Some early Christians used water, not wine, in the cup of their Eucharist, and avoided eating meat. This kind of avoidance, more common than previously imagined, reflected a more radical stance towards the wider society than that taken by the Christian mainstream. The discussion here throws new light on early Christianity and the ways eating and drinking have often reflected deeply-held beliefs and values.

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.

In the centuries following his death, Jerome (c.347-420) was venerated as a saint and as one of the four Doctors of the Latin church. In his own lifetime, however, he was a severely marginalized figure whose intellectual and spiritual authority did not go unchallenged, at times not even by those in his inner circle. His ascetic theology was rejected by the vast majority of Christian contemporaries, his Hebrew scholarship was called into question by the leading Biblical authorities of the day, and the reputation he cultivated as a pious monk was compromised by allegations of moral impropriety with some of his female disciples.
In view of the extremely problematic nature of his profile, how did Jerome seek to bring credibility to himself and his various causes? In this book, the first of its kind in any language, Andrew Cain answers this crucial question through a systematic examination of Jerome's idealized self-presentation across the whole range of his extant epistolary corpus. Modern scholars overwhelmingly either access the letters as historical sources or appreciate their aesthetic properties. Cain offers a new approach and explores the largely neglected but nonetheless fundamental propagandistic dimension of the correspondence. In particular, he proposes theories about how, and above all why, Jerome used individual letters and letter-collections to bid for status as an expert on the Bible and ascetic spirituality.

Richard Finn OP examines the significance of almsgiving in Churches of the later empire for the identity and status of the bishops, ascetics, and lay people who undertook practices which differed in kind and context from the almsgiving practised by pagans. It reveals how the almsgiving crucial in constructing the bishop's standing was a co-operative task where honour was shared but which exposed the bishop to criticism and rivalry. Finn details how practices gained meaning from a discourse which recast traditional virtues of generosity and justice to render almsgiving a benefaction and source of honour, and how this pattern of thought and conduct interacted with classical patterns to generate controversy. He argues that co-operation and competition in Christian almsgiving, together with the continued existence of traditional euergetism, meant that, contrary to the views of recent scholars, Christian alms did not turn bishops into the supreme patrons of their cities.

When barbarians invaded the Roman Empire in the years around 400 AD, Christian monks hid in their cloisters - or so it is often assumed. Conrad Leyser shows is that monks in the early medieval West were, in fact, pioneers in the creation of a new language of moral authority. He describes the making of this tradition over two centuries from St Augustine to St Benedict and Gregory the Great.

In its twelfth volume this text examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective."The Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature" is the twelfth volume in the "Feminist Companion to the Bible and Early Christian Literature" series. Presenting cutting-edge studies by both established scholars and new voices from diverse cultures and contexts, the series not only displays the range of feminist readings, but also offers essential readings for all students of the New Testament and early Christian literature.This volume examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective including "Clement of Rome", "Clement of Alexandria", the "Christian Martyr" and the "Gospel of Thomas". The contributors include: Barbara Bowe, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Denise Buell, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Castelli, Elizabeth Clark, Kathy Gaca, Robin Jensen, Ross S Kraemer, Carolyn Osiek, Carolyn Osiek, and Theresa Shaw. It is suitable for libraries; academics; postgraduates and upper level undergraduates.

John, the sixth-century orthodox bishop of Scythopolis in Palestine, was the first of many authors to comment upon the highly influentional Pseudo-Dionysian writings (such as The Mystical Theology). Here translated and interpreted, John's Prologue and Scholia (marginalia) have only recently been separable from later comments. They present his complex theological and philosophical observations on the Dionysian texts. The book begins with the general outlines of the appearance and reception of the Dionysian corpus in the sixth century, followed by an overview of the career and works of John of Scythopolis. Written around AD 540, John's own comments in the Prologue provide the outline for introducing the concerns dominating his Scholia: biblical, classical, and patristic sources; liturgical terminology and context; orthodox and heretical doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, creation, and eschatology; Dionysian authenticity; Neoplatonism and John's unacknowledged quotations from Plotinus. Most of the Scholia and all of the Prologue are translated and annotated in order to present the first of many layers of Dionysian interpretation.

In its twelfth volume this text examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective."The Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature" is the twelfth volume in the "Feminist Companion to the Bible and Early Christian Literature" series. Presenting cutting-edge studies by both established scholars and new voices from diverse cultures and contexts, the series not only displays the range of feminist readings, but also offers essential readings for all students of the New Testament and early Christian literature.This volume examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective including "Clement of Rome", "Clement of Alexandria", the "Christian Martyr" and the "Gospel of Thomas". The contributors include: Barbara Bowe, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Denise Buell, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Castelli, Elizabeth Clark, Kathy Gaca, Robin Jensen, Ross S Kraemer, Carolyn Osiek, Carolyn Osiek, and Theresa Shaw. This book is suitable for libraries; academics; postgraduates and upper level undergraduates.

Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) is our major historical witness to the triumph of Christianity in the early fourth century. His commentary on the Book of Isaiah has only been available to modern scholars since 1975. The present book, the first comprehensive study, examines how Eusebius interpreted Isaiah in the context of Constantine's conversion.

The question of what it means for Christ to be the "image of God," or imago dei, lies at the heart of the Christological debates of the fourth century. Is an image a derivation from its source? Are they two separate substances? Does an image serve to reveal its source? Is an image ontologically inferior to its source? In this book, Gerald P. Boersma examines three Western pro-Nicene theologies of the imago dei, which tackle the question of whether human beings and Christ can both be considered to be the "image of God." Boersma goes on to examine Augustine's early theology of the imago dei, prior to his ordination (386-391). According to Boersma, Augustine's early thought posits that Christ is an image of equal likeness to God, while a human being is an image of unequal likeness. He argues that although Augustine's early theology of image builds on that of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, and Ambrose of Milan, Augustine was able to affirm, in ways that his predecessors were not, how both Christ and the human person can be considered the imago dei.

In general, theological terms this study examines the interplay of early Christian understandings of history, revelation, and identity. The book explores this interaction through detailed analysis of appeals to "mystery" in the Pauline letter collection and then the discourse of previously hidden but newly revealed mysteries in various second-century thinkers. T.J. Lang argues that the historical coordination of the concealed/revealed binary ("the mystery previously hidden but presently revealed") enabled these early Christian authors to ground Christian claims - particularly key ecclesial, hermeneutical, and christological claims - in Israel's history and in the eternal design of God while at the same time accounting for their revelatory newness. This particular Christian conception of time gives birth to a new and totalizing historical consciousness, and one that has significant implications for the construction of Christian identity, particularly vis-a-vis Judaism.

How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the West?

In the early first century, a small group of peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God’s messiah. Less than four hundred years later it had become the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers.

It could so easily have been a forgotten sect of Judaism.

Through meticulous research, Bart Ehrman, an expert on Christian history, texts and traditions, explores the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations the world has ever seen, one that has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics and economics of modern Western civilisation.

Originally published in Italian in 1978, The Transmission of Sin is a study of the origins of the doctrine of original sin, one of the most important teachings of the Catholic Church. While the doctrine has a basis in biblical sources, it found its classic expression in the work of St. Augustine. Yet Augustine did not work out his theory on the basis of the biblical texts alone, rather he sought to understand them in the context of the religious thinking of his own time. Pier Franco Beatrice's work seeks to illuminate that context, and discover the post-biblical influences on Augustine's thought. Although he made considerable efforts to defend and elaborate the doctrine of hereditary guilt, says Beatrice, the doctrine already existed before Augustine and was in fact widespread in the Christianity of the time, particularly in the West. He locates its origins in Egypt in the second half of the second century CE, in Jewish-Christian circles that saw sexual congress as the source of the physical and moral corruption that afflicts all humans. In reaction to this extreme view, which rejected marriage and procreation as inherently evil, other theologians developed a more moderate position, recognizing only personal sin, which could not be inherited. Beatrice argues that Augustine's doctrine exemplified a synthesis of these two trends which would ultimately triumph as the orthodox Catholic position.

The Life of Peter the Iberian by John Rufus records the ascetic struggle of a fifth-century anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Mayyuma, Palestine. Cornelia Horn presents a historical-critical study of the only substantial anti-Chalcedonian witness to the history of the conflict in Palestine and analyses the formative period of fifth-century anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy, theology, and its ascetic expression. Important themes are pilgrimage as an ascetic ideal and asceticism as source of theological authority. Archaeological data on many places in the Levant and textual sources in Syriac, Coptic, Greek, Armenian, and Georgian are examined. This book contributes to our understanding of the origins of anti-Chalcedonian theology and the influence of asceticism on its development, the Christian topography of the Levant, and the history of the anti-Chalcedonian movement in Palestine.

We are used to thinking of words as signs of inner thoughts. In Outward Signs, Philip Cary argues that Augustine invented this expressionist semiotics, where words are outward signs expressing an inward will to communicate, in an epochal departure from ancient philosopical semiotics, where signs are means of inference, as smoke is a sign of fire. Augustine uses his new theory of signs to give an account of Biblical authority, explaining why an authoritative external teaching is needed in addition to the inward teaching of Christ as divine Wisdom, which is conceived in terms drawn from Platonist epistemology. In fact for Augustine we literally learn nothing from words or any other outward sign, because the truest form of knowledge is a kind of Platonist vision, seeing what is inwardly present to the mind. Nevertheless, because our mind's eye is diseased by sin we need the help of external signs as admonitions or reminders pointing us in the right direction, so that we may look and see for ourselves. Even our knowledge of other persons is ultimately a matter not of trusting their words but of seeing their minds with our minds. Thus Cary argues here that, for Augustine, outward signs are useful but ultimately powerless because no bodily thing has power to convey something inward to the soul. This means that there can be no such thing as an efficacious external means of grace. The sacraments, which Augustine was the first to describe as outward signs of inner grace, signify what is necessary for salvation but do not confer it. Baptism, for example, is necessary for salvation, but its power is found not in water or word but in the inner unity, charity and peace of the church. Even the flesh of Christ is necessary but not efficacious, an external sign to use without clinging to it.

