Beginning as a marginal group in Galilee, the movement initiated by Jesus of Nazareth became a world religion within 100 years. Why, among various religious movements, did Christianity succeed? This major work by internationally renowned scholar Udo Schnelle traces the historical, cultural, and theological influences and developments of the early years of the Christian movement. It shows how Christianity provided an intellectual framework, a literature, and socialization among converts that led to its enduring influence. Senior New Testament scholar James Thompson offers a clear, fluent English translation of the successful German edition.

The African Q. Septimus Florens Tertullianus (ca. 150-222 CE), the great Christian writer, was born a soldier's son at Carthage, educated in Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and medicine, studied law and became a pleader, remaining a clever and often tortuous arguer. At Rome he became a learned and militant Christian. After a visit to churches in Greece (and Asia Minor?) he returned to Carthage and in his writings there founded a Christian Latin language and literature, toiling to fuse enthusiasm with reason; to unite the demands of the Bible with the practice of the Church; and to continue to vindicate the Church's possession of the true doctrine in the face of unbelievers, Jews, Gnostics, and others. In some of his many works he defended Christianity, in others he attacked heretical people and beliefs; in others he dealt with morals. In this volume we present "Apologeticus" and "De Spectaculis."

Of Minucius, an early Christian writer of unknown date, we have only "Octavius," a vigorous and readable debate between an unbeliever and a Christian friend of Minucius, Octavius Ianuarius, a lawyer sitting on the seashore at Ostia. Minucius himself acts as presiding judge. Octavius wins the argument. The whole work presents a picture of social and religious conditions in Rome, apparently about the end of the second century.

The earliest attempts to interpret Mary's Dormition in the light of the Paschal mystery. Some of the authors -- John of Damascus, Andrew of Crete, Germanus of Constantinople -- are well known, others less so. Most of these works have never been translated into English; some are not available in any modern language. Includes index.

Scholars and mainline pastors tell a familiar narrative about the roles of women in the early church: that women held leadership roles and exercised some authority in the church, but, with the establishment of formal institutional roles, they were excluded from active leadership in the church. Evidence of women's leadership is either described as "exceptional" or relegated to (so-called) heretical groups, who differed with proto-orthodox groups precisely over the issue of women's participation. For example, scholars often contrast the Acts of Paul and Thecla (ATh) with 1Timothy. They understand the two works to represent discrete communities with opposite responses to the question of women's leadership. In A Modest Apostle Susan Hylen uses Thecla as a microcosm from which to challenge this larger narrative. In contrast to previous interpreters, Hylen reads 1Timothy and the ATh as texts that emerge out of and share a common cultural framework. In the Roman period, women were widely expected to exhibit gendered virtues like modesty, industry and loyalty to family. However, women pursued these virtues in remarkably different ways, including active leadership in their communities. Read against a background in which multiple and conflicting norms already existed for women's behavior, Hylen shows that texts like the ATh and 1Timothy begin to look different. Like the culture, 1Timothy affirms women's leadership as deacons and widows while upholding standards of modesty in dress and speech. In the ATh, Thecla's virtue is first established by her modest behavior, which allows her to emerge as a virtuous leader. The text presents Thecla as one who fulfills culturally established norms, even as she pursues a bold new way of life. Hylen's approach points to a new way of understanding women in the early church, one that insists upon the acknowledgment of women's leadership as a historical reality without neglecting the effects of the culture's gender biases.

