This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Latin is the language in which the New Testament was copied, read, and studied for over a millennium. The remains of the initial 'Old Latin' version preserve important testimony for early forms of text and the way in which the Bible was understood by the first translators. Successive revisions resulted in a standard version subsequently known as the Vulgate which, along with the creation of influential commentaries by scholars such as Jerome and Augustine, shaped theology and exegesis for many centuries. Latin gospel books and other New Testament manuscripts illustrate the continuous tradition of Christian book culture, from the late antique codices of Roman North Africa and Italy to the glorious creations of Northumbrian scriptoria, the pandects of the Carolingian era, eleventh-century Giant Bibles, and the Paris Bibles associated with the rise of the university. In The Latin New Testament, H.A.G. Houghton provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and development of the Latin New Testament. Drawing on major editions and recent advances in scholarship, he offers a new synthesis which brings together evidence from Christian authors and biblical manuscripts from earliest times to the late Middle Ages. All manuscripts identified as containing Old Latin evidence for the New Testament are described in a catalogue, along with those featured in the two principal modern editions of the Vulgate. A user's guide is provided for these editions and the other key scholarly tools for studying the Latin New Testament.

Religions of the Constantinian Empire provides a synoptic review of Constantine's relation to all the cultic and theological traditions of the Empire during the period from his seizure of power in the west in 306 cE to the end of his reign as autocrat of both east and west in 337 cE. Divided into three parts, the first considers the efforts of Christians to construct their own philosophy, and their own patterns of the philosophic life, in opposition to Platonism. The second assembles evidence of survival, variation or decay in religious practices which were never compulsory under Roman law. The 'religious plurality' of the second section includes those cults which are represented as demonic burlesques of the sacraments by Firmicus Maternus. The third reviews the changes, both within the church and in the public sphere, which were undeniably prompted by the accession of a Christian monarch. In this section on 'Christian polyphony', Mark Edwards expertly moves on from this deliberate petrifaction of Judaism to the profound shift in relations between the church and the civic cult that followed the Emperor's choice of a new divine protector. The material in the first section will be most familiar to the historian of philosophy, that of the second to the historian of religion, and that of the third to the theologian. All three sections make reference to such factors as the persecution under Diocletian, the so-called 'edict of Milan', the subsequent legislation of Constantine, and the summoning of the council of Nicaea. Edwards does not maintain, however, that the religious and philosophical innovations of this period were mere by-products of political revolution; indeed, he often highlights that Christianity was more revolutionary in its expectations than any sovereign could afford to be in his acts.This authoritative study provides a comprehensive reference work for those studying the ecclesiastical and theological developments and controversies of the fourth century.

This volume is the first major English-language commentary on the Epistle to Diognetus since that of Henry G. Meecham in 1949. Its purpose is twofold: to provide careful consideration to the essential introductory issues of authorship and setting, structure and integrity, theology, relationship to scripture, and historical trajectory as they apply to the transmission of the text; and to offer commentary focused on the movement of the author's argument and objectives in construction of the narrative, taking advantage of critical considerations of the apology within recent scholarship. In the final analysis the volume arrives at the premise that the core materials of Diognetus were likely delivered first in an oral context whose setting remains unknown and were thereafter recorded by a later hand as the framework of chapters 1-10. A subsequent editor (perhaps Clement of Alexandria) added the concluding materials of chapters 11-12 together with the insertion of numerous hymnic segments and theological phrases throughout chapters 1-10. These additions were inspired by Johannine tradition and reflect the setting of a living faith community. The text of Diognetus thus reflects an evolutionary process that moves from oral performance to literary record, from moral teaching to theological homily. The format of the volume is designed to welcome the non-specialist to the text of Diognetus while exposing the reader to the best of both earlier and more recent critical comments on the writing and its tradition.

"Judas" is synonymous with "traitor." But a newly discovered ancient text of the Gospel of Judas offers a picture of Judas Iscariot radically different from the Church's traditional understanding of him, and maintains that far from being the infamous betrayer, Judas was actually Jesus's trusted friend and the recipient of secret revelation. Simon Gathercole's new book includes a translation of the ancient Egyptian text of the Gospel of Judas and a running commentary, and offers new translations of all the ancient evidence about Judas Iscariot and the Gospel attributed to him. It gets behind the hype which the Gospel of Judas has attracted, and looks at why the group which produced the work were in such bitter conflict with the mainstream Christian church, and shows how the document provides us with a window into the turbulent world of Christianity and Gnosticism in the century after Jesus.

