`There are certain rules for interpreting the scriptures which, as I am well aware, can usefully be passed on to those with an appetite for such study...' On Christian Teaching is one of Augustine's most important works on the classical tradition. Written to enable Christian students to be their own interpreters of the Bible, it provides an outline of Christian theology, a detailed discussion of ethical problems, and a fascinating early contribution to sign theory. Augustine also makes a systematic attempt to determine what elements of classical education are permissible for a Christian, and in the last book suggests ways in which Ciceronian rhetorical principles may help in communicating the faith. This long-needed, completely new and up-to-date translation gives a close but stylish representation of Augustine's thought and expression. References to the classical background are carefully explained and Roger Green's introduction describes the aims and circumstances of the work, and outlines its influence on major figures in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The remarkable diversity of Christianity during the formative years before the Council of Nicea has become a plain, even natural, "fact" for most ancient historians. Until After the New Testament, however, there had never been a sourcebook of primary texts that revealed the many varieties of Christian beliefs, practices, ethics, experiences, confrontations, and self-understandings. To help readers recognize and experience the rich diversity of the early Christian movement, After the New Testament, Second Edition, provides a wide range of texts from the second and third centuries, both "orthodox" and "heterodox," including such works as the Apostolic Fathers, the writings of Nag Hammadi, early pseudepigrapha, martyrologies, anti-Jewish tractates, heresiologies, canon lists, church orders, liturgical texts, and theological treatises. Rather than providing only fragments of texts, this collection prints large excerpts-entire documents wherever possible-organized under social and historical rubrics. This unique reader's concise and informative introductions and clear and up-to-date English translations make it ideal for courses on Early Christianity, Christian Origins, or Early Church History. It will also appeal to anyone-student, scholar, and general reader alike-interested in the entire range of early Christian literature from the period after the New Testament up to the writings of the so-called father of church history, Eusebius. The Second Edition includes new and updated translations as well as considerable additions to the roster of sources, including excerpts from the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas, and the correspondence between Jesus and Abgar. The book also includes two brand-new rubrics of texts, one focusing on the method and practice of interpreting scripture, and the other focusing on women and gender in early Christianity.

These pioneering Lives are central sources for the major Christian monastic figures from St Antony, who died in 356, to St Benedict (c. 480-547). They also shed light on the beliefs and values of their celebrated authors. Athanasius' Life of Antony reveals the man who many believe was the first to set out into the Egyptian desert to pursue the path of poverty, abstinence and solitary prayer. St Jerome fought for the cause of chastity and asceticism in writing about Paul of Thebes, Hilarion and Malchus, while in his Life of Martin Sulpicius Severus described the achievements of a man who combined the roles of monk, bishop and missionary. Almost two hundred years later, Pope Gregory the Great in his Dialogues focused above all on St Benedict, whose Rule became the template for every subsequent form of monasticism. Full of vivid incidents and astonishing miracles, all these works proved hugely popular and influential and also inspired much of the visual imagery of the Middle Ages.

DJD XXXII presents the first full critical edition of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa]a) and the Hebrew University Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa]b), which constitute almost 30% of all the preserved biblical material, in the styles of the DJD series. That is, whereas the photographs and transcriptions have been available since the 1950s, this volume provides a fresh transcription of all the known fragments, notes clarifying problematic readings, and the first comprehensive catalogue of the textual variants. It is not, and cannot be, a comprehensive analysis of all these highly influential manuscripts, on which innumerable studies have been published over the past half century. Part 1 contains the photographic plates (1QIsa]a in colour) with the transcriptions on facing pages for easy comparison. Part 2 contains the introductions, notes, and catalogue of variants. The main introduction narrates the discovery and early history of these two manuscripts.

DJD XXXII presents the first full critical edition of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa]a) and the Hebrew University Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa]b), which constitute almost 30% of all the preserved biblical material, in the styles of the DJD series. That is, whereas the photographs and transcriptions have been available since the 1950s, this volume provides a fresh transcription of all the known fragments, notes clarifying problematic readings, and the first comprehensive catalogue of the textual variants. It is not, and cannot be, a comprehensive analysis of all these highly influential manuscripts, on which innumerable studies have been published over the past half century. Part 1 contains the photographic plates (1QIsa]a in colour) with the transcriptions on facing pages for easy comparison. Part 2 contains the introductions, notes, and catalogue of variants. The main introduction narrates the discovery and early history of these two manuscripts.

