Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations

Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations
Author: Philip A. Harland
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Associations, institutions, etc
ISBN: 9780800635893

Ephesus, Galatia, Troas, and Pergamum are familiar names to readers of the New Testament. But what made this region such fertile ground for early synagogues and congregations of those who followed Christ? How did the earliest churches and synagogues organize themselves? How did other voluntary associations operate within the Roman empire? How did such organizations relate to the constraints of imperial religion? These are some of the questions that Philip Harland addresses in this stimulating look at first-century Roman Asia. He surveys the various forms of guilds and associations in the eastern Roman empire. Asia Minor is one of the primary regions of Paul's journeys described in Acts, and it provided the context for several New Testament books, especially the Pastoral Epistles, 1 Peter, and Revelation. The author's fresh look at ancient inscriptions reveals new insights about the formation, operation, and functions of congregations and synagogues within the larger framework of voluntary associations in the Roman world.

In the World but Not of the World

In the World but Not of the World
Author: A. Sue Russell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532644760

There has been much discussion of two dimensions of the kingdom of God in scholarship: the temporal (already/not yet) and the embodied (spirit/flesh). Russell proposes that there is a third parallel dimension, a social dimension. Using Victor Turner's concepts of structure, antistructure, and liminality, Russell explores how these concepts are consistently expressed in Jesus' teaching, in Paul's writing, and through the writers of the second and third centuries. She demonstrates how, from the very beginning of the Jesus movement, Christ followers were unique, not because their members were to live liminal lives apart from structure, but because they lived out new antistructural relationships within existing structures and thus transformed them. They lived liminally within their structure.

Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities

Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities
Author: Dr. Benedikt Eckhardt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900440760X

In Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, Benedikt Eckhardt brings together a group of experts to investigate a problem of historical categorization. Traditionally, scholars have either presupposed that Jewish groups were “Greco-Roman Associations” like others or have treated them in isolation from other groups. Attempts to begin a cross-disciplinary dialogue about the presuppositions and ultimate aims of the respective approaches have shown that much preliminary work on categories is necessary. This book explores the methodological dividing lines, based on the common-sense assumption that different questions require different solutions. Re-introducing historical differentiation into a field that has been dominated by abstractions, it provides the debate with a new foundation. Case studies highlight the problems and advantages of different approaches.

Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World

Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World
Author: John S. Kloppenborg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134778570

Based upon a series of detailed case studies of associations such as early synagogues and churches, philosophical schools and pagan mystery cults, this collection addresses the question of what can legitimately be termed a 'voluntary association'. Employing modern sociological concepts, the essays show how the various associations were constituted, the extent of their membership, why people joined them and what they contributed to the social fabric of urban life. For many, those groups were the most significant feature of social life beyond family and work. All of them provided an outlet of religious as well as social commitments. Also included are studies of the way in which early Jewish and Christian groups adopted and adapted the models of private association available to them and how this affected their social status and role. Finally, the situation of women is discussed, as some of the voluntary associations offered them a more significant recognition than they received in society at large.

Down Home

Down Home
Author: Leonard Rogoff
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2010-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807895997

A sweeping chronicle of Jewish life in the Tar Heel State from colonial times to the present, this beautifully illustrated volume incorporates oral histories, original historical documents, and profiles of fascinating individuals. The first comprehensive social history of its kind, Down Home demonstrates that the story of North Carolina Jews is attuned to the national story of immigrant acculturation but has a southern twist. Keeping in mind the larger southern, American, and Jewish contexts, Leonard Rogoff considers how the North Carolina Jewish experience differs from that of Jews in other southern states. He explores how Jews very often settled in North Carolina's small towns, rather than in its large cities, and he documents the reach and vitality of Jewish North Carolinians' participation in building the New South and the Sunbelt. Many North Carolina Jews were among those at the forefront of a changing South, Rogoff argues, and their experiences challenge stereotypes of a society that was agrarian and Protestant. More than 125 historic and contemporary photographs complement Rogoff's engaging epic, providing a visual panorama of Jewish social, cultural, economic, and religious life in North Carolina. This volume is a treasure to share and to keep. Published in association with the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, Down Home is part of a larger documentary project of the same name that will include a film and a traveling museum exhibition, to be launched in June 2010.