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the 'peace of the Church' (c. 312). Some of the Roman martyrs are universally known-SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example-but others are scarcely recognized outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature, and are followed by five Appendices which present translated texts which are essential for understanding the cult of Roman martyrs. This volume offers the first collection of the Roman passiones martyrum translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425-675, by anonymous authors who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs' remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. Although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. As certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between the second century and the fifth, the passiones shed valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. The passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, as they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried.

Arianism is the archetypal Christian heresy. It was not only a watershed historically; its central issue-the question of Christ's full co-equal divinity as Son of God-remains an issue of deep concern to every generation of Christians, including our own. The traditional critique of Arianism is that its errors arise from an over-intellectual approach to Christianity, that it failed because it lacked a gospel of salvation. Questions about that traditional view have been raised here and there in recent years. This book challenges it head on. It does no on a basis of careful scholarship, and at the same time in a lively and readable style.' Maurice Wiles, Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford 'Gregg and Groh have enabled us to see the thought of Arius on the nature of Christ as condensing nothing less than a distinctive view of man, congruent to a precise social and religious milieu. As a result, the clash of disembodied dogmas becomes suffused with the quality of a late Roman Christian's most urgent concerns: "love and betrayal, grace and backsliding". Now presented with liberating precision in all its implications-from conflicting attitudes to change and stability in society and the universe, to vivid glimpses of the bustling world of Greek cities contrasted with the unearthly stillness of St Anthony in the desert-a well-worn chapter of Christian dogma emerges as a high moment in the birth of a new civilization in the Roman world. This is a model book, that any scholar of Christian doctrine would dearly wish to have written; and that every scholar of the early Christian world must read.' Peter Brown, Professor of History and Classics in the University of California at Berkeley 'Gregg and Groh propose a novel approach to the most profound crisis of the dogmatic tradition in the ancient church. They extract from the denunciation of the errors of Arius ... a striking view of the ancient doctrine of salvation. The principle aspects of this doctrine remain too often neglected by the critics. But with Gregg and Groh the saviour God of Arius is brought back to life, reactivated ... The authors display in convincing fashion the original accents of this doctrine, at the heart of the Christian community, before it had become nothing but a heresy charged doctrine... They promote a healthy reflection on the more fixed forms of antiArian dogmatism, passively transmitted over the centuries.' Charles Kannengiesser, Professeur a Onstitut Catholique de Paris

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.

The first 'heretic' to be condemned to death at the end of IV century, Priscillian, sometime bishop of Avila, has generated much scholarly interest in early Christian studies since the rediscovery of his works in the nineteenth century. Early scholarly attention focussed on the question of Priscillian's heterodoxy. Was he really an orthodox thinker victimised by ecclesiastical politics or were the accusations of heresy fully grounded in his teachings? Recent scholarship has moved away from rigid categorisation of the individual and focussed on the social-political movement of Priscillianism, with a tendency to neglect the literary corpus. Marco Conti draws attention back to the writings and the theological reflections there contained.
Published for the first time in one volume with facing page translation and systematic commentaries, The Complete Works provide invaluable material for better understanding the complex nature of this fascinating figure and the movement he inspired, a crucial example of early opposition to Ecclesiastical power. With an extensive introduction providing biographical and textual background information.

Leontius Of Byzantium (485-543) Byzantine monk and theologian who provided a breakthrough of terminology in the 6th-century Christological controversy over the mode of union of Christ's human nature with his divinity. He did so through his introduction of Aristotelian logical categories and Neoplatonic psychology into Christian speculative theology. His work initiated the later intellectual development of Christian theology throughout medieval culture. Brian E. Daley provides translation and commentary on the six theological works associated with the name of Leontius of Byzantium. The critical text and facing-page translation help make these works more accessible than ever before and provide a reliable textual apparatus for furture scholarship of this key writing.

