This is a comprehensive study of the well known and the not so well known creeds. Dr Kelly's famous book - a study of the rise, development and use of formularies in the creative centuries of the Church's history - was immediately acclaimed in Europe and America as the standard work on the subject. The book opens with an examination of creedal elements in the New Testament and continues with an enquiry into the relation of creeds to the rite of Baptism. The chapters that follow are devoted to a study of the evidence for 'the rule of faith' in the second century; a long discussion of the old Roman Creed; and a consideration of the creeds of the Eastern Church and their relation to Western creeds and to those propounded by the fourth-century councils. Particular attention is given to the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed. In addition, there is a lengthy and largely original reconstruction of the expansion of the Roman Creed and its acceptance throughout Europe as the present Apostle's Creed. Two valuable features of the book are the emphasis it lays on the liturgical setting of ancient creeds, and the attempt it makes to elucidate their theology as it was understood by those who framed them.

The second volume of the Letters of Barsanuphius and John completes the collection of these monastic writings, which provided both spiritual and practical advice to a variety of sixth-century interlocutors from diverse walks of life. The two anchorites, having settled in an isolated location near Gaza, were in demand as trusted counselors, responding to questions on topics ranging from relationships within monasteries to problems of municipal taxation. Barsanuphius, the ""great old man,"" and John, the ""other old man,"" fulfilled their time-honored role as resident holy men in their locality, leaving behind a wealth of monastic wisdom as well as inspiration for all Christians. Distinctive to this volume are many colorful letters that will attract the interest of historians of this period. Some of these are responses to inquiries about specific problems of mundane life, such as veterinary treatment for a horse, the leprous disease of a household servant, and vandalism in a vineyard. Of broader applicability is the advice regarding such issues as the replacement of an unworthy bishop, the management of alms donated for the poor, and the quality of public entertainment in faraway Constantinople. The religious diversity of the Gaza region at this time, a century before the advent of Islam, generated questions about how Christians should interact with Jewish, pagan, and Manichaean fellow citizens. Abundant also are insights into the human heart. Barsanuphius and John offer timeless teachings on the inner warfare against resentful thoughts, temptations, doubts, anxieties, and reluctance to surrender oneself trustfully to God. They examine the human foibles arising from relationships among monks, and between monks and abbots, with a serene clarity resulting from these holy men's long experience with the introspective asceticism of the desert. Charity and humility, perpetual watchwords of the Christian life, are combined with prudence and discretion to create a literary corpus that both inspires and informs.

In the first half of the fifth century, the Latin-speaking part of the Roman Empire suffered vast losses of territory to barbarian invaders. But in the Greek-speaking half of the Eastern Mediterranean, with its capital at Constantinople, there was a stable and successful system, using Latin as its official language, but communicating with its subjects in Greek. This book takes an inside look at how this system worked in the long reign of the pious Christian Emperor Theodosius II (408-50), and analyzes its largely successful defense of its frontiers, its internal coherence, and its relations with its subjects, with a flow of demands and suggestions traveling up the hierarchy to the Emperor, and a long series of laws, often set out in elaborately self-justificatory detail, addressed by the Emperor, through his officials, to the people. Above all, this book focuses on the Imperial mission to promote the unity of the Church, the State's involvement in intensely-debated doctrinal questions, and the calling by the Emperor of two major Church Councils at Ephesus, in 431 and 449. Between the Law codes and the acts of the Church Councils, the material illustrating the working of government and the involvement of State and church, is incomparably richer, more detailed, and more vivid than for any previous period.

This lively and original account of early Celtic Christianity - which was of far greater importance in the development of Western culture than we commonly realize - is told against the background of European history of the first seven centuries A.D. It focuses on the lives of Saints Brendan, Columba, and Columbanus, who lived active and effective lives in the cause of the early Church. Brendan, one of the founding fathers of Christianity in Ireland, was known in legend as a voyager and was thought to have reached the Western Hemisphere long before the Vikings. Columba took Celtic Christianity to Scotland and helped to re-establish it in Wales and in the North and West of England. Columbanus was the great Irish missionary to continental Europe, where he and his followers helped to convert the heathen invaders from the East. When Rome, in the person of St. Augustine, Pope Gregory's apostle to the Angles, penetrated again to England, a showdown between Roman and Celtic Christianity was inevitable. The dramatic confrontation occurred at the Council of Whitby in 664. Rome, with its organization and authority, won, and Celtic Catholicism went into eclipse. But some of its influence persisted all over Europe, and it had a large share in shaping the culture that ultimately emerged from the dark ages. This book's fascination is the picture that it gives of the movements of peoples, the shaping of new countries, and the development of ideas during those too-little-known centuries.