This volume traces the history of Oneness Pentecostalism in North America. It maps the major ideas, arguments, periodization, and historical figures; corrects long-standing misinterpretations; and draws attention to how race and gender impacted the growth and trajectories of this movement. Oneness Pentecostalism first emerged in the United States around 1913, baptizing its members in the name of Jesus Christ rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and splintering from trinitarian Pentecostals. With its rapid growth throughout the twentieth century, especially among ethnic minorities, Oneness Pentecostalism assumed a diversity of theological, ethnic, and cultural expressions. This book reckons with the multiculturalism of the movement over the course of the twentieth century. While common interpretations tend to emphasize the restorationist impulse of Oneness Pentecostalism, leading to notions of a static, unchanging movement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that the movement is much more fluid and that the interpretation of its history and theology should be grounded in the variegated North American contexts in which Oneness Pentecostalism has taken root and dynamically developed. Groundbreaking and interdisciplinary, this volume presents diverse perspectives on a significant religious movement whose modern origins are embedded within the larger Pentecostal story. It will be welcomed by religious studies scholars and by practitioners of Oneness Pentecostalism. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Daniel Chiquete, Dara Coleby Delgado, Patricia Fortuny-Loret de Mola, Manuel Gaxiola, David Reed, Rosa Sailes, and Daniel Segraves.

Byzantine church law remains terra incognita to most scholars in the western academy. In this work, David Wagschal provides a fresh examination of this neglected but fascinating world. Confronting the traditional narratives of decline and primitivism that have long discouraged study of the subject, Wagschal argues that a close reading of the central monuments of Byzantine canon law c. 381-883 reveals a much more sophisticated and coherent legal culture than is generally assumed. Engaging in innovative examinations of the physical shape and growth of the canonical corpus, the content of the canonical prologues, the discursive strategies of the canons, and the nature of the earliest forays into systematization, Wagschal invites his readers to reassess their own legal-cultural assumptions as he advances an innovative methodology for understanding this ancient law. Law and Legality in the Greek East explores topics such as compilation, jurisprudence, professionalization, definitions of law, the language of the canons, and the relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical laws. It challenges conventional assumptions about Byzantine law while suggesting many new avenues of research in both late antique and early medieval law, secular and ecclesiastical.

Philoxenos of Mabbug (c. 440-523) was a prolific late-antique theologian and polemicist who produced the largest literary corpus to have survived in Syriac. He earned a reputation as the leading Syriac opponent of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and its two-nature Christology. In The Practical Christology of Philoxenos of Mabbug, David A. Michelson offers a new understanding of Philoxenos one-nature Christology by interpreting the post-Chalcedonian doctrinal disputes through a holistic analysis of Philoxenos life and works. Michelson's close reading of the entire Philoxenian corpus reveals a miaphysite perspective on the Christological controversies in which the intellectual clash was not primarily over defining doctrine. As a metropolitan bishop, sponsor of a revised New Testament, and monastic theologian, Philoxenos was principally concerned with matters of Christian praxis and the ascetic pursuit of divine knowledge. This book shows how he opposed Chalcedonian Christology because he was convinced its intellectual theological method was inimical to the mystical pursuit of divine knowledge through liturgical and ascetic practice. Philoxenos polemical engagement drew upon a theological epistemology that he had adapted from Pro-Nicene theologians including Ephrem, the Cappadocians, and Evagrius. Philoxenos argued that divine knowledge was not to be achieved through human understanding or doctrinal inquiry. Instead, true divine knowledge was attained through practice, specifically contemplation, reading of scripture, participation in the liturgical mysteries, and ascetic discipline. Michelson considers each of these practices in turn to show how Philoxenos thought of opposition to Chalcedon as part of a larger vision of ascetic and spiritual struggle. In short, for Philoxenos conflict over Christology was foremost a practical matter.

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

This book is the first publication of a very early collection of Christian monastic rules from Roman Egypt. Designed for the so-called White Monastery Federation, a community of monks and nuns who banded together about 360 CE, the rules are quoted by the great monastic leader Shenoute of Atripe in his writings of the fourth and fifth century. These rules provide new and intimate access to the earliest phases of Christian communal (cenobitic) monasticism. In this volume, Bentley Layton presents for the first time the Coptic text of the rules, amounting to five hundred and ninety-five entries, accompanied by a clear and exact English translation. Four preliminary chapters discuss the character of the rules in their historical and social context, and present new evidence for the founding of the monastic federation. From passing remarks in the rules, Layton paints a brilliant picture of monastic daily life and ascetic practice, organized around six general topics: the monastery as a physical plant, the human makeup of the community, the pattern of ascetic observances, the hierarchy of authority, the daily liturgy, and monastic economic life . The Canons of Our Fathers will be a fundamental resource for readers interested in Christian life in late antiquity, ascetic practices, and the history of monasticism in all its forms.

