Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity

Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity
Author: Ismo Dunderberg
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2014-04-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004268219

This collection of essays in honour of Heikki Räisänen, New Testament professor at the University of Helsinki, consists of 22 essays written by his colleagues and students on Jesus, the gospels, Paul, early Christianity, and biblical interpretation. Räisänen's own research has been characterized by methodological awareness combined with a keen interest in ethical issues. Both these aspects come to expression in his insistence on "fair play" as a correct scholarly attitude involving an honest dialogue, a real encounter, and a recognition of diverging opinions. In this spirit, most of the essays in this book lay emphasis on issues related to early Christian diversity and conflicts, and to their challenge in modern society. The book is useful for scholars, academic teachers and students interested in various aspects of the New Testament, early Christianity, and hermeneutics.

On Agamben, Donatism, Pelagianism, and the Missing Links

On Agamben, Donatism, Pelagianism, and the Missing Links
Author: Peter Iver Kaufman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350191493

Peter Iver Kaufman shows that, although Giorgio Agamben represents Augustine as an admired pioneer of an alternative form of life, he also considers Augustine an obstacle keeping readers from discovering their potential. Kaufman develops a compelling, radical alternative to progressive politics by continuing the line of thought he introduced in On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, and the Dark Arts of Civilization. Kaufman starts with a comparison of Agamben and Augustine's projects, both of which challenge reigning concepts of citizenship. He argues that Agamben, troubled by Augustine's opposition to Donatists and Pelagians, failed to forge links between his own redefinitions of authenticity and “the coming community” and the bishop's understandings of grace, community, and compassion. On Agamben, Donatism, Pelagianism, and the Missing Links sheds new light on Augustine's “political theology,” introducing ways it can be used as a resource for alternative polities while supplementing Agamben's scholarship and scholarship on Agamben.

The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory

The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory
Author: Joshua Ezra Burns
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 571
Release: 2016-02-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1316666670

How did Jews perceive the first Christians? By what means did they come to appreciate Christianity as a religion distinct from their own? In The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Professor Joshua Ezra Burns addresses those questions by describing the birth of Christianity as a function of the Jewish past. Surveying a range of ancient evidences, he examines how the authors of Judaism's earliest surviving memories of Christianity speak to the perspectives of rabbinic observers who were conditioned by the unique circumstances of their encounters with Christianity to recognize its adherents as fellow Jews. Only upon the decline of the Church's Jewish demographic were their successors compelled to see Christianity as something other than a variation of Jewish cultural expression. The evolution of thought in the classical Jewish literary record thus offers a dynamic account of Christianity's separation from Judaism counterbalancing the abrupt schism attested in contemporary Christian texts.

The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church

The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church
Author: J. D. Atkins
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2019-08-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3161581652

"Why do the Gospels depict the risen Jesus as touchable and able to eat? J. D. Atkins challenges the common view that Luke 24 and John 20 are apologetic responses to docetism by re-examining the redaction of the appearance stories in light of their reception among early docetists and church fathers."--Page 4 of cover.

From the Magdala Stone to the Syriac Bema

From the Magdala Stone to the Syriac Bema
Author: Rina Talgam
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2024-11-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004707735

This book sheds light on the reciprocal relations between liturgical performance and the physical spaces in which they took place in synagogues and churches in antiquity. The kernel of the manuscript revolves around a decorated stone that was found during the excavations of a synagogue dated to the first century CE at Magdala on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The book displays how this important archaeological discovery radically transforms our understanding of the changes in the shape of the liturgical space and the liturgical furniture in the places of assembly of the two sister faiths, Judaism and Christianity.

The Sheep of the Fold

The Sheep of the Fold
Author: Edward W. Klink III
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2007-08-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1139466704

The last generation of gospel scholarship has considered the reconstruction and analysis of the audience behind the gospels as paradigmatic. The key hermeneutical template for reading the gospels has been the quest for the community that each gospel represents. This scholarly consensus regarding the audience of the gospels has been reconsidered. Using as a test case one of the most entrenched gospels, Edward Klink explores the evidence for the audience behind the Gospel of John. This study challenges the prevailing gospel paradigm by examining the community construct and its functional potential in early Christianity, the appropriation of a gospel text and J. L. Martyn's two-level reading of John, and the implied reader located within the narrative. The study concludes by proposing a more appropriate audience model for reading John, as well as some implications for the function of the gospel in early Christianity.

Sectarianism in Early Judaism

Sectarianism in Early Judaism
Author: David J. Chalcraft
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317491394

'Sectarianism in Early Judaism' applies recent developments in sociological analysis to sect formation and development in early Judaism. The essays examine sectarianism in a wide range of different forms: the many layers of redaction in religious texts; the development arcs of sectarian groups; the role of sectarianism across Jewish history as well as in the time of the Second Temple; and the relations within and between sects and between sects and wider society. The book aims to establish a conceptual framework for the analysis of sects and, in doing so, makes particular use of the work of Max Weber and Bryan Wilson, exploring the limits of their typologies and sociological theories.

Introduction to Christian Ethics

Introduction to Christian Ethics
Author: Ellen Ott Marshall
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018-10-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1611648904

All Christians read the Bible differently, pray differently, value their traditions differently, and give different weight to individual and corporate judgment. These differences are the basis of conflict. The question Christian ethics must answer, then, is, "What does the good life look like in the context of conflict?" In this new introductory text, Ellen Ott Marshall uses the inevitable reality of difference to center and organize her exploration of the system of Christian morality. What can we learn from Jesus' creative use of conflict in situations that were especially attuned to questions of power? What does the image of God look like when we are trying to recognize the divine image within those with whom we are in conflict? How can we better explore and understand the complicated work of reconciliation and justice? This innovative approach to Christian ethics will benefit a new generation of students who wish to engage the perennial questions of what constitutes a faithful Christian life and a just society.

Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels

Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels
Author: Petri Luomanen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2011-11-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004217436

The mystery of lost, apocryphal Jewish-Christian gospels has intrigued scholars for centuries. Scholars have also debated whether the Ebionites with their low Christology or the more “orthodox” Nazarenes are the genuine successors of the early Jerusalem church. This book provides a fresh assessment of the patristic sources and the scholarly theories on the number and contents of Jewish-Christian gospels. A new approach, the study of indicators of Jewish-Christian profiles, shows the artificial nature of the church fathers’ heretical discourse, bringing forth previously neglected connections between various Jewish-Christian movements. This book also challenges the widely accepted theory of three Jewish-Christian gospels bringing the Gospel of the Hebrews closer to its synoptic cousins—not, however, as a witness of the earliest Jesus traditions but as a post-synoptic composition.

Beyond Gnosticism

Beyond Gnosticism
Author: Ismo Dunderberg
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2008
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231141726

Valentinus (100-160 C.E.) was an influential Gnostic opposed to the practices that would later become part of the Christian orthodoxy. This text covers Valentinus's interpretation of the biblical creation myth, in which he affirms mankind's original immortality and places a special emphasis on the 'frank speech' afforded to Adam by God.