Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World

Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World
Author: Judith Lieu
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2006-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780199291427

'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This book is a highly original exploration of how a sense of being 'a Christian', or of 'Christian identity', was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. Contemporary discussions of identity provide the background to a careful study of early Christian texts from the first two centuries. Judith Lieu shows that there were similarities and differences in the ways Jews and others were thinking about themselves, and asks what made early Christianity distinctive.

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts
Author: Jan Willem van Henten
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2012-11-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004242155

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts focuses upon the nexus of early Christian Ethics and its contexts as a dynamic process. The ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman or early Christian traditions as well as with the social-historical context at large continuously transformed early Christian ethics. The volume proposes a dynamic model for studying culture and its various expressions in a society composed of several ethnic and religious groups. The contributions focus on specific transformations of ethics in key documents of early Christianity, or take a more comparative perspective pointing to similar developments and overlaps as well as particularities within early Christian writings, Hellenistic-Jewish writings, Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish inscriptions.

Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire

Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire
Author: Natalie B. Dohrmann
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812245334

This volume revisits issues of empire from the perspective of Jews, Christians, and other Romans in the third to sixth centuries. Through case studies, the contributors bring Jewish perspectives to bear on longstanding debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity.

Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context

Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context
Author: D. Clint Burnett
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2021-01-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110691795

Given the dearth of non-messianic interpretations of Psalm 110:1 in non-Christian Second Temple Jewish texts, why did it become such a widely used messianic prooftext in the New Testament and early Christianity? Previous attempts to answer this question have focused on why the earliest Christians first began to use Ps 110:1. The result is that these proposals do not provide an adequate explanation for why first century Christians living in the Greek East employed the verse and also applied it to Jesus’s exaltation. I contend that two Greco-Roman politico-religious practices, royal and imperial temple and throne sharing—which were cross-cultural rewards that Greco-Roman communities bestowed on beneficent, pious, and divinely approved rulers—contributed to the widespread use of Ps 110:1 in earliest Christianity. This means that the earliest Christians interpreted Jesus’s heavenly session as messianic and thus political, as well as religious, in nature.

Jews in a Graeco-Roman World

Jews in a Graeco-Roman World
Author: Martin Goodman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1998-12-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191518360

This book contains studies of the social, cultural, and religious history of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman world. Some of the sixteen contributors are specialists in Jewish history, others in classics. They tackle from different angles the extent to which Jews in this period differed from other peoples in the Mediterranean region, and how much Jewish evidence can be used for the history of the wider classical world. The authors make extensive use not only of types of evidence familiar to classicists, such as inscriptions and the writing of Josephus, but also Jewish religious literature, including rabbinic texts. The various studies demonstrate that, although Jews lived to some extent apart from others and with distinctive customs, in many ways this showed the cultural presuppositions and preoccupations of their gentile contemporaries. The book aims to encourage wider use of the Jewish evidence by classicists and will be important for all students of the classical world.

Judaism and Christianity in First-century Rome

Judaism and Christianity in First-century Rome
Author: Karl P. Donfried
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802842657

Rome, as the center of the first-century world, was home to numerous ethnic groups, among which were both Jews and Christians. The dealings of the Roman government with these two groups, and their dealings with each other, are the focus of this book.t

The Graeco-Roman Context of Early Christian Literature

The Graeco-Roman Context of Early Christian Literature
Author: Roman Garrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 129
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0826437869

In this volume of essays the Graeco-Roman background and context of early Christianity are explored for significant parallels. From the athlete metaphor in 1 Corinthians 9 to the role of Aphrodite as the goddess of love and sexuality, the important cultural symbols and terminology that the first Christians employed are examined. Garrison maintains that the Graeco-Roman setting of early Christianity is essential to our understanding of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers.

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts
Author: Jan Willem van Henten
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-11-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004237003

In Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts experts from various fields analyze the process of transformation of early Christian ethics because of the ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman and Christian traditions.

The Jewish-Greek Tradition in Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire

The Jewish-Greek Tradition in Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire
Author: James K. Aitken
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 1107001633

This comprehensive survey of Jewish-Greek society's development examines the exchange of language and ideas in biblical translations, literature and archaeology.