Birth of a Worldview is a groundbreaking intellectual history of the making of the worldview that came to define western Christian culture for two millennia. Using a broad range of primary sources, Robert Doran narrates the story of how early thinkers wrestled with philosophical and cultural questions in order to form a view that would make sense of their place in the world. This engaging book will be of interest to scholars, students, and general readers interested in religious studies, ancient history, and intellectual thought.

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.

The timeless message of the New Testament applies to people of every culture and generation. Yet there is great value in understanding the world in which that message was first revealed - its social manners, politics, religious customs, and culture. Exploring the New Testament World, written by classics and Bible scholar Dr. Albert A. Bell, Jr., illuminates the living context of the New Testament, immersing its readers in the intriguing world of Jesus and the early church.

An authority on ancient Greek and Roman language, culture, and history, Dr. Bell writes in a readable style that is accessible and enjoyable to any reader - an uncommon accomplishment among New Testament scholars today. Surveying Jewish factions of the era, the social and political structure of the Roman Empire, and the philosophies and religions that surrounded the early church, Dr. Bell helps his readers learn to think like first-century Jews, Greeks, and Romans, illuminating puzzling New Testament passages for clear understanding. Comprehensive Scripture and Subject Indexes make this volume even more useful as a "manners and customs" Bible companion.

This authoritative guide receives high praise from college professors and Sunday school teachers alike, proving its appeal to both popular and academic audiences. A "must-have" reference for every pastor and an indispensable resource to any Bible reader.

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.

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.

This study poses and answers two questions: 1. What is the basis in the tradition for the Acts 13 and 14 narrative about Paul's and Barnabas' mission on Cyprus and in southern Galatia? 2. Who are the addressees of the letter to the Galatians?
Using the extant inscriptions and literary sources that relate to the provinces of Cyprus and Galatia in the early Roman Empire, the above questions are addressed to Acts and Galatians, and answered as follows: 1 Acts 13-14 contains so much local colour as to rule out the thesis that the so-called first missionary journey is fictional. 2. Paul's letter to the Galatians is addressed to the churches in southern Galatia - Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. The hypothesis of a north-Galatian setting is shown to be improbable in the light of the geographical, archaeological and epigraphic evidence.

In Volume One of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, the renowned theologian and political philosopher examines various facets of the unique encounter between biblical religion and Greek philosophy during the early Christian centuries and the Middle Ages. Fortin's aim is to uncover the crucial issues to which this encounter gave rise, such as the sometimes troubling but immensely fruitful tension between divine revelation and philosophic reason. The book includes sections on St. Augustine and the refounding of Christianity; the encounter between Jerusalem and Athens; the medieval roots of Christian education; and Dante and the politics of Christendom.

Presents Father Columba's chapter-by-chapter commentary designed to help others share St Benedict's words and approach to living the Christian life. The book draws on the author's lifetime of living and teaching the Rule, of his mission experience and on his work with the growing Oblate movement.

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.

A discussion by a broadly respected authority of the complicated relationship between theology and ordinary life in the early church. The first section of the book scrutinizes theology with a view to understanding its bearing upon Christian understandings of life (the theological "stories" of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine). The second section examines aspects of ordinary life and explores how Christians related them to religious ideas (the family, hospitality, citizenship, monasticism, and attitudes toward the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West).

This very learned piece of work, which reflects lengthy study of original texts as well as of the current and important secondary literature, is distinctive because it does not conform to the present reigning ideology: The author writes as a convinced Christian thinker. He believes that there is no such thing as a purely detached observer and that the best way of being critical and fair is to make no secret of one's presuppositions, but to face them so as to be able to discount them when necessary. This quality makes the work interesting and suggestive. The book is of importance to scholars and theologians and to all concerned with the early church.

Guidelines for medieval clerics on how to assign appropriate penances for particular sins, in readable translations with detailed introductions.

This warm, richly detailed biography brings the beloved saint alive in all his human and profoundly spiritual dimensions.

This is an annotated translation of On True Doctrine, a polemic written in the second century by the Greek philosopher Celsus, one of the most important early opponents of the Christian church. Celsus' work survives only as it is quoted by the Christian writer Origen, in his Contra Celsum, an extended refutation of Celsus' arguments. Hoffman's reconstruction of On True Doctrine presents Celsus `by himself' for the first time. Celsus' discourse shows him to be an eclectic philosopher--a dabbler in various schools of thought, including Platonism and Stoicism, and a student of the history and religious customs of many nations.

Hoffman supplements this definitive translation with an informative introduction, summarizing Celsus' premises and placing the identity of Celsus in its historical context.

