The Birth of Christian History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve-Marie Becker ◽  
John J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Gospel Of Mark ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Awareness ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Literary Memory

When the Gospel writings were first produced, Christian thinking was already cognizant of its relationship to ancient memorial cultures and history-writing traditions. Yet, little has been written about exactly what shaped the development of early Christian literary memory. This book explores the diverse ways in which history was written according to the Hellenistic literary tradition, focusing specifically on the time during which the New Testament writings came into being: from the mid-first century until the early second century CE. While acknowledging cases of historical awareness in other New Testament writings, the book traces the origins of this historiographical approach to the Gospel of Mark and Luke—Acts. The book shows how the earliest Christian writings shaped Christian thinking and writing about history.

The Parousia of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels

1959 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Owen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
2 Peter ◽  
Apostolic Church ◽  
Second Coming

The Second Coming (otherwise called the Parousia)1 of Christ constituted a serious problem for the apostolic Church. One of the earliest of Paul's Epistles (1 Thessalonians) shows how quickly his converts became discouraged when some of their number died before the Lord's appearing. In reply Paul repeats his promise that the Lord will soon return, although in his second epistle he has to give a reminder that Antichrist must first make a final bid for power (1 Thess. 4.15–18, 2 Thess. 2). Similarly the author of Hebrews, writing to a disillusioned and apathetic group of Christians some decades later in the first century, recalls the words of Habakkuk that ‘the Lord will come and not be slow’ (10.37). Finally 2 Peter, the latest book of the New Testament (written, perhaps, as late as the middle of the second century), continues to offer the hope of an imminent Parousia to be accompanied by the world's destruction and renewal (ch. 3). If Christians are tempted to despair they must remember that the word of prophets and Apostles is sure (v. 2) and that with God ‘a thousand years are as one day’ (v. 8).

scholarly journals The New Testament teaching on family matters

2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Women Slaves ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Family

The article shows that first-century urban Christian communities, such as those founded by Paul, brought in both whole families and individual women, slaves, and others. An example of an early Christian family can be seen in the autobiographical details of the Shepherd of Hermas, whether factual or not. The article aims to demonstrate that the New Testament teaching on family gives two very different pictures: the structured harmony of the patriarchal family as presented in the household codes of Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5, over against the warnings and challenges of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels to leave family in favor of discipleship. The developing devotion to martyrdom strengthened the appeal to denial. Another version of the essay was published in Horsley, Richard A (ed), A people’s history of Christianity, Volume 1: Christian origins, 201-220. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.1.

scholarly journals Nuwe-Testamentiese perspektiewe op die Sabbat en die Sondag

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
S. J. Joubert
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
To Come ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Interpretative Framework

New Testament perspectives on the Sabbath and the Sunday In order to come to terms with New Testament views on the Sabbath and the Sunday, an investigation of Jewish schematizations of time and of the Sabbath in particular, around the first century A.D. is undertaken. This is followed by a discussion of relevant New Testament texts on the Sabbath and the Sunday. Finally, the available information from the New Testament is placed within the interpretative framework of the “Christ event” which inaugurated the eschaton, and which also replaced the strong emphasis on specific holy days within early Christianity. However, the Sunday was probably chosen by some early Christian groups as the most suitable day to commemorate the resurrection of Christ.

Clement of Rome and Moralism

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Merritt Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Apostolic Fathers ◽  
Do So

Clement of Rome has often been judged and found wanting by his Protestant interpreters. His letter is frequently presented as “a good illustration of the break between the New Testament faith and the Apostolic Fathers' lapse into moralism.” (And “moralism,” to put it mildly, is not always a pleasant word in Protestant theological circles.) Rudolf Knopf calls attention to the “rationalen Moralismus des Schreibens.” And Johannes Weiss says that “a strong moralism runs through all its expressions from the first page to the last.” When James Mackinnon gives us examples of Christian moralism in the sub-apostolic period, Clement is of course present in a prominent way, as indeed he is also significantly present when H. E. W. Turner mentions the “tradition of ‘sober moralism’ which was so notable a feature of late first-century and early second-century Christianity.” Moreover, A. C. McGiffert stands in the same tradition of interpretation when he says that for Clement “salvation is to be had only by obeying God and doing his will.” One could of course go on and on citing examples of this kind, but it seems unnecessary to do so, especially in view of the fact that a great many more illustrations are readily available in Thomas F. Torrance's The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers. Not only does Professor Torrance mention numerous scholars who stress the moralism of Clement, but also he himself comes to the conclusion that grace in I Clement appears to be an “enabling power granted to those who are worthy.” Clement “may use the language of election and justification, but the essentially Greek idea of the unqualified freedom of choice is a natural axiom in his thought, and entails a doctrine of ‘works,’ as Paul would have said.”

