scholarly journals Witnesses of the Resurrected Messiah

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-696
Author(s):  
Janusz Kucicki
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Israel

The dominant classification of Acts as the history of the early Christian Church whose main aim is to present the spread of the nascent movement from a less important part of the Roman Empire (Judea) to the very heart of the Empire (Rome), seems to be supported by Ac 1, 8 which is often taken as a kind of very general a table of contents. However, the rather unexpected end of Acts (a short and laconic account regarding Paul’s period in Rome), and Luke’s approach to and use of his sources, allow us to assume that Luke was aiming rather at a great story involving some main hearos and many other participants than are involved in just one thematic story. Following this assumption, based on the content of Acts, it is possible to individuate two main heroes (Peter and Paul) whose fate is somehow connected with many other persons that are also involved in giving witness to Jesus the Resurrected Messiah. In this study we look at Acts as the story concerning the two the most important witnesses, Peter and Paul, in order to determine their contribution to establishing the structural and doctrinal foundation of the New Israel.      

Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic

Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Block Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Visual Statement

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) and Early Christianity

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

Thus Gibbon opened the thirty-seventh chapter of the History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a lengthy chapter devoted to the twin topics of ‘the institution of monastic life’ and ‘the conversion of the northern barbarians’. The connection between the history of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church was indeed indissoluble. The Church was destined to follow the pattern of the empire by gradually degenerating as it grew in strength from original purity in the life of Christ and the Apostles to become a corrupt and baleful influence on the fortunes of secular society. Looking back over twenty years of research and writing (1767–87) he wrote near the beginning of his final chapter, ‘In the preceding volumes of this History, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion and I can only resume in a few words, their real or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome.’ He goes on to list ‘potent and forcible causes of destruction’ by barbarians and Christians respectively. As he finally laid down his pen on 27 June 1787 at Lausanne, he concluded with a sentence whose strict accuracy has sometimes been doubted: ‘It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.’ The date of this decision was 15 October 1764. Here we survey briefly the role of ‘religion’, i.e. Christianity in the ruin of the Roman Empire.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ‘ARIAN CONTROVERSY’ IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-263
Author(s):  
David M. Gwynn
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
The Church ◽  
Archaeological Approach ◽  
Arian Controversy

The so-called ‘Arian Controversy’ that divided the Christian Church in the 4th c. has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate in recent decades. The literary sources from which the majority of our knowledge of the controversy derives are highly polemical and distorted, written almost exclusively from the perspective of those whose positions would come to be accepted as ‘orthodox’, and this in turn has directly influenced scholarly interpretations of the material evidence from this crucial period in the history of the Church. In this paper I wish to reconsider that material evidence and ask how an archaeological approach independent of the biases of our literary sources might broaden our understanding of the controversy and its impact upon the 4th c. Roman empire.

The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians

AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam H. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer. This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish–Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge—in lay person's terms, education—in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at a great distance from the centers of classical learning, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch. The recently reexamined East Syrian sources may help push the conversation about rabbinic academic institutionalization forward. However, the significance of this issue is not simply attributable to its bearing on the social and institutional history of rabbinic institutions. Such inquiry may also reflect on how we understand the Babylonian Talmud and on the difficult redaction history of its constituent parts. Furthermore, I hope that the discussion offered herein will contribute to the ongoing analysis of the late antique creation and formalization of cultures of learning, which were transmitted, in turn, into the Eastern (i.e., Islamic and “Oriental” Christian and Jewish) and Western Middle Ages within their corresponding communities.

scholarly journals Fra huskult til basilika

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Bilde
Keyword(s):  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Dwelling House ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dining Room

