The two authors featured in this volume composed defenses of the Christian faith in Latin around the turn of the third century. In Rome, Minucius Felix used the genre of dialogue to confront pagan opposition to Christianity, and in Carthage, Tertullian produced an apologetical treatise as well as an open letter to a Roman governor. Tertullian, who is known for his blanket rejection of pagan philosophy, nevertheless utilized Stoic concepts in his essay De anima, which describes the nature, capability, and ultimate destination of the soul.

What terms would early Christians have used to address one another? In the first book-length study on this topic, Paul Trebilco investigates the origin, use and function of seven key self-designations: 'brothers and sisters', 'believers', 'saints', 'the assembly', 'disciples', 'the Way', and 'Christian'. In doing so, he discovers what they reveal about the identity, self-understanding and character of the early Christian movement. This study sheds light on the theology of particular New Testament authors and on the relationship of early Christian authors and communities to the Old Testament and to the wider context of the Greco-Roman world. Trebilco's writing is informed by other work in the area of sociolinguistics on the development of self-designations and labels and provides a fascinating insight into this often neglected topic.

Inspired by analogies betwen the construction of heresy and the representation of madness described by Michael Foucault in in Histoire de la folie a l'age classique (Madness and Civilization), The Notion of Heresy in Greek Literature in the Second and Third Centuries demonstrates how the concept of heresy emerges in the work of Justin Matyr. It shows that this invention created a concept capable of dominating every current suspected of endangering ecclesial harmony, and transformed the tradition of Greek historiography of philosophical schools by combining it with the apocalyptic theme of diabolical conspiracy. Le Boulluec examines how this model is refined by Irenaeus, then modified by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. First published in 1985 as d'heresie dans la litterature grecque (IIe-IIIesiecles), this newly translated work includes a substantial new introduction surveying literature in the previous decades. In line wth Walter Bauer's pioneering book, which overturned the confessional model making heresy a later falsification of orthodoxy, it shows that the notion of heresy was invented in the second century and then refined in order to remove all legitimacy from diversity and pluralism in the fields of doctrine and practice. Le Boulluec studies rhetorical practices and polemical assimilations to highlight key debates on the relationship between philosophy, Christianity, and Judaism, and to examine the conflict of interpretations that drive the exegesis of the Bible in constructing an orthodoxy.

This book breaks new ground in New Testament reception history by bringing together early Pauline interpretation and the study of early Christian institutions. Benjamin Edsall traces the close association between Paul and the catechumenate through important texts and readers from the late second century to the fourth century to show how the early Church arrived at a wide-spread image of Paul as the apostle of Christian initiation. While exploring what this image of Paul means for understanding early Christian interpretation, Edsall also examines the significance of this aspect of Pauline reception in relation to interpretive possibilities of Paul's letters. Building on the analysis of early interpretations and rhetorical images of the Apostle, Edsall brings these together with contemporary scholarly discourse. The juxtaposition highlights longstanding continuity and conflict in exegetical discussions and dominant Pauline images. Edsall concludes with broader hermeneutical reflections on the value of historical reception for New Testament Studies.

St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria for thirty-two years in the first half of the fifth century, was a great champion of the faith against heresy; he opposed Novatianism, Neoplatonism, and Judaism. His principal struggle, however, was with Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril vehemently defended the application of the word Theotokos, which means 'Godbearer', to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nestorius, representative of the Antiochene theological school, held that the Blessed Virgin was the mother only of the humanity of Christ. This great Christological controversy and the Council of Ephesus that was convened in 431 to resolve it provide the subject matter for the entire collection of letters in this volume. Letter 1 is Cyril's response to a group of monks under his jurisdiction who ask for guidance in the Nestorian debate. His remarks take us straight to the heart of the matter: "Therefore, I am amazed if some should question at all whether the Holy Virgin should be called the Mother of God." Through Letter 32 we are involved with the controversy and its development down to and including the Council of Ephesus. Letter 4, addressed to Nestorius, has been called the dogmatic letter, and the Council of Ephesus approved it as maintaining the teaching of Nicaea. Letter 17 is considered an epitome of Cyril's faith. Along with twelve anathemas it condemned Nestorius in the name of the synod convened by Pope Celestine in Rome and later was added to the Acts of the Council of Ephesus Letters 33 to 50 concern the question of John, Bishop of Antioch and a personal friend of Cyril through a longstanding correspondence. When John and his bishops arrived at Ephesus, they set up a rival council and issued a decree of deposition and excommunication against Cyril and Memnon, Bishop of Ephesus. After the Council of Ephesus it was Cyril's task to reconcile the Antiochene bishops who had formed the Conciliabulum with John to restore peace to the Churches in the East. Letter 39 reveals his joy in achieving this reconciliation and in regaining his friendship with John. Together with Letters 4 and 17, Letter 39 has been called ecumenical. Letter 41 is exegetically important for its long discussion of the work "scapegoat," and Letter 45, which contains Cyril's famous formula, for it's doctrinal and theological content.

