A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature , and: Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (review)

Reviewed by: A concise dictionary of New Testament Greek by Warren C. Trenchard Heather J. Enns A concise dictionary of New Testament Greek. By Warren C. Trenchard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii, 177. ISBN 0521521114. $15. Trenchard’s latest Greek dictionary is a compact reference tool that nevertheless contains quite detailed information. The print is larger than that of many small dictionaries, and the wordlists are divided into two columns. The dictionary contains four main elements: a preface, an introduction, a list of abbreviations, and the wordlists. The preface (ix–x) describes the development of the dictionary and defends its distinctiveness. T notes it is ‘unique in providing cognate key words, frequency data, and references for all words that occur only once in the New Testament’ (ix). He then presents a list of works consulted and a list of acknowledgments. In the introduction (xi–xv), T notes the markers identifying the entry components, clarifies his system of classification (e.g. ‘Names of persons (pers.) include the names of human persons, deities, and titles associated with each’ (xii)), and explains how various peculiarities and difficulties of the New Testament are handled, such as the presence of Aramaic and Hebrew words in the Greek New Testament. The [End Page 1023] introduction presupposes a solid understanding of Greek grammatical terms and a basic understanding of Greek grammar and concepts of word derivation. The section pertaining to headwords highlights in particular the dependence of T’s dictionary on the standard scholarly New Testament Greek dictionary, A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature by Walter Bauer, rev. and ed. by Frederick William Danker (3rd edn., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), for headword forms, and on the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament (1998) for spelling, accentuation, and capitalization. The section entitled ‘Abbreviations’ (xvi–xvii) contains a table of abbreviations for New Testament books, grammatical terms, languages, and reference works. T summarizes the contents of each entry in the introduction: ‘The entries in this dictionary contain information in the following order and formatting: headword in boldface type, part of speech, cognate key word(s) in parentheses, type of proper word, indication of a non-Greek word or one of non-Greek origin, principal parts of verbs, meanings and glosses in italic type, frequency of NT use in parentheses, and NT references for words that occur only once’ (xi). These items are presented in every relevant entry. For example, each noun is followed by a part of speech designation (n.) but obviously not a list of principal parts, since they pertain only to verbs. Although T’s book is a comprehensive dictionary of the Greek New Testament, it is small and thus directed toward beginning, or perhaps intermediate, students of New Testament Greek, or for use as a quick reference tool. Its information is not nearly as detailed as Danker’s lexicon, the source of its headword forms. It contains very little etymological information. However, T’s dictionary stands out for its accessible size, the readability of its wordlists, the presence of frequency data for all words, and the listing of cognate key words where relevant. Heather J. Enns Okanagan University College Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Steven D. Smith Patricia Cox Miller. In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 271. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-5035-0. Miller's book is a welcome contribution to the growing field of animal studies in antiquity. Over the space of an introduction, five chapters, and a brief afterword, Miller masterfully elucidates a tension in early Christian literature between an anthropocentric rhetoric that disparages non-human animal life and a persistent tendency in these same texts to think about animals "in terms of their emotional, ethical, psychological, and behavioral continuities with human beings" (4). Miller's brilliant close readings of patristic texts are thoroughly informed by a broad range of theoretical insights from leading thinkers in the field of animal studies. Miller appears equally at home with the works of Jean-Christophe Bailly, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as she is with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens, all of whom here enter into a rich dialogue with the likes of Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, among others. The Introduction lays out the problem of the conflicting attitudes towards human-animal relationality in early Christian thought and literature and nicely situates the book's theoretical orientation. Chapter 1, "Animals and Figuration," uses birds as a case study for the various roles (spiritual, ethical, Christological) that animals play in the zoological imagination of early Christian writers. Miller's discussion of the dove is especially interesting, because she shows