scholarly journals An inquiry into socio-historical factors contributing to poverty within the Early Church in Palestine

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Kakwata
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Causes Of Poverty

This article seeks to investigate the root causes of poverty in the early Christian community.The view that is put forward and argued in this article is that poverty was widespread in early Christianity with particular reference to the converted Jews in Palestine. This was the result of socio-historical factors, namely the Israelites’ contact with Canaanites during the conquest,and the implementation of the secular leadership paradigm derived from those paga n nations around Israel, which led to their subjugation under the oppressive and exploitative and economic structures of the Roman Empire. For that reason many believers, newly converted Jews, at that time were destitute and impoverished as they belonged to the lower classes in society. In spite of this state of affairs, the early Christians in Jerusalem seemed to have faced the challenges of poverty with a measure of success as can be attested by the statement ‘for there was no needy person amongst them …’ (Ac 4:34).’n Ondersoek na sosio-historiese faktore wat tot armoede binne die vroeë Christelikekerk in Palestina bygedra het. Die doel van hierdie artikel is om die grondoorsake van armoede in die vroeë Christelike gemeenskap te ondersoek met spesifieke verwysing na die bekeerde Jode in Palestina. Die standpunt wat in hierdie artikel gestel en beredeneer word, is dat armoede algemeen in die vroeë Christendom voorgekom het. Dit was as gevolg van verskeie sosio-historiese faktore, waaronder die Israeliete se kontak met die Kanaäniete ná die inname, asook die instelling van die sekulêre paradigma oor leierskap wat Israel aan die naburige heidennasies ontleen het en wat op hulle verknegting onder die Romeinse Ryk se onderdrukkende en uitbuitende strukture uitgeloop het. ’n Groot aantal gelowiges, bekeerde Jode, was in daardie tyd behoeftig en armoedig omdat hulle deel van die laer klasse in die samelewing was. Tog, ten spyte van hierdie omstandighede, het die vroeë Christene in Jerusalem klaarblyklik die uitdaging van armoede met ’n mate van sukses gehanteer, soos die stelling getuig: ‘Nie een van hulle het gebrek gely nie …’ (Hand 4:34).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
The Relationship

Between the second and the sixteenth centuries CE, references to the Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria occur exclusively in texts written by Christians. David T. Runia has described this phenomenon as the adoption of Philo by Christians as an “honorary Church Father.” Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and recent investigations of the “Parting of the Ways” of early Christianity and Judaism, this study argues that early Christian invocations of Philo reveal ongoing efforts to define the relationship between Jewishness and Christianness, their areas of overlap and points of divergence. The introduction situates invocations of Philo within the wider context of early Christian writing about Jews and Jewishness. It considers how Philo and his early Christian readers participated in the larger world of Greco-Roman philosophical schools, text production, and the ethical and intellectual formation (paideia) of elite young men in the Roman Empire.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Archaeological Methods ◽  
Archaeological Method ◽  
Ancient Geography

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology brings together significant work by leading scholars of the archaeology of early Christianity in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions. The thirty-four contributions to this volume ground the history, culture, and society of the first seven centuries of Christianity in archaeological method, theory, and research. Collectively the essays emphasize the link between fieldwork, archaeological methods, and regional and national traditions in constructing our knowledge of the early church, Christian communities, and the context of the ancient Mediterranean. An introductory essay provides historical and chronological perspectives on the archaeology of the early Christian world. This is followed by two chapters on the archaeology of the earliest Christ followers, and a series of topical treatments that focus on significant types of objects common to Christian contexts, such as ceramics, lamps, and icons,and monuments and contexts ranging from Christian churches to martyria, catacombs, and baths. Finally, the volume locates the archaeology of the early Christian world in a series of regional studies stretching from Britain to Persia. These regional studies situate the archaeology of early Christianity in historical contexts shaped by ancient geography and modern national archaeological traditions. The thorough, carefully researched, and fully referenced essays offer the most intensive, state-of-the-art treatment of recent research into the archaeology of early Christianity currently available.