The theology of creation interconnected with virtually every aspect of early Christian thought, from Trinitarian doctrine to salvation to ethics. Paul M. Blowers provides an advanced introduction to the multiplex relation between Creator and creation as an object both of theological construction and religious devotion in the early church. While revisiting the polemical dimension of Christian responses to Greco-Roman philosophical cosmology and heterodox Gnostic and Marcionite traditions on the origin, constitution, and destiny of the cosmos, Blowers focuses more substantially on the positive role of patristic theological interpretation of Genesis and other biblical creation texts in eliciting Christian perspectives on the multifaceted relation between Creator and creation. Greek, Syriac, and Latin patristic commentators, Blowers argues, were ultimately motivated less by purely cosmological concerns than by the urge to depict creation as the enduring creative and redemptive strategy of the Trinity. The 'drama of the divine economy', which Blowers discerns in patristic theology and piety, unfolded how the Creator invested the 'end' of the world already in its beginning, and thereupon worked through the concrete actions of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to realize a new creation.

A collection of seventeen articles by colleagues and former students of Professor J. Maxwell Miller who taught at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. The papers deal with the history, chronology, geography, archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Israel and its setting in the Levant, and range from broad methodological discussions of historiography to focused analyses of individual texts or historical issues. A review of Miller's career and a select bibliography of his publications are also included.>

This book provides an edited text, introduction, and the first English translation of a central document in the history of religious coercion in late antiquity: Severus of Minorca's Letter on the Conversion of the Jews. The Letter describes the forced conversion of the Jews of Minorca to Christianity in AD 418, allegedly under the influence of St. Stephen's relics. Although ostensibly a hagiographical work, the Letter is fundamentally an anti-Jewish document, and therein lies its interest for historians. It offers a fascinating perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in a Mediterranean town, and on the motives for religious intolerance in the unsettled age of the Germanic invasions. In addition, its wealth of information about a diaspora Jewish community in the Western empire makes it unique among the surviving sources.

This commentary on Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp includes extensive introductions, the Greek or Latin texts, facing English translations, and substantial comments on each passage. The preliminary material investigates Polycarpian traditions and reconstructs an outline of his life. The introductory studies for both Philippians and the Martyrdom discuss text and manuscript traditions, date and place of composition, historical setting, literary genre and style, unity and integrity, purpose and themes, theology, and post-composition influence. The volume also explores communal self-definition, moral formation, and the transmission of traditions, including the use of documents now found in the New Testament. The commentary proceeds passage by passage, but also includes lengthy discussions of critical issues and key interpretive questions. The investigations survey the current status of relevant scholarship and contain balanced discussions of controversial topics and scholarly debates.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the writings of an early sixth-century Christian mystical theologian who wrote under the name of a convert of the apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. This 'Pseudo'-Dionysius is famous for articulating a mystical theology in two parts: a sacramental and liturgical mysticism embedded in the context of celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, and an austere, contemplative regimen in which one progressively negates the divine names in hopes of soliciting union with the 'unknown God' or 'God beyond being.' Charles M. Stang argues that the pseudonym and the influence of Paul together constitute the best interpretive lens for understanding the Corpus Dionysiacum [CD]. Stang demonstrates how Paul animates the entire corpus, and shows that the influence of Paul illuminates such central themes of the CD as hierarchy, theurgy, deification, Christology, affirmation (kataphasis) and negation (apophasis), dissimilar similarities, and unknowing. Most importantly, Paul serves as a fulcrum for the expression of a new theological anthropology, an 'apophatic anthropology.' Dionysius figures Paul as the premier apostolic witness to this apophatic anthropology, as the ecstatic lover of the divine who confesses to the rupture of his self and the indwelling of the divine in Gal 2:20: 'it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.' Building on this notion of apophatic anthropology, the book forwards an explanation for why this sixth-century author chose to write under an apostolic pseudonym. Stang argues that the very practice of pseudonymous writing itself serves as an ecstatic devotional exercise whereby the writer becomes split in two and thereby open to the indwelling of the divine. Pseudonymity is on this interpretation integral and internal to the aims of the wider mystical enterprise. Thus this book aims to question the distinction between 'theory' and 'practice' by demonstrating that negative theology-often figured as a speculative and rarefied theory regarding the transcendence of God-is in fact best understood as a kind of asceticism, a devotional practice aiming for the total transformation of the Christian subject.

