scholarly journals Golgotha and the burial of Adam between Jewish and Christian tradition

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29
Author(s):  
Jordan Ryan

The curious name of Golgotha, and its translations provided by the evangelists, became a focal point for interpretation, opening the door for new Christological concepts to become affixed to it. As these novel Christological interpretations accrued around Golgotha, they would eventually crystallise, and become a fixed part of the commemoration of Jesus in Palestine. Starting with Origen, third and fourth century Christian authors strongly associate the place of Jesus’s crucifixion with the burial place of Adam.

Author(s):  
Jonathan Reinarz

This chapter focuses exclusively on sacred scents and traces smell's role in the realm of religion, particularly the Christian tradition. It concentrates on the fourth century, when scent began to play an increasingly important role in early Christian practices. Initially, smells were present in ancient Christian texts, often as undercurrents within the text's larger purpose. Ancient Christians found numerous biblical models for experiencing a domain that lay beyond the physical senses but to which the senses provided access. Through sense encounters, people in the ancient world expected and experienced interaction with their gods, even when this implied communication with realms beyond the physically finite world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-370
Author(s):  
Anne Kreps

In the growing canon consciousness of the fourth century, Christians debated what should constitute the official reading list for the church. Epiphanius of Salamis was part of this conversation. His massivePanariondescribed eighty heresies, and, for Epiphanius, wrong books were a marker of wrong belief. However, although Epiphanius was a stringent supporter of Nicene orthodoxy, he, too, referred to books outside the canon. In thePanarion, he frequently referencedJubilees, an expanded, rewritten Genesis found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and which also circulated among early Christian readers. TheDecree of Gelasiuslater declared the text anathema. This paper explores the significance of a vocal heresiographer readingJubilees, particularly when he defined heretics based on similar reading practices. It suggests that Epiphanius saw close kinship betweenJubileesand his ownPanarion. The citations ofJubileesin thePanarionalso indicate that Epiphanius defined the text as a part of a larger Christian tradition. In doing so, Epiphanius transformedJubileesfrom Jewish apocrypha to Christian tradition. Thus, the citations ofJubileesin Epiphanius'sPanarionshow the complicated dynamics of canon consciousness in the shaping of Christian Orthodoxy.


1997 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. D. Hunt

On 27 November 395, shortly after the remains of Theodosius had been interred beside the tombs of Constantine and his successors in Constantinople, the eastern praetorian prefect Fl. Rufinus was murdered by troops outside the capital. Zosimus' narrative of the incident, deriving from Eunapius, adds that Rufinus' widow and daughter escaped with a safe conduct to sail to Jerusalem, ‘which had once been the dwelling of the Jews, but from the reign of Constantine had been embellished with buildings by the Christians’. As the only glimpse of the fourth-century development of Jerusalem from outside the Christian tradition, Zosimus' passing remark is not without interest – even if no more than a casual and seemingly unpartisan aside. We cannot unfortunately make comparisons with what, if anything, Eunapius' contemporary Ammianus Marcellinus had said on the subject in his lost narrative of Constantine; but to judge from the Constantinian back-references in the surviving books it is unlikely to have been sympathetic – certainly no more so than his lukewarm endorsement of Julian's later attempt at restoring the Jewish Temple to Jerusalem, which Ammianus attributed merely to a desire ‘to perpetuate the memory of his reign with great public works’.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asma Barlas

It has been stated that the body has overtly or latently been a focal point in the history of the three Abrahamic religions’.  However, Islam’s scripture, the Qur’an, does not say that Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) binds his son’s body, nor is the body the focal point of the story—nor, indeed, is it of more than passing interest in Muslim history. This has lead me to question the tendency to homogenize the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice and, by extension, the religions that claim their descent from him. There is no denying their family resemblance of course, but while the family may be Abraham’s, Abraham himself is not identical in the Qur’an and the Bible and neither are his trials. The term ‘Abrahamic religions’ is not very helpful here since, in spite of its linguistic pluralism, it obscures this crucial distinction between a genealogy that is shared and depictions of a common ancestor that are not. Nonetheless, it is more accurate than the standard alternative, ‘the Judeo-Christian tradition’, a phrase that papers over the fissures in this tradition while also excising Islam from what is surely an ‘interreligiously shared’ world. The author suggests that the only way to include Islam in this world does not have to be through an assimilative embrace that stifles its individuality; one could, instead, find ways to honour both the plurality of the Abrahamic tradition as well as the specificity of Islam within. The author recites the Qur’anic story of Abraham, as a way to unbind the lessons of his sacrifice from the body and also to illustrate the inappropriateness of using Isaac’s bound body as a universal template for all the Abrahamic religions. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 343-352
Author(s):  
Jörg Ulrich

AbstractAmong the polyphonic theology of the »church fathers« of the first centuries, Justin, who lived from about 100-165, who led a Christian school in Rome and died there as a martyr, contributes an important voice. He is concerned with the conversation between Christianity and pagan philosophy as well as Judaism, and in this seeks to prove the supremacy of Christianity. To accomplish this, he also emphasizes the proximity between Christianity and Platonism. His theology can be analyzed and structured in terms of ethics, anthropology, the doctrine of God and the Logos, demonology, and eschatology. The Christian tradition received and discussed Justin and his ideas up until the fourth century, while the pagan world opposed him, most strongly through the critical response of the philosopher Celsus.