Eusebius was commonly known among the ancients as Eusebius of Caesarea or Eusebius Pamphili. The first designation arose from the fact that he was bishop of Caesarea for many years; the second from the fact that he was a close friend and admirer of Pamphilus, a proselyte of Caesarea and a martyr. At least forty contemporaries bore the same name, among which the most famous were Eusebius of Samosata--and so arose the necessity of distinguishing him from these others by specific designation. The year of the Edict of Milan, which divides the first from the second epoch of Church history, does like service for the life and for the literary medium of the Church's first historian. According to the growing assent of scholars, 313 marks off chronologically the Alexandrian from the Byzantine period of Greek literature, and it is 313 that cleaves into uneven but appropriate parts that career of Eusebius Pamphilil. In training and in literary taste, Eusebius belongs to the earlier time. Officially and in literary productivity, he belongs to the later. It was shortly after 313 that Eusebius became a bishop, as it was, for the most part, after 313 that his works were actually composed. Of events contemporary with these later years, Eusebius recorded much that is valued, but it is for what he tells of the earlier period--of the days before the Peace of the Church--that he looms so large in the history of history and of literature. Through him--through him almost alone--are preserved to us the feeble memories of an age that died with himself. Of the facts of his life we know little. Neither the place nor the year of this birth is known. The best conjecture makes Palestine his native land and assigns to the period 260-264 the date of his birth. Caesarea in Palestine may have been his native city. All the known associates of his youth at any rate, and the chief activities of his maturity, are linked with her. He was certainly not born a Jew, but that he was born a Christian we do not know. His parents, whether pagan or Christian, were not of high rank. The fact that Arius, when writing to Eusebius of Nicomedia, refers to his namesake of Caesarea as 'your brother who is in Caesarea' cannot with confidence be taken literally. Arius might well call them brothers because they were associated in theological sympathies as well as in episcopal office. Of his parentage and relationship, then, essentially nothing is known.

This volume is an original and important contribution to the study of the earliest Palestinian Jewish Christianity. For the first time all the evidence for the role which relatives of Jesus played in the early church is assembled and assessed. Dr. Bauckham discusses a wide range of evidence, not only from the New Testament but also from the Church Fathers, the New Testament Apocrypha, rabbinic literature and Palestinian archaeology. The letter of Jude, in particular, proves to have much to teach us about the theology of the brothers of Jesus and their circle. It illuminates their exegetical methods and their Christology and shows both to have been influential contributions to the development of early Christianity. This study shows that this neglected New Testament book is far more important for the study of early Christianity than has hitherto been recognized. By setting the letter of Jude within the context of the evidence for the role of relatives of Jesus in the early church, new insights can be revealed into the letter and early Jewish Christianity.