This study of the Roman Empire in the age of Constantine offers a thoroughly new assessment of the part Christianity played in the Roman world of the third and fourth centuries.

Mr. Barnes gives the fullest available narrative history of the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. He analyzes Constantine's rise to power and his government, demonstrating how Constantine's sincere adherence to Christianity advanced his political aims. He explores the whole range of Eusebius' writings, especially those composed before Constantine became emperor, and shows that many attitudes usually deemed typical of the "Constantinian revolution" were prevalent before the new Christian empire came into existence. This authoritative political and cultural history of the age of Constantine will prove essential to students and historians of the ancient world.

'Constantine hardly deserves the title of Great which posterity has given him, either by his character or by his abilities. He was highly susceptible to flattery, and fell completely under the influence of any dominating personality who happened to be at his side ... Still less does Constantine deserve the title of saint, which the Eastern Church has bestowed upon him. He was, it is true, according to his lights, a good man on the whole, though his political murders - particularly that of Licinius - shocked even contemporary opinion, and his execution of his wife and son was felt by many to be an inexpiable stain on his character...

To the other title which the Orthodox Church has bestowed upon him, "the Peer of the Apostles," he has a better claim, for his career profoundly influenced the history of the Church and the future of Christianity ... Constantine had no doubts about his imperial duty. It was his task to secure God's favour on the empire by securing, by force if necessary, that his subjects worshipped God in a manner pleasing to Him.'

Originally published by Macmillan, 1948.

The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity. This exposition and defense of divine truth has two main parts: the consideration of that truth that faith professes and reason investigates, and the consideration of the truth that faith professes and reason is not competent to investigate. The exposition of truths accessible to natural reason occupies Aquinas in the first three books of the Summa. His method is to bring forward demonstrative and probable arguments, some of which are drawn from the philosophers, to convince the skeptic. In the fourth book of the Summa St. Thomas appeals to the authority of the Sacred Scripture for those divine truths that surpass the capacity of reason. The present volume studies God's existence, nature, and substance, and especially his perfect actuality, the autonomy of his knowledge, the independence of his will, the perfection of his life, and the generosity of his love. Book 2 of the Summa deals with Creation; Book 3, Providence; and Book 4, Salvation.

The first three centuries of Christianity are increasingly seen in modern scholarship as sites of complexity. Sacred Ritual, Profane Space examines the Christian meeting places of the time and overturns long-held notions about the earliest Christians as utopian rather than place-bound people. By mapping what is known from early Christian texts onto the archaeological data for Roman domestic spaces, Jenn Cianca provides a new lens for examining the relationship between early Christianity and sites of worship. She proposes that not only were Roman homes sacred sites in their own right but they were also considered sacred by the Christian communities that used them. In many cases, meeting space would have included the presence of the Roman domestic cult shrines. Despite the fact that the domestic cult was polytheistic, Cianca asserts that its practices likely continued in places used for worship by Christians. She also argues that continued practice of the domestic cult in Roman domestic spaces did not preclude Christians from using houses as churches or from understanding their rituals or their meeting places as sacred. Raising a host of questions about identity, ritual affiliation, and domestic practice, Sacred Ritual, Profane Space demonstrates how sacred space was constructed through ritual enactment in early Christian communities.

Late antique Corinth was on the frontline of the radical political, economic and religious transformations that swept across the Mediterranean world from the second to sixth centuries CE. A strategic merchant city, it became a hugely important metropolis in Roman Greece and, later, a key focal point for early Christianity. In late antiquity, Corinthians recognised new Christian authorities; adopted novel rites of civic celebration and decoration; and destroyed, rebuilt and added to the city's ancient landscape and monuments. Drawing on evidence from ancient literary sources, extensive archaeological excavations and historical records, Amelia Brown here surveys this period of urban transformation, from the old Agora and temples to new churches and fortifications. Influenced by the methodological advances of urban studies, Brown demonstrates the many ways Corinthians responded to internal and external pressures by building, demolishing and repurposing urban public space, thus transforming Corinthian society, civic identity and urban infrastructure. In a departure from isolated textual and archaeological studies, she connects this process to broader changes in metropolitan life, contributing to the present understanding of urban experience in the late antique Mediterranean.

What was the relationship of ancient education to early Christianity? This volume provides an in-depth look at different approaches currently employed by scholars who draw upon educational settings in the ancient world to inform their historical research in Christian origins. The book is divided into two sections: one consisting of essays on education in the ancient world, and one consisting of exegetical studies dealing with various passages where motifs emerging from ancient educational culture provide illumination. The chapters summarize the state of the discussion on ancient education in classical and biblical studies, examine obstacles to arriving at a comprehensive theory of early Christianity's relationship to ancient education, compare different approaches, and compile the diverse methodologies into one comparative study. Several educational motifs are integrated in order to demonstrate the exegetical insights that they may yield when utilized in New Testament historical investigation and interpretation.

