scholarly journals Prayer “Birkat ha-Minim” (“Blessing of heretics”) and the Ban on Participation in the Synagogue Liturgy

2018 ◽  
pp. 56-66
Author(s):  
Anna Luneva
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Jewish Prayer ◽  
Jewish Liturgy

The Jewish prayer “Birkat ha-Minim” (“Blessing on the heretics”), 12th benediction of Amida, attracts attention not only of Jewish Liturgy researchers, but it is also an important plot in the history of Jewish-Christian relations in ancient period. Throughout the 20th century “Birkat ha-Minim” was read in the context of anti-Judean passages of the New Testament’s books and early Christian polemic treatises. Such works often include New Testament references to the excommunication of the Christ’s followers from the synagogue (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2). On the other side, for 2nd–3rd centuries’ Christian authors “Blessing” was one of the reasons for the emergence of anti-Jewish sentiments in the Christians’ environment. However, in recent times, a number of scholars, after more than a hundred years break, conducted a paleographic and textual analysis of the most currently known manuscripts, containing the text of the prayer, and published number of its versions, accompanied by a new critical apparatus. These publications have radically changed the understanding of this blessing. For this reason, all previous works either require rethinking or completely outdated. Although recent research allows us more accurately determine the time and place of the creation of manuscripts containing prayer, there is still no consensus on what purpose it was created and who should be understood by the term “Minim”. In addition, to what extent we can link “Birkat ha-minim” with the New Testament passages about excommunication Christ’s followers from the synagogue.

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.

Scripture and Tradition

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-135
Author(s):  
Oscar Cullmann
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The problem of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition is in the first place a problem of the theological relationship between the apostolic period and the period of the Church. All the other questions depend on the solution that we give to this problem. The alternatives—co-ordination or subordination of Tradition to Scripture—derive from the question of knowing how we must understand the fact that the period of the Church is the continuation and unfolding of the apostolic period. For we must note right away that this fact is capable of divergent interpretations. That is why agreement on the mere fact that the Church continues the work of Christ on earth does not necessarily imply agreement on the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Thus in my thesis developed in Christ and Time as well as in my studies on the sacraments in the New Testament I came considerably nearer to the ‘Catholic’ point of view. In fact I would affirm very strongly that through the Church the history of salvation is continued on earth. I believe that we find this idea throughout the New Testament, and I should even consider it the key for the understanding of the Johannine Gospel. I would maintain, moreover, that the sacraments, Baptism and Eucharist, take the place in the Church of the miracles performed by Jesus Christ in the period of the Incarnation. And yet I am going to show in the following pages that I subordinate Tradition to Scripture.

scholarly journals A Re-examination of Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

1959 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 260-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Lyon
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Family ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sample Page

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus has been the neglected member of the family of great uncials. Photographic facsimiles have been produced of ℵ, A, B, D, and others, but only a sample page or two of the valuable palimpsest is available in textbooks. All the important codices have been studied and collated more than once. But as regards Codex C only Tischendorf has transcribed its text and edited it according to modern standards. In textbooks on textual criticism Codex C has been given—almost without excepdon—less than half the space of any of the other main uncials. To be sure, it is a difficult manuscript to read, and many lacunae exist. Yet because of its age and the quality of its text, as well as the fact that it contains portions of all the sections of the New Testament, every possible detail should be accurately extracted from this once beautiful codex. Owing to this unwarranted neglect of Codex C, especially the fact that no one had tested the accuracy of Tischendorf's work, a new study was undertaken and a new edition is being prepared. The present article will include (1) a brief history Of thern manuscript and its use by textual critics; (2) introductory items on which new light may be shed or on which previous statements need to be corrected; and finally, (3) a list of the more significant errors found in Tischendorf's edition.

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.

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.

Jewish and Christian Ordination

1954 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Ehrhardt
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Rabbinical Literature ◽  
Laying On Of Hands ◽  
The Church

In recent discussions about the Apostolic Ministry of the Church the Jewish factor in its development has proved a disturbing element. Therefore, a book dealing with the early rite of rabbinical ordination, which has been lately published in Germany, should be certain of an interested reception, even though the main facts can be found already in Billerbeck. Dr. Lohse, its author, shows himself well versed in rabbinical literature, and the evidence which he has collected is well-nigh complete. Unfortunately, the author's main thesis, although it is by no means new, is apt to provoke serious misgivings. For he claims (101) that ‘the Christian ordination was modelled on the pattern of that of Jewish scholars, although early Christianity filled it with a new content’. To support his claim the author has given only one important reason, namely that both rites had the imposition of hands as their centre. The other support which the author has tried to build up to strengthen his thesis is, to say the least, feeble. It is therefore necessary to enquire whether the laying-on-of-hands had the same intention in the early Christian ordination rite as in the rabbinical rite. Such identity of intention is, however, not even to be found in all the various cases of laying-on-of-hands in the New Testament, and the same is also true of contemporary Judaism.

