In Volume Two of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, Fortin deals with the relationship between religion and civil society in a Christian context: that of an essentially nonpolitical but by no means entirely otherwordly religion, many of whose teachings were thought to be fundamentally at odds with the duties of citizenship. Sections focus upon Augustine and Aquinas, on Christianity and politics; natural law, natural rights, and social justice; and Leo Strauss and the revival of classical political philosophy. Fortin's treatment of these and related themes betrays a keen awareness of one of the significant intellectual events of our time: the recovery of political philosophy as a legitimate academic discipline.

Bart Ehrman-the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and a recognized authority on the early Christian Church-and Zlatko Plese here offer a groundbreaking edition of the Apocryphal Gospels, one that breathes new life into the non-canonical texts that were once nearly lost to history. In The Other Gospels, Ehrman and Plese present a rare compilation of over 40 ancient gospel texts and textual fragments that do not appear in the New Testament. This essential collection contains Gospels describing Jesus's infancy, ministry, Passion, and resurrection, as well as the most controversial manuscript discoveries of modern times, including the most significant Gospel discovered in the 20th century-the Gospel of Thomas-and the most recently discovered Gospel, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Each translation begins with a thoughtful examination of key historical, literary, and textual issues that places each Gospel in its proper context. The end result is a resource that enables anyone interested in Christianity or the early Church to understand-better than ever before-the deeper meanings of these apocryphal Gospels. The Other Gospels is much more than an annotated guide to the Gospels. Through its authoritative use of engaging, accurate translations, it provides an unprecedented look at early Christianity and the New Testament. This is an indispensable volume for any reader interested in church history, antiquity, or the Christian faith.

The Life of Saint Helia, a late ancient Latin hagiography of uncertain provenance, is a remarkable and virtually unknown text, of which a critical edition and English translation appear here for the first time, accompanied by an introduction and commentary. Written predominately in dialogue format, the Life records a lengthy and highly polemical debate between a young girl Helia and her mother regarding the relative merits of virginity and marriage, followed by a dialogue between Helia and a bishop and a debate between Helia and a judge. The arguments both for and against virginity are biblically based, and the text is notable for its citational density and exegetical creativity. The dramatic narrative that frames the dialogue appears to have been influenced by the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, while the speeches suggest familiarity with the virginity apologetics of Ambrose and Jerome; because the Life has is preserved in only two medieval manuscripts, both from northern Spain, a Priscillianist context of composition is possible. This lively work will be of great interest to students of hagiography, asceticism, women's history, and biblical exegesis.

Georges Florovsky is the mastermind of a 'return to the Church Fathers' in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. His theological vision-the neopatristic synthesis-became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology and the golden standard of Eastern Orthodox identity in the West. Focusing on Florovsky's European period (1920-1948), this study analyses how Florovsky's evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources. Paul Gavrilyuk offers a new reading of Florovsky's neopatristic theology, by closely considering its ontological, epistemological and ecclesiological foundations. It is common to contrast Florovsky's neopatristic theology with the 'modernist' religious philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. Gavrilyuk argues that the standard narrative of twentieth-century Orthodox theology, based on this polarization, must be reconsidered. The author demonstrates Florovsky's critical appropriation of the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood. The distinctive features of Florovsky's neopatristic theology-Christological focus, 'ecclesial experience', personalism, and 'Christian Hellenism'-are best understood against the background of the main problematic of the Renaissance. Specifically, it is shown that Bulgakov's sophiology provided a polemical subtext for Florovsky's theology of creation. It is argued that the use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology represents Florovsky's theological signature. Drawing on unpublished archival material and correspondence, this study sheds new light on such aspects of Florovsky's career as his family background, his participation in the Eurasian movement, his dissertation on Alexander Herzen, his lectures on Vladimir Solovyov, and his involvement in Bulgakov's Brotherhood of St Sophia.

This book is a study of the union between God and those he has redeemed, as it is represented in the New Testament. In conversation with historical and systematic theology, Grant Macaskill argues that the union between God and his people is consistently represented by the New Testament authors as covenantal, with the participation of believers in the life of God specifically mediated by Jesus, the covenant Messiah: hence, it involves union with Christ. Christ's mediation of divine presence is grounded in the ontology of the Incarnation, the real divinity and real humanity of his person, and by the full divine personhood of the Holy Spirit, who unites believers to him in faith. His personal narrative of death and resurrection is understood in relation to the covenant by which God's dealings with humanity are ordered. In their union with him, believers are transformed both morally and noetically, so that the union has an epistemic dimension, strongly affirmed by the theological tradition but sometimes confused by scholars with Platonism. This account is developed in close engagement with the New Testament texts, read against Jewish backgrounds, and allowed to inform one another as context. As a 'participatory' understanding of New Testament soteriology, it is advanced in distinction to other participatory approaches that are here considered to be deficient, particularly the so-called 'apocalyptic' approach that is popular in Pauline scholarship, and those attempts to read New Testament soteriology in terms of theosis, elements of which are nevertheless affirmed.