Christian monasticism emerged in the Egyptian deserts in the fourth century AD. This introduction explores its origins and subsequent development and what it aimed to achieve, including the obstacles that it encountered; for the most part making use of the monks' own words as they are preserved (in Greek) primarily in the so-called Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Mainly focussing on monastic settlements in the Nitrian Desert (especially at Scete), it asks how the monks prayed, ate, drank and slept, as well as how they discharged their obligations both to earn their own living by handiwork and to exercise hospitality. It also discusses the monks' degree of literacy, as well as women in the desert and Pachomius and his monasteries in Upper Egypt. Written in straightforward language, the book is accessible to all students and scholars, and anyone with a general interest in this important and fascinating phenomenon.

Rarely did ancient authors write about the lives of women; even more rarely did they write about the lives of ordinary women: not queens or heroines who influenced war or politics, not sensational examples of virtue or vice, not Christian martyrs or ascetics, but women of moderate status, who experienced everyday joys and sorrows and had everyday merits and failings. Such a woman was Monica-now Saint Monica because of her relationship with her son Augustine, who wrote about her in the Confessions and elsewhere. Despite her rather unremarkable life, Saint Monica has inspired a robust controversy in academia, the Church, and the Augustine-reading public alike: some agree with Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who knew Monica, that Augustine was exceptionally blessed in having such a mother, while others think that Monica is a classic example of the manipulative mother who lives through her son, using religion to repress his sexual life and to control him even when he seems to escape. In Monica: An Ordinary Saint, Gillian Clark reconciles these competing images of Monica's life and legacy, arriving at a woman who was shrewd and enterprising, but also meek and gentle. Weighing Augustine's discussion of his mother against other evidence of women's lives in late antiquity, Clark achieves portraits both of Monica individually, and of the many women like her. Augustine did not claim that his mother was a saint, but he did think that the challenges of everyday life required courage and commitment to Christian principle. Monica's ordinary life, as both he and Clark tell it, showed both. Monica: An Ordinary Saint illuminates Monica, wife and mother, in the context of the societal expectations and burdens that shaped her and all ordinary women.

Is it possible we don't see God working in mighty ways because we don't ask him to work in mighty ways? Throughout history, God has used revival to build and renew his church. God-Sized Vision challenges us to pray expectantly to see his work in our own day. God can bring revival again to our community, our country, and our world. Our faith grows stronger when we learn how God worked in the past. The historical stories of worldwide revivals in this book enlarge our hearts and expand our minds as we see God at work in human history with a power that is still available to the faithful today. Here scholars Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge recount the fascinating details of world-changing revivals, beginning with biblical events and continuing through the Reformation, the Great Awakenings, the Welsh and Korean revivals, the East Africa Revival of the 1930s, and more recent revivals in North America and China. What did these revivals have in common? How can we prepare for-and expect-revival in our own culture? With accessible language and gripping examples, Hansen and Woodbridge explore these questions and more, strengthening our understanding of God's work while deepening our faith in the possibility of revival-right where we are.

In 1490/92 Marsilio Ficino, the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato, made new translations of, with running commentaries on, two treatises he believed were the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of St. Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. His aim was to show how these two treatises (in fact the achievement of a sixth-century Christian follower of the Neoplatonist Proclus) had inspired pagan thinkers in the later Platonic tradition like Plotinus and Iamblichus. These major products of fifteenth-century Christian Platonism are here presented in new critical editions accompanied by English translations, the first into any modern language.

This is the first edition of a translation into English of an Old French Commentary on the Penitential Psalms, made in the fifteenth century by Dame Eleanor Hull, wife of Sir John Hull, a retainer of John of Gaunt. Eleanor Hull was a devout laywoman, lady-in-waiting to the second wife of Henry IV, who spent some of her life in Sopwell Priory, a house of Benedictine nuns attached to St Albans Abbey. She is the first woman to have made translations into English whose name is known, and about whom there is any information. In addition to the commentary on the penitential psalms, she also translated a collection of prayers and meditations that is as yet unpublished. She is a significant figure in English literary history, who has remained virtually unknown until now.

