Rethinking Early Christian Identity

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 : Maia Kotrosits
Publisher : Class 200: New Studies in Religion
ISBN 13 : 022670758X
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lives of Objects written by Maia Kotrosits and published by Class 200: New Studies in Religion. This book was released on 2020 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Judaism and Christianity as condensed illustrations of how people across time struggle with the materiality of life and death. Speaking across many fields, including classics, history, anthropology, literary, gender, and queer studies, the book journeys through the ancient Mediterranean world by way of the myriad physical artifacts that punctuate the transnational history of early Christianity. By bringing a psychoanalytically inflected approach to bear upon her materialist studies of religious history, Kotrosits makes a contribution not only to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity, but also our sense of how different disciplines construe historical knowledge, and how we as people and thinkers understand our own relation to our material and affective past"--

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 : Medi Ann Volpe
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1405195118
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rethinking Christian Identity written by Medi Ann Volpe and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-04 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have seen major shifts in our understanding of Christian identity. This timely book explores contemporary theological theory in asking what makes a Christian in the twenty-first century. Engages with developments in contemporary theological thought, assessing the work of leading figures Rowan Williams, John Milbank, and Kathryn Tanner Challenges accepted ideas of Christian identity by revealing largely unexplored perspectives on how sin affects its formation Contributes to vexed debates about Christian identity at a time when Christianity is expanding in some regions, yet in decline in many parts of the Western world

Author : Philip A. Harland
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0567457362
Total Pages : 254 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 Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 254 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 : Denise Kimber Buell
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691221529
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Christians written by Denise Kimber Buell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did second-century Christians vie with each other in seeking to produce an authoritative discourse of Christian identity? In this innovative book, Denise Buell argues that many early Christians deployed the metaphors of procreation and kinship in the struggle over claims to represent the truth of Christian interpretation, practice, and doctrine. In particular, she examines the intriguing works of the influential theologian Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-210 c.e.), for whom cultural assumptions about procreation and kinship played an important role in defining which Christians have the proper authority to teach, and which kinds of knowledge are authentic. Buell argues that metaphors of procreation and kinship can serve to make power differentials appear natural. She shows that early Christian authors recognized this and often turned to such metaphors to mark their own positions as legitimate and marginalize others as false. Attention to the functions of this language offers a way out of the trap of reconstructing the development of early Christianity along the axes of "heresy" and "orthodoxy," while not denying that early Christians employed this binary. Ultimately, Buell argues, strategic use of kinship language encouraged conformity over diversity and had a long lasting effect both on Christian thought and on the historiography of early Christianity. Aperceptive and closely argued contribution to early Christian studies, Making Christians also branches out to the areas of kinship studies and the social construction of gender.

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 : Denise Kimber Buell
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231133359
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why This New Race written by Denise Kimber Buell and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denise Kimber Buell radically rethinks the origins of Christian identity, arguing that race and ethnicity played a central role in early Christian theology. Focusing on texts written before the legalization of Christianity in 313 C.E., including Greek apologetic treatises, martyr narratives, and works by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, Buell shows how philosophers and theologians defined Christians as a distinct group within the Roman world, characterizing Christianness as something both fixed in its essence and fluid in its acquisition through conversion. Buell demonstrates how this view allowed Christians to establish boundaries around the meaning of Christianness and to develop the kind of universalizing claims aimed at uniting all members of the faith. Her arguments challenge generations of scholars who have refused to acknowledge ethnic reasoning in early Christian discourses. They also provide crucial insight into the historical legacy of Christian anti-Semitism and contemporary issues of race.

Author : Terence L. Donaldson
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1467459550
Total Pages : 748 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine written by Terence L. Donaldson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, “gentile” soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of “the parting of the ways,” the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity’s legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome’s imperial ideology. Drawing on social identity theory and ethnography, Terence Donaldson offers an analysis of gentile Christianity that is thorough and highly relevant to today’s discourses surrounding identity, ethnicity, and Christian-Jewish relations. As Donaldson shows, a full understanding of the term “gentile” is key to understanding the modern Western world and the church as we know it.

Author : Gerald L. Sittser
Publisher : Brazos Press
ISBN 13 : 1493419986
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Resilient Faith written by Gerald L. Sittser and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our Western, post-Christendom society, much of Christianity's cultural power, privilege, and influence has eroded. But all is not lost, says bestselling author Gerald Sittser. Although the church is concerned and sobered by this cultural shift, it is also curious and teachable. Sittser shows how the early church offers wisdom for responding creatively to the West's increasing secularization. The early Christian movement was surprisingly influential and successful in the Roman world, and so different from its two main rivals--traditional religion and Judaism--that Rome identified it as a "third way." Early Christians immersed themselves in the empire without significant accommodation to or isolation from the culture. They confessed Jesus as Lord and formed disciples accordingly, which helped the church grow in numbers and influence. Sittser explores how Christians today can learn from this third way and respond faithfully, creatively, and winsomely to a world that sees Christianity as largely obsolete. Each chapter introduces historical figures, ancient texts, practices, and institutions to explain and explore the third way of the Jesus movement, which, surprising everyone, changed the world.