Cyril's life of some seventy years, placed in the very center of the fourth century, epitomizes much that was characteristic of the period and the locale. Bishop of Jerusalem for nearly forty years, he experienced three expulsions from his see, these due as much to politico-ecclesiastical rivalry as to his participation in the contemporary theological controversies, in which Cyril played an important and still disputed role. The present volume carries about half of the bishop's most valuable production, a series of catechetical lectures for Lent and Easter week. The introductory lecture (the Procatechesis) admitted the catechumens to the instructions to follow. Of these, the Catecheses proper, the first twelve appear in this first volume, the remaining six, with the five Mystogogical Lectures (for Easter Week), to come in Volume 2. The conferences are based firmly in the sacraments and in the successive articles of the Creed. It is upon the Creed and the various forms of it with which Cyril was involved that much of the extended Introduction centers. Cyril's body of catechetical lectures, which has been called "one of the most precious treasures of Christian antiquity," can make a telling contribution to the catechetical renewal within the Church of today and to the study and devotion of clergy and layfolk alike.

Magnus Zetterholm uses theoretical insights from the social sciences to deal with the complex issues raised by the parting of Judaism and Christianity, and the accompanying rise of Christian anti-Semitism in ancient Antioch.

Unlike previous attempts to solve this problem have focused mainly on ideology, Zetterholm's excellent study emphasizes the interplay between sociological and ideological elements.

For students of religious studies, classical studies, history and social science, this will give leverage and knowledge in the pursuit of their course studies.

St Benedict's Rule is a set of guidelines that has governed Christian monastic life since the 6th century. Those who live according to the Rule regard it as the bedrock of their lives and feel great affection for its author. In this book four prominent Buddhist scholars turn their attention to the Rule. Through personal anecdotes, lively debate and thoughtful comparison, they reveal how the wisdom of each tradition can revitalise the other and how their own spiritual practices have been enriched through familiarity with the Rule. Their insights are written not only for Buddhists and Christians but for anyone interested in the ancient discipline of monasticism and what it might offer a materially glutted and spiritually famished culture. This book also includes a new translation of the Rule by the former Abbot of Ampleforth, Patrick Barry.>

The essays in this book honor and extend the work of Rowan A. Greer, Walter H. Gray Professor Emeritus of Anglican Studies at Yale University Divinity School, by exploring the connections between textual interpretation and the formation of religious identity. A diverse and prestigious group of biblical scholars, church historians, and theologians study the function that scripture plays in the creation and maintenance of faith communities and the ways that communal locations in turn shape the interpretation of scripture. The first part of the book examines specific examples of ancient biblical interpretation as a means of creating, maintaining, and challenging Christian identity in the pluralistic ancient world. Authors study acts of interpretation in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Physiologus, Gnostic literature, the fifth-century mosaic of the Church of Hosios David in Thessaloniki, and in the works of Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, John Chrysostom, and Porphyry of Tyre. Reading scripture emerges as a strategy for locating the reader and his or her community with respect to other Christians, Jews, and pagans. Part 2 of the volume considers the general problem of interpretation within Christian communities, whether ancient or modern, as they face the task of maintaining a coherent identity in a multicultural environment. Contributors to this book-all students, colleagues, and friends of Rowan Greer-are Charles A. Bobertz, David Brakke, Mary Rose D'Angelo, Stanley Hauerwas, Martha Meeks, Wayne Meeks, Frederick Norris, Richard Norris, Alan Scott, Arthur Bradford Shippee, Michael Bland Simmons, and Frederick Weidmann.

Rich in captivating narratives, the four books of Dialogues of Gregory the Great (Pope, 590-604) present hagiographical accounts of the lives of Italian saints whose holiness remained intact during tumultuous times. Of these, the most famous is the monastic founder Benedict, whose life story occupies all of Book Two. These stories, along with Book Four's mixture of expository and narrative assurances of the immortality of the soul, must have been encouraging to its contemporary Italian readers, especially since Gregory wrote these books at a time when Italy had been ravaged by barbarian invasions, floods, plagues, and famines.