Back to the Future: The Fathers Refounded and the Recovery of Early Christianity

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-403
Author(s):  
Robin Darling Young
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Universities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Apostolic Succession

The Fathers Refounded, Elizabeth Clark's magnificent sequel to Founding the Fathers, describes in abundant detail how the overlapping disciplines of early church history and patristics became established in several American universities. It examines the work of three historians of early Christianity and their accomplishments and difficulties—and along the way it reminds its readers more than once that historical investigation poses a danger to the security of religious dogmatists. Take, for instance, the work of George LaPiana: As an Italian exile and historical scholar whose investigations of early Christian associations in Rome undermined the accustomed Roman Catholic story of apostolic succession and episcopal authority, his work could be ignored during his lifetime by the triumphalist representatives of seemingly unquestioned dogma. An example is the work of LaPiana's American contemporary, Monsignor Joseph (“Butch”) Fenton, writing only a few years before the Second Vatican Council would vindicate the historical approach when it endorsed patristic theology as an inspiration for aggiornamento, the “updating” of Catholic thought.

scholarly journals Our Common Breath: ‘Conspiration’ from the Stoics to the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Phillip Sidney Horky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.

scholarly journals The radicality of early Christian oikodome: A theology that edifies insiders and outsiders

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobus Kok
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament

In this article a study is made of the concept �oikodome� and its derivatives in the New Testament and early Christianity. Hence, in this essay the focus is limited to the use of the term οἰκοδομέω/οἰκοδομὴ(ν) in the New Testament, and briefly turns to inspiring trajectories in early Christianity. A detailed focus on the term(s) reveals the complexity of the matter in the different Biblical contexts with its multi-layered dimensions of meaning. Subsequently, attention is turned to a study of 1 Thessalonians, followed up with a discussion of the trajectories of other-regard and radical self-giving love in the early Church as witnessed by insiders and outsiders in antiquity.

scholarly journals Edward D. ANDREWS, The Reading Culture of Early Christianity: The Production, Publication, Circulation, and Use of Books in the Early Christian Church, Cambridge, Ohio 2019, pp. 247.

Vox Patrum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
Marcin Krzysztof Nabożny
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Publication Process ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Reading Culture

“The Reading Culture of Early Christianity” was written by Edward D. Andrews and published by Christian Publishing House, Cambridge, Ohio in 2019. It is historical and biblically centered with 226 pages: it provides the reader with the production process of the New Testament books, the publication process, how they were circulated, and to what extent they were used in the early church.

An Exegesis of Conformity: Textual Subversion of Subversive Texts

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
M. C. Steenberg
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Potential Influence ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
Christian Witness ◽  
The Church

‘We have learned from the Scriptures …’To speak with authority in the early Church was to speak from the Scriptures. While early Christianity may not have been a ‘religion of the book’ in the same way it is today, it was unquestionably a religion of text, and the refrain ‘we have learned from the holy Scriptures’ is a chorus in the early Christian witness. Here stood the authority of divine fulfilment. To confess merely Christ might be to proclaim a man, perhaps a prophet, perhaps a deity; but to confess ‘the scriptural Christ’ was to proclaim the Messiah foretold in divine writ, the revealed Saviour, and to find in that revelation the character and substance of the confession newly made. Nonetheless, while the text of the Old Testament might be of common heritage (though even this faced the challenge of a Marcion, who wished to do away with it), the emerging textual tradition of the Christian era provided a challenge: which text? what scripture? If the Christ of the Church is the ‘Christ of the scriptures’, determining the content of those scriptures – or those texts accorded scriptural authority in their receipt and influence -becomes critical. More than this, subverting the potential influence of texts deemed unsuitable stands as an essential task. To approach the era authentically, scholarly reading of the rise of a New Testament canon in the early Church must be combined with an understanding of the means and methodologies of its necessary correlate, textual exclusion. I shall argue here that this was accomplished through an exegetical method of subversion more intricate and nuanced than is often perceived.

