A wide-ranging collection of authoritative accounts covering all major areas of current research in Early Christian studies by a distinguished team of international authors. It is thematically arranged to encompass the inter-disciplinary nature of the field, examining history, literature, thought, practices, and material culture.

This article argues that theological pacifism is best evaluated when situated in a network of practices, beliefs and biblical reading strategies that support a critique of Empire, and when mapped onto this world open up a space for living that is non-territorial and non-sacrificial, the grammar of which is governed by a political understanding of love.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:704 BOOK REVIEWS The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy. By PAUL F. BRADSHAW. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 217. $35.00 (cloth). Despite broad and general acceptance of the study of liturgy as an academic discipline comprising (among other things) historical, theological, anthropological, aesthetic, and ritual aspects, liturgical scholars themselves are (...) still engaged in refining the contours of this discipline. With regard to historical perspectives on liturgy, for example, contemporary liturgical scholars have both relied upon the ground-breaking work of authors such as Anton Baumstark, Jean Danielou, Gregory Dix, and Josef Jungmann and urged caution in appropriating their insights too facilely or uncritically. More precisely, the kind of research such scholars were able to do on the sources they examined, the editing of new editions of those same sources, the fact of the discovery of additional sources, and the crucial issue of how to interpret what historical sources have to say require that contemporary liturgiologists revisit the early sources of the liturgy ever more carefully and precisely. Paul Bradshaw's contribution in The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship is nothing short of ground-breaking for the contribution it makes to contemporary liturgical method in general and to the study of liturgical sources in particular. With admirable clarity and modesty in tone Bradshaw accomplishes his aim: " to offer a guide or handbook for the journey through the field of liturgical origins" (x). He makes no claim that even a careful study of liturgical origins or liturgical history comprises the discipline and craft of liturgiology. What he does claim and exemplify in this remarkable hook is that the study of the sources of liturgy requires careful contextualization as well as precise textual and source criticism of the documents so that what can he legitimately gleaned from historical investigation continues to be a major factor in liturgical study. Bradshaw published some of the material in this carefully constructed monograph in an article in Studia Liturgica 17 (1987): 26-34 and in his contributions to The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship (1991) and Fountain of Life (1991). Among the author's noteworthy accomplishments is the way he has incorporated this material into a new synthesis here. The first three chapters deal with the Jewish background of Christian worship, worship in the New Testament, and principles for interpreting early Christian liturgical evidence. Bradshaw states and exemplifies one of his chief theses here: that any sense BOOK REVIEWS 705 of a linear progression from Jewish liturgical forms at the time of Jesus through the early Christian centuries is impossible to sustain for at least two reasons. First, the Jewish sources themselves at the time of Christ were not uniform, as exemplified by the fact that some manuscripts presumably attesting to the Jewish practices at the time of Jesus were not compiled until centuries later. And even then the normativity of such texts was not universally held. Second, the pluriformity in church life customarily derived from the scientific study of the scriptures should also be expected to derive from the scientific study of liturgical sources, for example, because of the difference between and evolution within the liturgy both East and West. With regard to what are customarily more precisely termed " liturgical sources " Bradshaw offers significant insights in chapter four about individual documents (e.g., the Didache, the Apostolic Tradition, and the Apostolic Constitutions) and, even more importantly, their interrelationship. The modesty in tone of the whole book is nowhere more evident than when he observes that one needs to be cautious in determining whether these documents describe or prescribe what should be done liturgically and when he muses about why some of the evidence in these texts should have appeared there at all. This caution is sustained in chapter five describing "other major liturgical sources," namely, the apostolic fathers, patristic texts, and the diary of Egeria. Here again the descriptive/prescriptive issue resurfaces especially regarding Justin's accounts of liturgy in his First Apology, insights about initiation rites in patristic homilies and catecheses, and the ceremonies of the Easter triduum recounted by Egeria. In chapters six through eight... (shrink)

