Toward a Social Interpretation of Early Christian Apologetics

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-458
Author(s):  
Robert L. Wilken
Keyword(s):  
Social Thought ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gallup Poll ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Methodological Guideline ◽  
Christian Apologetics

How did Christianity appear to men and women of the GrecoRoman world when it first began to emerge into public view? What ideas and conceptions were present within Roman “social thought” to identify and define a new phenomenon such as Christianity? What did men “see” when they looked at the Christians? In antiquity no one subjected the Christian movement to a social analysis or took a Gallup poll of popular opinions, but there is some evidence from which to gain an impression of how Christianity appeared to outsiders. As a methodological guideline I take the suggestion made by James Gustafson in his Treasure in Earthern Vessels.

scholarly journals Cartoon movies at home: animation films and TV

Comunicar ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (31) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicidad Loscertales-Abril ◽  
Trinidad Núñez-Domínguez
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Behaviour Models ◽  
At Home

Movies are one of the objects of study for Social Psychology because they are not only art or industry; they are a way of socialization. Therefore, movies show behaviour models, social values and norms, and make people react: movies are persuasive. A psycho-social analysis of films is necessary because movies can sometimes display prejudiced negative contents, which could be both explicit or very subtle, and therefore quite dangerous. The authors analyse ten well-known Dis-ney films from the gender perspective: How are men and women shown? What roles do they impersonate? Specifying contents and valuing subtle prejudiced stereotypes will help families to watch them from a different point of view. El cine es objeto de estudio para la Psicología Social porque no sólo es arte o industria; es socialización. Porque muestra modelos de comportamiento, valores sociales y normas, produce reacciones: es persuasivo. Este aspecto es el que mejor justifica el análisis psicosocial. También en muchas ocasiones, el cine presenta unos contenidos con prejuicios negativos poco explícitos, muy sutiles y, por tanto, bastantes peligrosos. Analizamos diez conocidas películas Disney desde la perspectiva de género: ¿Cómo se presentan hombres y mujeres? ¿Qué roles representan? Explicitar contenidos y valorar estereotipos con prejuicios sutiles ayuda a las familias a ver con otra mirada.

The Bishop as Pastor and Solitary: Bede and the Spiritual Authority of the Monk-Bishop

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon J. Coates
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Directed Attention ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Minority Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Clear Link

‘One is always aware of Bede's Church as an institution of men and women, meetings and buildings, and especially as a bishops' Church.’ With this comment, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill directed attention to a fundamental aspect of Bede's world which requires further examination. From early childhood until his death, Bede was and remained a monk. He had entered themonasteriumof Wearmouth and Jarrow at the age of seven and was to remain in it all his life. Although he was ordained to the priesthood by John of Beverley he never advanced to episcopal office. Despite the fact that he was nurtured in a world of reflective scholarship at Wearmouth and Jarrow it is now less common for historians to view Bede as ‘a lonely intellectual locked in an elite minority community’ and a scholar who lived out his life away from the events of the outside world. He perceived that world and the clergy who occupied it, however, through monastic eyes. Since Bede is, and indeed should be, seen as a representative and guardian of a monastic culture heavily influenced by Benedictine spirituality his views concerning the episcopate have not been analysed to the same extent as his views concerning monasticism. This is somewhat surprising since Bede himself perceived a clear link between the episcopal and monastic lives and was deeply concerned with the early Anglo-Saxon Church as an episcopally governed institution. The purpose of this article is to examine Bede's exploration of the manner in which individual bishops came personally to define their prestige, power and authority. This involves an investigation of their continued attachment to ascetic traditions once they had been elevated to the episcopate and an examination of the models applying ascetic sanctity to an episcopal context which Bede inherited from his predecessors in the late antique and early Christian world.