A full survey of the first 600 years of Christian history, this is an examination of the earliest years of one of the world's most important religions.

The Early Christian Centuries carries the reader from the world of second-temple Judaism to the Byzantine age, the rise of Islam, and the beginnings of medieval European polities. Stressing the importance of shifting historical consciousness, the continuity and development of ideas, and the urge for social respectability, Rousseau gives the greatest attention to the 'inner' components of the Christian life: authority, worship, biblical interpretation, moral seriousness and spiritual idealism

A sweeping and original study of the structuring of sanctity in pictorial hagiography, Hahn's book teases out the sophisticated rhetoric and imaginative independence of the illustrations to medieval lives of the saints. In systematically surveying the many ways in which narrative imagery reached out to and responded to a variety of audiences, "Portrayed on the Heart will take its place among the most compelling studies of medieval narrative in any medium.--Jeffrey Hamburger, "The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany and "Nuns As Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent

In her superb analysis of the development of hagiographic pictorial narrative, Cynthia Hahn has achieved both historical precision and critical nuance. It is the very best sort of interdisciplinary work, showing the complex symbiosis of visual and textual narrative. This is one of the handful of best books I have read about medieval sanctity. Thomas Head, editor of "Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology

Cynthia Hahn's "Portrayed on the Heart, richly and beautifully illustrated, is both scholarly and entertaining. It is an interpretive feat that makes hagiographic manuscripts come alive as a dynamic dialogue between text and image. In a sophisticated application of narrative theory to illustrated manuscripts, Hahn shows how images "speak" to a medieval audience, elicit responses that are more emotional than those to a written text, and function as devotional objects. Far from being "mere" illustrations, images can reshape the textual presentation of a saint, make visible spiritual struggles, turn readers into witnesses to sanctity, and even play a role in canonizationproceedings. This is a wonderful book that deserves a wide readership. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, "Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature

This study of Mark, the apostolic associate to whom Christians have traditionally attributed authorship of the second gospel, views him from a variety of angles: historical, literary and theological. It shows how images of Mark helped shape the identity of the Early Church.

This book provides an original and rewarding context for understanding the prolific fourth-century Christian theologian John Chrysostom and the religious and social world in which he lived. Blake Leyerle analyzes two highly rhetorical treatises by this early church father attacking the phenomenon of "spiritual marriage." Spiritual marriage was an ascetic practice with a long history in which a man and a woman lived together in an intimate relationship without sex. What begins as an analysis of Chrysostom's attack on spiritual marriage becomes a broad investigation into Chrysostom's life and work, the practice of spiritual marriage itself, the role of the theater in late antique city life, and the early history of Christianity. Though thoroughly grounded in the texts themselves and in the cultural history of late antiquity, this study breaks new ground with its focus on issues of rhetoric, sexuality, and power.
Leyerle argues that Chrysostom used images and tropes drawn from the theater to persuade religious men and women that spiritual marriage was wrong. In addition to her analysis of the significance of the rhetorical strategies used by Chrysostom, Leyerle gives a thorough discussion of the role of the theater in late antiquity, particularly in Antioch, one of the gems among late antique cities. She also discusses gender in the context of late antique religion, shedding new light on early Christian attitudes toward sexuality. Throughout Leyerle weaves an ongoing conversation with contemporary theory in film and gender studies that gives her study an important analytic dimension.

The apostle Paul is a controversial figure, both admired and reviled. His letters have influenced creeds and dogmatic statements, but he is also accused of turning the "simple" gospel that Jesus preached into a complex dogmatic system. Furthermore, on the authority of Paul, women have been given second place in church and society for many centuries. The "apostle to the Gentiles" has sometimes been a source of inspiration, but he has more often than not been a stumbling block when Jews and Christians meet. This book tackles all of these and other issues surrounding Paul and presents him for the widest possible audience. With his enviable gift for clear and popular writing, C. J. den Heyer here takes on a particularly difficult task and shows great mastery in offering a detailed portrait of one of the most controversial figures in the ancient world. C. J. den Heyer is Professor of New Testament at the Theological University of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands.