It is still an astonishing fact that no material remains of early Christian churches have been found antedating the building in Dura-Europos at the Euphrat River in present day Iraq. It was a usual private dwelling house that in 241 was rebuilt and transformed into a Christian cult place. This building, however, in no way resembled the magnificent Christian basilicas that were built from the time of Constantine the Great (ruling 306/324-337), and only the baptistery in the rebuilt houses proves that it actually was a Christian building. In the present article I briefly scetch the history of the development of the Christian cult building from the private meeting places at the time of the New Testament to the Constantinian basilicas. The main purpose, however, is to discuss the character of the Christian cult house in relation to a number of related earlier and contemporary types of buildings such as the classical Hellenistic-Roman temples, the Jewish synagogue and a number of Graeco-Roman buildings that can be reagrded as historical forerunners of the Christian church building: the Greek counsel hall (bouleutêrion), the hall of initiation (e.g. Eleusis), the lecture hall (such as gymnasium and stoa), the Greek and Near Eastern cult theatres, the roman basilica and the Roman mithraeum. From the beginning, obviously, the Christian cult building  was a meeting house like the Greek counsel hall, the roman basilica and the Jewish synagogue. But it was also a dining room, and, at least from 241, with thebatistery in Dura-Europos, it also became a hall of initiation. Thus, the Christian cult building developed by uniting a number of eatlier types of buildings, secular and sacred, and from the time of Constantine, the Christian basilica united the secular Greek meeting house, which was continued and further developed in the Jewish synagogue, the Greek hall of initiation, and the classical Graeco-Roman Temple.

scholarly journals Reflections on the City of Alexandria and the growth of the early Christian faith

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Nicolaides
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Theological School ◽  
History Of ◽  
Coptic Church ◽  
The City

The city of Alexandria in Egypt was and remains the centre of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, and it was one of the major centres of Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire. St. Mark the Evangelist was the founder of the See, and the Patriarchate's emblem is the Lion of Saint Mark. It was in this city where the Christian faith was vigorously promoted, and in which Hellenic culture flourished. The first theological school of Christendom was stablished which drove catechesis and the study of religious philosophy to new heights. It was greatly supported in its quest by numerous champions of the faith and early Church Fathers such as inter-alia, Pantaenus, Clement, Dionysius, Gregory, Eusebius, Athanasius, Didymus and Origen. Both the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and also the Coptic Church, lay claim to the ancient legacy of Alexandria. By the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 CE, the city had lost much of its significance. Today the Greek or Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria remains a very important organ the dissemination of Christianity in Africa especially due to its missionary activities. The head bishop of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and all Africa, Theodore II, and his clerics are performing meritorious works on the continent to the glory of God’s Kingdom. This article traces, albeit it in a limited sense, the history of the faith in Alexandria using a desk-top research methodology. In order to trace Alexandria’s historical development and especially its Christian religious focus, existing relevant primary and secondary data considered to be relevant was utilised including research material published in academic articles, books, bibliographic essays, Biblical and Church documents, electronic documents and websites.

The religion of the first ages: primitivism and the primitive Church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
North African ◽  
Short History ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of

This chapter illustrates how the history of the early Christian church was not an abstruse subject during the eighteenth century but a topical one. For the primitive church remained the standard for both orthodoxy and orthopraxis well into the eighteenth century. This chapter demonstrates how that was the case by focusing especially on two pieces by Zachary Grey — his Examination of the fourteenth chapter of Sir Isaac Newton’s observations upon the prophecies of Daniel (1736) and his Short history of the Donatists (1741). Grey’s engagement with Netwon’s work on prophecy centred osn Newton’s treatment of saints and of God’s nature. In writing about these subjects, Newton had aimed to show that the post-fourth-century church was infested with theological impurities; Grey’s rejoinder aimed to show that the eighteenth-century Church of England understood both the saints and God’s nature in a primitively pure way. Grey’s treatment of the ancient Donatist heresy similarly related to contemporary concerns. For he tried to show that Methodism was not novel but, instead, a revival of an ancient heretical sect which had almost rent asunder the fourth-century North African church.

Review: Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité 4: Les aveux de la chair

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Elden
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of

In February 2018 the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality was finally published. Les aveux de la chair [Confessions of the Flesh] was edited by Frédéric Gros, and appeared in the same Gallimard series as Volumes 1, 2 and 3. The book deals with the early Christian Church Fathers of the second to fifth centuries. This essay reviews the book in relation to Foucault’s other work, showing how it sits in sequence with Volumes 2 and 3, but also partly bridges the chronological and conceptual gap to Volume 1. It discusses the state of the manuscript and whether it should have been published, given Foucault’s stipulation of ‘no posthumous publications’. It outlines the contents of the book, which is in three parts, on the formation of a new experience, on virginity and on marriage. There are also some important supplementary materials included. The review discusses how it begins to answer previously unanswered questions about Foucault’s work, and offers some suggestions about how the book might be received and discussed.

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