The School of Antioch: Biblical Theology and the Church in Syria contains the latest conclusions and findings of academic research by specialized biblical scholars in biblical theology of the Church in the East commonly referred to as the School of Antioch. This collection of essays will be of special interest to scholars of theology and religion, including those interested in the fields of hermeneutics, Apocrypha, Chrysostom, Orthodox Eastern Christianity, and Eastern Christianity.

Embodiment in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa is a much-debated topic. Hans Boersma argues that this-worldly realities of time and space, which include embodiment, are not the focus of Gregory's theology. Instead, embodiment plays a distinctly subordinate role. The key to his theology, Boersma suggests, is anagogy, going upward in order to participate in the life of God. This book looks at a variety of topics connected to embodiment in Gregory's thought: time and space; allegory; gender, sexuality, and virginity; death and mourning; slavery, homelessness, and poverty; and the church as the body of Christ. In each instance, Boersma maintains, Gregory values embodiment only inasmuch as it enables us to go upward in the intellectual realm of the heavenly future. Boersma suggests that for Gregory embodiment and virtue serve the anagogical pursuit of otherworldly realities. Countering recent trends in scholarship that highlight Gregory's appreciation of the goodness of creation, this book argues that Gregory looks at embodiment as a means for human beings to grow in virtue and so to participate in the divine life. It is true that, as a Christian thinker, Gregory regards the creator-creature distinction as basic. But he also works with the distinction between spirit and matter. And Nyssen is convinced that in the hereafter the categories of time and space will disappear-while the human body will undergo an inconceivable transformation. This book, then, serves as a reminder of the profoundly otherworldly cast of Gregory's theology.

An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse testimony from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere-including the Pseudo-Clementine Letters to Virgins, Augustine's On the Work of Monks, John Chrysostom's homilies, legal codes-to reveal gospel-inspired patterns of ascetic dependency and teaching from the third to the fifth centuries. Throughout, his point of departure is social and cultural history, especially the urban social history of the late Roman empire. He also introduces many charismatic individuals whose struggle to persist against church suppression of their chosen way of imitating Christ was fought with defiant conviction, and the book includes the first annotated English translation of the biography of Alexander Akoimetos (Alexander the Sleepless). Wandering, Begging Monks allows us to understand these fascinating figures of early Christianity in the full context of late Roman society.

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.

The call to repentance is central to the message of early Christianity. While this is undeniable, the precise meaning of the concept of repentance for early Christians has rarely been investigated to any great extent, beyond studies of the rise of penitential discipline. In this study, the rich variety of meanings and applications of the concept of repentance are examined, with a particular focus on the writings of several ascetic theologians of the fifth to seventh centuries: SS Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus. These theologians provide some of the most sustained and detailed elaborations of the concept of repentance in late antiquity. They predominantly see repentance as a positive, comprehensive idea that serves to frame the whole of Christian life, not simply one or more of its parts. While the modern dominant understanding of repentance as a moment of sorrowful regret over past misdeeds, or as equivalent to penitential discipline, is present to a degree, such definitions by no means exhaust the concept for them. The path of repentance is depicted as stretching from an initial about-face completed in baptism, through the living out of the baptismal gift by keeping the Gospel commandments, culminating in the idea of intercessory repentance for others, after the likeness of Christ's innocent suffering for the world. While this overarching role for repentance in Christian life is clearest in ascetic works, these are not explored in isolation, and attention is also paid to the concept of repentance in Scripture, the early church, apocalyptic texts, and canonical material. This not only permits the elaboration of the views of the ascetics in their larger context, but further allows for an overall re-assessment of the often misunderstood, if not overlooked, place of repentance in early Christian theology.