The study of the Second Sophistic is a relative newcomer to the Anglophone field of classics, and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitimate contestation. This Handbook offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define the state of this developing field. Included are chapters that offer practical guidance on the wide range of valuable textual materials that survive, many of which are useful or even core to inquiries of particularly current interest (e.g., (...) gender studies, cultural history of the body, sociology of literary culture, history of education and intellectualism, history of religion, political theory, history of medicine, cultural linguistics, intersection of the classical traditions and early Christianity). (shrink)

In Volume One of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, the renowned theologian and political philosopher examines various facets of the unique encounter between biblical religion and Greek philosophy during the early Christian centuries and the Middle Ages. Fortin's aim is to uncover the crucial issues to which this encounter gave rise, such as the sometimes troubling but immensely fruitful tension between divine revelation and philosophic reason. The book includes sections on St. Augustine and the refounding of Christianity; the encounter (...) between Jerusalem and Athens; the medieval roots of Christian education; and Dante and the politics of Christendom. (shrink)

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. (...) Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life. (shrink)

In his reference letter for Murdoch’s 1947 fellowship application at Newnham College, Cambridge, her erstwhile Oxford undergraduate tutor, Donald MacKinnon, remarks that Murdoch is ‘on the threshold of creative work of a high order’. This chapter outlines the nature of that ‘creative work’ and its early development. We show how Murdoch’s close study of the Christian existentialist philosopher and playwright Gabriel Marcel (1883–1973) came to inflect both her early critique of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism and her (...) first attempts to show the limits of logical positivism. We explain how once at Cambridge, Murdoch’s exposure to Wittgenstein’s method, through her philosophical friendship with Elizabeth Anscombe, gave her the conceptual means to recast those aspects of Marcel’s thought (as well as those of Martin Buber) that she believed were important but, as she wrote in her application, ‘vague’. We show, finally, how both strands of Murdoch’s thinking are later brought into synchrony in the much-discussed example of M&D. This, in turn, allows us to isolate Murdoch’s understanding of the individual’s relation to their own ‘ghostly past’ and to reveal the importance of Murdoch’s early encounters with Anscombe and Marcel. (shrink)

This collection of articles explores a broad range of issues relating to the development of Platonism. The volume takes in such figures as John Scotus Eriugena and Salomon ibn Gabirol, while bearing witness to an understanding and appreciation of the last head of the Platonic Academy, Damascius. The volume begins with a study of an aspect of Plato himself, his distinctly ironic way of making use of the ancient concept of the golden age and the history of a notion that (...) he bequeathed to his successors, the idea that the philosopher should develop something of an art or science of erotics. The volume continues on to explore areas such as the philosophical stature of Plato's nephew and successor, Speusippus, the functioning of Platonic dialogues within the intellectual life of the school, issues and figures within middle Platonism - notably Philo of Alexandria and Plutarch - various aspects of Plotinus' thought, evidence from Porphyry and Iamblichus and different aspects of the philosophy of Proclus. (shrink)

_Christianity and the Roots of Morality_ combines philosophical, early Christian and empirical studies to cast light on the role of religion, especially Christianity, in morality, pro-social behavior and altruism.

The authors of this volume elucidate the remarkable role played by religion in the shaping and reshaping of narrative forms in antiquity and late antiquity in a variety of ways. This is particularly evident in ancient Jewish and Christian narrative, which is in the focus of most of the contributions, but also in some “pagan” novels such as that of Heliodorus, which is dealt with as well in the third part of the volume, both in an illuminating comparison with (...) Christian novels and in an inspiring rethinking of Heliodorus's relation to Neoplatonism. All of these essays, from different perspectives, illuminate the interplay between narrative and religion, and show how religious concerns and agendas shaped narrative forms in Judaism and early Christianity. A series of compelling and innovative articles, all based on fresh and often groundbreaking research by eminent specialists, is divided into three large sections: part one deals with ancient Jewish narrative, and part two with ancient Christian narrative, in particular gospels, acts, biographies, and martyrdoms, while part three offers a comparison with “pagan” narrative, and especially the religious novel of Heliodorus, both in terms of social perspectives and in terms of philosophical and religious agendas. Like the essays collected by Marília Futre Pinheiro, Judith Perkins, and Richard Pervo in 2013, which investigate the core role played by narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the Roman Empire, the present volume fruitfully bridges the disciplinary gap between classical studies and ancient Jewish and Christian studies, offers new insights, and hopefully opens up new paths of inquiry. Contributions by (in alphabetical order): Cathryn Chew, Mark J. Edwards, Erich Gruen, Vincent Hunink, David Konstan, Karen King, Dennis MacDonald, Laura S. Nasrallah, Judith Perkins, Richard Pervo, Ilaria Ramelli, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, and Lawrence Wills. (shrink)