This book discusses the development of the English Church during a rich and turbulent two centuries of European history. It provides a comprehensive survey covering the late Anglo-Saxon period through the Norman Conquest and right across the Anglo-Norman period. Professor Loyn addresses major themes in medieval history. He begins with the pre-1066 period looking at the great Benedictine monastic revival; he looks at the role of the Church in the Conquest itself; the evidence of the Domesday Book and then considers the activities of the Church in the turbulent years of the Conqueror's successors. The book concludes with a discussion of doctrine, belief and ritual.

This volume contains six or seven manuscripts of a previously unknown sapiential composition from the Second Temple period (4Q415 ff.), originally dubbed 'Sapiential Work A' and now known as '4QInstruction'. The numerous copies of this manuscript attest to its importance for the community at Qumran. Also included in the volume is a re-edition of 1QInstruction (1Q26) originally published by J. T. Milik in DJD I. DJD XXXIV is the second and final volume in the series of sapiential texts from Cave 4.

During the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the prevailing ideal of feminine virtue was radically transformed: the pure but fertile heroines of Greek and Roman romance were replaced by a Christian heroine who ardently refused the marriage bed. How this new concept and figure of purity is connected with - indeed, how it abetted - social and religious change is the subject of Kate Cooper's lively book. The Romans saw marital concord as a symbol of social unity - one that was important to maintaining the vigor and political harmony of the empire itself. This is nowhere more clear than in the ancient novel, where the mutual desire of hero and heroine is directed toward marriage and social renewal. But early Christian romance subverted the main outline of the story: now the heroine abandons her marriage partner for an otherworldly union with a Christian holy man. Cooper traces the reception of this new ascetic literature across the Roman world. How did the ruling classes respond to the Christian claim to moral superiority, represented by the new ideal of sexual purity? How did women themselves react to the challenge to their traditional role as matrons and matriarchs? In addressing their questions, Cooper gives us a vivid picture of dramatically changing ideas about sexuality, family, morality - a cultural revolution with far-reaching implications for religion and politics, women and men. The Virgin and the Bride offers a new look at central aspects of the Christianization of the Roman world, and an engaging discussion of the rhetoric of gender and the social meaning of idealized womanhood.

One of the outstanding Christian thinkers of all time, Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662) exerted a powerful formative influence on the Church when it was still one and undivided. Maximus left his stamp on Christianity as it is now recognized by all three broad streams of Christian faith: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. Yet for centuries the detailed study of Maximus's writings was neglected. The first edition of Thunberg's Microcosm and Mediator (1965) helped to transform this situation of indifference into one of intense interest in Maximus and the subtleties of his thinking. This new edition has been revised and expanded, with updated references and bibliographies. The focus of Microcosm and Mediator is Maximus's anthropology, his highly developed general reflections on human nature. Maximus understands man as, not only a being - a microcosm - who reflects the constitution of the created universe, but also as a being - a mediator - created in the image of God, whose task it is, in Christ, to reconcile the spiritual and the sensible into one homogeneous unity.

What is the Church? Perhaps more importantly, what is it meant to be? How did ti's earliest members understand this body of which they had become a part? How did they envisage what it ought to be and might become? This collection of fifteen early essays by an international group of New Testament experts is made in honour of John Sweet. They bring together in one volume a dynamic range of perspectives on how the early Christians viewed the Church: its origin, purpose and relation to the Jewish Scriptures and to Jesus Christ; its place in the world and in God's plan; its community life and worship, both in theory and in practice. The concluding chapter draws together the various recurrent strands of early Christianity's relationship with Judaism. Concise and accesible, with reading lists for each chapter, the book covers every New Testament author and ranges in time from the Greek Old Testatment to the Apostolic Fathers. Markus Bockmuehl is University Lecturer in Divinity and Fellow and Tutor of Fiztwilliam Collge, Cambridge. Michael B. Thompson is Director of Studies and Lecturer in New Testament at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

Basil of Caesarea is thought of most often as an opponent of heresy and a pioneer of monastic life in the eastern church. In this biographical study, however, controversy is no longer seen as the central preoccupation of his life, nor are his ascetic initiatives viewed as separable from his pastoral concern for all Christians. Basil's letters, sermons, and theological treatises, together with the testimonies of his relatives and friends, reveal a man beset by doubt. He demanded loyalty, but gave it also, and made it a central feature of his church. In Rousseau's portrait, Basil's understanding of human nature emerges as his major legacy.

