scholarly journals Engaging Politics in the New Testament Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
University Of Tennessee ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interesting Class ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
The University

Teaching the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Tennessee requires creativity, confidence, and compassion. The forty-person upper-level “Introduction to the New Testament” course that I teach every year is my most challenging and most pedagogically interesting class, and also the most rewarding. My goal in this class is to make space for a variety of responses to the material while teaching the context and history of the New Testament texts as well as how to think critically about the politics of their interpretation. The challenge is to take the diverse passions that my students bring to the class and help them all to engage together critically with both the historical study of early Christianity and the politics of its interpretation that are so visible in the world around them.

God’s Pedagogy of the Embodied Soul

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-110
Author(s):  
Bart van Egmond
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

This chapter deals with Augustine’s thinking on the soteriological meaning of God’s judgement during his stay in Rome and Thagaste. In this period, Augustine starts to engage explicitly with the Manichaean view of evil in the world. Against the Manichees, he interprets the evil that we suffer as a corrective punishment of the Creator on the sinful soul. In continuity with the Alexandrian tradition, Augustine still believes that man by his free will is capable of making a good use of this divine incentive to return. The chapter also addresses God’s use of judgement in the history of salvation. It opposes the views of scholars who have argued that the early Augustine sees the history of salvation as a process of moral progress from the Old to the New Testament, which would imply that God ceased using earthly punishments to educate his people in the time of the New Testament. A final section treats Augustine’s experience of ordination. It argues that Augustine understood his ordination as divine chastisement for his own arrogance.

scholarly journals Die uitbouing van die Bybelse kanon in antieke Judaïsme en die vroeë Christendom

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Frey
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Canonical Process ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The development of the biblical canon in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. A brief account of the process of the development of both the Jewish and the bipartite Christian canon is given. It is argued that due to insights gained from recent textual discoveries, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran texts), earlier theories about the history of canonisation had to be reviewed. With the New Testament canon the authors focus on the influence of Marcion as well as the various other factors that played a role in the process of canonisation. It is shown that canonisation was the result of a complicated and variegated canonical process. But in spite of the problems of the criteria used and other factors involved, the biblical canon is theologically valuable and ‘well-chosen’.

Babylonian and Hebrew Demonology with reference to the supposed borrowing of Persian Dualism in Judaism and Christianity

1934 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
S. Langdon
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Independent Existence

Dualism is a term introduced into modern theology by the Englishman, Thomas Hyde, in 1700, and was first used to describe sthe fundamental principle of Persian Zoroastrism, namely the independent existence of good and evil. Ormazd the good god and Ahriman the evil god in the theology of the Persians represent an absolute dualism. For them Ahriman, corresponding to Satan of Judaism and Christianity, is entirely independent of the creator god. Good and evil, God and the Devil, are primeval supreme powers. Now I wish to trace the history of Satan or the Devil in Christianity back through Judaism, Hebrew, and Babylonian religion to its origin among the Sumerians. I shall endeavour to prove this Persian dualism, which admits that God did not create the Devil, to be totally foreign to Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew speculation; and I shall then briefly examine the evidence on which modern scholars admit dualism to have been held by the Jews of the Apocalyptic period and by early Christianity as set forth in the New Testament. It is my conviction that Persian religion never had any influence upon Judaism or early Christianity. Satan, the Devil (diabolus), is traceable directly to Babylonian theology; there he is the creation of the gods.

Material Culture and Historical Analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Laura Salah Nasrallah
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship

This chapter outlines and argues for the vital importance of material culture in our historiographies of early Christianity in four parts. The chapter begins by defining material culture and then shows that material culture has long been included in the history of scholarship of the New Testament. Next, it surveys some of the key trends in the use of material culture for the study of women, gender, and sexuality in antiquity, and, finally, it suggests ways in which feminist materialist philosophy and history leads us to think more expansively about what is meant by material culture, focusing on the “matter” within it and harnessing theories of materiality to deepen our historical analysis of the context for the first production and reception of New Testament and other early Christian texts.