The book is going through its biggest revolution since Gutenberg. Thanks to computer tools and electronic publication, the concept and realisation of critical editions are being rethought. As so often in the history of scholarship, editors of the New Testament are making a vital contribution to these changes.
In this book, originally the Lyell Lectures in Bibliography at Oxford, David C. Parker explores textual scholarship, in particular the idea of the edition. He argues that textual scholarship has had an important influence on the meaning given to the term 'New Testament'. Starting with the observation that a text is a process, not an object, he proposes a new way of understanding the relationship between manuscripts, the texts which manuscripts contain and the work they represent as the basis for critical scholarship. This leads him to challenge the idea of a 'Greek New Testament manuscript', and thus to reconsider the nature of the New Testament as a collection of works and the nature and purpose of critical editions. By studying new tools for studying how manuscripts are related to each other, he shows how the modern digital edition of the New Testament has overcome the impasses created by the failure of Lachmannian stemmatics to deal with the problem of contamination.
Exploring the emergence of the critical edition in modern scholarship, Parker discusses the ways in which a digital edition advances scholarship and gives the reader more opportunities both to scrutinise the quality of the edition and to access the raw data on which it is based. The whole book uses New Testament research as a paradigm of wider changes in textual scholarship.

The Histories Against the Pagans of Orosius, written in 416/7, has been one of the most influential works in the history of Western historiography. Often read as a theology of history, it has been rarely been set against the background of ancient historiography and rhetorical practice in the time of Orosius. Arguing for the closeness of rhetoric and historiography in Antiquity, this book shows how Orosius situates himself consciously in the classical tradition and draws on a variety of rhetorical tools to shape his narrative: a subtle web of interextual allusions, a critical engagement with traditional exempla, a creative rewriting of the sources, and a skilled deployment of the rhetoric of pathos. In this way, Orosius aims at opening the eyes of his adversaries; instead of remaining blinded by the traditional, glorious view of the past, he wishes his readers to see the past and the present in their true colours. The book paints a more complex picture of theHistories, and argues against the tendency to see Orosius as a naive apologist of the Roman empire. In fact, he can be shown to put the Church at the heart of view of Roman history. Setting Orosius in the context of contemporary historiography and literature, it sheds new light on the intellectual life in the early fifth century AD.

In Debating the Saints' Cults in the Age of Gregory the Great, Dal Santo argues that the Dialogues, Pope Gregory the Great's most controversial work, should be considered from the perspective of a wide-ranging debate about the saints which took place in early Byzantine society. Like other contemporary works in Greek and Syriac, Gregory's text debated the nature and plausibility of the saints' miracles and the propriety of the saints' cult. Rather than viewing the early Byzantine world as overwhelmingly pious or credulous, the book argues that many contemporaries retained the ability to question and challenge the claims of hagiographers and other promoters of the saints' miracles. From Italy to the heart of the Persian Empire at Ctesiphon, a healthy, sceptical, rationalism remained alive and well. The book's conclusion argues that doubt towards the saints reflected a current of political dissent in the late East Roman or Byzantine Empire, where patronage of Christian saints' shrines was used to sanction imperial autocracy. These far-reaching debates also re-contextualize the emergence of Islam in the Near East.

The Early Text of the New Testament aims to examine and assess from our earliest extant sources the most primitive state of the New Testament text now known. What sort of changes did scribes make to the text? What is the quality of the text now at our disposal? What can we learn about the nature of textual transmission in the earliest centuries? In addition to exploring the textual and scribal culture of early Christianity, this volume explores the textual evidence for all the sections of the New Testament. It also examines the evidence from the earliest translations of New Testament writings and the citations or allusions to New Testament texts in other early Christian writers.

This is a landmark work, providing the first complete collection of the remaining excerpts from the writings of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia together with a ground-breaking study of the controversy regarding the person of Christ that raged from the fourth to the sixth century, and which still divides the Christian Church. Destroyed after their condemnation, all that remains of the dogmatic writings of Diodore and Theodore are the passages quoted by their supporters and opponents. John Behr brings together all these excerpts, from the time of Theodore's death until his condemnation at the Second Council of Constantinople (553) - including newly-edited Syriac texts (from florilegium in Cod. Add. 12156, and the fragmentary remains of Theodore's On the Incarnation in Cod. Add. 14669) and many translated for the first time - and examines their interrelationship, to determine who was borrowing from whom, locating the source of the polemic with Cyril of Alexandria. On the basis of this textual work, Behr presents a historical and theological analysis that completely revises the picture of these 'Antiochenes' and the controversy regarding them. Twentieth-century scholarship often found these two 'Antiochenes' sympathetic characters for their aversion to allegory and their concern for the 'historical Jesus', and regarded their condemnation as an unfortunate incident motivated by desire for retaliation amidst 'Neo-Chalcedonian' advances in Christology. This study shows how, grounded in the ecclesial and theological strife that had already beset Antioch for over a century, Diodore and Theodore, in opposition to Julian the Apostate and Apollinarius, were led to separate the New Testament from the Old and 'the man' from the Word of God, resulting in a very limited understanding of Incarnation and circumscribing the importance of the Passion. The result is a comprehensive and cogent account of the controversy, both Christological and exegetical together, of the early fifth century, the way it stemmed from earlier tensions and continued through the Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II.