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.

Relating to Judaism, Experiencing the Sacred

2019 ◽  
pp. 285-313
Author(s):  
Eyal Regev
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Point Of Reference

This chapter examines how early Christian attitude toward the Temple changed and why. First-century early Christianity was a religious and social movement at the beginning of the process of identity formation. Its members had yet to determine who they were: what part of their identity was contiguous with Judaism and what part comprised all-new elements. During this process they undoubtedly looked to other non-Christian Jews as a point of reference. Literary engagement with the Temple granted the New Testament writers and their contemporary readers the opportunity to express their debt to Jewish tradition, while at the same time their distinctiveness from it. Moreover, this engagement enhanced their sense of being powerful, genuine, and sacred—that is, close to God. For them, the Temple is a means of experiencing the sacred in both old and new fashion, somewhere on the spectrum between what would later be termed “Judaism” and “Christianity.”

The Question as to Why We Have to Live Out the Agony of Our Epoch and its Fundamental Un-Answerability

Symposion ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-138
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Proclamation

This paper excavates certain impulses that are buried in Pierre Klossowski’s 1968 edition of his original 1947 work, Sade My Neighbor. We argue that the self-suffocating nature of our historical present reveals the problem of an epochal threshold: in which twenty-first century democracy itself is threatened with death and violence in delusional neofascist attempts at national self-preservation. This speaks to a deeper enigma of time, epochal shifts, and the mystery of historical time; but it does so in a manner that escapes classical problems in the philosophy of history. Rather, by returning to Klossowski’s late 1940s and late 1960s contexts while reoccupying the New Testament question of Jesus’s foresakeness on the Cross, we unravel a series of paradoxes and aporias that attempt to deepen metaphysical problems of time, death, and the sovereign autonomy of human freedom and existence. Ultimately the paper concludes by offering certain speculative philosophical constructions on why today’s self-cannibalization of democracy has its roots in unresolved tensions that span these two poles: a.) the primordial secret of early Christian proclamation of Jesus’s death and b.) the post-Christian Sadean experiment of a philosophical revolution that was doomed to implode when the valorization of pain, suffering, and death fails to fill the vacuum left behind by atheism.

Philosophers, Scribes, Rhetors … and Paul? The Educational Background of the New Testament

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Riley Estep
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
History Of

Of increasing interest to New Testament scholars is the educational background of Paul and the early Christians. As evangelical educators, such studies also engage our understanding of the Biblical and historical basis of Christian education. This article endeavors to ascertain the early Christian community's, and particularly Paul's, assessment of education in first-century A.D. Greco-Roman culture as one dimension of the interactions between the early Christian community and its culture. It will (1) provide a brief review of passages in the New Testament that reflect or interact with the educational community of the first-century A.D., (2) Conjecture Paul's assessment of education in Greco-Roman culture, with which early Christians interacted, (3) Itemize implications of Paul's opinion on Greco-Roman education for our understanding on the formation and history of Christian education, and finally (4) Address the need for further study of the subject.

“We Have the Prophets”: Inspiration and the Prophets in Athenagoras of Athens

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Jeffrey Bingham
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Simple Classification ◽  
The New Testament

Abstract:In contrast to those who argue simply that Athenagoras’s discussion of the prophets and inspiration is Hellenic, sourced in Philo as well as in Plato and Plutarch, this paper claims that there are other sources to consider that are equally informative. Athenagoras manifests alliance and dependence upon the Septuagint, other Jewish sources, the New Testament and second-century Christian sources, especially Ignatius and Justin. Athenagoras is a Christian philosopher. We would expect to see such a broad-based platform of resources for his theological construction. A simple classification of Greek, Hellenistic or Philonic for his notion of the inspired prophets is incomplete, unreflective of his own ingenuity, and fails to adequately account for his Judaeo-Christian heritage. It also minimizes the elegance of this early Christian attempt to theologize about the Jewish prophets in a gentile world. In Athenagoras we have an explanation of the prophets and inspiration that (1) clearly positions them preeminently as rational, doctrinal Christian authorities above the poets, philosophers, and human opinions; (2) constructs his community’s theology with an artistic flair that selectively and critically weaves together both pagan and Judaeo-Christian sources; so that (3) he might win a hearing from both his imperial and ecclesiastical audience.

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