2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Ayres

Let me turn in this “Response” to the concerns of those who have been unhappy with particular features of Nicaea and Its Legacy. Although the bulk of my discussion will be taken up with the responses of Khaled Anatolios and John Behr, I want also to range a little more widely. For the most part, criticisms of my book Nicaea have stemmed as much from opposition to my overall attitude towards the task of historical theology as from opposition to my interpretation of particular episodes of the fourth century. A range of related questions focuses on the relationship between the good practice of theology and the implications of the forms of modern historical consciousness that I have clearly found persuasive. The three critics that I engage here all seem to me to be pushing in directions that (consciously or unconsciously) inappropriately restrict the scope and character of theological—and particularly of historical theological—investigation. I must confess at the beginning of this discussion that I assumed the majority of negative responses to my project as a whole (as opposed to negative responses to particular sections of the argument) would come from what might be termed the theological “left”: those who are convinced by some of the fundamental lines of post-Enlightenment and recent liberal critique of classical Christian tradition. It has, however, been fascinating to see other critics emerge from what might perhaps be termed the theological “right”: those sympathetic to modern attempts to retrieve the centrality of classical Christian texts, theologians, and exegetical methods. Both forms of critique demand a response.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Corbit ◽  
Chris Moore

Abstract The integration of first-, second-, and third-personal information within joint intentional collaboration provides the foundation for broad-based second-personal morality. We offer two additions to this framework: a description of the developmental process through which second-personal competence emerges from early triadic interactions, and empirical evidence that collaboration with a concrete goal may provide an essential focal point for this integrative process.


Author(s):  
R. W. Carpenter ◽  
I.Y.T. Chan ◽  
J. M. Cowley

Wide-angle convergent beam shadow images(CBSI) exhibit several characteristic distortions resulting from spherical aberration. The most prominent is a circle of infinite magnification resulting from rays having equal values of a forming a cross-over on the optic axis at some distance before reaching the paraxial focal point. This distortion is called the tangential circle of infinite magnification; it can be used to align and stigmate a STEM and to determine Cs for the probe forming lens. A second distortion, the radial circle of infinite magnification, results from a cross-over on the lens caustic surface of rays with differing values of ∝a, also before the paraxial focal point of the lens.


Author(s):  
Gertrude F. Rempfer

I became involved in electron optics in early 1945, when my husband Robert and I were hired by the Farrand Optical Company. My husband had a mathematics Ph.D.; my degree was in physics. My main responsibilities were connected with the development of an electrostatic electron microscope. Fortunately, my thesis research on thermionic and field emission, in the late 1930s under the direction of Professor Joseph E. Henderson at the University of Washington, provided a foundation for dealing with electron beams, high vacuum, and high voltage.At the Farrand Company my co-workers and I used an electron-optical bench to carry out an extensive series of tests on three-electrode electrostatic lenses, as a function of geometrical and voltage parameters. Our studies enabled us to select optimum designs for the lenses in the electron microscope. We early on discovered that, in general, electron lenses are not “thin” lenses, and that aberrations of focal point and aberrations of focal length are not the same. I found electron optics to be an intriguing blend of theory and experiment. A laboratory version of the electron microscope was built and tested, and a report was given at the December 1947 EMSA meeting. The micrograph in fig. 1 is one of several which were presented at the meeting. This micrograph also appeared on the cover of the January 1949 issue of Journal of Applied Physics. These were exciting times in electron microscopy; it seemed that almost everything that happened was new. Our opportunities to publish were limited to patents because Mr. Farrand envisaged a commercial instrument. Regrettably, a commercial version of our laboratory microscope was not produced.


Author(s):  
P.M. Houpt ◽  
A. Draaijer

In confocal microscopy, the object is scanned by the coinciding focal points (confocal) of a point light source and a point detector both focused on a certain plane in the object. Only light coming from the focal point is detected and, even more important, out-of-focus light is rejected.This makes it possible to slice up optically the ‘volume of interest’ in the object by moving it axially while scanning the focused point light source (X-Y) laterally. The successive confocal sections can be stored in a computer and used to reconstruct the object in a 3D image display.The instrument described is able to scan the object laterally with an Ar ion laser (488 nm) at video rates. The image of one confocal section of an object can be displayed within 40 milliseconds (1000 х 1000 pixels). The time to record the total information within the ‘volume of interest’ normally depends on the number of slices needed to cover it, but rarely exceeds a few seconds.


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