Collected together for the first time in one volume are the most important critical study of Pelagius to date and a selection of his letters. Collected together for the first time in one volume are the most important critical study of Pelagius to date, together with a selection of his letters. Arriving in Rome in the late 4th century, Pelagius soon acquired a considerable reputation as a reformer and spiritual adviser. In Palestine he became embroiled with Jerome and later with Augustine who had been alerted to the Pelagian threat to orthodox doctrine. Professor Rees here re-examines the evidence for the Pelagian controversy. The second part of the book consists of Pelagius' letters, which provide the clearest and most succinct statements of Pelagian theology, but few of which have ever been translated into English before. Reissue; first published in two volumes as Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic and The Letters of Pelagius and his Followers (The Boydell Press, 1991).

Written by an international and interdisciplinary team of distinguished scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine is an indispensable reference compendium on the day-to-day lives of Jews in the land of Israel in Roman times. Ranging from subjects such as clothing and domestic architecture to food and meals, labour and trade, and leisure time activities, the volume covers all the major themes in an encompassing yet easily accessible way. Individual chapters introduce the reader to the current state of research on particular aspects of ancient Jewish everyday life - research which has been greatly enriched by critical methodological approaches to rabbinic texts, and by the growing interest of archaeologists in investigating the lives of ordinary people. Detailed bibliographies inspire further engagement by enabling readers to pursue their own lines of enquiry.The Handbook will prove to be an invaluable reference work and tool for all students and scholars of ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, Roman provincial history and culture, and of ancient Christianity.

To understand the past, we necessarily group people together and, consequently, frequently assume that all of its members share the same attributes. In this ground-breaking volume, Eric Rebillard and Joerg Rupke bring renowned scholars together to challenge this norm by seeking to rediscover the individual and to explore the dynamics between individuals and the groups to which they belong. Instead of taking religious groups as their point of departure, the authors in Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity address the methodological challenges attached to a rescaling of the analysis at the level of the individual. In particular, they explore the tension between looking for evidence about individuals and taking individuals into account when looking at evidence. Too often, the lack of direct evidence on individuals is used as a justification for taking the group as the unit of analysis. However, evidence on group life can be read with individuals as the focal point. What it reveals is how complex is the interaction of group identity and religious individuality. The questions examined by these authors include the complex relationships between institutional religions and religious individuals, the possibility of finding evidence on individual religiosity and exploring the multiplicity of roles and identities that characterizes every individual. Shifting the attention towards individuals also calls into question the assumption of groups and invites the study of group-making process. The result is a picture that makes room for dynamic tension between group identity and religious individuality.

A historical and systematic introduction to what the medieval philospher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) said about faith in the Trinity. Gilles Emery OP provides an explanation of the main questions in Thomas's treatise on the Trinity in his major work, the Summa Theologiae. His presentation clarifies the key ideas through which Thomas accounts for the nature of Trinitarian monotheism. Emery focuses on the personal relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both in their eternal communion and in their creative and saving action. By highlighting the thought of one of the greatest defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity, he enables people to grasp the classical Christian understanding of God.

Justin Martyr (c.100-165) was one of the key apologists of the Early Church. Oxford Early Christian Texts presents a new critical edition of the Greek text of the Apologies with introduction, English translation, and textual commentary.
Editors Denis Minns and Paul Parvis take a searching look at the text transmitted by the single fourteenth-century manuscript containing the works of Justin. They attempt to see behind the work of the Byzantine editor, and his predecessors, who sought to make sense of the badly damaged text before them. The commentary is designed not merely to annotate the text but to identify and draw out Justin's train of thought and the structure of his argument. It explains the readings adopted in the text by setting Justin's Greek within his Christian, Hellenistic, and philosophical contexts.
The introduction traces the complex history of the text in manuscript and print and discusses the puzzling relationship of the Second Apology to the First, and suggests a new solution. Justin is located against the background of the diversity of Christianity in the second century. A new understanding of Justin emerges from this work. His thought is often sharper, and his language more pointed than has been recognised, and the difficulty of the task he set himself of bridging the enormous gap between two cultures is clearly shown.