With the growth of interest in later Greek philosophy, the importance of Plotinus (AD 205-270) as a seminal influence on later thinkers, both pagan and Christian, is being increasingly recognized. The Enneads have been readily available for some time, both in Greek and in English translation, and there is no shortage of scholarly writing on the Enneads in general, and on particular aspects of Plotinus' thought. However, apart from Michael Atkinson's translation and commentary on Ennead V.1 (Clarendon Press, 1985), there has been no major commentary in English on any single treatise. Plotinus' Greek is notoriously obscure, and mere translation often sheds little light. Barrie Fleet's translation and commentary on Ennead III.6 elucidates the text of a major treatise in which Plotinus uses the concept of impassivity to shed light on three questions of importance to Platonists: the nature of change in the human soul; its analogue in the Sensible World; and the nature of Matter. Dr Fleet shows how texts of Plato and Aristotle, and Hellenistic commentaries on them, were central to the seminars held in Rome under the leadership of Plotinus. This treatise is the outcome of one such seminar. All Greek quotations in the commentary are translated into English, and all Greek terms are either translated or transliterated, making this edition fully accessible to readers with or without Greek.

How were ideas and experiences of transformation expressed in early Christianity and early Judaism? This volume explores the social and philosophical frameworks within which transformative ideas such as resurrection and practices of becoming a oea new beinga were shaped. It also explores the analogies and parameters by which transformation was being observed, noted and asserted. The focus on transformation helps to connect topics that tend to be studied separately, such as cosmology, resurrection, aging, gender, and conversion. The textual material is wide-ranging and there are new readings of core passages. Ideas and experiences of transformations in early Christianity and early Judaism Connects topics that tend to be studied seperately (cosmology, resurrection, aging, gender, conversion) With wide-ranging textual material

The Asketikon of St Basil the Great comprises a new English translation and studies which re-examine the emergence of monasticism in Asia Minor. The Regula Basilii, translated by Rufinus from Basil's Small Asketikon, is closely compared with the Greek text of the longer edition, as a means to tracing the development of ideas. Silvas concludes that the antecedents of the monastic community of the Great Asketikon are best sought not in some kind of sub-orthodox modus vivendi of male and female ascetics living together and increasingly curbed by an emerging neo-Nicene orthodoxy less favourable to women ('homoiousian asceticism'), but in the local domestic ascetic movement in Anatolia as typified in the developments at Annisa under the leadership of Makrina.

Pseudo-Dionysius is the name given to the author of an influential body of theological texts, dating from around 500 C.E. For centuries, the works were falsely attributed to "Dionysius the Areopagite", the biblical name chosen by the pseudonymous author - that of the Athenian who was converted to Christianity by St. Paul in Acts 17. Written some five hundred years later than the biblical account, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Divine Names, and the Mystical Theology offer a synthesis of biblical interpretation, liturgical spirituality and Neoplatonic philosophy. Their central motif, which has made them the charter of Christian mysticism, is the upward progress of the soul toward God through the spiritual interpretation of the Bible and the liturgy. Dionysius continually reminds his readers, however, that all human concepts fall short of the transcendence of God. In this book, Rorem provides a commentary on all of the Dionysian writings, chapter by chapter, paying special attention to their complex inner coherence. The Dionysian influence on medieval theology is introduced in essays on specific topics: hierarchy, biblical symbolism, angels, Gothic architecture, liturgical allegory, the scholastic doctrine of God, and the mystical theology of the western Middle Ages. Rorem's book makes these important texts more accessible to both scholars and students and includes a comprehensive bibliography of secondary sources.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People is recognized as a masterpiece among the historical literature of medieval England and Europe. Completed in 731, it comprises in a single flowing narrative a coherent history of the conversion of the English peoples to Christianity, and the story of the island kingdoms and churches from the 590s to the early eighth century, prefaced by a sketch of the earlier history of Britain. In 1969 the Clarendon Press published the new edition in Oxford Medieval Texts, edited by Bertram Colgrave and Sir Roger Mynors. Mynors's masterly text and textual introduction replaced much of Charles Plummer's great edition of 1896; but the historical notes did not attempt to match in scale and detail Plummer's second volume of commentary. To fill this gap the late Professor J. M. Wallace-Hadrill devoted the last years of his life to a new commentary, one of the finest and most mature fruits of his scholarship - more succinct than Plummer, tauter, more relevant, above all drawing together and adding to the findings of a galaxy of modern scholars. Prepared for the press by Thomas Charles-Edwards, helped by Patrick Wormald and others, this book completes the new Bede, and is prefaced by a paper characteristic of Professor Wallace-Hadrill on 'Bede and Plummer'.