In our age of ecological crisis, what insights-if any-can we expect to find by looking to our past? Perhaps, suggests Virginia Burrus, early Christianity might yield usable insights. Turning aside from the familiar specter of Christianity's human-centered theology of dominion, Burrus directs our attention to aspects of ancient Christian thought and practice that remain strange and alien. Drawn to excess and transgression, in search of transformation, early Christians creatively reimagined the universe and the human, cultivating relationships with a wide range of other beings-animal, vegetable, and mineral; angelic and demonic; divine and earthly; large and small. In Ancient Christian Ecopoetics, Burrus facilitates a provocative encounter between early Christian theology and contemporary ecological thought. In the first section, she explores how the mysterious figure of khora, drawn from Plato's Timaeus, haunts Christian and Jewish accounts of a creation envisioned as varyingly monstrous, unstable, and unknowable. In the second section, she explores how hagiographical literature queers notions of nature and places the very category of the human into question, in part by foregrounding the saint's animality, in part by writing the saint into the landscape. The third section considers material objects, as small as portable relics and icons, as large as church and monastery complexes. Ancient Christians considered all of these animate beings, simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, protective and in need of protection, lovable and loving. Viewed through the shifting lenses of an ancient ecopoetics, Burrus demonstrates how humans both loomed large and shrank to invisibility, absorbed in the rapture of a strange and animate ecology.

The name "Apostolic Fathers" was first applied in 1672 to a group of five writers who were taken either to have been in touch directly with some of the original Twelve Apostles or, in the next generation, to reflect the teaching of their immediate successors: Clement of Rome (fourth in the list of Popes), Ignatius (second bishop of Antioch), Polycarp of Smyrna (recorded as a disciple of the evangelst John), "Barnabas" (reputedly St. Paul's co-worker), and a Hermas, associated, though wrongly, with Hermas of Romans 16.14. With the later addition of Papias of Hierapolis and the unknown writer of the Epistle to Diognetus, the number of the Apostolic Fathers rose to seven; a final addition to the group was the Didache, a brief, early manual on morals and Church practice. Anything but homogenous in origin, form, and purpose, and ranging widely in all of these respects, these writings are of prime importance for the understanding of the Church around the year 100 A.D. Unless it be the Apostles' Creed itself, nothing precedes them in the development of Patrology.

A clear, readable translation of the ten books of Bishop Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History—the only surviving record of the Church during its crucial first three hundred years—this edition recounts the martyrdoms, heresies, schisms, and proceedings that led to Nicaea and other great church councils.

In 2011, Frances Young delivered the Bampton Lectures in Oxford to great acclaim. She offered a systematic theology with contemporary coherence, by engaging in conversation with the fathers of the church - those who laid down the parameters of Christian theology and enshrined key concepts in the creeds - and exploring how their teachings can be applied today, despite the differences in our intellectual and ecclesial environments. This book results from a thorough rewriting of those lectures in which Young explores the key topics of Christian doctrine in a way that is neither simply dogmatic nor simply historical. She addresses the congruence of head and heart, through academic and spiritual engagement with God's gracious accommodation to human limitations. Christianity and biblical interpretation are discussed in depth, and the book covers key topics including Creation, anthropology, Christology, soteriology, spirituality, ecclesiology and Mariology, making it invaluable to those studying historical and constructive theology.

This book provides a critical edition of a major non-canonical Gospel: the Gospel of Judas. It is based upon the manuscript published in 2007 by the National Geographic Society as well as the fragments of the same codex Tchacos that have since become available for study. The introduction by Bas van Os explores various aspects of this writing: its inclusion in the Codex Tchacos, the literary genre and the structure of the text, the "Gospel" narrative that frames the text, the polemical story, the relation between mythological representations from this text and those from "Sethian" traditions and Genesis material, the intended audience of the text, and its provenance. Johanna Brankaer provides a comprehensive commentary covering the whole of the text. It contains philological as well as substantive elements and unveils the intra-textual coherence as well as the affinities with other, Gnostic, apocryphal, patristic, and biblical traditions. Special attention is paid to the characterization of the disciples and Judas, to the much debated sacrificial theory behind the text and its rejection of the Eucharist (and Baptism) of the apostolic church, to expressions of (astral and eschatological) determinism, and to the Gnostic protology and cosmology.

