In Stone and Story: Early Christianity in the Roman World, by Bruce W. Longenecker

2021 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 380-382
Author(s):  
D. Forrest Mills
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Roman World

The Interpretation of the Book of Revelation in Early Christianity

2020 ◽  
pp. 393-411
Author(s):  
Charles E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The One

This chapter attempts an overview of the use and interpretation of the book of Revelation up to the end of the fourth century. Revelation’s first readers shared with its author a marginalized status in the Roman world and naturally tended to interpret its images, which spoke to them of both their current and future situations, in the light of present circumstances. Chiliast and non-chiliast approaches to Revelation’s eschatology emerged early, as interpreters sought to steer a path between Jewish messianic expectation on the one side, and anti-creational, dualizing heresy on the other. By the late second and early third century, writers were explicitly debating the hermeneutical methods appropriate to the exposition of Revelation and other prophetic Scriptures. Victorinus of Pettau (late third century) published the first known commentary on the book, but it is the ecclesiastically centered commentary of Tyconius that sets the stage for medieval exegesis.

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.

Pottery

2019 ◽  
pp. 295-312
Author(s):  
R. Scott Moore
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter discusses the role ceramics play in addressing archaeological questions related to early Christianity. Ceramic artifacts, such as fine wares and amphorae, have typically been used to provide chronological markers for dating, or to provide evidence related to economic activities such as trade and exchange. Religious decorations on fine wares and stamps on amphora also provide insight into the presence and spread of Christianity even if there remain significant problems in connecting these decorations with religious identity. Previously neglected ceramic artifacts, such as roof tiles, ampullae, and decorative covers, offer new possibilities for untapped evidence related to the nature of the Christian religion in the Roman world.

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.

The idea of becoming an individual in the context of early Christianity

1997 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Pavlo Pavlenko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

The last centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, the first centuries after that, were enveloped in the history of mankind as a period of the total crisis and the decline of the Greco-Roman civilization, a crisis that covered virtually all spheres of the social life of the Roman world and which, as ever before, experienced almost every one, whether he is a slave or a free citizen, a small merchant or a big slave or an aristocrat. As a reaction to the crisis, in various parts of the empire the civil wars and the slavery uprising erupt in different parts of the empire. Under such conditions of life, the world around itself no longer seemed to man to be self-sufficient, harmonious, stable, "good" and warded by a cohort of traditional deities. Yes, and the gods themselves were now turned out to be incapable, unable to change the unceasing flow of fatal doom.

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