The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church: Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Discourse ◽  
The Church

Within the past decade or so, historical studies of early Christianity have been affected by what has been called the “linguistic turn.” This development has entailed a new appreciation of the varied forms of Christian “discourse” and their importance in shaping the cultural, political, and social worlds of late antiquity. For example, historians of religion and culture, such as Judith Perkins and Kate Cooper, have drawn attention to the way in which narrative representation in early Christian literature functioned to construct Christian identities and to negotiate power relations both within the church and in society at large. It has become increasingly difficult for historians to ignore the power of rhetoric in shaping the imaginative (and, therefore, real) worlds of late ancient Christians.

James the Just in History and Tradition: Perspectives of Past and Present Scholarship (Part I)

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Myllykoski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Christianity ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Church

James the Just, the brother of Jesus, is known from the New Testament as the chief apostle of the Torah-obedient Christians. Up to the last quarter of the twentieth century, Jewish Christianity was regarded as an unimportant branch of the early Christian movement. Correspondingly, there was remarkably little interest in James. However, in the past two decades, while early Christianity has been studied as a form of Judaism, the literature on James has grown considerably. Now some scholars tend to assume that James was a loyal follower of his brother right from the beginning, and that his leadership in the church was stronger than traditionally has been assumed. Fresh studies on Acts 15 and Galatians 2 have opened new questions about the Christian Judaism of James and social formation of the community which he led. Part II of this article, to be published in a later issue of Currents, will treat the rest of the James tradition—James's ritual purity, martyrdom and succession, and his role in the Gnostic writings and later Christian evidence. It will conclude with reflections concerning James and earliest Jewish-Christian theology.

Caesarius of Arles and the Development of the Ecclesiastical Tithe: From a Theology of Almsgiving to Practical Obligations

Traditio ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 43-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Shuler
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Law ◽  
The Church

Few taxes have been as enduring and as evocative of identity as the Christian ecclesiastical tithe, arguably “the most important tax in the economic development of western Europe.” The secular enforcement in 779 of the tithe's collection by the church clearly marked a decisive moment in its evolution, but its earlier origins as religious law have been much more elusive. Scholarship over the past five decades has made clear that mandatory tithing to the church was not a custom of early Christianity but rather something that developed in late antiquity, with our first unambiguous evidence of a developed theory of the tithe coming from sixth-century Gaul. The key figure providing that evidence was Caesarius of Arles (ca. 469–542).

scholarly journals The Pauline Epistles in Tertullian's Bible

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew V. Novenson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Reading First ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Early Christian Studies ◽  
The Church

The question of the fate of Paulinism in late antiquity, a point of controversy in early Christian studies especially since Adolf von Harnack, has benefited from fresh attention in recent research, even as, simultaneously, there is ever less agreement among New Testament scholars on the question of what Paulinism actually is. This state of affairs comes sharply into focus in Todd Still and David Wilhite's edited volume Tertullian and Paul, the first in a new series from T&T Clark on the reception of Paul in the church fathers. Reading and assessing Tertullian and Paul is a sometimes dizzying experience of intertextuality. The reader encounters, for example, Margaret MacDonald reading Elizabeth Clark reading Tertullian reading Paul. What is more, Paul himself is reading, for example, Second Isaiah, who is reading First Isaiah, who is reading parts of the Pentateuch, and so on. One thinks of Derrida's notion of différance, in which any given text refers to other texts, which refer to still other texts, which refer to still other texts, and so on, ad infinitum.

scholarly journals ‘Einer Frau gestatte ich nicht, dass sie lehre‘ (1 Timotheus 2:12): Exegese – Hermeneutik – Kirche

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph W. Stenschke
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Timothy 2 ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
The Church

This article is an exercise in combining the exegesis, hermeneutical issues and application of 1 Timothy 2:12 in ecclesial contexts where this prohibition is still taken seriously as a Pauline injunction or, at least, as part of the canon of the Church. It surveys representative proposals in New Testament studies of dealing with this least compromising assertion regarding the teaching of women in early Christianity. It discusses the hermeneutical issues involved in exegesis and application and how one should relate this prohibition to other New Testament references to women and their role in the early Christian communities. In closing, the article discusses whether and how this assertion can still be relevant in contemporary contexts when and where women have a very different role in society and church.

scholarly journals Feminist Historiography and Uses of the Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 260-283
Author(s):  
Blossom Stefaniw
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Feminist Historiography