More exegetical literature survives from the hand of Cyril of Alexandria than nearly any other Greek patristic author, yet this sizable body of work has scarcely received the degree of attention it deserves. In this work, Matthew R. Crawford reconstructs the intellectual context that gave rise to this literary output and highlights Cyril's Trinitarian theology, received as an inheritance from the fourth century, as the most important defining factor. Cyril's appropriation of pro-Nicene Trinitarianism is evident in both of his theology of revelation and his theology of exegesis, the two foci that comprise his doctrine of Scripture. Revelation, in his understanding, proceeds from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit, following the order of Trinitarian relations. Moreover, this pattern applies to the inspiration of Scripture as well, insofar as inspiration occurs when the Son indwells human authors by the Spirit and speaks the words of the Father. Although Cyril's interpretation of revelation may consequently be called 'Trinitarian', it is also resolutely Christological, since the divine and incarnate Son functions as the central content and mediator of all divine unveiling. Corresponding to this divine movement towards humanity in revelation is humanity's appropriation of divine life according to the reverse pattern-in the Spirit, through the Son, unto the Father. Applied to exegesis, this Trinitarian pattern implies that the Spirit directs the reader of Scripture to a Christological interpretation of the text, through which the believer beholds the incarnate Son, the exemplar of virtue and the perfect image of the Father, and accordingly advances in both virtue and knowledge. This process continues until the final eschatological vision when the types and riddles of Scripture will be done away with in light of the overwhelming clarity of the Christologically-mediated Trinitarian vision.

The One and the Three explores parallels between Byzantine and early Irish monastic traditions, finding in both a markedly trinitarian theology founded on God's contemplation and ascetic experience. Chrysostom Koutloumousianos refutes modern theological theses that affect ecclesiology, and contrasts current schools of theological thought with patristic theology and anthropology, in order to approach the meaning and reality of unity and otherness within the Triadic Monad and the cosmos. He explores such topics as the connection between nature and person, the esoteric dimension of the Self, the relation and dialectic of impersonal institutions and personal charisma, and perennial monastic virtues as ways to unity in diversity.

St. Jerome (347-420) has been considered the pre-eminent scriptural commentator among the Latin Church Fathers. His Commentary on Matthew, written in 398 and profoundly influential in the West, appears here for the first time in English translation. Jerome covers the entire text of Matthew's gospel by means of brief explanatory comments that clarify the text literally and historically. Although he himself resided in Palestine for forty years, Jerome often relies on Origen and Josephus for local information and traditions. His stated aim is to offer a streamlined and concise exegesis that avoids excessive spiritual interpretation. Jerome depends on the works of a series of antecedent commentators, both Greek and Latin, the most important of whom is Origen, yet he avoids the extremes in Origen's allegorical interpretations. His polemic against theological opponents is a prominent thrust of his exegetical comments. The Arians, the Gnostics, and the Helvidians are among his most important targets. Against Arius, Jerome stresses that the Son did not lack omniscience. Against Marcion and Mani, Jerome holds that Jesus was a real human being, with flesh and bones, and that men become sons of God by their own free choice, not by the nature with which they are born. Against Helvidius, Jerome defends the perpetual virginity of Mary. In this commentary, Jerome calls attention to the activity of the Trinity as a principal unifying theme of the Gospel of Matthew. He also stresses that exertions are necessary for the Christian to attain eternal salvation; that free will is a reality; that human beings cooperate with divine grace; and that it is possible to obtain merit during the earthly life.