how Christian writers de-eroticized and spiritualized what was traditionally a symbol of potent sexuality. Chapters 2 and 3 share the title "The Pensivity of Animals," with a focus on "zoomorphism" and "anthropomorphism," respectively. Chapter 4, "Wild Animals," engages with the figuration of animals in the literature of monastic asceticism; Miller's recurring interest in the subversive quality of animal fabulae works well with the book's overall thesis. Chapter 5, "Small Things," employs the insights of "new materialism" to focus on the "vibrant materiality" of worms, mosquitos, flies, and frogs within the early Christian zoological imagination. In the brief afterword, Miller brings together her various readings of the ambiguous attitudes towards non-human animals in patristic literature and synthesizes them under the sign of a Christian kosmos that harmonizes and seeks affinity between its dissimilar parts. The great value of Miller's work is its delineation of how early Christian literature provides evidence of a lively discourse that ran contrary to and even disrupted the conventional anthropocentric view of the kosmos, a view inherited from the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition. The passages that Miller collects and analyzes in this volume illustrate without a doubt that patristic writers celebrated human entanglement with non-human animal life, "even when those relations are paradoxically presented as both positive and negative in the same text" (192). But early Christian writers were not alone in antiquity in presenting such an ambiguous or paradoxical relationship with non-human animal life. Though she deftly traces continuities between the patristic texts and modern ideas about human-animal entanglement, Miller misses an important opportunity to engage more deeply with the inheritance of non-Christian writers from the Roman Imperial period who sometimes shared with their Christian counterparts a sympathetic fascination with the natural world that contrasted sharply with the [End Page 374] conventional disparagement of non-human animals as "irrational creatures" (ἄλογα ζῷα). Miller duly notes parallels and differences between passages from patristic texts and similar passages from non-Christian writers such as Pliny and Aelian. But if, as Miller concludes, early Christianity heralded "a rhetoric of cosmic resemblance, connection, harmony, and affinity that does not debase animals but includes them . . . in the material and spiritual enchainments that are the created order" (194), then the book would have benefitted from a more searching inquiry into how the Christian writers were responding to, modifying, or consonant with their non-Christian counterparts in the creation of this new rhetoric. Finally—and it may seem churlish to note this, but it must be said—a more careful editorial...

The term “mysticism” is a modern scholarly category, not an ancient concept. Although the etymology of the term “mysticism” (from the Greek word myeo [“to be initiated”]) has roots in Greek mystery cults, ancient people did not use the term to describe their religious experiences. “Mysticism” is rather an etic term, a modern analytic tool for investigating a cluster of religious phenomena in ancient literature. In early Jewish and Christian literatures, mysticism refers to religious experiences which embody the act of revelation itself, an encounter with God. Since only written records are available to us, the modern reader has no direct access to ancient religious experiences. Nevertheless, the value of these mystical texts is that they contain diverse projections and reflections of ancient authors’ beliefs and of their desire to understand a reality beyond the human realm and to experience a direct connection with a transcendent God. This connection is accessed either through ecstatic experiences or particular praxes, often resulting in the transformation of the mystics and the attainment of esoteric knowledge. Scriptural interpretation plays a pivotal role in the development of early Jewish and Christian mystical texts. On the basis of foundational scriptures, especially Genesis 1–3; Exodus 24 and 33; Ezekiel 1, 8, 10, and 40–48; Isaiah 6; and Daniel 7, ancient Jewish and Christian writers competed to explain certain biblical motifs and reinterpret them within particular sociocultural situations. The common mystical themes shared in both early Jewish and Christian literature include visions of an anthropomorphic God, stories about heavenly ascent, revelations of hidden secrets, angelic adjurations and liturgies, and transformative divine encounters. The range of materials brought to bear on early Jewish and Christian mysticism include Jewish apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic texts, Hellenistic Jewish Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, early Christian literature, Gnostic Texts, and Hekhalot Literature. This chronological order does not indicate a linear progression toward a discrete tradition; rather, the varied application of similar themes and literary forms represents the diverse nature of Jewish and Christian mystical traditions.