Early Christianity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard A. van den Heever
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Church History ◽  
Subsequent Formation ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Early Christian Studies

The study of early Christianity overlaps with closely related fields of study such as New Testament canonical literature, Historical Jesus studies, and early Christian history (or church history/patristics). This survey will concentrate on the broader conceptualization of the formation of the religio-historical phenomenon named Christianity, the religio-historical contexts that formed the matrix for the emergence of Christianity, Christianity as the taxonomizer for a number of cultural practices or as a subset of the broader Greco-Roman Mediterranean culture including its cultural production, and the history of scholarship on early Christianity. Broadly speaking, early Christianity as a historical phenomenon is framed by two “events,” namely, at the one end, the career of Jesus of Nazareth and the subsequent formation of Jesus- or Christ-groups in the 1st century ce, and at the other end, in the 4th century ce, the Constantinian revolution which signaled the Christianization of the Roman Empire (or which goes by the shorthand of “Nicaea”—after the Council called in 325 ce). These are not hard and fast boundaries as there are good reasons to include subsequent developments beyond the Council of Chalcedon, into the 6th century ce, in the purview. Beyond that, the study of early Christianity also encompasses the newly emerged field of “Christian origins,” by which is specifically referred to the interdisciplinary, non-theological theorizing of the origins of Christianity. All in all, this bibliographic overview assumes, in line with new directions in scholarship on early Christianity, that the study of early Christianity is best approached from the perspective of the newly defined study field of early Christian studies. The difference between early Christian studies and disciplines such as early church history and patristics is constituted by the fact that early Christian studies is informed by theories of history and of religion and is practiced as a kind of cultural studies.

Paul's Uncommon Declaration in Romans 1:18–32 and Its Problematic Legacy for Pagan and Christian Relations

1999 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy L. Gaca
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Christian Leaders

By the late fourth century, prominent Christian leaders no longer remained content to advocate religious separatism from their polytheistic social environment. Instead they started making more strenuous efforts in law and in the streets to prohibit Greek and other pagan religious practices in the Roman Empire. This change in policy and practice was the outcome of historical factors that need better explanation than that of the unavoidable destiny of Christianity. One important aspect of this change, I argue here, is a problematic innovation in the tradition of Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian polemic against polytheism. The innovation derives from Paul's letter to the Ro-mans and develops through patristic endorsements of Paul's argument. In Rom 1:18–32 Paul fully reworks the Hellenistic Jewish polemical tradition, even though his argument is not yet recognized today as the distinctive proclamation that it is. Nonetheless, the polemic he wages in Rom 1:18–32 is anomalous in the tradition before, during, and for a century after he lived.

Satan’s Empire: Ancient Rome’s anti-Christian appeal in extreme metal

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy J. Swist
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extreme Metal

This article discusses the previously unexplored intersection of the reception of classical antiquity in extreme metal with Satanic and anti-Christian themes. It is demonstrable that the phenomenon has roots in the genesis of extreme metal itself, especially in its inheritance from biblical and literary history of the associations between Satan and Roman emperors. As extreme metal evolved over the past three decades, that theme combined with the perception that imperial Rome had undertaken widespread and sustained persecutions of Christians, including spectacular executions for the sake of popular entertainment, throughout the three-century history of the early Church. This is despite the consensus of many modern historians that the Romans were largely tolerant of Christians and persecutions were brief, isolated, more humane, and cost much fewer lives than early Christian sources suggest. It is evident that metal artists inherit, and thereby perpetuate, a tradition manufactured by Christian sources that have largely been debunked; yet these artists depart from those Christian sources by denying the appeal of martyrdom and shifting sympathies to imperial Rome and its ‘Satanic’ emperors. Like Satan himself, these emperors function as symbols of masculine aggression and liberation of the passions from contemporary political and moral systems. Such anti-establishment sentiments, especially among Italian artists, can manifest in fantasies of a Roman Empire reborn. By their artistic license, extreme metal artists continue to reshape a literary and artistic legacy of the imperial Rome and constructions of persecution narratives developed over the course of the late antique, medieval and modern periods.

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