Two recently-published works involved in the representation of women in the Christian past show two contemporary but divergent historiographic modes. The following essay examines each study within a larger frame of inquiry as to how patriarchy continues to shape both the institutional and embodied orders within which feminist historiography of early Christianity and Late Antiquity takes place. Using Critical Race Theory as the best available perspective from which to engage with systems of oppression, I articulate certain revisions which should be made to current efforts towards equality and consider what it would mean to write feminist historiography as counter-narrative or counter-storytelling without that becoming a decorative or extra-curricular practice in the academy. When feminist historiography is treated simultaneously in institutional, embodied, and epistemic terms it becomes evident that the way we think about women is part of a high-stakes conflict around the use of the past.

scholarly journals Responses to Apocalypse: Early Christianity and Extinction Rebellion

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 384
Author(s):  
Cullan Joyce
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Community Strategies ◽  
Cultural Movement

The Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement has grown rapidly in the past two years. In popular media, XR has sometimes been described using religious terminology. XR has been compared to an eco-cult, a spiritual and cultural movement, and described as holding apocalyptic views. Despite XR lacking the distinctive religiosity of new testament and early (pre-150ACE) Christianity, the movement resonates with the early Christian experience in several ways. (1) A characterization of events within the world as apocalyptic. (2) Both feel vulnerable to the apocalypse in specific ways, though each responds differently. (3) Both experience the apocalypse as a community and develop community strategies in response to the apocalypse. The paper sketches certain features of new testament Christianity and compares some of these to XR. The main difference between the two movements is that XR makes decisions to actively become vulnerable, whereas new testament Christianity was more often passively vulnerable. Elements of new testament Christianity provide a context for understanding XR as a response to an apocalypse.

The Ransom of Captives: Evolution of a Tradition

1981 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Verbal Expression ◽  
Moral Conviction ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Social Tradition

The admonition to ransom captives has a long paraenetic and social tradition that is documented in a variety of genres in early Christian literature. It is a tradition which, like many of its companion pieces in paraenetic literature, springs from roots in the Hebrew Scriptures which were consciously adopted by Christians as an important base upon which to build their own theology. The development of this particular tradition in early Christianity is an interesting example and test case of how a theological and moral conviction was not limited to verbal expression but was effectively translated into practice and creatively adapted to changing situations.

‘Race’, ‘Nation’, ‘People’: Ethnic Identity-Construction in 1 Peter 2.9

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Horrell
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
1 Peter ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

1 Peter 2.4–10 is a significant passage within the letter, rich in material from the Jewish scriptures. Verse 9 is particularly significant for the construction of Christian group-identity in that it uniquely applies three words from the vocabulary of ethnic identity to the Church: γένος, ἔθνος, and λαός, widely translated as ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘people’. A survey of these words in pre-Christian Jewish literature (especially the LXX), in the NT, and in other early Christian literature, reveals how crucial this text in 1 Peter is to the process by which Christian identity came to be conceived in ethnoracial terms. Drawing on modern definitions of ethnic identity, and ancient evidence concerning the fluidity of ethnic identities, it becomes clear that ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ identities are constructed, believed, and sustained through discourse. 1 Peter, with both aggregative and oppositional modes of ethnic reasoning, makes a crucial contribution to the construction of an ethnic form of Christian identity.

scholarly journals The Doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the Church of England

1894 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 171-192
Author(s):  
Henry C. Vedder
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Apostolic Succession ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Adequate Evidence

A definition of terms is essential at the outset of this investigation, but I am not aware of a definition of Apostolic Succession that would be accepted as authoritative by those who profess the doctrine, In this paper the term will be held to mean the doctrine that the order of bishops exists in the Church jure divino; that the first bishops were ordained by the Apostles as their successors, and that these orders have been transmitted by an unbroken succession to the present time; and furthermore, that without bishops there can be no valid orders, no valid sacraments, in short, no Church. It is not proposed in this paper to question the truth of this theory—to inquire whether there is adequate evidence in its favor either in the Scriptures of the New Testament, in the early Christian literature, or in the institutions of the Church of the first two centuries. Assuming that the doctrine rests on the sure foundations of Scripture teaching and institutional Christianity—or, at least, allowing that this may be the case—our task is to trace the effects of this doctrine upon the external history and internal life of the Church of England.

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