What do we know in our bodies? Jennifer A. Glancy uses this fundamental question to illuminate the cultural history of early Christianity. Studying representations in sources from Paul to Augustine, she traces the centrality of bodies to early Christian social dynamics and discourse.
Glancy offers in-depth analyses of important texts, historical problems, and theological questions. How did Paul present his suspiciously marked body as a source of knowledge and power? How did the corporal conditioning of the Roman slaveholding system infiltrate-and deform-articulations of Christian sexual ethics, and create parallel systems of virtue for elite Christians and enslaved Christians? Early Christians imagined Mary's body at the moment she gave birth; what do these primitive images and narratives suggest about ancient-and modern-understandings of maternal epistemology?
In an approach to cultural history informed by the writings of philosophical and sociological theorists of corporeality, including Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bourdieu, and Linda Martin Alcoff, Glancy shows that the cultural habituation of bodies caused Christians of the first centuries to replicate hierarchical patterns of social relations prevalent in the Roman Empire. These embodied patterns of relations are seemingly at odds with the good news of Christian preaching.
Corporal Knowledge sheds light on the many ways in which social location is known in the body, and shows the significance of that insight for a cultural history of Christian origins. By framing questions about the function of corporal epistemology, Glancy offers new insights into bodies, identities, and early Christian understandings of what it means to be human."

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition of these essential texts reflects current idiom and the latest scholarship.

Here are the Letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, among the most famous documents of early Christianity; these letters, addressing core theological questions, were written to a half dozen different congregations while Ignatius was en route to Rome as a prisoner, condemned to die in the wild-beast arena. Also in this collection is a letter to the Philippian church by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and friend of Ignatius, as well as an account of Polycarp's martyrdom. There are several kinds of texts in the Apostolic Fathers collection, representing different religious outlooks. The manual called the "Didache" sets forth precepts for religious instruction, worship, and ministry. The Epistle of Barnabas searches the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, for testimony in support of Christianity and against Judaism. Probably the most widely read in the early Christian centuries was "The Shepherd" of Hermas, a book of revelations that develops a doctrine of repentance.

These four essays of Ambrose, the forceful and scholarly Bishop of Milan and the metropolitan of the churches of northern Italy in the late fourth century, expound upon both sacramental and Trinitarian theology. The two essays on "the mysteries" and on "the sacraments" provide a window into the liturgical practices of the ancient Italian church, for which Ambrose-ever the Scripture scholar par excellence-explains the biblical basis. Two other essays, one a response to Arianism and the other a refutation of the contentions of those who opposed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, together constitute a robust defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, influenced by Greek Christian theological writings and grounded on Scripture.

Inspired by the social theories of Max Weber, David d'Avray asks in what senses medieval religion was rational and, in doing so, proposes a new approach to the study of the medieval past. Applying ideas developed in his companion volume on Rationalities in History, he explores how values, instrumental calculation, legal formality and substantive rationality interact and the ways in which medieval beliefs were strengthened by their mutual connections, by experience, and by mental images. He sheds new light on key themes and figures in medieval religion ranging from conversion, miracles and the ideas of Bernard of Clairvaux to Trinitarianism, papal government and Francis of Assisi's charismatic authority. This book shows how values and instrumental calculation affect each other in practice and demonstrates the ways in which the application of social theory can be used to generate fresh empirical research as well as new interpretative insights.

Orosius wrote the first Christian Universal History, "Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem." It has been thought to be a supplement to the "City of God," "Civitate Dei," especially the third book, in which St. Augustine attempts to prove that the Roman Empire suffered as many disasters before as after Christianity was received. It was a common argument among the pagans that the abandonment of the worship of their deities had led to the general break-up of the Roman Empire and all its attendant evils. St. Augustine was annoyed by the persistence of this argument and hoped that a history of all the known people of antiquity, with the fundamental idea in mind that God determines the destinies of nations, would put an end to that pagan thinking. St. Augustine called upon his young friend Orosius to do this work. Added interest is attached to Orosius' History by reason of his think link with St. Augustine. The great St. Augustine, in his declining years, requested the youthful and far less gifted Orosius to perform a most important task. From the point of view of the modern historian and his scientific method, Orosius' work does not rate very high. The work completed in 418 shows sign of haste. In addition to Holy Scripture and the chronicle of Eusebius revised by St. Jerome, Orosius used Livy, Eutropius, Caesar, Suetonius, Florus, and Justin as sources. All the calamities suffered by the various peoples are described often with annoying monotony. Yet the work is valuable as history, containing as it does contemporary information on the period after 278 A.D. It was used widely during the Middle Ages, and the existence today of nearly 200 manuscript copies is evidence of its past popularity.