The New Testament: Jewish or Gentile?

2018 ◽  
Vol 130 (6) ◽  
pp. 237-242
Author(s):  
Ann Conway-Jones
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Message ◽  
Christian Message

The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler, has recently been republished in a second edition. It performs the vital task of correcting Christian misunderstandings, distortions, stereotypes and calumnies to recover the various Jewish contexts of Jesus, Paul, and the early Christian movement. This is a welcome development in the painful history of Jewish–Christian relations. There is a danger, however, in the book’s Christian reception, of a kind of nostalgia for ‘Jewish roots’—an expectation that by returning to Jesus’ original message, and an ‘authentic’ Jewish form of Christianity, one can bypass centuries of mistrust and worse. Matters are not that simple. Christianity grew out of a complex dual heritage, already reflected in the New Testament. The Christian message quickly spread into the Greek-speaking world, and its adherents soon became majority Gentile. This paper explores the implications of that process, which was begun by Paul, who presented Jewish messianic ideas to a Gentile audience, assigning universal significance to the traditions of his own particular community. It examines how Jesus’ teachings acquired new meanings, often reflecting a Christian movement at odds with the majority of Jews. And it unearths the subtext beneath the New Testament’s defamatory polemic. Doing so involves negotiating the complex relationship between theology and sociology: between ideals (Jewish and/or Christian) and the lived experiences of Jewish and Gentile communities.

The Provenance of the Interpolator in the ‘Western’ Text of Acts and of Acts Itself

1966 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. C. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
De Novo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Opposite View

First of all, the title of this paper needs justification. Why should we assume that anyone ever made interpolations in the text of Acts? Ropes, who is still the most considerable authority on this subject, spoke of the ‘Western’ text all through his work on the Text of Acts in The Beginnings of Christianity as if it gave evidence of the work of a reviser of the text, not of an interpolator, and many scholars before him had the same opinion. On the other hand, very recent scholarship has tended to the opposite view, that it is wrong to hold that ‘Western’ readings in the New Testament necessarily represent a single continuous revision done at one particular moment in the history of the text. Professor G. D. Kilpatrick, for instance, in a recent article suggests that every reading in Acts has to be considered on its merits, independently of speculation about whether it represents a revision or a recension or a ‘good’ MS tradition. He believes that the ‘Western’ readings often do not represent a revision or recension, but are single examples of original, correct readings preserved in this particular MS tradition. In his view, word order, orthography, and grammatical, syntactical and philological considerations applied de novo to each reading should be paramount in attempting to discover correct readings. The wisdom of this approach has been confirmed by the careful scholarship applied to the subject by M. Wilcox in his book The Semitisms of Acts (1965).

Frühchristliche Religion als Wahrnehmungsobjekt und Erkenntnisprozess

2014 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Michael Tilly
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis essay explores the exegetical possibilities and boundaries of the history of religions approach to the New Testament. In part 1 it offers an overview of the history of historical critical exegesis of the New Testament from the magisterial research of the history of religions school to the newest approaches of historical Jesus research. In part 2, three hermeneutical problems for the exegete are outlined: the relationship between text and tradition, the relationship between early Christian literature and its surroundings and the relationship between the New Testament as an ancient collection and its reception today.

Le Paraclet dans la notice antimontaniste du PseudoHippolyte, Refutatio omnium haeresium VIII, 19 Les commentaires prophétiques de Priscilla et Maximilla

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-284
Author(s):  
David Pastorelli
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women's Ministry ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Prophetic Office

AbstractThe anti-Montanist notice of Pseudo-Hippolytus, Ref. VIII, 19 is often quoted in research in order to show that the Phrygian prophets wrote numerous books to complete the New Testament. It is, however, marked by an obvious editorial activity: the motive of countless books belongs to the author's heresiological arsenal and should not be counted as a testimony for the history of the New Testament canon. The author is more concerned about the issue of women's ministry : the conflict is on the one hand about the status of Priscilla and Maximilla as prophetic teachers, based on the prophetic office of the Paraclete, and on the other hand about their claims to write « prophetic » commentaries. The underlying principle is the Pauline prohibition that women teach, a fortiori that they write books.

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