This highly accessible book discusses how the early Jewish and Christian communities went about interpreting Scripture.

The Library of Early Christianity is a series of eight outstanding books exploring the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts in which the New Testament developed.

Sardis was home to one of the earliest known Christian communities, appearing among the Seven Churches of Asia in the mid-first century AD. Between 1962 and 1973, the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis excavated two superimposed churches at the ancient site, one early Christian, one Byzantine. This richly illustrated volume documents the architecture and history of these buildings from the fourth to the sixteenth century. The early Christian church, an aisled basilica with narthex and atrium, both decorated with floor mosaics, had a long and complicated history, starting in the fourth century and continuing into the ninth century. Built over its remains is a Byzantine church dating to the little-known Lascarid period, when Constantinople had fallen to the Fourth Crusade and western Asia Minor was home to an independent Christian empire. This building's standing remains, scattered domes, and vaulting fragments support the reconstruction of an inscribed-cross church with six columns and five domes, enriched on the exterior by a variety of brick and terracotta decoration. Together, these buildings cast new light on a millennium of Christian worship at Sardis, from the first official recognition of Christianity until the end of the Byzantine era.

In the year 394 seven monks from Palestine made a difficult journey through the Egyptian desert, drawn there by stories of remarkable men. What they found in the communities living far up the Nile Valley fully accorded with their expectations, and in the account written by one of their number we have a rare contemporary source of information about the lives of these Desert Fathers. The witness of the monks in the face of a corrupt and declining, though nominally Christian Empire, and the roots of monasticism in fourth century Egypt, are subjects of steadily growing interest in the Church in the twentieth century. In her long and illuminating introduction Sister Benedicta Ward SLG explores the background of these traveller's tales and their encounters with the great men of the Desert, and places the account in its literary context alongside the complementary text of the 'Sayings' of the Fathers and the later, more sophisticated literature. She indicates throughout the social impact of the Fathers and the lasting truths discovered by these simple men in their way of holiness. This translation of the Historia Monachorum by Norman Russell is the first available in English, and will be of absorbing interest for the general reader as well as for students.

Crucifixion - in the ancient world and the folly of the message of the cross.

In his Commentary on Daniel, the earliest extant Christian commentary, Hippolytus interprets the deeds and visions of Daniel against the backdrop of contemporary Roman persecution and eschatological expectation, thus providing much information about Christian affairs in the early third century. Throughout the commentary Hippolytus further discusses his distinctive Logos theology and also makes mention of various liturgical practices evolving baptism, anointing, the celebration of Easter and perhaps the date of Christmas.

When Jesus of Nazareth began proclaiming the kingdom of God early in the first century, he likely had no intention of starting a new religion, especially one that included former pagans. Yet a new religion did eventually develop-one that not only included non-Jews but was soon dominated by them. How did this happen? Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire by Paul Duff offers an accessible and informed account of Christian origins, beginning with the teaching of Jesus and moving to the end of the first century. Duff's narrative shows how the rural Jewish movement led by Jesus developed into a largely non-Jewish phenomenon permeating urban centers of the Roman Empire. Paying special attention to social, cultural, and religious contexts-as well as to early Christian ideas about idolatry, marriage, family, slavery, and ethnicity-Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire will help readers cultivate a deeper understanding of the identity, beliefs, and practices of early Christ-believers.

In this second volume of translations from the Iberian Fathers appear the works of two seventh-century writers. From the first of these, bishop Braulio of Saragossa, a figure in Visigothic literature second only to St. Isidore of Seville, comes an extensive collection of letters. These are variously addressed to Isidore himself, to other ecclesiastics, to Pope Honorius, and to King Receswinth; friends and relatives were the recipients of seven letters of consolation. Braulio's letters are joined by the Life of a near contemporary, St. Emilian, and by a valuable list of the writings of Isidore, under whom Braulio studied. Fructuousus of Braga is represented by two monastic rules. The first of these was composed for Compludo, a foundation made by Fructousus himself; the other rule is a general or common one. Two other writings dealing with monastic practice accompany these rules, together with a letter to King Receswinth. Nearly all of the material presented here by Professor Barlow is new to English readers, and all of it offers a lively and wide-ranging insight into conditions prevailing in the seventh century among the people, lay, clerical, and religious, of what later became Spain and Portugal.

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.

