. Current areas of discussion include the definition of crucifixion itself, especially in light of the range of use of ancient terminology. Further debates concern the origins of the punishment, the cessation of its practice (at least in the West), the precise means of death, and whether certain cultures (e.g., Second Temple Judaism) endorsed the penalty. A large portion of this article examines the many issues related to crucifixion as a form of execution in Antiquity. The topic of crucifixion in the ancient world includes a variety of issues: Near Eastern suspensions, Greek and Roman extreme penalties and crucifixion, the practice of penal suspension and crucifixion in Second Temple Judaism, the terminology for crucifixion and suspension, crucifixion in the New Testament, the practice of crucifixion in Late Antiquity, crucifixion and law in the ancient world, the question of crucifixion and martyrdom, Greco-Roman imagery of crucifixion and related punishments, Christian iconography of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the later history of the punishment. The last sections of this article then turn to understandings of Jesus’ crucifixion in the New Testament and other early Christian literature.

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.

The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman

The article deals with the complex relationship between the religious revolution of late antiquity and cultural changes in the Roman world. It focuses on new attitudes to books, and analyses them in parallel with new conceptions of the self emerging in early Christianity. In particular, it seeks to understand the paradox of the early monks having been at once fierce opponents and carriers of Greco-Roman paideia.

De-Spiritualizing Pneuma

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 365-383
Author(s):  
Paul Robertson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Physiological Process ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
New Testament Studies

This paper is one of several presented at the 2010sbl naasrsession in Atlanta concerning anachronism and translation in the study of early Christianity. It argues that the concept ofpneuma’s central importance to Paul’s thought makes it a prime candidate to remain untranslated in scholarship. Most scholarship onpneumatranslates this word ‘Spirit’, which imports normative Christian theological implications. This reflects a modern, Western understanding of religion that is derived from thinkers like Kant and Descartes, which privileges dualisms of mind/body and material/spirit, and which foregrounds the importance of a private, internal, subjective religious experience anachronistic relative to Paul. I redress this through a theoretical shift toward contextualizing Paul’s understanding ofpneumaas a physiological process with analogues in ancient Greco-Roman medical thought. This approach is briefly compared to other influential accounts ofpneumain New Testament studies, and subsequently treats several Pauline passages within this new lens.

The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-376
Author(s):  
Mike Duncan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical History ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Rhetorical Force ◽  
Apostolic Church

Current histories of rhetoric neglect the early Christian period (ca. 30–430 CE) in several crucial ways–Augustine is overemphasized and made to serve as a summary of Christian thought rather than an endpoint, the texts of church fathers before 300 CE are neglected or lumped together, and the texts of the New Testament are left unexamined. An alternative outline of early Christian rhetoric is offered, explored through the angles of political self-invention, doctrinal ghostwriting, apologetics, and fractured sermonization. Early Christianity was not a monolithic religion that eventually made peace with classical rhetoric, but as a rhetorical force in its own right, and comprised of more factions early on than just the apostolic church.

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.

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