Paul, Politics, and New Creation

Paul, Politics, and New Creation
Author: Najeeb T. Haddad
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978708955

Paul, Politics, and New Creation: Reconsidering Paul and Empire nuances Paul’s relationship with the Roman Empire. Using rhetorical, sociohistorical, and theological methods, Najeeb T. Haddad reevaluates claims of Paul’s anti-imperialism by situating him in his proper Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts.

Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods

Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods
Author: Lutz Doering
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2020-12-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647522155

The study of ancient Judaism has enjoyed a steep rise in interest and publications in recent decades, although the focus has often been on the ideas and beliefs represented in ancient Jewish texts rather than on the daily lives and the material culture of Jews/Judaeans and their communities. The nascent institution of the synagogue formed an increasingly important venue for communal gathering and daily or weekly practice. This collection of essays brings together a broad spectrum of new archaeological and textual data with various emergent theories and interpretative methods in order to address the need to understand the place of the synagogue in the daily and weekly procedures, community frameworks, and theological structures in which Judaeans, Galileans, and Jewish people in the Diaspora lived and gathered. The interdisciplinary studies will be of great significance for anyone studying ancient Jewish belief, practice, and community formation.

The Offering of the Gentiles

The Offering of the Gentiles
Author: David J. Downs
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2016
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802873138

The monetary fund that the apostle Paul organized among his Gentile congregations for the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem was clearly an important endeavor to Paul; discussion of it occupies several prominent passages in his letters. In this book David Downs carefully investigates that offering from historical, sociocultural, and theological standpoints. Downs first pieces together a chronological account of Paul's fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Jerusalem church, based primarily on information from the Pauline epistles. He then examines the sociocultural context of the collection, including gift-giving practices in the ancient Mediterranean world relating to benefaction and care for the poor. Finally, Downs explores how Paul framed this contribution rhetorically as a religious offering consecrated to God.

Ancient Letters and the Purpose of Romans

Ancient Letters and the Purpose of Romans
Author: Aaron Ricker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567693996

Aaron Ricker locates the purpose of Romans in its function as a tool of community identity definition. Ricker employs a comparative analysis of the ways in which community identity definition is performed in first-century association culture, including several ancient network letters comparable to Romans. Ricker's examination of the community advice found in Rom 12-15 reveals in this new context an ancient example of the ways in which an inscribed addressee community can be invited in a letter to see and comport itself as a “proper” association network community. The ideal community addressed in the letter to the Romans is defined as properly unified and orderly, as well accommodating to – and clearly distinct from – cultures “outside.” Finally, it is defined as linked to a proper network with recognised leadership (i.e., the inscribed Paul of the letter and his network). Paul's letter to the Romans is in many ways a baffling and extraordinary document. In terms of its community-defining functions and strategies, however, Ricker shows its purpose to be perfectly clear and understandable.

Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE?

Jews and Christians – Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE?
Author: Jens Schröter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2021-08-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110742217

The present volume is based on a conference held in October 2019 at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt University Berlin as part of a common project of the Australian Catholic University, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Humboldt University Berlin. The aim is to discuss the relationships of “Jews” and “Christians” in the first two centuries CE against the background of recent debates which have called into question the image of “parting ways” for a description of the relationships of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. One objection raised against this metaphor is that it accentuates differences at the expense of commonalities. Another critique is that this image looks from a later perspective at historical developments which can hardly be grasped with such a metaphor. It is more likely that distinctions between Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians, Christian Jews etc. are more blurred than the image of “parting ways” allows. In light of these considerations the contributions in this volume discuss the cogency of the “parting of the ways”-model with a look at prominent early Christian writers and places and suggest more appropriate metaphors to describe the relationships of Jews and Christians in the early period.