Author Biography:
Richard Wallace is a lecturer in the Department of Classics at Keele University and the treasurer of the Classical Association.
Wynne Williams retired from teaching ancient history at Keele University in 1991. He is co-author, with Richard Wallace, of The Acts of the Apostles: A Companion (1993).

A genuine renaissance is presently underway in the study of biblical interpretation and biblical culture in the early Christian age. The profundity and complexity of the early Christians engagement with Holy Scripture, in theology, in ecclesial and liturgical life, in ethics, and in ascetic and devotional life, are providing a rich resource for contemporary discussions of the Bible's ongoing "afterlife" within ecumenical Christian communities and contexts.

The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity is a collection of wide-ranging essays on the influence of the Bible in numerous and varied aspects of the life of the Greek-speaking churches during the first four centuries. Essays appear under the general themes of (I) The Bible as a Foundation of Christianity; (II) The Bible in Use among the Greek Church Fathers; (III) The Bible in Early Christian Doctrinal Controversy; (IV) The Bible and Religious Devotion in the Early Greek Church. Individual essays probe topics as diverse as the use of the Bible in early Christian preaching and catechesis, appeals to Scripture in the conflicts between Jews and Christians, pagan use of Scripture against the Church, and the Bible's influence in early Christian art, martyrology, liturgical reading, pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and ascetical life.

Much of the volume constitutes a translation, revision, and adaptation of essays originally presented in the French volume Le monde grec ancien et la Bible (1984), Volume 1 of the series Bible de Tousles Temps. Four new studies appear, however, including an introductory essay on Origen of Alexandria as a guide to the biblical reader, and two essays on the biblical culture of early Eastern Christianmonasticism.

The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity comes as an international project, the work of French, Swiss, Australian, and now Canadian and American scholars. It will be useful to students of early Christianity and the history of biblical interpretation, and will also serve as a useful introduction to the many dimensions of the reception of the Bible in the early Church.

Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe (ca. 467-532), is considered the greatest North African theologian after the time of St. Augustine. When Fulgentius was born, North Africa had been under the rule of Germanic Vandals for several decades. His family was repeatedly victimized by Vandal persecutions, and Fulgentius himself suffered persecution and exile. While in exile, he continued his pastoral labors and became the theological spokesman of the displaced. Though he was not an original thinker, he propagated the Augustinian heritage and defended it against its adversaries, notably the Arians and Pelagians (or semi-Pelagians). With thorough understanding and conviction, Fulgentius promoted the Trinitarian theology of Augustine. He also defended and explained Augustine's difficult and controversial stance on the question of predestination. Fulgentius contributed greatly to the transmission and interpretation of a theological heritage that would dominate and shape the Church in the West for hundreds of years to come. Unfortunately, many of Fulgentius's writings have been lost. Of those that have survived, the most important are dated to the period of his second exile and the sixteen years from his return to North Africa from Sardinia until his death. This volume gives English readers for the first time an opportunity to study a representative selection of the writings of this early sixth-century author. It also presents Fulgentius's biography, the Life, for the first time in English.

The Russian church is central to an understanding of early Russian and Slav history, but for many years there has been no accessible, up-to-date introduction to the subject in English - until now. The late John Fennell's last book, is a masterly survey of the development, nature and role of the early Church in Russia from Christianization of the country in 988, through Kievan and Tatar poeriods to 1448 when the Russian Church finally became totally independent of its mother-church in Byzantium.

This startling study of early Christian attitudes toward sexuality begins with an account of the different stances adopted by the Church-from the Early Fathers' view that sex and the female body were irredeemably unholy, to Augustine's contention that sex was natural, but lust was evil. While the Church Fathers struggled to reach consistent theoretical conclusions, the underlying conflation of 'women' with 'sex' meant that patristic statements on chastity, virginity and marriage effectively read as ecclesiastical law governing women's conduct. Joyce Salisbury explains the relationship between Church doctrine and the position of women by placing these official views alongside an ascetic tradition which resisted the constraints imposed by sexual intercourse. Through an examination of texts of female and popular authorship, and the extraordinary lives of seven women saints-including the transvestites Castissima and Pelagia-she presents a markedly different picture of sexual and social roles. For many of these women, celibacy became a form of emancipation. Church Fathers, Independent Virgins bears witness to the entrenched power of the Church to oppress, the continuing power of women to overcome, and the enduring effects of medieval sexual attitudes.