No Roman emperor had a greater impact on the modern world than did Constantine. The reason is not simply that he converted to Christianity, but that he did so in a way that brought his subjects along after him. Indeed, this major new biography argues that Constantine's conversion is but one feature of a unique administrative style that enabled him to take control of an empire beset by internal rebellions and external threats by Persians and Goths. The vast record of Constantine's administration reveals a government careful in its exercise of power but capable of ruthless, even savage, actions. Constantine executed (or drove to suicide) his father-in-law, two brothers-in-law, his eldest son, and his once beloved wife. An unparalleled general throughout his life, planning a major assault on the Sassanian Empire in Persia even on his deathbed. Alongside the visionary who believed that his success came from the direct intervention of his God resided an aggressive warrior, a sometimes cruel partner, and an immensely shrewd ruler. These characteristics combined together in a long and remarkable career, which restored the Roman Empire to its former glory. Beginning with his first biographer Eusebius, Constantine's image has been subject to distortion. More recent revisions include John Carroll's view of him as the intellectual ancestor of the Holocaust (Constantine's Sword) and Dan Brown's presentation of him as the man who oversaw the reshaping of Christian history (The Da Vinci Code). In Constantine the Emperor, David Potter confronts each of these skewed and partial accounts to provide the most comprehensive, authoritative, and readable account of Constantine's extraordinary life.

The night before his crucifixion, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks his Father to take away the cup of his suffering, but then says, "not my will, but yours, be done." Shortly afterward, Judas arrives, and his arrival reveals something important about the Father's will. Yet much remains obscure. The sheer fact of Christ's crucifixion shows only that God was not willing to spare his Son. It does not shed any light on the positive content of the Father's will. Drawing on philosophical analysis and historical-critical exegesis, The Father's Will sets out to clarify the Father's will for Christ and how it relates to his death on the cross. Then, after considering the theologies of Anselm and Peter Abelard, it argues for the recovery of the early Christian category of ransom. Since Christians look to the crucifixion to make sense of their suffering, the Father's will for Christ relates to many existential questions; it also shapes the place of God the Father in Christian theology and culture. Interpreting the crucifixion as a ransom makes the goodness of God more evident. It also makes it easier to see God the Father as the author of our salvation, rather than a stern judge who must be placated. And since the category of ransom traces back to Jesus' saying in the Gospels about giving his life "as a ransom for many" it has great claim to interpret the crucifixion in the way Jesus himself interpreted it.

Band 9 der zweisprachigen Ausgabe der Sermones ad populum bietet die erstmalige deutsche UEbersetzung der drei Predigten zur Apostelgeschichte 148-150. Die lateinischen Texte beruhen auf dem Vergleich der bisherigen Editionen, im Fall von sermo 150 auch auf Codex I 9 der Stadtbibliothek Mainz, der als Faksimile abgedruckt wird. Die Kommentierung erlautert insbesondere UEberlieferung, Chronologie, Struktur, Stil, historische Daten, biblisches Gedankengut, Liturgie und Theologie der Predigten. Daruber hinaus werden hagiographische und archaologische Daten sowie die Verwendung der Apostelgeschichte im Gesamtwerk Augustins dargestellt.

The martyrs in early Christian texts are consistently portrayed as Christ figures. Their words, actions, and deaths are modeled on the person and work of Jesus. As such they provide us with insights into the interpretation and use of scripture in geographically diverse locations and a variety of social settings in a period for which there are lamentably few sources. Moss begins by tracing out the theme of imitating Jesus through suffering in the literature of the Jesus movement and early church and its application in martyrdom literature. She demonstrates the importance of imitating the sufferings of Christ as a practice and ethos in the Jesus movement. She then proceeds to the interpretations of the martyr's death and afterlife. Moss argues against the dominant theory that the martyr's death was viewed as a sacrifice, finding that in their post-mortem existence martyrs continue to be assimilated to Christ, closely resembling the exalted Christ as intercessors, judges, enthroned monarchs and banqueters. The characterization of the martyr as "another Christ" ultimately conflicted with emerging theological commitments to Christ's uniqueness and the egalitarian nature of post-mortem existence for his followers. But for a brief period, Moss finds, the martyr's imitation was viewed as a way in which he or she shared in the status of the exalted Christ.