Tertullian is a primary source for a modern understanding of the issues that once confronted -- and still confront -- Christians living in a non-Christian world. Unfortunately, his writings have often been cast aside as too difficult to read. In this volume, Robert D. Sider undertakes a judicious pruning of the original texts and brings a fresh accessibility to the important writings of Tertullian.

Anglo-Saxon literature; theology; patristics.

The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field. Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

In the light of the escalation of sectarian tensions during and after Mubarak's reign, the predicament of the Arab world's largest religious minority, the Copts, has come to the forefront. This book poses such questions as why there has been a mass exodus of Copts from Egypt, and how this relates to other religious minorities in the Arab region; why it is that sectarian violence increased during and after the Egyptian revolution, which epitomized the highest degree of national unity since 1919; and how the new configuration of power has influenced the extent to which a vision of a political order is being based on the principles of inclusive democracy.
The book examines the relations among the state, the church, Coptic citizenry, and civil and political societies against the backdrop of the increasing diversification of actors, the change of political leadership in the country, and the transformations occurring in the region. An informative historical background is provided, and new fieldwork and statistical data inform a thoughtful exploration of what it takes to build an inclusive democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt.

It was not until after the conversion of the English to Christianity that any sustained information was written down about Christian life in these islands. This was done in the eigth century by the monk Bede, and it is mostly through his writings that it is possible to be in touch with the first Christians in England and to know about what they thought and did. Ward looks at this "golden age" of English Christianity, how it ended with the attacks of the Vikings and the "golden age" of faith and culture which followed in the tenth century.

Today the Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian (ca. 949 to 1022 ce) is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church and revered as one of its most influential spiritual thinkers. But in his own time a cloud of controversy surrounded him and the suspicion of heresy tainted his reputation long afterward. The Life was written more than thirty years after Symeon's death by his disciple and apologist the theologian Niketas Stethatos, who also edited all of Symeon's spiritual writings. An unusually valuable piece of Byzantine hagiography, it not only presents compelling descriptions of Symeon's visions, mystical inspiration, and role as a monastic founder, but also provides vivid glimpses into the often bitter and unpleasantly conflicted politics of monasticism and the construction of sanctity and orthodoxy at the zenith of the medieval Byzantine Empire. Although the many volumes of Symeon's spiritual writings are now readily available in English, the present translation makes the Life accessible to English readers for the first time. It is based on an authoritative edition of the Greek.

This book examines Paul's letter to the Philippians against the social background of the colony at Philippi. After an extensive survey of Roman social values, Professor Hellerman argues that the cursus honorum, the formalized sequence of public offices that marked out the prescribed social pilgrimage for aspiring senatorial aristocrats in Rome (and which was replicated in miniature in municipalities and in voluntary associations), forms the background against which Paul has framed his picture of Jesus in the great Christ hymn in Philippians 2. In marked contrast to the values of the dominant culture, Paul portrays Jesus descending what the author describes as a cursus pudorum ('course of ignominies'). The passage has thus been intentionally framed to subvert Roman cursus ideology and, by extension, to redefine the manner in which honour and power were to be utilized among the Christians at Philippi.

Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose.

In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.

In "The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle" Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian.

"There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here... The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'"--from the Introduction

The Interpreting Biblical Texts series presents a concise edition covering the seven undisputed epistles of Paul.

In this volume, Charles Cousar is primarily concerned not with the man Paul and his life and work, but with his surviving letters. Part 1 introduces methods in reading the Pauline letters. Part 2 attends to the critical themes emerging in the letters--the decisiveness of Jesus Christ and old versus new life. Part 3 discusses the other six letters bearing Paul's name that appear in the New Testament.

