Exploring Early Christian Identity

Author : Bengt Holmberg
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exploring Early Christian Identity written by Bengt Holmberg and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main point of emphasis in the book is that approaching the Christian movement's early history through investigating its identity helps us to understand how the followers of Jesus developed from an intra-Jewish messianic renewal movement into a new religion with a major Gentile membership and major differences from its Jewish matrix - all in only a hundred years. Identity is not simply a collection of beliefs that was agreed upon by many first-century Christians. It is embedded, or rather, embodied in real life as participation in the founding myths (narrativized memory of and accepted teaching on Jesus), in cults and rituals as well as in ethical teaching and behavioral norms, crystallized into social relations and institutions. This is a dynamic feedback process, full of conflicts and difficulties, both internal and caused by the surrounding society and culture. The authors explore different aspects of identity, such as how the Gospels' narrativization of the social memory shapes and is shaped by the identity of the groups from which they emerge, how labels such as "Jewish" and "Christian" should and should not be understood, the identity-forming role of behavioral norms in letters, and the interplay between competing leadership ideals and the underlying unity of different Christian groups. They also show that identity formation is not necessarily related to innovation in moral teaching, nor averse to making use of ancient conventions of masculinity with their emphasis on dominance.

Author : Maia Kotrosits
Publisher : Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1451492650
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rethinking Early Christian Identity written by Maia Kotrosits and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2015 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Union Theological Seminary, 2013 under title: Affect, violence, and belonging in early Christianity.

Author : Philip A. Harland
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0567111466
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians written by Philip A. Harland and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study sheds new light on identity formation and maintenance in the world of the early Christians by drawing on neglected archaeological and epigraphic evidence concerning associations and immigrant groups and by incorporating insights from the social sciences. The study's unique contribution relates, in part, to its interdisciplinary character, standing at the intersection of Christian Origins, Jewish Studies, Classical Studies, and the Social Sciences. It also breaks new ground in its thoroughly comparative framework, giving the Greek and Roman evidence its due, not as mere background but as an integral factor in understanding dynamics of identity among early Christians. This makes the work particularly well suited as a text for courses that aim to understand early Christian groups and literature, including the New Testament, in relation to their Greek, Roman, and Judean contexts. Inscriptions pertaining to associations provide a new angle of vision on the ways in which members in Christian congregations and Jewish synagogues experienced belonging and expressed their identities within the Greco-Roman world. The many other groups of immigrants throughout the cities of the empire provide a particularly appropriate framework for understanding both synagogues of Judeans and groups of Jesus-followers as minority cultural groups in these same contexts. Moreover, there were both shared means of expressing identity (including fictive familial metaphors) and peculiarities in the case of both Jews and Christians as minority cultural groups, who (like other "foreigners") were sometimes characterized as dangerous, alien "anti-associations". By paying close attention to dynamics of identity and belonging within associations and cultural minority groups, we can gain new insights into Pauline, Johannine, and other early Christian communities.

Author : Geoffrey Dunn
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004301577
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium written by Geoffrey Dunn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians Shaping Identity explores different ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them to the 12th century C.E. It also illustrates how modern readings of that past continue to shape Christian identity.

Author : James M Houston
Publisher : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9780802882677
Total Pages : 722 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sources of the Christian Self written by James M Houston and published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Charles Taylor's magisterial Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity as a springboard, this interdisciplinary book explores lived Christian identity through the ages. Beginning with such Old Testament figures as Abraham, Moses, and David and moving through the New Testament, the early church, the Middle Ages, and onward, the forty-two biographical chapters in Sources of the Christian Self illustrate how believers historically have defined their selfhood based on their relation to God/Jesus. Among the many historical subjects are Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Dante, John Calvin, Teresa of Ávila, John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, Christina Rossetti, Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, and Flannery O'Connor--all of whom boldly lived out their Christian identities in their varied cultural contexts. In showing how Christian identity has evolved over time, Sources of the Christian Self offers deep insight into our own Christian selves today. CONTRIBUTORS: Markus Bockmuehl Keith Bodner Gerald P. Boersma Hans Boersma Robert H. Bork Paul C. Burns Julie Canlis Victor I. Ezigbo Craig M. Gay Yonghua Ge Christopher Hall Ross Hastings Bruce Hindmarsh James M. Houston Sharon Jebb Smith Robert A. Kitchen Marian Kamell Kovalishyn Pak-Wah Lai Jay Langdale Bo Karen Lee Jonathan Sing-cheung Li V. Phillips Long Howard Louthan Elizabeth Ludlow Eleanor McCullough Stephen Ney Ryan S. Olson Steve L. Porter Iain Provan Murray Rae Jonathan Reimer Ronald T. Rittgers Sven Soderlund Janet Martin Soskice Mikael Tellbe Colin Thompson Bruce K. Waltke Steven Watts Robyn Wrigley-Carr Jens Zimmermann

