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42566 results in Collections

Page 1613 of 2129

  • 8 - Articulating identity

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 71-90

  • Summary

    By the last decades of the first century, the Christian communities around the Mediterranean basin had entered upon a process that would, over a period of two or more centuries, produce a relatively stable, widely shared, and socially embodied sense of who they were and what they stood for. The original Christians, however, had no place in this world as Christians. They were Jews with an odd set of convictions. Judaism in the days of Jesus and Paul, in Judaea and in the diaspora as well, was a more differentiated phenomenon. Judaism in the Roman-Hellenistic age produced a variegated literature in Aramaic or Hebrew and also in Greek. Christianity was an identifiable phenomenon even before the drawn-out, and relatively self-conscious, process of acknowledging and constructing a shared identity. In defining the principles as representing the true sense of the Scriptures and the emerging 'New Testament', Irenaeus had focused attention on his alternative to the Valentinian 'secret tradition'.

  • 13 - Hippolytus, Ps.-Hippolytus and the early canons

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 142-151

  • Summary

    Hippolytus is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of the early Church. In 1841 a single manuscript containing a Refutation of All Heresies was discovered and eventually attributed to Hippolytus. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the complete texts of some of his commentaries and homilies were discovered in Slavonic, Armenian and Georgian translations, and a few portions of his works in Greek. Eusebius, who provides the earliest information about Hippolytus, names him, along with Beryllus of Bostra and Gaius of Rome, as one of the learned churchmen of that time. The two works that go under the titles of the Canons of Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition represent a specialized field of study in themselves. The work known as the Apostolic Tradition appears in several collections of Church Orders dating from the fourth century, and is sometimes in longer and sometimes in shorter form. It exists in Sahidic, Bohairic, Arabic, Ethiopic and Latin versions.

  • 4 - Apocryphal writings and Acts of the martyrs

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 28-35

  • Summary

    Apocrypha' and 'apocryphal' originally signified something hidden or secret, and they were applied in this sense to esoteric writings, that is, writings which circulated only within a narrow group of persons 'in the know'. Several apocryphal gospels are attributed to apostles, thus tacitly claiming apostolic authority for their content. Of more interest to historians are the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter. The first of these is known only from the Nag Hammadi corpus, and therefore in a Coptic translation of the original Greek. Like the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, an early third-century composition, identifies its subject as 'Judas Thomas, also called Didymus. The early Christians wrote and consulted works of the sort that are styled 'apocalypse'. One type of apocalypse is represented by the Ascension of Isaiah, which combines an old Jewish legend of the martyrdom of Isaiah, originally in Hebrew, with a Christian interpolation and supplement originally in Greek.

  • 7 - Social and historical setting

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 53-70

  • Summary

    The first two centuries of the history of Christianity was a period of struggle for survival and the crucible in which the basic elements of Christian identity and church organization were forged. The Roman Government was usually tolerant of foreign cults and religions, provided that they did not encourage sedition or weaken traditional values. The various local deities of the provinces encompassed by the Roman Empire were easily absorbed into the pantheon and the diverse spectrum of religious life. The God of the Jews, however, demanded exclusive adherence, that sacrifices be performed only at Jerusalem, and prohibited all images. In second century, although Christians were formally in official disrepute and were socially stigmatized, informally they were usually left to do as they pleased, and were even able to protest against their treatment. The second century was a remarkable period of peace, stability and well-being in the history of the Roman Empire.

  • 36 - Conciliar records and canons

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 391-396

  • Summary

    This chapter provides two ways of reaching decisions in primitive Christianity, the council and the authority of the individual apostle, both of which ground the authority for any decision in apostolicity. The production of canons really got under way in the fourth century. Canons were not only issued by councils. In the fourth century especially, and occasionally later, canons were issued by individual bishops on their own authority. Almost invariably these canons were issued in response to requests for guidance from other bishops, and imitate imperial rescripts. Canons and conciliar records survive because they were gathered into collections put together to provide a legal basis for the functioning of the Church of the Empire. In late antiquity such a legal basis fulfilled the dual function of providing practical rules and holding up an ideal, the ideal here being that of the 'apostolic' Church.

  • 16 - Concluding review: the literary culture of the third century

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 172-178

  • Summary

    Christian texts are becoming more embedded in the cultural and linguistic worlds around the Alexandrians, and their genres reflect that reality. The commentaries and sequences of exegetical homilies which emerge in the third century, particularly with Origen but also Hippolytus, indicate a level of professional attention to the texts that owes something to Jewish precedent but much more to the way in which Hellenistic scholars and philosophers approached the classical texts. Christian literature, however, was not simply concerned to establish Christian identity over against the wider culture and to distinguish it from Judaism. There was also the issue of where the true tradition lay, and Irenaeus' attempt to expose the falsehood of some claims to gnosis was taken up in further compendia which critically detailed the teachings of heretics, such as those of Hippolytus. One aspect of the developing Christian literary culture cannot be ignored: the primary activity of the community which produced it was worship.

  • 15 - The earliest Syriac literature

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 161-171

  • Summary

    The work known as the Teaching of Addai, which belongs to the early decades of the fifth century, is more interesting for the light it sheds on Edessene Christianity of that time than for any reliable information it can give of the origins of Christianity in Edessa. A passage in The Laws of the Countries implies that Christianity had spread fairly widely in the East by the first half of the third century, and it is virtually certain that by that time much of both the Old and the New Testament would have been available in Syriac translation. The Syriac Old Testament, known as the Peshitta, is definitely a translation directly from Hebrew, and the earliest books to be translated probably go back to the second century AD, thus almost certainly constituting the earliest surviving monument of Syriac literature. By far the most extensive piece of early Syriac literature is the narrative known as the Acts of Thomas.