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.

For almost 300 years, the dominant trend in New Testament interpretation has been to read the Acts of the Apostles as a document that argues for the political possibility of harmonious co-existence between 'Rome' and the early Christian movement. Kavin Rowe argues that the time is long overdue for a sophisticated, critically constructive reappraisal.
"A brilliant piece of work by a young scholar of considerable promise."
--First Things
"This well-written, well-argued book is a must read for New Testament scholars."
-- Review of Biblical Literature
"This sophisticated argument offers a comprehensive vision of Acts and deserves a wide readership."
-- Religious Studies Review
"There is so much happening in these pages that a slow and careful read will provoke sustained thoughts on a variety of subjects of ecclesial interest ranging from Christianity and culture to issues of tolerance and political theology."
-- Themelios

The translated works in this volume have been dated variously either to the beginning or to the final decade of Augustine's career as Bishop of Hippo. De agone Christiano, a treatise on the challenges of the Christian life in simple Latin for unschooled believers, was composed in the late 390s, as was more than half of the De doctrina Christiana. The latter work, which was finally completed near the end of Augustine's life, includes his views on the canon of Scripture, the proper approach to biblical exegesis, and how to preach effectively, as well as his famous distinction between "use" and "enjoyment." Later works included in this volume are the Enchiridion de fide, spe, et caritate, which is a compendium of Augustine's doctrines, and the anti-Pelagian work De correptione et gratia. The latter asserts the necessity of divine grace while affirming the benefit of firm human guidance, including rebuke, in monastic formation.

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.

This volume aims to create--in Walter Benjamin's terms--dialectical images from early Christian texts and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It blasts the past and the present into one another, creating new constellations of thought, ones connected with tensions and mediated by theory (mediation being what Theodor Adorno adds to Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image). Our ancient images derive from the Gospels, the Apostle Paul, Revelation, Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine. Our modern images and theories derive from Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler. Together these images and theories challenge the way we think about gentrification, progress, early Christianity, revolutionary movements, history, the body of Christ, canonicity, language, gender, and bodies, both human and non-human. Eleven international scholars contribute to this volume. These scholars are experts in the fields of Biblical Studies, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy, and Critical Theory.

A comprehensive guide to the individual churches, catacombs, embellishments and artefacts of Early Christian Rome. The author describes precisely where the extant features are situated and provides details on what can be seen. The ground plans of each site studies allows the reader to compare the proportions of each church with another From the 1st-century visits of the Apostles Peter and Paul to the end of the 9th-century Carolingian Renaissance, the book also includes dates of emperors and popes, and important historical events relating to this period in Rome. A historical introduction places the monuments in the context of the Early Christian period and its development in Rome.

Geza Vermes, translator and editor of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls and worldwide expert on the life and times of Jesus, tells the enthralling story of early Christianity and the origins of a religion. The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, yet one of the least understood. With a forensic, brilliant re-examination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was - a prophet in the tradition of other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament - to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Christian Beginnings pulls apart myths and misunderstandings to focus on the true figure of Jesus, and the birth of one of the world's major religions. Reviews: 'A beautiful and magisterial book' Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Guardian 'An exciting and challenging port of call, sweeping aside much of the fuzzy thinking and special pleading that bedevils the study of sacred scripture ... courteously expressed and witty' Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Times 'A challenging and engaging book that sets out to retrace the route by which a Jewish preacher in 1st-century Israel came to be declared as consubstantial and co-equal with the omnipotent, omniscient only God' Stuart Kelly, Scotsman 'A major contribution to our understanding of the historical Jesus' Financial Times 'A very accessible and entertaining read' Scotland on Sunday Books of the Year 'A magnum opus of early Christian history and one of the year's most significant titles' Bookseller

Carol Harrison counters the assumption that Augustine of Hippo's (354-430) theology underwent a revolutionary transformation around the time he was consecrated Bishop in 396. Instead, she argues that there is a fundamental continuity in his thought and practice from the moment of his conversion in 386. The book thereby challenges the general scholarly trend to begin reading Augustine with his Confessions (396), which were begun ten years after his conversion, and refocuses attention on his earlier works, which undergird his whole theological system.

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization (in the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum) to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view (in the De Doctrina Christiana and Confessiones); the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy.

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.