Author : Judith Lieu
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0567658821
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Neither Jew nor Greek? written by Judith Lieu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-breaking study in the formation of early Christian identity, by one of the world's leading scholars.In Neither Jew Nor Greek, Judith Lieu explores the formation and shaping of early Christian identity within Judaism and within the wider Graeco-Roman world in the period before 200 C.E. Lieu particularly examines the way that literary texts presented early Christianity. She combines this with interdisciplinary historical investigation and interaction with scholarship on Judaism in late Antiquity and on the Graeco-Roman world.The result is a highly significant contribution to four of the key questions in current New Testament scholarship: how did early Christian identity come to be formed? How should we best describe and understand the processes by which the Christian movement became separate from its Jewish origins? Was there anything special or different about the way women entered Judaism and early Christianity? How did martyrdom contribute to the construction of early Christian identity? The chapters in this volume have become classics in the study of the New Testament and for this Cornerstones edition Lieu provides a new introduction placing them within the academic debate as it is now.

Author : Hal Taussig
Publisher : Augsburg Fortress
ISBN 13 : 9780800663438
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In the Beginning was the Meal written by Hal Taussig and published by Augsburg Fortress. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taussig, a founding member of the SBL Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, brings a wealth of scholarship to bear on the question of Christian origins. He shows that in the Augustan age, common meals became the sites of dramatic experimentation and innovation regarding social roles and relationships, challenging expectations regarding gender, class, and status. Rich comparative material and rigorous ritual analysis reveals that it was in just such a swirl of experimentation that the early Christian assemblies, with their love feasts and supper of the Lord, were born.

Author : M. David Litwa
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000989925
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Naassenes written by M. David Litwa and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an accessible investigation of the Naassene discourse embedded in the anonymous Refutation of All Heresies (completed about 222 CE), in order to understand the theology and ritual life of the Naassene Christian movement in the late second and early third centuries CE. The work provides basic data on the date, genre, and provenance of the Naassene discourse as summarized by the author of the Refutation (or Refutator). It also offers an analysis of the Refutator’s sources and working methods, an analysis which allows for a full reconstruction of the original Naassene discourse. The book then turns to major aspects of Naassene Christianity: its intense engagement with Hellenic myth and “mysteries,” its biblical sources, its cosmopolitan hermeneutics, its snake symbology, as well as its distinctive approach to baptism, hymns, and celibacy. A concluding chapter outlines all we can securely reconstruct about the Naassene Christian movement in terms of its social identity and place in the larger field of early Christianity and ancient Mediterranean religions more broadly. The Naassenes: Exploring an Early Christian Identity is suitable for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Early Christianity, Gnostic and Nag Hammadi Studies, Classics, and Ancient Philosophy, as well as hermeneutical issues like allegory and intertextuality.

Author : David Lyle Jeffrey
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780802841773
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book People of the Book written by David Lyle Jeffrey and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the "cultural and literary identity among Western Christians which the centrality of 'the Book' has helped to create, and the Christian use of the phrase 'People of the book.'"--Preface.

Author : Judith Lieu
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0199262896
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World written by Judith Lieu and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judith Lieu's study explores how a sense of being a Christian was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. By exploring this theme she reveals what made early Christianity so distinctive and separate.