Banquet Ceremonies Involving Wine in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life.

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Sin in the New Testament

10.1093/oso/9780190465735.001.0001 ◽

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.

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Laying Out the Fleece

Rewriting Masculinity ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190619398.003.0004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 67-89

Author(s):

Kelly J. Murphy

Keyword(s):

Cultural Context ◽

Near East ◽

Early Christianity ◽

Ancient Near East ◽

Early Christian ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman ◽

Different Cultures

Chapter 3 approaches Gideon’s story in three different ways: the role of divine signs in the ancient Near East; the portrait of Gideon as a hesitant solider in need of divine assurance in the biblical stories of Judg 6:36–40, 7:1–8, and 7:9–15; and the ways that early Christian exegetes interpreted Gideon’s requests for divine assurance. The chapter continues to trace how masculinity is constructed in different cultures, including the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity, where men were encouraged to fight spiritual battles rather than physical battles. These interpretations serve as a powerful reminder that masculinity is always “in crisis,” tending toward transformation and change, depending on cultural context.

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The idea of becoming an individual in the context of early Christianity

Ukrainian Religious Studies ◽

10.32420/1997.6.117 ◽

1997 ◽

pp. 43-51

Author(s):

Pavlo Pavlenko

Keyword(s):

Civil Wars ◽

Social Life ◽

Early Christianity ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Different Parts

The last centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, the first centuries after that, were enveloped in the history of mankind as a period of the total crisis and the decline of the Greco-Roman civilization, a crisis that covered virtually all spheres of the social life of the Roman world and which, as ever before, experienced almost every one, whether he is a slave or a free citizen, a small merchant or a big slave or an aristocrat. As a reaction to the crisis, in various parts of the empire the civil wars and the slavery uprising erupt in different parts of the empire. Under such conditions of life, the world around itself no longer seemed to man to be self-sufficient, harmonious, stable, "good" and warded by a cohort of traditional deities. Yes, and the gods themselves were now turned out to be incapable, unable to change the unceasing flow of fatal doom.

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The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity

Church History and Religious Culture ◽

10.1163/18712428-09501002 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 95 (1) ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Guy G. Stroumsa

Keyword(s):

Late Antiquity ◽

Early Christianity ◽

The Self ◽

Complex Relationship ◽

Late Antique ◽

Reading Practices ◽

Cultural Changes ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman

The article deals with the complex relationship between the religious revolution of late antiquity and cultural changes in the Roman world. It focuses on new attitudes to books, and analyses them in parallel with new conceptions of the self emerging in early Christianity. In particular, it seeks to understand the paradox of the early monks having been at once fierce opponents and carriers of Greco-Roman paideia.

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Pauline Worship as Seen by Pagans

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s0017816000002133 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 73 (1-2) ◽

pp. 241-249 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Morton Smith

Keyword(s):

Early Christianity ◽

Pliny The Younger ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman ◽

Christian Congregations

In Jesus the Magician I argued that the earliest pagan reports of persecutions of Christians—those in Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the younger—indicate that the persecutors believed the Christians were practicing magic. Here I want to explain their belief by reviewing the eariest evidence for Christian congregational practices and indicating how these practices would have been understood by the ancient Christians' neighbors. This does not imply that there were not other grounds for the persecutors' belief. Magic seems to have figured in the charges for which Jesus was condemned; it certainly was prominent in the propaganda against his cult that was spread by rival Jewish groups. Such propaganda doubtless shaped the expectations with which many outsiders viewed early Christianity, and people are apt to see what they expect to see. Nevertheless, Pliny's famous letter shows that Roman authorities sometimes tried to get beyond rumor to the facts. Accordingly we should ask what the facts would have looked like to men of the Greco-Roman world in the late first and early second centuries, a world in which magic was practiced on all levels of society and almost universally believed to be effective. As “the facts” we may take, with some reservations, the evidence about Christian congregations to be found in Paul's relatively unquestioned letters—Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, or Philippians, and Philemon.

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