What difference does the philosophical revolution of Deleuze and Guattari make to our understanding the early Christianity? In honour of the fortieth anniversary of publication of A Thousand Plateaus, this article argues that the discipline of Christian origins is currently premised on a historically condemned mode of subjectivity, that of subject/object metaphysics. The philosophical processes found in A Thousand Plateaus are particularly apposite to the current dilemma of Christian origins: as a rhizome-book consisting of plateaus, machines, singularities (...) and non-representational concepts, this book models new modes of thinking that can help the discipline rejuvenate itself and accomplish new tasks which are presently beyond its reach – for Deleuzian philosophy privileges the virtual over the actual, becoming over being, machinic transformations over static structures, and semiotics over linguistics. (shrink)

This paper first traces the general influence of Ernest Barker's undergraduate training in Oxford's School of Literae Humaniores on his later work on ancient political thought, and in particular shows how Idealism conditioned his view that the major ancient texts were perennially relevant and also applicable to practical affairs. The second part of the paper is based on a letter that Barker wrote to E.R. Dodds in 1953 critical of Dodds's negative perspective in The Greeks and the Irrational on (...) the religious culture of the early centuries of the Roman Empire. This document offers a revealing insight into the gulf between Barker's Christian values and optimistic view of the evolution of the classical tradition and Dodds's pessimistic secularism, which had its theoretical basis in ideas drawn from social psychology which Barker had always despised. (shrink)

In The Ethics of The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5) Paul Linjamaa offers the first full length thematical monograph on the longest Valentinian text extant today. By investigating the ethics of The Tripartite Tractate, this study offers in-depth exploration of the text's ontology, epistemology, theory of will, and passions, as well as the anthropology and social setting of the text. Valentinians have often been associated with determinism, which has been presented as "Gnostic" and then not taken seriously, or disregarded as (...) an invention of ancient intra-Christian polemics. Linjamaa challenges this conception and presents insights into how early Christian determinism actually worked, and how it effectively sustained viable and functioning ethics. (shrink)

This article examines the potential of art and archaeological remains for the study of women's social history in early Christianity. Part I considers important sources for art and archaeological data; the received method and classification criteria for the discipline of early Christian art and archaeology; and the types of problems both earlier and contemporary approaches to the material remains present for scholars. Part II proposes an approach to understanding early Christian art and material culture as (...) part of a larger ongoing social discourse in the ancient Mediterranean world where cultural representations take part in the lively social and aural culture of life lived in close proximity to others. This approach places art and archaeological evidence in the foreground and documentary sources in the background as corroborative evidence. (shrink)

Abstract‘Adoptionism’ is an early Christian ‘heresy’ often associated with early strands of Jewish Christian tradition. It figures as such in handbooks of church history and New Testament studies alike. This essay investigates the origins of the concept of ‘adoptionism’ in the historiography of early Christianity, offers a fresh analysis of the relevant ‘adoptionist’ sources, and concludes that the concept is a misleading one. Therefore, the proposal is made to abandon the notion of ‘adoptionism’ as (...) a category and to focus on the authors involved as such and to investigate what their soteriological and christological concerns were, rather than to identify them as ‘adoptionists’ and to study them with that identification as a starting point. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the relation between Christian Wolff's philosophy and the methodological views of early modern experimental philosophers. The chapter argues for three claims. First, Wolff's system relies on experience at every step and his views on experiments, observations, hypotheses, and the a priori are in line with those of experimental philosophers. Second, the study of Wolff's views demonstrates the influence of experimental philosophy in early eighteenth-century Germany. Third, references to Wolff's empiricism and rationalism are best identified (...) or replaced with references to his endorsement of the tenets of experimental philosophers and of a mathematical demonstrative method. (shrink)