The Eastern Church venerates among its saints several Early Christian women whose teaching and wisdom contribute to the depth of our theological heritage. Their inspired voices can be heard at work witnessing: in the New Testament, in the early centuries of the Church Fathers and throughout the Byzantine era. Readers will find this volume bringing female leaders from the Early Church to life from the traditional ancient sources and sharing their experience of the presence of God. Their remembered advice to followers still illuminates issues of faith and justice which bind us together as Christians today.

Included in this collection of Medieval writings are Ray Petry's careful essays on the province and character of mysticism and the history of mysticism from Plato to Bernard of Clairvaux.

Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

Scholars of religion have long assumed that ritual and belief constitute the fundamental building blocks of religious traditions and that these two components of religion are interrelated and interdependent in significant ways. Generations of New Testament and Early Christian scholars have produced detailed analyses of the belief systems of nascent Christian communities, including their ideological and political dimensions, but have by and large ignored ritual as an important element of early Christian religion and as a factor contributing to the rise and the organization of the movement. In recent years, however, scholars of early Christianity have begun to use ritual as an analytical tool for describing and explaining Christian origins and the early history of the movement. Such a development has created a momentum toward producing a more comprehensive volume on the ritual world of Early Christianity employing advances made in the field of ritual studies. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual gives a manifold account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the fifth century. The volume introduces relevant theories and approaches; central topics of ritual life in the cultural world of early Christianity; and important Christian ritual themes and practices in emerging Christian groups and factions.

The facts about Pontius Pilate are very few. We don't know when he was born or when he died. We know nothing of his career before he became Governor of Judea, and nothing of what happened to him after he was recalled by Tiberius. Some say he came from Rome, others from Spain or Germany. Everyone - from the evangelists to the writers of the medieval mystery plays - has his own Pilate, each symbolic of something, each a projection of his own ideas and anxieties. This extraordinary book is about all our Pilates, real, half-real and invented. Some are familiar, some surprising. They have depths and contrasts that are unexpected. They do remarkable things. Among these surprises, perhaps, are the glimpses we get of a man actually walking on a marble floor in Caesarea, feeling his shoes pinch, clicking his fingers for a slave, while the clouds of lasting infamy gather over his head.

By the late second century, early Christian gospels had been divided into two groups by a canonical boundary that assigned normative status to four of them while consigning their competitors to the margins. Connecting Gospels: Beyond the Canonical/Non-canonical Divide finds new ways to reconnect these divided texts. Starting from the assumption that, in spite of their differences, all early gospels express a common belief in the absolute significance of Jesus and his earthly career, this authoritative collection makes their interconnectedness fruitful for interpretation. The contributors have each selected a theme or topic and trace it across two or more gospels on either side of the canonical boundary, and the resulting convergences and divergences shed light not least on the canonical texts themselves as they are read from new and unfamiliar vantage points. This volume demonstrates that early gospel literature can be regarded as a single field of study, in contrast to the overwhelming predominance of the canonical four characteristic of traditional gospels scholarship.

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.

Deification in the Greek patristic tradition was the fulfilment of the destiny for which humanity was created - not merely salvation from sin but entry into the fullness of the divine life of the Trinity. This book, the first on the subject for over sixty years, traces the history of deification from its birth as a second-century metaphor with biblical roots to its maturity as a doctrine central to the spiritual life of the Byzantine Church. Drawing attention to the richness and diversity of the patristic approaches from Irenaeus to Maximus the Confessor, Norman Russell offers a full discussion of the background and context of the doctrine, at the same time highlighting its distinctively Christian character.

In A Threat to Public Piety, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser reexamines the origins of the Great Persecution (AD 303 313), the last eruption of pagan violence against Christians before Constantine enforced the toleration of Christianity within the Empire. Challenging the widely accepted view that the persecution enacted by Emperor Diocletian was largely inevitable, she points out that in the forty years leading up to the Great Persecution Christians lived largely in peace with their fellow Roman citizens. Why, Digeser asks, did pagans and Christians, who had intermingled cordially and productively for decades, become so sharply divided by the turn of the century?Making use of evidence that has only recently been dated to this period, Digeser shows that a falling out between Neo-Platonist philosophers, specifically Iamblichus and Porphyry, lit the spark that fueled the Great Persecution. In the aftermath of this falling out, a group of influential pagan priests and philosophers began writing and speaking against Christians, urging them to forsake Jesus-worship and to rejoin traditional cults while Porphyry used his access to Diocletian to advocate persecution of Christians on the grounds that they were a source of impurity and impiety within the empire.