Early Christian Art

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Jensen ◽  
Lee Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Precious Metals ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Painted Panel ◽  
Complex Images

Most scholars agree that Christian art first appeared around the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd century. Among these earliest examples are the wall paintings and epitaphs found in the Roman catacombs. At first the iconography was primarily simple and symbolic (e.g., doves, anchors, boats, and praying figures). More complex images included the Good Shepherd with his sheep and representations from the Hebrew Bible, including Jonah, Noah, Daniel, and the Three Youths in the fiery furnace. By the end of the 3rd century, Christians had begun commissioning sarcophagi with relief carvings that depicted narrative episodes from the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Following the legalization of Christianity and the imperial support that following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, Christian art was dramatically transformed in style, technique, context, and motifs. From the mid-4th through the end of the 6th centuries, Christians built and decorated churches and baptisteries; designed and made liturgical vessels; produced private devotional objects in gemstones, pottery, glass, ivory, fabric, and precious metals; painted panel portraits of their holy men and women; and began to illustrate their sacred texts. Older types and motifs, such as the Good Shepherd and Jonah, were gradually replaced by new iconography that emphasized the glory and triumph of Christianity over the traditional Roman gods. Along with the iconographic changes, new media emerged, in particular polychrome glass mosaic for walls, apses, and domes of church buildings.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS: THE CATACOMBS, THE CLOSET, AND THE VICTORIAN “EARLY CHRISTIAN” NOVEL

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent A. Lankewish
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Victorian Novels ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Absolute Limit ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
A Site

Catacomb, n., a subterranean place for the burial of the dead, consisting of galleries or passageways with recesses excavated in their sides for tombs.The Oxford English DictionarySilence itself — the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers — is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies.Michel Foucault, The History of SexualityWe often assume (rightly) that homosexuality must be hidden, that it has to be found.Neil Bartlett, Who Was That Man?I. Ruining the Religious NovelBY TITLING THIS ESSAY “Love Among the Ruins,” I mean at once to be literal, figurative, and allusive in the framing of my topic: literal, in that I will be examining the place of love — specifically, erotic love — within the Roman catacombs or equivalent sites of Christian sanctuary; figurative, in that the representations of love that I will be discussing occur within the context of “literary ruins” — that is, within a relatively obscure nineteenth-century English narrative sub-genre, the Victorian “Early Christian” novel1; and, finally, allusive, in that I deliberately invoke the first poem of Robert Browning’s 1855 collection of dramatic monologues, Men and Women, for more than mere rhetorical effect. In fact, “Love Among the Ruins” condenses a number of the key concerns that I want to address in this essay, for the poem offers an important critique of classical culture not only as a site of pagan aesthetic production and human vainglory, but, relatedly, of homosocial and, perhaps, homoerotic bonds and the sterility presumed to inhere therein — a critique highly visible in Victorian Early Christian fiction. Indeed, I would argue, Browning’s text implicitly participates in the discursive construction of an important, if ultimately unstable, dichotomy that Victorian novels set in the catacombs and written roughly around the same time as “Love Among the Ruins” powerfully reinforce: namely, the traditional opposition between classicism and Christianity, an opposition at least one facet of which is rooted in competing attitudes toward the erotic.

The Philosophical Tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 331-344
Author(s):  
Philip Bosman
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Christian Apologetics ◽  
Allegorical Interpretation ◽  
Over Time

This chapter traces the development of the image and use of the mythological figure of Heracles in philosophical contexts. Heracles’ mythology is notoriously amoral, but the figure gets drawn into moral roles over time, in tandem with the development of virtue from a heroic to a civic value. Pindar employs him as an example of attaining immortality through virtuous actions and Prodicus’ tale implies that his deeds were the result of autonomous moral choice. Antisthenes and Cynic tradition elevate him to the paradigm for the Cynic way in opting for action (above theory), itinerancy, training of body and soul, and toil. Others also claimed Heracles to have philosophized through his deeds, but prefer an allegorical interpretation of the mythology, a tradition of interpretation that ran from Herodorus through the Stoics Cleanthes, Cornutus and Seneca, and into early Christian apologetics.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document