  • 19 - Christian teaching

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 222-238

  • Summary

    Christian teaching in the third century displayed a complex integration of spiritual sensibility, textual interpretation, and philosophical reflection. Pedagogical aspirations within the Platonist tradition began with Socrates' sharp denunciation of the role of traditional poetic texts in shaping human character. In the Republic, Plato has Socrates vehemently oppose the poetic narratives that had long been the centrepiece of Greek moral education. Literary and philosophical strands in Greek culture had long been at odds with one another, and early Christian teachers exploited that internal cultural debate by endorsing Greek philosophy's demythologization of poetic, mythical traditions and by identifying parallels between pagan philosophical and Christian theological ideas. The fashioning of Christian identity in the third century did not turn principally on the alliance between Christian theology and Greek philosophy against the mythological texts of Greek religion. Instead, it turned on the displacement of culturally authoritative Greek texts by the Christian Bible.

  • 26 - The Cappadocians

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 289-301

  • Summary

    The grouping together of Basil of Caesarea, with his friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, as the 'Cappadocian Fathers' is a product of modern scholars, who have regarded as significant the family links, geographical locality and common theological commitment they perceived in them. Theodosius was committed to Nicene orthodoxy and soon invited Gregory of Nazianzus to Constantinople, a largely Arian city, to be orthodox pastor in the Church of the Resurrection. He preached eloquently in defence of Nicene orthodoxy, his sermons there including the five theological orations to which he owes his title 'the Theologian'. The writings of Basil the Great can be divided into several categories: ascetic works, dogmatic works, homiletic works, letters, and a liturgy. Gregory of Nyssa seems to have been the Cappadocian for the twentieth century. There are a large number of dogmatic works, the most important of which is his Against Eunomius.

  • 34 - The literature of the monastic movement

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 373-381

  • Summary

    The traditional story of the rise of monasticism as a fourth-century phenomenon associated par excellence with the Egyptian desert, is a Catholic legend, which, unlike many others, was reinforced, rather than questioned, by Protestant scholarship, happy to regard monasticism as a late, and therefore spurious, development. The literature falls into two categories: the literature of those monastic movements of the fourth century condemned as heretical; and literature that is eccentric to the geographical hegemony of Egypt in the traditional literature. The Life of St Antony, almost certainly by Athanasius of Alexandria, is the model, not only for all monastic Lives, but for the genre of the saint's Life itself. Instructional literature obviously includes monastic rules: those of Pachomius, Basil, Augustine, and, for Palestine, what can be discerned of the rules of Chariton and Gerasimus. The most important monastic literature of an instructional kind is the writings of Evagrius and John Cassian.

  • 5 - The Apologists

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 36-44

  • Summary

    The term 'Apologists', as applied to Christian writers of the early period, denotes a series of authors who in the course of the second century composed and circulated addresses and pleas to emperors and others in public authority on behalf of their fellow Christians. A Greek text of The Apology of Aristides was identified as figuring in a novel, Barlaam and Josaphat, that had been written in Palestine in the tenth century. The Syriac text disagrees with Eusebius' statement that the work was addressed to Hadrian and sets it instead in the reign of Antoninus Pius, but three Armenian manuscripts that contain the opening lines of the Apology concur with Eusebius. Sardis was a significant centre of diaspora Judaism, and Melito's stance towards Judaism, that of one who was at once an ungrateful tributary and an indebted foe, illustrates the general position of Christianity in relation to Judaism in his time.

  • 39 - Christian teaching

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 464-484

  • Summary

    The fourth century sees a great cultural shift which both retains something of the school-like character of early Christianity and yet leaves no room for the semi-independent Christian philosopher or exegete. The character of the catechetical lectures that are extant demonstrates that the old anti-heretical thrust of the rule of faith remains crucial in the exposition of the creeds. Education in grammar and rhetoric would continue to be based on the traditional literature, now regarded as 'pagan' in an increasingly Christianized society, treated as useful but not true. The Christian way remained an education, a paideia, a training and discipline, moral, intellectual and spiritual. Christian teaching characterized human life and history as a journey, as progress under the guidance of the Spirit, even justifying some doctrinal developments in these terms as well as spiritual insights. The Christian tradition is clearly rooted in educational practice, and in this period retained something of its legacy as a teaching institution.

  • 21 - Classical genres in Christian guise; Christian genres in classical guise

  • from A - LITERARY GUIDE
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 247-258

  • Summary

    The 'Golden Age of Patristic Literature', the fourth and fifth centuries provides a mass of material which carries weighty literary and theological significance. Christian rhetoricians began to produce a new literature which had classical styles and genres but Christian content. The Constantinian revolution had reinforced the tendencies for Christians to come from the educated literary elites and to adapt classical modes of writing to Christian ends. History, for Eusebius, had become a kind of apologetic, an alternative method of proof that Christianity was true. Little of the Christian literature of the fourth and fifth centuries escapes influence from the classical traditions of antiquity, yet little of it can be analysed neatly according to the classical genres. The descriptions 'apologetic' and 'dogmatic' both appear as subsequent classifications, and raise questions about genre, and the point of generic analysis.

Page 1613 of 2129