The first book to explore in depth the intellectual social milieu of the late third century, A Threat to Public Piety revises our understanding of the period by revealing the extent to which Platonist philosophers (Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus) and Christian theologians (Origen, Eusebius) came from a common educational tradition, often studying and teaching side by side in heterogeneous groups."

Constantine and the Council of Nicaea plunges students into the theological debates confronting early Christian church leaders. Emperor Constantine has sanctioned Christianity as a legitimate religion within the Roman Empire but discovers that Christians do not agree on fundamental aspects of their beliefs. Some have resorted to violence, battling over which group has the correct theology. Constantine has invited all of the bishops of the church to attend a great church council to be held in Nicaea, hoping to settle these problems and others. The first order of business is to agree on a core theology of the church to which Christians must subscribe if they are to hold to the ""true faith."" Some will attempt to use the creed to exclude their enemies from the church. If they succeed, Constantine may fail to achieve his goal of unity in both empire and church. The outcome of this conference will shape the future of Christianity for millennia.

Classifying Christians investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and theological terms. Oscillating between ancient ethnographic evidence and contemporary ethnographic writing, Todd S. Berzon argues that late antique heresiology shares an underlying logic with classical ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world. By providing an account of heresiological writing from the second to fifth century, Classifying Christians embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.

Wealth and poverty are issues of perennial importance in the life and thought of the church. This volume brings patristic thought to bear on these vital issues. The volume begins with explanations of poverty in the New Testament period, continues with developments among Christians in Egypt and Asia Minor and in early Byzantium, and closes by connecting patristic theology with contemporary public policy and religious dialogue.

"Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society" is the first volume to appear in Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History, a series that represents a deliberate outreach by the Orthodox community to evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic seminarians, pastors, and theologians. These multiauthor books include contributors from all traditions but focus on the patristic (especially Greek patristic) heritage.

"This is a splendid book, a substantial contribution on a topic of perennial import for scholars of religion and theology. The essays collected here offer important reassessments of scholarship to date. They present fresh, vivid material and provide revised models through which to study, reflect upon, and respond to deprivation and surplus as realities in antiquity and in our own time. Practical, pragmatic considerations are interwoven with cultural, historical, and theological analyses. Excellent work throughout!"--Susan Ashbrook Harvey, professor of religious studies, Brown University

In late antiquity the rising number of ascetics who joined the priesthood faced a pastoral dilemma. Should they follow a traditional, demonstrably administrative, approach to pastoral care, emphasizing doctrinal instruction, the care of the poor, and the celebration of the sacraments? Or should they bring to the parish the ascetic models of spiritual direction, characterized by a more personal spiritual father/spiritual disciple relationship? Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church explores the struggles of five clerics (Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, and Pope Gregory I) to reconcile their ascetic idealism with the reality of pastoral responsibility. Through a close reading of Greek and Latin texts, George E. Demacopoulos explores each pastor's criteria for ordination, his supervision of subordinate clergy, and his methods of spiritual direction. He argues that the evolution in spiritual direction that occurred during this period reflected and informed broader developments in religious practices. Demacopoulos describes the way in which these authors shaped the medieval pastoral traditions of the East and the West. Each of the five struggled to balance the tension between his ascetic idealism and the realities of the lay church. Each offered distinct (and at times very different) solutions to that tension. The diversity among their models of spiritual direction demonstrates both the complexity of the problem and the variable nature of early Christianity. Scholars and students of late antiquity, the history of Christianity, and historical theology will find a great deal of interest in Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church. The book will also appeal to those who are actively engaged in Christian ministry.

Augustine's dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland (a pilgrimage) and the condition of exile from the homeland. For Augustine, all human beings are, in the earthly life, exiles from their true homeland: heaven. Some, but not all, become pilgrims seeking a way back to the heavenly homeland, a return mediated by the incarnate Christ. Becoming a pilgrim begins with attraction to beauty. The return journey therefore involves formation, both moral and aesthetic, in loving rightly. This image has occasioned a lot of angst in ethical thought in the last century. Augustine's vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage, his critics allege, casts a pall of groaning and longing over this life in favor of happiness in the next. Augustine's eschatological orientation robs the world of beauty and ethics of urgency. In Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine's Thought, Sarah Stewart-Kroeker responds to Augustine's critics by elaborating the Christological continuity between the earthly journey and the eschatological home. Through this cohesive account of pilgrimage as a journey toward the right ordering of the desire for beauty and love for God and neighbour, Stewart-Kroeker reveals the integrity of Augustine's vision of moral and aesthetic vision. From the human desire for beauty to the embodied practice of Christian sacraments, Stewart-Kroeker develops an account of the relationship between beauty and morality as the linchpin of an Augustinian moral theology.

