Throughout its first three centuries, the growing Christian religion was subjected not only to official persecution but to the attacks of pagan intellectuals, who looked upon the new sect as a band of fanatics bent on worldwide domination even as they professed to despise the things of this world. Prominent among these pagan critics was Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232-ca. 305 C.E.), scholar, philosopher, and student of religions. His book Against the Christians (Kata Christianon), was condemned to be burned by the imperial Church in 448. It survives only in fragments preserved by the cleric and teacher Macarius Magnes.
This new translation of the remains of Against the Christians, by renowned biblical scholar R. Joseph Hoffmann, reveals a work of deft historical and literary criticism. Porphyry's trenchant comments extend to key figures, beliefs, and doctrines of Christianity as he roundly attacks the divinity of Jesus, the integrity of the apostles, the Christian concept of God, and the Resurrection. Porphyry dismisses the gospels as the work of charlatans and Jesus himself as a criminal and failure. In short, the gospels, as a collective account of the life and deeds of Jesus, are hardly worth the reverence with which an increasing number of Christian converts of Porphyry's own day have begun treating them.
Critical notes by the translator provide a running commentary to the text. A lively introduction and comprehensive epilogue describe the "buildup" to the pagan critique of Christianity, and help put Porphyry's work in historical perspective.
Accessible to the general reader, and a valuable scholarly tool as well, this new translation of Against the Christians proves a worthy addition to both classical and patristic studies.

When first published in 1958, The Canons of the Council of Sardica, AD 343 at once became the standard account of the canons passed by the Western bishops assembled at Serdica in 343 and the thinking on Church matters that lay behind them. In this new edition Hamilton Hess has updated his account in the light of recent literature, included new material and the full texts of the canons, and translated all quotations into English to reach a wider audience. Three new opening chapters make a fresh contribution to the study of early church history in giving a comprehensive analysis of the rise of the conciliar movement from its earliest beginnings to the fourth-century establishments of councils as exclusively episcopal legislative assemblies. It is also shown that the emergence of canon law was a gradual evolutionary process leading towards the sixth-century organization of canonical collections as juridical ecclesiastical codes parallel with and complementary to the contemporary civil codes of the Roman empire.

A Psycho-Spiritual View on the Message of Jesus in the Gospels explores elements of mysticism in the words of Jesus. Four fields are analyzed with the help of two key concepts of mysticism: presence of the divine and transformation of the self. Analyses, semantic and otherwise, reveal alternative understandings on each of the four fields. Psuche appears as 'self' ('mind-and-heart') rather than as 'life,' for example, in the Good Shepherd passage (dedicating one's self), or in the saving and losing logia in Mark 8.35 par, calling for transformation. Pneuma in the Gospels appears both in a definite form and indefinitely: next to the Holy Spirit, there is holy spirit active and present, implying that baptism literally is immersing in holy spirit. Repentance (metanoia) is alternatively to be understood as transformation of the self, and is not necessarily connected to 'sin.' Finally, the Kingdom of God, in line with theologian Adolf von Harnack, is found to be present (it has approached,eggiken) and is a reality inside (entos) the human being, a musterion, apart from its references to the eschaton or to a paradisiacal new world. Parables teach about the Kingdom as a spiritual entity in and around the human being: presence of the divine, closely connected with transformation of the self. These findings open up to a psycho-spiritual understanding of the message (euaggelion) of Jesus.

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W. Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties, guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship. The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life, indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its pioneering and most influential practitioners.

Bradley G. Green's close reading of Augustine challenges Colin Gunton's argument that Augustine bequeathed to the West a theological tradition with serious deficiencies. According to Gunton, Augustine's particular construal of the doctrine of God led to fundamental problems in the relationship between creation and redemption. However, Green persuasively argues that Augustine did not sever the link between creation and redemption, but rather affirmed that the created order is a means of genuine knowledge of God by which redemption is accomplished. Green suggests the prominent role this relationship plays in Augustine's doctrines of man and God, provides the kind of relational Christian ontology that Gunton sought. In short, Augustine could have provided Gunton with fundamental theological resources in countering the modernity he so rightly challenged.

Early Christians and Animals presents a lively study of the significance of animals in early Christian thought, tradition, text and art. Robert M. Grant: * examines the diverse and often conflicting sources, from the pagan antecedents Aristotle and Pliny, to Biblical animal references and the Church fathers * provides fresh translations of key texts concerning animals - the Physiologus, Basils homilies and Isidores chapters.