This edition of St Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only one in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In Book V Augustine searches out and presents an answer to the question which lies behind the earlier books. In spite of the moral bankruptcy of the Roman state, and in spite of the disasters and injustices which have marked her history since the foundation, Rome has extended her imperial sway throughout Europe and the Near East. If the pagan gods have not guided her to this terrestrial eminence, how has this success been achieved? Augustine divides his response into four main sections: addressing the pagan notion of fate; arguing that God aided the Romans to imperial glory because a minority of them were virtuous even though they did not worship him; stating explicitly that the Roman Empire was set in place by God and is governed by his providence; and devoting the final section to the advent of Christian Emperors. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

In a time when the ordination of women is an ongoing and passionate debate, the study of women's ministry in the early church is a timely and significant one. There is much evidence from documents, doctrine, and artifacts that supports the acceptance of women as presbyters and deacons in the early church. While this evidence has been published previously, it has never before appeared in one complete English-language collection.

With this book, church historians Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek present fully translated literary, epigraphical, and canonical references to women in early church offices. Through these documents, Madigan and Osiek seek to understand who these women were and how they related to and were received by, the church through the sixth century. They chart women's participation in church office and their eventual exclusion from its leadership roles. The editors introduce each document with a detailed headnote that contextualizes the text and discusses specific issues of interpretation and meaning. They also provide bibliographical notes and cross-reference original texts. Madigan and Osiek assemble relevant material from both Western and Eastern Christendom.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. "Through the Eye of a Needle" is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.

"Through the Eye of a Needle" challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

Band 8 der zweisprachigen Ausgabe der Sermones ad populum enthalt die langste aller erhaltenen Predigten Augustins, den 1990 in der Mainzer Stadtbibliothek entdeckten Sermo Dolbeau 26. Er wird auf der Grundlage der Mainzer Handschrift, die als Faksimile abgedruckt wird, neu herausgegeben, erstmals ins Deutsche ubersetzt und kommentiert. Die zweite, 1980 von Raymond Etaix erstmals edierte Neujahrspredigt wird in gleicher Weise auf der Basis des Codex Marston MS 208 in der Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Universitat Yale, herausgegeben. Von den sieben Epiphanie-Predigten werden vier erstmals ins Deutsche ubertragen. Die Kommentierung erlautert insbesondere Echtheit, UEberlieferung, Chronologie, Struktur, Stil, historische Daten, biblisches Gedankengut, Theologie und Liturgie.

Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity is the first major study in English of the 'heretic' Jovinian and the Jovinianist controversy. David G. Hunter examines early Christian views on marriage and celibacy in the first three centuries and the development of an anti-heretical tradition. He provides a thorough analysis of the responses of Jovinian's main opponents, including Pope Siricius, Ambrose, Jerome, Pelagius, and Augustine. In the course of his discussion Hunter sheds new light on the origins of Christian asceticism, the rise of clerical celibacy, the development of Marian doctrine, and the formation of 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' in early Christianity.

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.

Diese oeffentliche Vorlesung wird jahrlich veranstaltet im Andenken an den Kirchenhistoriker Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942), den Nachfolger Adolf von Harnacks als Leiter des Akademienunternehmens Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (GCS). Es wird dazu jeweils ein international bedeutender Referent aus dem Bereich der Altertumswissenschaften eingeladen. Die Vortrage behandeln zentrale Themen der antiken Religionsgeschichte mit einer Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart.

How were the Johannine books of the New Testament received by second-century Christians and accorded scriptural status? Charles E. Hill offers a fresh and detailed examination of this question. He dismantles the long-held theory that the Fourth Gospel was generally avoided or resisted by orthodox Christians, while being treasured by various dissenting groups, throughout most of the second century. Integrating a wide range of literary and non-literary sources, this book demonstrates the failure of several old stereotypes about the Johannine literature. It also collects the full evidence for the second-century Church's conception of these writings as a group: the Johannine books cannot be isolated from each other but must be recognized as a corpus.