The Question as to Why We Have to Live Out the Agony of Our Epoch and its Fundamental Un-Answerability

Symposion ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-138
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Proclamation

This paper excavates certain impulses that are buried in Pierre Klossowski’s 1968 edition of his original 1947 work, Sade My Neighbor. We argue that the self-suffocating nature of our historical present reveals the problem of an epochal threshold: in which twenty-first century democracy itself is threatened with death and violence in delusional neofascist attempts at national self-preservation. This speaks to a deeper enigma of time, epochal shifts, and the mystery of historical time; but it does so in a manner that escapes classical problems in the philosophy of history. Rather, by returning to Klossowski’s late 1940s and late 1960s contexts while reoccupying the New Testament question of Jesus’s foresakeness on the Cross, we unravel a series of paradoxes and aporias that attempt to deepen metaphysical problems of time, death, and the sovereign autonomy of human freedom and existence. Ultimately the paper concludes by offering certain speculative philosophical constructions on why today’s self-cannibalization of democracy has its roots in unresolved tensions that span these two poles: a.) the primordial secret of early Christian proclamation of Jesus’s death and b.) the post-Christian Sadean experiment of a philosophical revolution that was doomed to implode when the valorization of pain, suffering, and death fails to fill the vacuum left behind by atheism.

Jewish Law in the Gospels in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

2021 ◽  
pp. 014610792110343
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Right

This study examines a number of specific examples of halakhic (Jewish legal) matters discussed in the New Testament that are also dealt with in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper compares and contrasts the rulings of these two traditions, as well as the Pharisaic views, showing that the Jewish legal views of the Gospels are for the most part lenient views to the left of those of the Pharisees, whereas those of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent a stricter view, to the right of the Pharisaic views. Ultimately, in the halakhic debate of the first century ce, the self-understanding of the earliest Christians was very different from that of the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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.

scholarly journals Nuwe-Testamentiese perspektiewe op die Sabbat en die Sondag

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
S. J. Joubert
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
To Come ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Interpretative Framework

New Testament perspectives on the Sabbath and the Sunday In order to come to terms with New Testament views on the Sabbath and the Sunday, an investigation of Jewish schematizations of time and of the Sabbath in particular, around the first century A.D. is undertaken. This is followed by a discussion of relevant New Testament texts on the Sabbath and the Sunday. Finally, the available information from the New Testament is placed within the interpretative framework of the “Christ event” which inaugurated the eschaton, and which also replaced the strong emphasis on specific holy days within early Christianity. However, the Sunday was probably chosen by some early Christian groups as the most suitable day to commemorate the resurrection of Christ.

Sin in the New Testament

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Message

This book examines what the different New Testament writings have to say about sin within the broader historical and theological contexts of first-century Christianity. These contexts include both the immediate world of Judaism out of which early Christianity emerged, as well as the larger Greco-Roman world into which Christianity quickly spread as an increasingly Gentile religious movement. The Jewish sacrificial system associated with the Jerusalem Temple was important for dealing with human sin, and early Christians appropriated the language and imagery of sacrifice in describing the salvific importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Greco-Roman understandings of sin as error or ignorance played an important role in the spreading of the Christian message to the Gentile world. The book details the distinctive portraits of sin in each of the canonical Gospels in relation to the life and ministry of Jesus. Beyond the Gospels the book develops how the letters of Paul and other early Christian writers address the reality of sin, again primarily in relation to the revelatory ministry of Jesus.

Relating to Judaism, Experiencing the Sacred

2019 ◽  
pp. 285-313
Author(s):  
Eyal Regev
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Point Of Reference

This chapter examines how early Christian attitude toward the Temple changed and why. First-century early Christianity was a religious and social movement at the beginning of the process of identity formation. Its members had yet to determine who they were: what part of their identity was contiguous with Judaism and what part comprised all-new elements. During this process they undoubtedly looked to other non-Christian Jews as a point of reference. Literary engagement with the Temple granted the New Testament writers and their contemporary readers the opportunity to express their debt to Jewish tradition, while at the same time their distinctiveness from it. Moreover, this engagement enhanced their sense of being powerful, genuine, and sacred—that is, close to God. For them, the Temple is a means of experiencing the sacred in both old and new fashion, somewhere on the spectrum between what would later be termed “Judaism” and “Christianity.”