In studies of early Christian thought, 'philosophy' is often a synonym for 'Platonism', or at most for 'Platonism and Stoicism'. Nevertheless, it was Aristotle who, from the sixth century AD to the Italian Renaissance, was the dominant Greek voice in Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Aristotle and Early Christian Thoughtis the first book in English to give a synoptic account of the slow appropriation of Aristotelian thought in the Christian world from the second (...) to the sixth century. Concentrating on the great theological topics - creation, the soul, the Trinity, and Christology - it makes full use of modern scholarship on the Peripatetic tradition after Aristotle, explaining the significance of Neoplatonism as a mediator of Aristotelian logic. While stressing the fidelity of Christian thinkers to biblical presuppositions which were not shared by the Greek schools, it also describes their attempts to overcome the pagan objections to biblical teachings by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. (shrink)

In this Element the author argues that genre deeply affects how early Christian female philosophers are characterized across different works. The included case studies are three women who feature in both narrative and dialogic texts: Thecla, Macrina the Younger and Monica. Based on these examples, the author demonstrates that the narrative sources tend to eschew secular education, while the dialogic sources are open to displays of secular knowledge. Philosophy was not only seen as a way of life, (...) but sometimes also as a mode of educated argumentation. The author further argues that these female philosophers were held up in their femininity as models for imitation by both women and men. (shrink)

This article first deals with Pantaenus’s mission to India, which began in Alexandria through the private initiative of Pantaenus, the teacher of Clement who was also well known to Origen. In the age of Athanasius (fourth century), another mission to India was organised in Alexandria, and this time the bishop himself took the initiative to send missionaries. Meanwhile in Alexandria the episcopacy had gained strength, and the head of the Didaskaleion – Didymus, a follower of Origen – was then appointed (...) by the bishop, whereas neither Pantaenus nor Clement were so appointed. The article also discusses to which “India” the mission was directed. Generally, it is considered to have been Ethiopia, but in fact it might have been India. (shrink)

In 1991, Stephen Halliwell published "The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture", an essay that, among other things, rejected totalizing definitions of laughter and the laughable in favor of a more nuanced view that emphasized a distinction between laughter perceived as friendly and non-consequential, i.e., not injurious to the reputation of anyone, and laughter seen as abusive, hostile, or belittling, and so deleterious to the reputation of the target. His point was not that laughter could be classified so easily but (...) that there was a gray area at the interface of these two categories, capable of being perceived either way, and that even for non-problematic cases the dynamic quality of the phenomenon allowed non-consequential laughter to metamorphose with alarming speed into laughter perceived as aggressive, confrontational, and potentially violent. (shrink)

The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings provides the definitive anthology of early Christian texts, from c.100 to 650 CE. Its six volumes reflect the cultural, intellectual and linguistic diversity of early Christianity and are organized thematically on the topics of God, practice, Christ, community, reading and creation. The series expands the pool of source material to include not only Greek and Latin writings, but also Syriac and Coptic texts. Additionally, the series rejects a theologically (...) normative view by juxtaposing texts that were important in antiquity but later deemed 'heretical', with orthodox texts. The translations are accompanied by introductions, notes, suggestions for further reading and scriptural indices. The first volume focuses on early Christian writings about God's nature and unity, and the meaning of faith. It will be an invaluable resource for students and academic researchers in early Christian studies, history of Christianity, theology, religious studies and late antique Roman history. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant.

Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into early Christian monasticism. Though it could take various forms, ‘imagining/remembering Jerusalem’ was often practised as a devotional exercise throughout the European Middle Ages. Drawings of such an imagined character are significant to late medieval exegesis of these and related scriptural materials, particularly those associated with the commentaries of Nicholas (...) of Lyra and the collection of visual meditations known as the Speculum theologie. This chapter queries a late medieval illuminated manuscript that, in the fifteenth century, formed part of the library of St John's Hospital in Exeter, to suggest that its materials were acquired and used for scriptural study and sermon composition by scholars of the hospital and its associated school. (shrink)