Recent French Discussions of Christianity: the Series ‘Christianisme’

1927 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-104
Author(s):  
Maurice Goguel
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
General Public ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
University Programs ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

The general public in France is singularly uninformed on questions of religion. Persons in other respects very well educated are frequently lacking in the most elementary notions of the doctrines and history of Christianity. Men who would be ashamed if they were caught taking Virgil for a Greek poet or Demosthenes for a Roman orator, unblushingly display an astonishing ignorance about the books of the Bible, and will suppose, for example, that the New Testament was written in Hebrew, or in Syriac, or even in Arabic, and the Old Testament in Latin. On the part of the small group of scholars who occupy themselves with the history of Christianity, efforts have been made to combat this ignorance and to awaken some interest in questions which the university programs systematically ignore. Plans have been sketched, but difficulties of every kind have prevented putting them into effect. Some steps have been taken, but as yet only too few; some books of an untechnical character, capable of being understood by anyone of moderate education, have been published, but so far they have not succeeded in shaking the general indifference.

The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the History of Gender and Sexuality

2019 ◽  
pp. xxvi-15
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Dunning
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature

What is the place of the New Testament and early Christianity in the history of gender and sexuality? This essay explores this question in conversation with feminist and queer theory. It considers the terminology of sex, gender, sexual difference, sex acts, and sexuality both as theoretical concepts and in relation to New Testament and Early Christian Studies. It then surveys the question of ancient androcentrism and the methodological problem posed by the so-called linguistic turn, arguing that the ongoing study of gender and sexuality in the New Testament and early Christianity will, of necessity, continue to be a prismatic, if contested, exercise in writing “the history of the present.”

The Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender, and Sexuality

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

The Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender, and Sexuality provides a roadmap to the relevant problems, debates, and issues that animate the study of sex, gender, sexuality, and sexual difference in early Christianity. Over several decades, scholarship in the New Testament and early Christianity has drawn attention to the ways in which ancient Mediterranean conceptions of embodiment, sexual difference, and desire were fundamentally different from modern ones. But scholars have also sometimes pointed to important lines of historical continuity or genealogical connection between the past and the present. Indeed, these textual materials have played a foundational role in the history of reflection on issues of gender and sexuality in Western thought and continue to impact cultural and religious debates today. Research into these topics has produced a rich and nuanced body of scholarly literature that has contributed substantially to our understanding of early Christian history and also proved relevant to ongoing contemporary theological discussion. Leading scholars in the field offer original contributions by way of synthesis, critical interrogation, and proposals for future research trajectories.

Toward the Renewal of New Testament Christology

1986 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leander E. Keck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Proper Subject

The study of NT Christology will be renewed if it recovers its proper subject-matter - christology - and its proper scope, the New Testament.The scholarly literature shows that what is called NT christology is, by and large, really the history of christological materials and motifs in early Christianity, and their ancestry. This massive preoccupation with history has, to be sure, produced impressive results. In fact, today it is difficult to imagine a study of NT christology which is not influenced by this historical analysis of early Christian conceptions of Christ and their antecedents. Nevertheless, the time is at hand to take up again what was set aside - an explicitly theological approach to NT christology, one which will be in-formed by the history of ideas but which will deliberately pursue christology as a theological discipline. It is doubtful whether the study of NT christology can be renewed in any other way. This essay intends to illumine and substantiate this claim by considering briefly the nature of christology, then by reviewing the turn to history and its consequences for the study of NT christology, and finally by sketching elements of an alternative.

The Promises to David and their Entrance into Christianity—Nailing down a Likely Hypothesis

1973 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Duling
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

The fundamental outlook in what follows is that there is a fairly consistent, compact, yet expanding and developing promise tradition which is founded on the promises to David (and his descendants) in the Hebrew Scriptures; that this tradition in certain ways has been rejuvenated and strengthened in the early Christian period; and that it enters Christianity in connection with the application of these promises to Jesus' resurrection apart from the title Son of David itself, a title whose acceptance and adaptation in early Christianity appears on both historical and redaction critical grounds to be relatively late. The hypothesis is not totally new. My intention will be to put some older information into what will hopefully be an illuminating perspective, to draw out some implications from the perspective itself, and to nail down the hypothesis of the use of Old Testament texts in connection with the resurrection of Jesus a little tighter. I have not undertaken here to trace out a history of tradition in the New Testament such as can now be found in C. Burger's excellent study,Jesus als Davidssohn, though the direction of the paper will support the legitimacy of his starting point in early Christian formulae.

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