As the value and importance of the non-canonical Jesus tradition continues to be recognized, there is an ever-increasing need for scholarly introductions to this tradition. This co-edited edition comprises the Greek critical editions, with full translations, of several key gospel fragments including P.Egerton 2, P. Oxy. 840, and P.Oxy. 1224. These fragments, preserved despite the widespread destruction of non-canonical manuscripts, are invaluable primary witnesses of ancient Christianity and the transmission of early Christian texts. Introductions to the fragments discuss dates, origins, interpretations, and the relationship of the texts to the canonical gospels. Detailed commentaries expand points of interest to facilitate further scholarly research on these texts in the future.

This magisterial compilation personalizes and historicizes the history of religion in the city of Rome. After introductory essays on the documentary sources for the various Greek, Roman, Oriental, Jewish, and Christian cults in question, there are yearly lists of religious office-holders of various kinds, followed by 4,000 biographies of individuals who fulfilled ritual, organizational, or doctrinal roles. Concluding chapters discuss important aspects of Roman religion and its relationship with the state. The data assembled here will open up many new perspectives: on the social place of religion and certain cults, on the interplay between different religious groups, and on the organizational history of individual cults. The volume as a whole signifies a major advance in our understanding of ancient religions.

What sort of Bible did Augustine have? How did he quote from it -- and was he accurate? Do Augustine's biblical citations transmit readings not found in any surviving manuscripts? This book is part of a major project on the Old Latin versions of the Gospel according to John, and uses Augustine as a test-case to examine the importance of the evidence provided by the Church Fathers for the text of the Gospels. The early history of the Latin Bible is reconstructed from Augustine's comments in his treatise De doctrina christiana (On Christian teaching). Details are assembled from sermons, letters, and other writings to show how Augustine and his contemporaries used the Bible in the liturgy of the Church, public debates, and in composing their own works. Augustine's own methods of citing the Bible are analysed, and features are identified which are characteristic of citations produced from memory rather than read from a gospel codex. The second part of the book is a chronological survey of the biblical text in Augustine's works, showing how he switched from using the older versions of the Gospel to the revised text of Jerome, which later became known as the Vulgate. Finally, a verse-by-verse commentary is provided on all the significant readings in Augustine's text of John, assessing their significance for the history of the Latin Bible, and in some cases the Greek tradition as well. Details are also given of Augustine's exegesis of particular verses of the Gospel, making this an indispensable handbook for biblical scholars and church historians alike.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 divided eastern Christianity, with those who were later called Syrian Orthodox among the Christians in the near eastern provinces who refused to accept the decisions of the council. These non-Chalcedonians (still better known under the misleading term Monophysites) separated from the church of the empire after Justin I attempted to enforce Chalcedon in the East in 518. Volker L. Menze historicizes the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the first half of the sixth century. This volume covers the period from the accession of Justin to the second Council of Constantinople in 553. Menze begins with an exploration of imperial and papal policy from a non-Chalcedonian, eastern perspective, then discusses monks, monasteries and the complex issues surrounding non-Chalcedonian church life and sacraments. The volume concludes with a close look at the working of "collective memory" among the non-Chalcedonians and the construction of a Syrian Orthodox identity. This study is a histoire evenementielle of actual religious practice, especially concerning the Eucharist and the diptychs, and of ecclesiastical and imperial policy which modifies the traditional view of how emperors (and in the case of Theodora: empresses) ruled the late Roman/early Byzantine empire. By combining this detailed analysis of secular and ecclesiastical politics with a study of long-term strategies of memorialization, the book also focuses on deep structures of collective memory on which the tradition of the present Syrian Orthodox Church is founded.

In this pioneering study, the first of its kind, Galit Noga-Banai analyses silver reliquaries decorated with Christian figurative themes. She offers a clearer and more detailed picture of the beginnings of the cult of relics, which were an essential asset to the Church in its establishment of pilgrimage centres and local hagiographic heritage sites, first in Italy and later in other places around Europe and North Africa. At the same time, Noga-Banai highlights the identity of the objects as portable art, treating the reliquaries as visual historical testimonies. The book is illustrated with nearly 100 finely reproduced drawings and photographs.