This is the first English translation of Marius Victorinus' commentary on Galatians. Analytical notes, full bibliography, and a lengthy introduction make this book a valuable resource for the study of the first Latin commentator on Paul. No such comparable work exists in English; and this volume engages fully with German, French, and Italian scholarship on Victorinus' commentaries. A number of themes receive special treatment in a lengthy introduction: the relation of Victorinus' exegetical efforts to the trinitarian debates; the iconography of the apostle Paul in mid-fourth-century Rome; Victorinus' exegetical methodology; his intentions as a commentator; and the question of his influence on later Latin commentators (Ambrosiaster and Augustine).

This volume, the first in a major new series which will provide authoritative texts of key non-canonical gospel writings, comprises a critical edition, with full translations, of all the extant manuscripts of the Gospel of Mary. In addition, an extended Introduction discusses the key issues involved in the interpretation of the text, as well as locating it in its proper historical context, while a Commentary explicates points of detail. The gospel has been important in many recent discussions of non-canonical gospels, of early Christian Gnosticism, and of discussions of the figure of Mary Magdalene. The present volume will provide a valuable resource for all future discussions of this important early Christian text.

This book reassesses the impact of Aristotle's moral and political philosophy on medieval scholastic thought. It examines the relationship between the common good and the individual good, and between the authority of the Church and the authority of the temporal ruler. The result is a major reinterpretation of the emergence of a secular theory of the state in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

There have been many books written to assist churchwardens in discharging their duties, detailing their responsibilities in respect of the intricacies of ecclesiastical law and making the role seem quite a challenge. The office of churchwarden is one of the oldest recognised forms of Lay Ministry and is the highest position of trust and responsibility that the Church gives to its lay people. The churchwarden is a lay official in a parish or congregation of the Anglican Communion, usually working as a part-time volunteer. They are ex officio members of the parish board, usually called a vestry, parochial church council, or in the case of a cathedral parish, the chapter. Over the centuries churchwardens have acquired many 'hats,' carrying out tasks that required a broad range of skills both practical and pastoral. They came to the fore during the time when the vestry evolved to be a key element of political democracy in local government. The aim of this, sometimes whimsical, book is to illustrate the various roles and situations churchwardens would have had to deal with, from the early years of the Christian Church to the present time. By exploring these important roles and their dilemmas in interpreting complex laws and social problems throughout the ages, will perhaps reassure current post-holders that they are indeed better off than their predecessors.

Arianism has been called the "archetypal Christian heresy" - a denial of the divine status of Christ. In his examination, now augmented by new material, Rowan Williams argues that Arius himself was a dedicated theological conservative whose concern was to defend the free and personal character of the Christian God. His "heresy" grew out of the attempt to unite traditional biblical language with radical philosophical ideas and techiniques, and was, from the start, involved with issues of authority in the church. Thus, the crisis of the early 4th century was not only about the doctrine of God, but also about the relations between emperors, bishops and ascetical "charismatic" teachers in the church's decision-making. Williams raises the wider questions of how heresy is defined and how certain kinds of traditionalism transform themselves into heresy. With a fresh conclusion, in which the author reflects on how his views have changed or remained the same, and a new introduction, this book is suitable reading for students of patristics, doctrine and church history.

New Testament I and II represents Vol. I/15 and I/16 in the Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. The present volume contains the translations of four works, all of which are exegetical treatises of one sort or another: The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Agreement among the Evangelists, Questions on the Gospels and Seventeen Questions on Matthew. Each of the four works are accompanied by its own introduction, general index, and scripture index. The Lord's Sermon on the Mount (translated by Michael Campbell, OSA) is an exegesis of chapters five through seven of Matthew's Gospel, but Augustine's explanation of the Sermon is more a charter of Christian morality and spirituality than mere exegesis of the text and brings a unity to the lengthy discourse that goes far beyond an account of what the text says. Augustine wrote Agreement among the Evangelists in 400, contemporaneously with the composition of his Confessions (397 - 401).The treatise, translated by Kim Paffenroth, is an attempt to defend the veracity of the four evangelists in the face of seeming incompatibilities in their record of the gospel events, especially against some pagan philosophers who raised objections to the gospel narratives based on alleged inconsistencies. Questions on the Gospels and Seventeen Questions on Matthew are translated by Roland Teske, SJ. Questions on the Gospels is a record of questions that arose when Augustine was reading the Gospels of Matthew and Luke with a disciple. The answers to the questions are not intended to be commentaries on the Gospels in their entirety but merely represent the answers to the questions that arose for the student at the time. Seventeen Questions on Matthew is similarly in the question-and-answer genre and is most likely by Augustine, but it includes some paragraphs at the end that are certainly not his. For all those who are interested in the greatest classics of Christian antiquity, Augustine's works are indispensable. This long-awaited translation makes Augustine's monumental work approachable.ABOUT THE AUTHOR Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the Western world. After he converted to Christianity he became bishop of Hippo in North Africa, where he was influential in civil and church affairs. His writings have had a lasting impact on Western philosophy and culture.