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.

The Birth of Christian History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve-Marie Becker ◽  
John J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Gospel Of Mark ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Awareness ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Literary Memory

When the Gospel writings were first produced, Christian thinking was already cognizant of its relationship to ancient memorial cultures and history-writing traditions. Yet, little has been written about exactly what shaped the development of early Christian literary memory. This book explores the diverse ways in which history was written according to the Hellenistic literary tradition, focusing specifically on the time during which the New Testament writings came into being: from the mid-first century until the early second century CE. While acknowledging cases of historical awareness in other New Testament writings, the book traces the origins of this historiographical approach to the Gospel of Mark and Luke—Acts. The book shows how the earliest Christian writings shaped Christian thinking and writing about history.

New Testament Christianity in the Roman World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry O. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Context Specific

The book explores the social contexts of New Testament writings from Acts onward, along with other relevant Jewish and Christian literature. Moving from large to increasingly smaller spheres, the study examines how at each level beliefs and practices related to the gods and the cosmos, the empire, the city, and the household shaped a shifting and context-specific Christian faith and a set of affiliated identities. In each case, the discussion considers intersections with the New Testament and other early Christian and Jewish literature. The introduction discusses theories of canon formation, the history of the Roman Empire relevant to New Testament study, and the concept of lived religion as a means to understand ancient Christianity. Chapter 2 discusses the gods, sacrifices, festivals, divine epithets, temple architecture, magic, neighborhood religion, demonology, pagan and Christian ritual, and Greco-Roman and Jewish views of the cosmos. Chapter 3 examines the empire’s political and administrative structure, urbanization, taxation, nomenclature, patronage, and emperor worship. Chapter 4 treats the organization and governance of cities, liturgies, urban demography, poverty, mortality, economic production, trade associations, and integration of Jews in city life. Chapter 5 considers terms and definitions of the ancient household and family; architecture; domestic rituals; rites of passage; slavery and manumission; expectations of men, women, children, and slaves; funerary practices; and fictive kinship. Chapter 6 discusses the self; the social constitution of identity; physiological understandings of the body; Greco-Roman gender construction; philosophical theories concerning the interrelationship of body, soul, and ethics; and Jewish and early Christian conceptualizations of the self.

The Galilean Jesus and a Contemporary Christology

2009 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Freyne
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Proclamation

Current interest in the Galilean Jesus as a historical figure has obscured the christological claims of the New Testament with regard to his person and ministry. This article seeks to build bridges between Jesus and the proclamation about him by exploring three themes arising from accounts of his ministry (messiahship, openness to Gentiles, and the role of wisdom teacher) by examining each theme within the context of Galilean life in the Herodian period, and by demonstrating how these aspects of Jesus' Galilean career are carried forward and developed into the early Christian proclamation.

The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-376
Author(s):  
Mike Duncan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical History ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Rhetorical Force ◽  
Apostolic Church

Current histories of rhetoric neglect the early Christian period (ca. 30–430 CE) in several crucial ways–Augustine is overemphasized and made to serve as a summary of Christian thought rather than an endpoint, the texts of church fathers before 300 CE are neglected or lumped together, and the texts of the New Testament are left unexamined. An alternative outline of early Christian rhetoric is offered, explored through the angles of political self-invention, doctrinal ghostwriting, apologetics, and fractured sermonization. Early Christianity was not a monolithic religion that eventually made peace with classical rhetoric, but as a rhetorical force in its own right, and comprised of more factions early on than just the apostolic church.

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