In this historical and theological study, John G. Gager undermines the myth of the Apostle Paul's rejection of Judaism, conversion to Christianity, and founding of Christian anti-Judaism. He finds that the rise of Christianity occurred well after Paul's death and attributes the distortion of the Apostle's views to early and later Christians. Though Christian clerical elites ascribed a rejection-replacement theology to Paul's legend, Gager shows that the Apostle was considered a loyal Jew by many of his Jesus-believing contemporaries and that later Jewish and Muslim thinkers held the same view. He holds that one of the earliest misinterpretations of Paul was to name him the founder of Christianity, and in recent times numerous Jewish and Christian readers of Paul have moved beyond this understanding. Gager also finds that Judaism did not fade away after Paul's death but continued to appeal to both Christians and pagans for centuries. Jewish synagogues remained important religious and social institutions throughout the Mediterranean world. Making use of all possible literary and archaeological sources, including Muslim texts, Gager helps recover the long pre-history of a Jewish Paul, obscured by recent, negative portrayals of the Apostle, and recognizes the enduring bond between Jews and Christians that has influenced all aspects of Christianity.

In this bold approach to late antiquity, Garth Fowden shows how, from the second-century peak of Rome's prosperity to the ninth-century onset of the Islamic Empire's decline, powerful beliefs in One God were used to justify and strengthen "world empires." But tensions between orthodoxy and heresy that were inherent in monotheism broke the unitary empires of Byzantium and Baghdad into the looser, more pluralistic commonwealths of Eastern Christendom and Islam. With rare breadth of vision, Fowden traces this transition from empire to commonwealth, and in the process exposes the sources of major cultural contours that still play a determining role in Europe and southwest Asia.

Archaeology and the Letters of Paul illuminates the social, political, economic, and religious lives of those to whom the apostle Paul wrote. Roman Ephesos provides evidence of slave traders and the regulation of slaves; it is a likely setting for household of Philemon, to whom a letter about the slave Onesimus is addressed. In Galatia, an inscription seeks to restrain the demands of travelling Roman officials, illuminating how the apostolic travels of Paul, Cephas, and others disrupted communities. At Philippi, a list of donations from the cult of Silvanus demonstrates the benefactions of a community that, like those in Christ, sought to share abundance in the midst of economic limitations. In Corinth, a landscape of grief extends from monuments to the bones of the dead, and provides a context in which to understand Corinthian practices of baptism on behalf of the dead and the provocative idea that one could live"as if not" mourning or rejoicing. Rome and the Letter to the Romans are the grounds for an investigation of ideas of time and race not only in the first century, when we find an Egyptian obelisk inserted as a timepiece into the mausoleum complex of Augustus, but also of a new Rome under Mussolini that claimed the continuity of Roman racial identity from antiquity to his time and sought to excise Jews. Thessalonike and the early Christian literature associated with the city demonstrates what is done out of love for Paul-invention of letters, legends, and cult in his name. The book articulates a method for bringing together biblical texts with archaeological remains. This method reconstructs the lives of the many adelphoi-brothers and sisters-whom Paul and his co-writers address. Its project is informed by feminist historiography and gains inspiration from thinkers such as Claudia Rankine, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Wendy Brown, and Katie Lofton.

Bart Ehrman--the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and a recognized authority on the early Christian Church--and Zlatko Plese here offer a groundbreaking, multi-lingual edition of the Apocryphal Gospels, one that breathes new life into the non-canonical texts that were once nearly lost to history.
In The Apocryphal Gospels, Ehrman and Plese present a rare compilation of over 40 ancient gospel texts and textual fragments that do not appear in the New Testament. This essential collection contains Gospels describing Jesus's infancy, ministry, Passion, and resurrection, as well as the most controversial manuscript discoveries of modern times, including the most significant Gospel discovered in the 20th century--the Gospel of Thomas--and the most recently discovered Gospel, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. For the first time ever, these sacred manuscripts are featured in the original Greek, Latin, and Coptic languages, accompanied by fresh English translations that appear next to the original texts, allowing for easy line by line comparison. Also, each translation begins with a thoughtful examination of key historical, literary, and textual issues that places each Gospel in its proper context. The end result is a resource that enables anyone interested in Christianity or the early Church to understand--better than ever before--the deeper meanings of these apocryphal Gospels.
The Apocryphal Gospels is much more than an annotated guide to the Gospels. Through its authoritative use of both native text and engaging, accurate translations, it provides an unprecedented look at early Christianity and the New Testament. This is an indispensable volume for any reader interested in church history, antiquity, ancient languages, or the Christian faith.