Sexuality: Another Useful Category of Analysis in European History Joanna Bourke. Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.336 pp. ISBN 0-22606746 -7 (cl). Bernadette J. Brooten. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xxü + 412 pp. ISBN 0-226-075915 (cl). James R. Farr. Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (15501730 ). New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. viü + 252 pp. ISBN 0-19-408907-3 (cl). FeUcity A. Nussbaum. Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth -Century English Narratives. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. χ + 264 pp. ISBN 0-8018-4075-4 (pb). Robert A. Nye. Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ix + 316 pp. ISBN 0-19-404649-8 (cl). Victoria Thompson Pick up any catalogue issued by an academic press these days, and you wiU be sure to notice that more and more books on the history of sexuaUty are being pubUshed. Once associated primarily with gay and lesbian history, the study of sexuaUty, Uke the study of women, has moved from a history focused on discovering homosexuals in past societies to one that employs sexuaUty as a category of analysis much Uke that of gender.1 Ii this trend continues, it wiU become increasingly dUficult for historians to ignore this fundamental aspect of human experience when constructing their narratives of the past. The books chosen for this review span a wide time period in European history, and each approaches the topic of sexuality differently. Nonetheless , they do share certain characteristics. AU of the authors have been strongly influenced by women's history and consequently pay close attention to the relationships between sexuaUty and gender. In addition, all of the authors address the work of Michel Foucault. WhUe each of the authors is clearly interested in tracing the development of a "dominant" discourse on sexuality, they are also concerned with the ways in which © 1998 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. 4 (Winter) 212 Journal of Women's History Winter such discourses are contested or rejected, as weU as their relationship to actual sexual practice. The authors demonstrate a tendency to move away from the essentiatist /social-constructionist debate that has so marked gay and lesbian studies. Although most of the authors impUcitly address the question of whether sexuality is an intrinsic and timeless condition or is defined by sociaUy-constructed betiefs and practices, their primary focus is on the role of sexuaUty in creating social and political distinctions. As a result, these studies reveal how analyses of sexuaUty can shed tight on a variety of broader historical and cultural questions. SexuaUty is used as a category of analysis to examine not only sexual identity, but the poUtical and social identity of individuals and groups as weU. Together, these works raise interesting questions concerning how sexuaUty has been understood and experienced at different times, the role of sexuality in creating poUtical and social hierarchies, and the nature of the relationship between discourse and practice. Of the five works examined in this review, only Bernadette J. Brooten's Love between Women places ifseU explicitly within the context of gay and lesbian history. One of Brooten's goals in this thoroughly-researched and carefuUy-argued study is to draw attention to the existence and experience of women who had erotic relationships with women in the ancient Roman world. Brooten, hoping to correct what she sees as the lack of gender analysis in the work of John BosweU, argues that Romans during the early Christian era were aware of the existence of erotic relationships between women, and that they condemned these relationships as monstrous and unnatural.2 Brooten argues that by focusing on female, rather than male homoeroticism, one can perceive continuities between early Christian writers who elaborated a negative view of female homoeroticism and their non-Christian contemporaries. Brooten argues that early Christian writers adopted existing discourses concerning homoeroticism to recast the boundaries of the Christian community. By drawing on both Jewish and pagan writings concerning same-sex relationships, Paul of Tarsus blurred the difference between...

Much scholarship has recently been done on the Satanology (Satan-concept) of New Testament books or writers. This study attends to the Satanology of early non-canonical Christian writings, which have been comparatively under-researched. The literature examined includes the Apostolic Fathers and other texts that can be reliably dated to c. 100–150 c.e., namely Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter, Odes of Solomon, Gospel of Truth, Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora, and Justin Martyr’s writings. Over 160 certain or probable references to Satan, under various designations, are identified. Analysis of this data set proceeds in two directions. The first looks at the concept’s explanatory power: for what kinds of evil did Satanology help to account? The discussion traverses various loci of perceived satanic activity, from the human heart to community boundaries to earthly political authorities to a dualistic cosmos to the abstract realm of ideas. The second analytical section explores ways that Christian writers and communities incorporated Satanology into their religious life through liturgical forms, hermeneutics for reading the Jewish Scriptures, and theological debates about the nature of God and evil. Satanology is found to have been a pervasive and distinctive feature of Christianity in the early subapostolic period.