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"The selections recapture the drama and counter-cultural nature of becoming a Christian and creating a community that stood out from the crowd...This collection offers easy access to early Christianity's daily life."
-- "The Princeton Seminary Bulletin"

Life and Practice in the Early Church brings together a range of primary texts from the church's first five centuries to demonstrate how early Christians practiced their faith. Rather than focusing on theology, these original documents shed light on how early believers "did church," addressing such practical questions as, how did the church administer baptism? How were sermons delivered? How did the early church carry out its missions endeavors?

Early Christian writings reveal a great deal about the tradition, as well as the wider culture in which it developed. Far from being monolithic, the documents which present the voices of the early church fathers in their own words demonstrate variation and diversity regarding how faith was worked out during the patristic period. The texts illuminate who was eligible for baptism, what was expected of worshippers, how the Eucharist was celebrated, and how church offices and their functions were organized. Contextual introductions explain practices and their development for those with little prior knowledge of Christian history or tradition. The pieces included here, all in accessible English translation, represent such sources as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.

This book examines the transformation in US thinking about the role of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) in national security policy since the end of the Cold War. The evolution of the BMD debate after the Cold War has been complex, complicated and punctuated. As this book shows, the debate and subsequent policy choices would often appear to reflect neither the particular requirements of the international system for US security at any given time, nor indeed the current capabilities of BMD technology. Ballistic Missile Defence and US National Security Policy traces the evolution of policy from the zero-sum debates that surrounded the Strategic Defense Initiative as Ronald Reagan left office, up to the relative political consensus that exists around a limited BMD deployment in 2012. The book shows how and why policy evolved in such a complex manner during this period, and explains the strategic reasoning and political pressures shaping BMD policy under each of the presidents who have held office since 1989. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates how relative advancements in technology, combined with growth in the perceived missile threat, gradually shifted the contours and rhythm of the domestic missile defence debate in the US towards acceptance and normalisation. This book will be of much interest to students of missile defence and arms control, US national security policy, strategic studies and international relations in general.

This is the second volume of Ferguson's collected essays, and includes some of his most memorable work.

Irenaeus' theology of the Holy Spirit is often highly regarded amongst theologians today, but that regard is not universal, nor has an adequate volume of literature supported it. This study provides a detailed examination of certain principal, often distinctive, aspects of Irenaeus' pneumatology. In contrast to those who have suggested Irenaeus held a weak conception of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, Anthony Briggman demonstrates that Irenaeus combined Second Temple Jewish traditions of the spirit with New Testament theology to produce the most complex Jewish-Christian pneumatology of the early church. In so doing, Irenaeus moved beyond his contemporaries by being the first author, following the New Testament writings, to construct a theological account in which binitarian logic did not diminish either the identity or activity of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, he was the first to support his Trinitarian convictions by means of Trinitarian logic. Briggman advances the narrative that locates early Christian pneumatologies in the context of Jewish traditions regarding the spirit. In particular, he argues that the appropriation and repudiation of Second Temple Jewish forms of thought explain three moments in the development of Christian theology. First, the existence of a rudimentary pneumatology correlating to the earliest stage of Trinitarian theology in which a Trinitarian confession is accompanied by binitarian orientation/logic, such as in the thought of Justin Martyr. Second, the development of a sophisticated pneumatology correlating to a mature second century Trinitarian theology in which a Trinitarian confession is accompanied by Trinitarian logic. This second moment is visible in Irenaeus' thought, which eschewed Jewish traditions that often hindered theological accounts of his near contemporaries, such as Justin, while adopting and adapting Jewish traditions that enabled him to strengthen and clarify his own understanding of the Holy Spirit. Third, the return to a rudimentary account of the Spirit at the turn of the third century when theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, and Novatian repudiated Jewish traditions integral to Irenaeus' account of the Holy Spirit.

For many in the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were seen to represent a clear risk of moral and religious perdition for women, and they were strongly discouraged from making them; this exhortation would have been universally disseminated and generally followed, except, of course, in the case of the virtuous 'extraordinary women', such as saints and queens. Women and Pilgrimage in Medieval Galicia represents an analysis of the social history of women based on documentary sources and physical evidence, breaking away from literary and historiographical stereotypes, while at the same time contributing to a critical assessment of the myth that medieval women were kept hidden away from the world. As the chapters here show, women - and not only those 'extraordinary women', but also women from other social strata - became pilgrims and travelled the paths that led from their homes to the most important Christian shrines, especially - although not exclusively - Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela. It can be seen that medieval women were actively involved in this ritualistic expression of devotion, piety, sacrifice or penitence. This situation is thoroughly documented in this multidisciplinary book, with emphasis both on the pilgrimages abroad from Galicia and on the pilgrimages to the shrine of St James at Compostela.