At the end of the 1740s, the Moravians, a young and rapidly expanding radical-Pietist movement, experienced a crisis soon labeled the Sifting Time. As Moravian leaders attempted to lead the church away from the abuses of the crisis, they also tried to erase the memory of this controversial and embarrassing period. Archival records were systematically destroyed, and official histories of the church only dealt with this period in general terms. It is not surprising that the Sifting Time became both a taboo and an enigma in Moravian historiography. In A Time of Sifting, Paul Peucker provides the first book-length, in-depth look at the Sifting Time and argues that it did not consist of an extreme form of blood-and-wounds devotion, as is often assumed. Rather, the Sifting Time occurred when Moravians began to believe that the union with Christ could be experienced not only during marital intercourse but during extramarital sex as well. Peucker shows how these events were the logical consequence of Moravian teachings from previous years. As the nature of the crisis became evident, church leaders urged the members to revert to their earlier devotion of the blood and wounds of Christ. By returning to this earlier phase, the Moravians lost their dynamic character and became more conservative. It was at this moment that the radical-Pietist Moravians of the first half of the eighteenth century reinvented themselves as a noncontroversial evangelical denomination.

The 21 studies in this volume, which deal with issues of social and intellectual history, religion and historical methodology, explore the ways whereby over the course of a few hundred years -roughly between the second and the fifth centuries A.D.- an anthropocentric culture mutated into a theocentric one. Rather than underlining the differences between a revamped paganism and the emergent Christian traditions, the essays in the volume focus on the processes of osmosis, interaction and acculturation, which shaped the change in priorities among the newly created textual communities that were spreading across the entire breadth of the late antique oecumene. The main issues considered in this connection include the phenomena of textuality and holy scripture, canonicity and exclusion, truth and error, prophecy and tradition, authority and challenge, faith and salvation, holy places and holy men, in the context of the construction of new orthodox readings of the Greek philosophical heritage. Moreover the volume suggests that intolerant attitudes, which form a characteristic trait of monotheisms, were not an exclusive preserve of Christianity (as the Enlightenment tradition would insist), but were progressively espoused by pagan philosophers and divine men as part of the theory and practice of Hellenism's theological koine. Efforts to establish the monopoly of a revealed truth against any rival claims were transversal to the textual communities which emerged in late antiquity and remodelled the intellectual and spiritual landscape of the Greater Mediterranean.

Prudentius, often acclaimed as the greatest Latin Christian poet, was born probably in Calahorra, Spain, the son of highly cultured Roman citizens and fervent Christians. His death occurred after 405. The metric structure of his poems clearly shows the great influence of Horace although echoes of other Latin poets are likewise detected. The Book of Hymns for Every Day (Liber Cathemerinon) is a collection of hymns for use at times of prayer that were once customary in the early Church: at cock-crow, morning hymn, hymns before and after repast, hymn at time of lamp lighting, hymn before sleep. Hymns to be used for special feasts and occasions conclude the work. The Book of the Martyrs' Crowns (Liber Peristephanon) is a work that comprises fourteen hymns in honor of various martyrs. Six hymns honor the Spanish martyrs: Emeterius, Chelidonius, Eulalia, the Eighteen Martyrs of Saragossa, Vincent, Fructuosus and companions. Five hymns sing the praises of Roman martyrs: Lawrence, Cassian, Hippolytus, Peter and Paul, Agnes. Three more hymns honoring the memory of Quirinus, Romanus and Cyprian conclude this work. The accounts of the martyrdom of Sts. Emetrius, Chelidonius, Lawrence, Eulalia, Cassian, Romanus, Hippolytus, the Eighteen Martyrs of Saragossa are the earliest extant.

For more than five hundred years the life and work of John of Damascus (c. 655-c.745) have been the subject of a very extensive literature, scholarly and popular, in which it is often difficult to get one's bearings. Through the studies included here (of which 6 appear in a translation into English made specially for this volume), Vassa Kontouma provides a critical review of this literature and attempts to answer several open questions: the author and date of composition of the official Life of John, the philosophical significance of the Dialectica (a study which has its first publication here), the original structure of the Exposition of the Orthodox faith, the identity of ps.-Cyril, the authenticity of the Letter on Great Lent, and questions of Mariology. She also opens new vistas for research along four main lines: the life of John of Damascus and its sources, Neochalcedonian philosophy, systematic theology in Byzantium, and Christian practices under the Umayyads.