Recent studies have examined martyrdom as a means of constructing Christian identity, but until now none has focused on Stephen, the first Christian martyr. For the author of Luke-Acts, the stoning of Stephen-- even more than the death of Jesus-- underscores the perfidy of non-believing Jews, the extravagant mercy of Christians, and the inevitable rift that will develop between these two social groups. Stephen's dying prayer that his persecutors be forgiven-the prayer for which he is hailed in Christian tradition as the "perfect martyr" plays a crucial role in drawing an unprecedented distinction between Jewish and early Christian identities.
Shelly Matthews deftly situates Stephen's story within the emerging discourse of early Christian martyrdom. Though Stephen is widely acknowledged to be an actual historical figure, Matthews points to his name, his manner of death, and to other signs that his martyrdom was ideally suited to the rhetorical purposes of Acts and its author, Luke: to uphold Roman views of security and respectability, to show non-believing Jews to disadvantage, and to convey that Christianity was an exceptionally merciful religion. By drawing parallels between Acts and stories of the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, Matthews challenges the coherent canonical narrative of Acts and questions common assumptions about the historicity of Stephen's martyrdom. She also offers a radical new reading of Stephen's last prayer, showing the complex and sometimes violent effects of its modern interpretations.
Perfect Martyr illuminates the Stephen story as never before, offering a deeply nuanced picture of violence, solidarity, and resistance among Jews and early Christians, a key to understanding the early development of a non-Jewish Christian identity, and an innovative reframing of one of the most significant stories in the Bible.

This volume completes the first English translation of Rufinus's Latin version of Origen of Alexandria's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans and contains Origen's detailed exegesis of Romans 6:12-16:27. Origen's much neglected Commentary, which stands out in splendid isolation at the fountainhead of Greek and Latin exegesis, is now completely accessible to English readers. In Books 6-10 Origen carries through to completion his programme, begun in Books 1-5, of defending human freedom and of opposing the natural predestinarian doctrine of the sects founded by the Gnostic heretics Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides. These schools relied heavily on texts from Paul, interpreted in isolation from the rest of Scripture, not only to deny free will but to support the doctrine that salvation is determined by the nature one receives at birth, whether good or evil. In contrast Origen clarifies passages in Romans by citations from Paul's other letters, from the Gospels, and from the Old Testament. He attempts to construct a coherent and unified ""biblical theology."" Origen views human beings as chosen or rejected by God deservedly; everyone has it within his own power whether he becomes a servant of God or of sin, a vessel of wrath or of mercy. Whether one sympathises with Origen's interpretations or finds them infuriating, it is difficult not to admire his concordance-like mind at work as he tackles the apostle Paul's greatest epistle. Readers will find interesting and thought-provoking discussions of all the important theological themes and terms of Romans: faith, hope, love, works, justification, election, law, Israel, Gentiles, Church, sin, death, flesh, body, glory, etc. The importance of these discussions is magnified by the fact that they stand alone in their detail and breadth and stem from the Church's most important theologian of the third century. Moreover, because Origen's work was productive in subsequent centuries in Rufinus's Latin translation, the Commentary is of outstanding importance for the history of New Testament exegesis.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), one of the great innovators in the study of the New Testament, argued that each of its books reflects the interests and tendencies of its author in a particular religio-historical milieu. A critique of the writings must precede any judgments about the historical validity of individual stories about Jesus in the Gospels. Thus Baur could move beyond the impasse created by Strauss's Life of Jesus. Baur demonstrated that the Gospel of John is not a historical document comparable to the Synoptic Gospels and cannot be used to reconstruct the teaching of Jesus, and that the Synoptic Gospels must be read critically and selectively. He applied the same principles to the Epistles, arguing that only four are genuinely Pauline (Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans). Baur's Lectures on New Testament Theology, delivered in Tubingen during the 1850s, summarize thirty years of his research. The lectures begin with an Introduction on the concept, history, and organization of New Testament theology. Part One is devoted to the teaching of Jesus, which Baur finds most reliably in Matthew. Part Two contains the teaching of the Apostles in three chronological periods. The first period presents the theological frameworks of the Apostle Paul and the Book of Revelation; the second period, the frameworks of Hebrews, the Deutero-Pauline Epistles, James and Peter, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts; and the third period, those of the Pastoral Epistles and the Gospel of John.