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 book offers an original interpretation of the origin and early reception of the most fundamental claim of Christianity: Jesus' resurrection. Richard Miller contends that the earliest Christians would not have considered the New Testament accounts of Jesus' resurrection to be literal or historical, but instead would have recognized this narrative as an instance of the trope of divine translation, common within the Hellenistic and Roman mythic traditions. Given this framework, Miller argues, early Christians would have understood the resurrection story as fictitious rather than historical in nature. By drawing connections between the Gospels and ancient Greek and Roman literature, Miller makes the case that the narratives of the resurrection and ascension of Christ applied extensive and unmistakable structural and symbolic language common to Mediterranean "translation fables," stock story patterns derived particularly from the archetypal myths of Heracles and Romulus. In the course of his argument, the author applies a critical lens to the referential and mimetic nature of the Gospel stories, and suggests that adapting the "translation fable" trope to accounts of Jesus' resurrection functioned to exalt him to the level of the heroes, demigods, and emperors of the Hellenistic and Roman world. Miller's contentions have significant implications for New Testament scholarship and will provoke discussion among scholars of early Christianity and Classical studies.

In the past few decades there has been an explosion of interest in the period of late antiquity. Rather than being viewed within a paradigm of the fall of the Roman Empire, these centuries have come to be seen as a time of immense creativity and significance in western history. Popes and the Church of Rome in Late Antiquity places the history of the papacy in a broader context, by comparing Rome with other major sees to show how it differed from these, evaluating developments beyond Rome which created openings for the extension of papal authority. Closer to home, the book considers the ability of the Roman church to gain access to wealth, retain it in difficult times, and disburse it in ways that enhanced its authority. Author John Moorhead evaluates patterns in the recruitment of popes and what these suggest about the background of those who came to papal office. Structured around a narrative of the papacy's history from the accession of Leo the Great to the death of Zacharias II, the book does more than tell what happened between these years, applying new approaches in intellectual, cultural, and social history to provide a uniquely deep and holistic study of the period.

Augustine of Hippo, indisputably one of the most important figures for the study of memory, is credited with establishing memory as the inner source of selfhood and locus of the search for God. Yet, those who study memory in Augustine have never before taken into account his preaching. His sermons are the sources of memory's greatest development for Augustine. In Augustine's preaching, especially on the Psalms, the interior gives way to communal exterior. Both the self and search for God are re-established in a shared Christological identity and the communal labors of remembering and forgetting. This book opens with Augustine's early works and Confessions as the beginning of memory and concludes with Augustine's Trinity and preaching on Psalm 50 as the end of memory. The heart of the book, the work of memory, sets forth how ongoing remembering and forgetting in Christ are for Augustine are foundational to the life of grace. To that end, Augustine and his congregants go leaping in memory together, keep festival with abiding traces, and become forgetful runners like St. Paul. Remembering and forgetting in Christ, the ongoing work of memory, prove for Augustine to be actions of reconciliation of the distended experiences of human life-of praising and groaning, labouring and resting, solitude and communion. Augustine on Memory presents this new communal and Christological paradigm not only for Augustinian studies, but also for theologians, philosophers, ethicists, and interdisciplinary scholars of memory.

Early Christian Dress is the first full-length monograph on the subject of dress in early Christianity. It pays attention to the ways in which dress expressed and shaped Christian identity, the role dress played in Christians' rivalries with pagan neighbours, and especially to the ways in which notions of gender were culled and revised in the process. Although many scholars have argued that gender in late antiquity was a performed and embodied category, few have paid attention to the ways in which dress and physical appearances were implicated in the understanding of femininity and masculinity. This study addresses that gap, revealing the amount of sartorial work necessary to secure stable gender categories in the worlds of early Imperial pagans and late ancient Christians. This study analyzes several vigorous discussions and debates that arose over Christian women's dress. It examines how Christians interpreted their dress-especially the dress of female ascetics-as evidence of Christianity's advanced morality and piety, a morality and piety that was coded "masculine." Yet even Christian leaders who championed ascetic women's ability to achieve a degree of virility in terms of their virtue and spiritual status were troubled when ascetics' dress threatened to materially dissolve gender categories, difference, and hierarchies. In the end, the study enables us to gain a broader view of how gender was constructed, perceived, and contested in early Christianity.

Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in this nuanced, literary analysis, Diane Lipsett traces the intriguing interplay of desire and self-restraint in three ancient tales of conversion: The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth. Lipsett treats "conversion"--marked change in a protagonist's piety and identity--as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Her approach is theoretically versatile, drawing on Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.

Late antiquity is increasingly recognised as a period of important cultural transformation. One of its crucial aspects is the emergence of a new awareness of human individuality. In this book an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars documents and analyses this development. Authors assess the influence of seminal thinkers, including the Gnostics, Plotinus, and Augustine, but also of cultural and religious practices such as astrology and monasticism, as well as, more generally, the role played by intellectual disciplines such as grammar and Christian theology. Broad in both theme and scope, the volume serves as a comprehensive introduction to late antique understandings of human individuality.

The Displacement of the Body in AElfric's Virgin Martyr Lives addresses 10th-century Old English hagiographical translations, from Latin source material, by the abbot and grammarian AElfric. The vitae of Agnes, Agatha, Lucy, and Eugenia, and the married saints Daria, Basilissa, and Cecilia, included in AElfric's s Old English Lives of Saints, recount the lives, persecution, and martyrdom of young women who renounce sex and, in the first four stories, marriage, to devote their lives to Christian service. They purport to be about the primacy of virginity and the role of the body in attaining sanctity. However, a comparison of the Latin sources with AElfric's versions suggests that his translation style, characterized by simplifying the most important meanings of the text, omits certain words or entire episodes that foreground suppressed female sexuality as key to sainthood. The Old English Lives de-emphasize the physical nature of faith and highlight the importance of spiritual purity. In this volume, Alison Gulley explores how the context of the Benedictine Reform in late Anglo-Saxon England and AElfric's commitment to writing for a lay audience resulted in a set of stories depicting a spirituality distinct from physical intactness.

In 1214, King John issued a charter granting freedom of election to the English Church; henceforth, cathedral chapters were, theoretically, to be allowed to elect their own bishops, with minimal intervention by the crown. Innocent III confirmed this charter and, in the following year, the right to electoral freedom was restated at the Fourth Lateran Council. In consequence, under Henry III and Edward I the English Church enjoyed something of a golden age of electoral freedom, during which the king might influence elections, but ultimately could not control them. Then, during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, papal control over appointments was increasingly asserted and from 1344 onwards all English bishops were provided by the pope. This book considers the theory and practice of free canonical election in its heyday under Henry III and Edward I, and the nature of and reasons for the subsequent transition to papal provision. An analysis of the theoretical evidence for this subject (including canon law, royal pronouncements and Lawrence of Somercote's remarkable 1254 tract on episcopal elections) is combined with a consideration of the means by which bishops were created during the reigns of Henry III and the three Edwards. The changing roles of the various participants in the appointment process (including, but not limited to, the cathedral chapter, the king, the papacy, the archbishop and the candidate) are given particular emphasis. In addition, the English situation is placed within a European context, through a comparison of English episcopal appointments with those made in France, Scotland and Italy. Bishops were central figures in medieval society and the circumstances of their appointments are of great historical importance. As episcopal appointments were also touchstones of secular-ecclesiastical relations, this book therefore has significant implications for our understanding of church-state interactions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centu

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.

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.

The Church and Social Reform studies the nature and extent of Athanasios' social reforms and political involvement during his two tenures on the patriarchal throne of Constantiople. The traditional influence, power, and authority that resided in the patriarchate of Constantinople made the involvement of an aggressive patriarch in the social affairs of the empire virtually inevitable.

The Divine Institutes of Lactantius was a vigorous riposte to pagan criticism and persecution of Christianity, which came to a head in the 'Great' Persecution of Diocletian in the early fourth century AD. This edition has been prepared with students and scholars of intellectual history in mind, but it will also appeal to those concerned with ecclesiastical history and patristics, and to anyone interested in tracing the impact of classical philosophy and literature on an early Christian thinker.

Early Christian apocryphal and conical documents present us with grotesque images of the human body, often combining the playful and humorous with the repulsive, and fearful. First to third century Christian literature was shaped by the discourse around and imagery of the human body. This study analyses how the iconography of bodily cruelty and visceral morality was produced and refined from the very start of Christian history. The sources range across Greek comedy, Roman and Jewish demonology, and metamorphosis traditions. The study reveals how these images originated, were adopted, and were shaped to the service of a doctrinally and psychologically persuasive Christian message.