Soliloquies is a work from Augustine's early life, shortly after his conversion, in which are visible all the seeds contained in his future writings. Here we see Augustine as a philosopher, a thinker and a budding theologian.

The essays included in this volume present Larry W. Hurtado's steadfast analysis of the earliest Christian manuscripts. In these chapters, Hurtado considers not only standard text-critical issues which seek to uncover an earliest possible version of a text, but also the very manuscripts that are available to us. As one of the pre-eminent scholars of the field, Hurtado examines often overlooked 2nd and 3rd century artefacts, which are among the earliest manuscripts available, drawing fascinating conclusions about the features of early Christianity. Divided into two halves, the first part of the volume addresses text-critical and text-historical issues about the textual transmission of various New Testament writings. The second part looks at manuscripts as physical and visual artefacts themselves, exploring the metadata and sociology of their context and the nature of their first readers, for the light cast upon early Christianity. Whilst these essays are presented together here as a republished collection, Hurtado has made several updates across the collection to draw them together and to reflect on the developing nature of the issues that they address since they were first written.

This edition of Books I & II of St Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only edition 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 these books, written in the aftermath of the sack of Rome in AD 410 by the Goths, Augustine replies to the pagans, who attributed the fall of Rome to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the pagan gods. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) has become one of the most discussed figures in contemporary patristic studies. This is partly due to the relatively recent discovery and critical edition of his works in various genres, including On the Ascetic Life, Four Centuries on Charity, Two Centuries on Theology and the Incarnation, On the 'Our Father', two separate Books of Difficulties, addressed to John and to Thomas, Questions and Doubts, Questions to Thalassius, Mystagogy and the Short Theological and Polemical Works. The impact of these works reached far beyond the Greek East, with his involvement in the western resistance to imperial heresy, notably at the Lateran Synod in 649. Together with Pope Martin I (649-53 CE), Maximus the Confessor and his circle were the most vocal opponents of Constantinople's introduction of the doctrine of monothelitism. This dispute over the number of wills in Christ became a contest between the imperial government and church of Constantinople on the one hand, and the bishop of Rome in concert with eastern monks such as Maximus, John Moschus, and Sophronius, on the other, over the right to define orthodoxy. An understanding of the difficult relations between church and state in this troubled period at the close of Late Antiquity is necessary for a full appreciation of Maximus' contribution to this controversy. The editors of this volume aim to provide the political and historical background to Maximus' activities, as well as a summary of his achievements in the spheres of theology and philosophy, especially neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism.

This volume offers a comprehensive portrait of St. Augustine (354-430) drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career. One chapter is devoted to each of his masterpieces (Confessions, On the Trinity, and City of God) and one to each of his best-known controversies (against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians). It also explores his everyday work as a bishop, preacher and interpreter of the Bible.

The 3rd century theologian Origen of Alexandria has traditionally been famous for his belief in universal salvation. Yet, Origen is also famous for his insistence on moral autonomy, the fact that God allows each creature to freely choose to move in the direction of good or evil. How can these two beliefs not result in a paradox or logical inconsistency in Origen's theology, as many contemporary scholars suggest they do? This book explores the intersection between moral autonomy and God's foreordained universal salvation in Origen's writings. Origen was, in fact, aware of the apparent contradiction between these two ideas. He nevertheless stipulated that God can achieve universal salvation without violating a soul's freedom of choice. God accomplishes this through his foreknowledge of future voluntary possibilities, which God then prearranges into a sequence leading to God's desired outcome.

