The State They Were In : Luke’s View of the Roman Empire Originally published in Peter Oakes (ed.), Rome in the Bible and the Early Church (Carlisle: Paternoster; Grand Rapids : Baker Academic, 2002), pp. 1–41 . I am grateful to Dr Peter Oakes for kind permission to reproduce this essay here. Previous rescensions of this paper were presented at the New Testament research seminar of London Bible College (now London School of Theology) and the Acts seminar of the British New Testament Conference (Roehampton, September 2000). Professor Edwin Judge and Drs Bruce Winter, David Gill and Gerald Borchert kindly advised me or commented on partial or full drafts. I am grateful to all of them; inadequacies which remain are, of course, my own responsibility.

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 406-416
Author(s):  
R. McL. Wilson

In the Gospel according to St. John it is written that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’ In these familiar words is summed up the message of the Bible as a whole, and of the New Testament in particular. In spite of all that may be said of sin and depravity, of judgment and the wrath of God, the last word is one not of doom but of salvation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of salvation, of deliverance and redemption. The news that was carried into all the world by the early Church was the Good News of the grace and love of God, revealed and made known in Jesus Christ His Son. In the words of Paul, it is that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’.


2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 762-783
Author(s):  
Seth Perry

This article explores the relationship between the idealization of the Bible and the material characteristics of printed bibles among the Disciples of Christ in the early nineteenth century. The Disciples were founded on the principles of biblical primitivism: they revered the “pure” Bible as the sole source for proper faith and practice. The tenacity with which Disciples emphasized their allegiance to an idealized, timeless Bible has obscured their attention to its physical manifestations and use as printed scripture. The timeless authority of the Bible was entangled with the historical contingencies of mere bibles, and the ways in which they dealt with these tensions offer important perspective on nineteenth-century bible culture. Scholars have treated primitivism as an ahistorical impulse—the idealization of the New Testament church as a mythical sacred era outside of time that could be perpetually inhabited. By contrast, through an examination of the New Testaments edited and published by Disciples leader Alexander Campbell and the heavily-annotated preaching bible of Thomas Allen, an early Disciples preacher, I argue that in seeking to recover the New Testament era through historicized understandings of scripture, primitivists like Campbell and Allen situated the early church itself firmly within historical, not primordial, time.


PMLA ◽  
1893 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-379
Author(s):  
Sylvester Primer

The primitive purity of the early Church soon yielded to a Church hierarchy. In those early times, before the New Testament was admitted to equal canonical authority with the Old, the Church became the supreme authority and the Bible was subordinate. After the incorporation of the New Testament into the Bible, the Scriptures and the Church appear to be coördinate authority in the patristic writings of that period. During the Middle Ages the Church grew rapidly in political power and the influence of the Scriptures waned accordingly, so that Dante complains of the way in which not merely creeds and fathers but canon law and the decretals were studied instead of the gospels.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
Cornelis van der Kooi ◽  
Cornelius A. Rietveld

Abstract This article explores to what extent God and his works can be understood in terms of entrepreneurship. We give several theological reasons for using this lens, and we survey briefly the use of the word ‘oikonomia’ in the New Testament, the early church, and Reformed theology. Thereafter, we investigate how the entrepreneurship metaphor fits the narrative of the Bible. We argue that by looking at how features of entrepreneurship can be found in the way in which the triune God acts, we obtain a more comprehensive view on our history as a risky drama between God and humanity. The metaphor also highlights the important role played by humans in letting creation flourish.


Author(s):  
Дмитрий Евгеньевич Афиногенов

Трактат 1 из сборника «Амфилохии» св. патр. Фотия на примере истолкования конкретных мест из Библии объясняет методологию библейской экзегезы вообще. Во внимание должен приниматься не только богословский или исторический контекст, но также чисто филологические аспекты: семантика, интонация, языковой узус Нового Завета и Септуагинты, возможные разночтения и т. д. Патриарх убеждён, что при правильном пользовании этим инструментарием можно объяснить все кажущиеся противоречащими высказывания Св. Писания таким образом, что они окажутся в полном согласии друг с другом. The first treatise from «Amphilochia» by the St. Patriarch Photios expounds the general principles of the biblical exegesis on a specific example of certain passages from the Bible. It is not just the theological or historical context that has to be taken into consideration, but also purely philological aspects, such as semantics, intonation, the language usage of the New Testament and Septuagint, possible variant readings etc. The Patriarch is convinced, that the correct application of these tools makes it possible to perfectly harmonize all seemingly contradictory statements of the Scriptures.


Author(s):  
Davina C. Lopez

This chapter discusses several aspects of Roman imperial culture that offer resonances with the study of the New Testament. Herein several gendered and sexualized tropes of Roman imperial ideology, which serve to discursively naturalize power relationships and differences in hierarchy, are considered. These include the impenetrable manliness of the Roman emperor, the link between military conquest and sexual violence and feminization of conquered barbarian “others,” and the characterization of the Roman Empire as an endlessly fertile family. Special attention is given to the rhetorical and representational dimensions of Roman imperial culture, and particular emphasis is afforded to visual representation. Finally, the article considers several areas wherein the intersection of gender, sexuality, Roman imperial culture, and the study of the New Testament might further be explored.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
David J. Neumann

AbstractSwami Vivekananda was the most influential pioneer of a Yogi Christ, illustrating well over a century ago how the life and teachings of Jesus might be incorporated within a larger Hindu worldview—and then presented back to Western audiences. Appropriation of Jesus, one of the central symbols of the West, might be viewed as the ultimate act of counter-Orientalism. This article begins by providing a brief biography of Vivekananda and the modern Hinduism that nurtured him and that he propagated. He articulated an inclusivist vision of Advaita Vedanta as the most compelling vision of universal religion. Next, the article turns to Vivekananda's views of Christianity, for which he had little affection, and the Bible, which he knew extraordinarily well. The article then systematically explores Vivekananda's engagement with the New Testament, revealing a clear hermeneutical preference for the Gospels, particularly John. Following the lead of biblical scholars, Vivekananda made a distinction between the Christ of the Gospels and the Jesus of history, offering sometimes contradictory conclusions about the historicity of elements associated with Jesus's life. Finally, the article provides a detailed articulation of Vivekananda's Jesus—a figure at once familiar to Christians but, in significant ways, uniquely accommodated to Hindu metaphysics. Vivekananda demonstrated a robust understanding and discriminating use of the Christian Bible that has not been properly recognized. He deployed this knowledge to launch an important and long-lived pattern: an attractive, fleshed out depiction of Jesus of Nazareth, transformed from the Christian savior into a Yogi model of self-realization. Through his efforts, Jesus became an indisputably Indian religious figure, no longer just a Christian one. The Yogi Christ remains a prominent global religious figure familiar to Hindus, Christians, and those of other faiths alike.


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