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.

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’.

The Celtic Warrior Fibula

1996 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
N. D. Meeks
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Front Cover ◽  
The Third ◽  
La Tène ◽  
La Tene

In 1960 and 1961 Ole Klindt-Jensen published two short notes about a golden statuette of a Celtic warrior, soldered to a fine brooch. He was convinced that the warrior did not belong to the brooch, and thought that they had been combined fairly recently. J. M. de Navarro added a comment to the 1961 note, concluding: ‘My impression (from photographs only) is that the brooch might date from the fourth century BC and the figure not before the latter half of the third or the second century BC, i.e. that it was added later.’ Klindt-Jensen's notes were accompanied by plates, and at the same time another photograph was published on the front cover ofCelticum, volume I. A decade later the brooch was shown at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and at the Hayward Gallery, London, as item no. 35 in the Early Celtic Art exhibition held in 1970. The catalogue entry was based on Klindt-Jensen's note, but no photograph was published. In the mid 1970s R. M. Rowlett prepared a paper on the authenticity of the brooch, including metal analyses and a comparison of its proportions with those of some La Tène II brooches: Rowlett considered that the figure of the warrior was contemporary with the rest of the brooch, which he accepted as an authentic antiquity. His paper was eventually published about twenty years later.

scholarly journals From Commentary to paribhāṣās: Kātyāyana and Patañjali vis-à-vis Vyāḍi

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-566
Author(s):  
Maria Piera Candotti ◽  
Tiziana Pontillo
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

Abstract The present paper is targeted on three landmarks in the long story of the paribhāṣās’ development. Two of these landmarks descended from the earliest testimony of Vyākaraṇa meta-rules, i. e. those included in Pāṇini’s grammar (fifth–fourth century BCE), and one which has been handed down as the first independent collection of paribhāṣās and attributed to Vyāḍi. In particular a shift is highlighted between Kātyāyaṇa’s (third century BCE) integrative approach (vacana) and Patañjali’s (second century BCE) recourse to implicit paribhāṣās in the Aṣṭādhyāyī as a powerful hermeneutical tool. A shift that helps in interpreting the need for a validation and collection of implicit pāṇinian paribhāṣās as carried out by authors such as Vyāḍi.

Roman Anglesey: Recent Discoveries

Britannia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 313-322
Author(s):  
David Hopewell
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Northern Coast ◽  
Coastal Defence ◽  
Defence System ◽  
Navigational Aid ◽  
Late Roman

ABSTRACTA series of projects by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust has identified two significant sites on the island of Anglesey. The first is a trading settlement on the shore of the Menai Strait which provides evidence for a hitherto unknown level of Romanisation in the remote west of the province. The second is a late first- to early second-century fortlet on the northern coast of the island that probably functioned as both a navigational aid and a point of strength at a landing place. The presence of a fourth-century watchtower on Carmel Head was also confirmed by excavation and its role in the late Roman coastal defence system is considered.

Body and Soul

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Frances Young
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Body And Soul

This chapter demonstrates how arguments about creation and resurrection in the second century ensured that by the fourth century even those Christian thinkers with the most leanings toward Neoplatonism would espouse the view that the union of soul with body was constitutive of human being as a creature among creatures, and so a necessary aspect of the reconstitution of the human person at the resurrection. Soul-body dualism is often treated as the default anthropological position in antiquity, but the fourth-century anthropological treatise of Nemesius of Emesa shows that, despite huge debts to the legacies of philosophy, creation and resurrection, though barely mentioned, in fact shape his conclusion that the body-soul union is fundamental to what a human being is; the same is true, for example, of the Cappadocian Gregories and Augustine.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

Amulets and the Ritual Efficacy of Christian Symbols

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Insight Into

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.

Caesar: De Bello Gallico, Book I, cc. 1–41

1935 ◽  
Vol 5 (13) ◽  
pp. 12-21
Author(s):  
A. G. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Lake Geneva ◽  
The South ◽  
Jura Mountains ◽  
Maritime Alps ◽  
South West ◽  
The Mediterranean

From about the fourth century b.c. Rome had a long-standing alliance with the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) whose territory was constantly raided by southern Gallic tribes; these incursions called for military intervention from the Romans from the middle of the second century, culminating in a series of successful campaigns, the enlargement of Massilia's territory, the founding of the colony of Aquae Sextiae (Aix, 30 miles north of Marseilles), and the annexation of southern Gaul in 121 b.c. after the defeat of the Allobroges and Arverni. The province stretched from the Pyrenees up to Tolosa (Toulouse), then the frontier skirted the Cevennes to the Jura Mountains and the south-west corner of Lacus Lemannus (Lake Geneva); then it came in a south-south-easterly line to the Mediterranean coasts, by the Maritime Alps. It formed a very valuable corridor from Italy to Spain, and through it ran the Via Domitia beyond the Rhone; in 118 b.c. Narbo Martius (Narbonne) was founded, and so flourishing a Roman civilization grew up that Pliny later described it as ‘Italia verius quam provincia’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document