Athanasius of Alexandria (c.295-373) is one of the greatest and most controversial figures of early Christian history. His life spanned the period of fundamental change for the Roman Empire and the Christian Church that followed the conversion of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor. A bishop and theologian, an ascetic and a pastoral father, Athanasius played a central role in shaping Christianity in these crucial formative years. As bishop of Alexandria (328-73) he fought to unite the divided Egyptian Church and inspired admiration and opposition alike from fellow bishops and the emperor Constantine and his successors. Athanasius attended the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea summoned by Constantine in 325 and as a theologian would be remembered as the defender of the original Nicene Creed against the 'Arian' heresy. He was also a champion of the ascetic movement that transformed Christianity, a patron of monks and virgins and the author of numerous ascetic works including the famous Life of Antony. All these elements played their part in Athanasius' vocation as a pastoral father, responsible for the physical and spiritual wellbeing of his congregations. This book offers the first study in English to draw together these diverse yet inseparable roles that defined Athanasius' life and the influence that he exerted on subsequent Christian tradition. The presentation is accessible to both specialists and non-specialists and is illuminated throughout by extensive quotation from Athanasius' many writings, for it is through his own words that we may best approach this remarkable man.

Leo the Great was the beneficiary of the consolidation of the power of the papacy in Rome and the Christianization of the city over the course of the preceding century. In this carefully nuanced study, Bernard Green demonstrates the influences at work on this celebrated pope's development as a theological thinker, including two of the most renowned theological names of the period, Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo.
Green charts Leo's theological journey from his first encounters with the Pelagian and Nestorian controversies, where he engaged Cassian as an advisor. Leo took an admiring though limited view of Cyril of Alexandria but misunderstood the weaknesses in Nestorius' thought. As pope, Leo preached a civic Christianity, accessible to all citizens, baptising the virtues of the classical and civic past.
The study then examines Leo's recently dated sermons and reveals the evolution of his thought as he worked out a soteriology that gave full value to both the divinity and humanity of Christ, especially in reaction to Manichaeism. In the crisis that led to Chalcedon, Leo's earlier misunderstanding of Nestorius affected the content of his Tome, which was atypical of the Christology and soteriology he had developed in his earlier preaching. Green persuasively concludes that its emphasis on the distinction of the two natures was an uncharacteristic attempt to respond to both Eutyches and Nestorius, as this pope understood them. In the light of Chalcedon, Leo produced a revised statement of Christology, the Letter to the Palestinian monks, which is both more accomplished and better aligned with his characteristic thought.

In this study, Ramsay MacMullen steps aside from the well-worn path that previous scholars have trod to explore exactly how early Christian doctrines became official. Drawing on extensive verbatim stenographic records, he analyzes the ecumenical councils from A.D. 325 to 553, in which participants gave authority to doctrinal choices by majority vote.
The author investigates the sometimes astonishing bloodshed and violence that marked the background to church council proceedings, and from there goes on to describe the planning and staging of councils, the emperors' role, the routines of debate, the participants' understanding of the issues, and their views on God's intervention in their activities. He concludes with a look at the significance of the councils and their doctrinal decisions within the history of Christendom.

Scholars of Gregory of Nyssa have long acknowledged the centrality of faith in his theory of divine union. To date, however, there has been no sustained examination of this key topic. The present study fills this gap and elucidates important auxiliary themes that accrue to Gregory's notion of faith as a faculty of apophatic union with God. The result adjusts how we understand the Cappadocian's apophaticism in general and his so-called mysticism of darkness in particular. After a general discussion of the increasing value of faith in late Neoplatonism and an overview of important work done on Gregorian faith, this study moves on to sketch a portrait of the mind and its dynamic, varying cognitive states and how these respond to the divine pedagogy of scripture, baptism, and the presence of God. With this portrait of the mind as a backdrop we see how Gregory values faith for its ability to unite with God, who remains beyond the comprehending grasp of mind. A close examination of the relationship between faith and mind shows Gregory bestowing on faith qualities which Plotinus would have granted only to the `crest of the wave of intellect'. While Gregorian faith serves as the faculty of apophatic union with God, faith yet gives something to mind. This dimension of Gregory's apophaticism has gone largely unnoticed by scholars. At the apex of an apophatic ascent faith unites with God the Word; by virtue of this union the believer takes on the qualities of the Word, who speaks (logophasis) in the deeds and discourse of the believer. Finally this study redresses how Gregory has been identified with a `mysticism of darkness' and argues that he proposes no less a `mysticism of light'.