Reviewed by: The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon W. Edward Glenny The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon. By Gary Alan Chamberlain. Pp. xlii + 256. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011. Cloth, $39.95. This lexicon was a labor of love over a quarter of a century by a man who does not earn his keep in the academy, but instead in financial services. Gary Alan Chamberlain was motivated to do this work by his "interest in understanding the Scriptures," and "the method and the goal of preparing this lexicon have been the reading of the LXX text itself (alongside the Hebrew Bible, the Greek NT, and not infrequently the Vulgate) with the prayerful attention the Benedictines call lectio divina" (p. xxix). However, Chamberlain has also read the LXX critically, reviewing every textual variant in the apparatus of Rahlf's LXX along the way. He has also employed many of the main resources available for biblical and classical scholarship, especially lexical resources. His goal is ultimately to complete a full lexicon of the Greek of the LXX, which would give precise parallels for all LXX meanings wherever such exist in Greek literature (p. x). In this review, I will attempt to summarize his preface ("The Design and Use of This Lexicon," pp. vii-x) and his introduction ("The Character of the Septuagint Vocabulary," pp. xi-xxix) and then briefly evaluate his lexicon. Chamberlain's lexicon is meant to be a supplement to BDAG (W. Bauer, F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [3rd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000]), like G. W. H. Lampe's lexicon (A Patristic Greek Lexicon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961-1968]) is meant to be a supplement to Liddell/Scott/Jones (LSJ; the last edition of which is H. G. Liddel and R. Scott. A Greek English Lexicon [9th ed. with a revised supplement; revised by H. S. Jones; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996]). Chamberlain is aware of recent LXX lexicons, and he employs Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie (J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint [2 vols.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992 and 1996]); however, Muraoka's excellent LXX lexicon (T. Muraoka, A Greek English Lexicon to the Septuagint [Louvain: Peeters, 2009]) was not completed until shortly before the publication of Chamberlain's, and thus there is no evidence of its use in Chamberlain's lexicon that I can see. (It is not listed in the abbreviations for his main sources. It also appears Chamberlain did not use the two earlier editions of Muraoka's lexicon [1993 and 2002]). In order to supplement BDAG for the LXX, Chamberlain employs the following four principles. First, he does not treat the most common Greek words, since the range of meaning of these words is essentially the same in the LXX as is given in BDAG, and readers with a modest command of New Testament Greek should need no help with them. Second, for less [End Page 394] common words which occur in early Christian literature in the sense they are found in the LXX, the reader can almost always find the LXX meaning in BDAG; thus he does not treat these words either. Third, when the LXX has additional senses for a word that go beyond the range of meaning in BDAG, Chamberlain supplements the discussion in BDAG. Here he provides some help for the LXX reader, which at times differs slightly from the LXX lexicons mentioned above; however, the recent Septuagint lexicons by Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie and Muraoka would probably be adequate for this class of words. Fourth, Chamberlain has composed new lexical articles for words that are not in BDAG or whose meaning differs substantially from their meaning in the New Testament. Chamberlain's treatment of these words looks like it would be helpful, because he deals with transliterations, proper names, and place names, which Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie and Muraoka do not do and because of his understanding of LXX Greek. That leads to the second topic of this review, Chamberlain's understanding of the character of...

Book Review| April 01 2000 Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, Bernadette J. Brooten. Elizabeth A. Castelli Elizabeth A. Castelli Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (2000) 119 (1): 127–129. https://doi.org/10.2307/3267982 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Elizabeth A. Castelli; Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 January 2000; 119 (1): 127–129. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3267982 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Michel Foucault’s groundbreaking work on power and knowledge has generated considerable interest among scholars seeking to clarify how these concepts operated in early Christian literature. One mode of power that Foucault identified as representative of the modern era finds expression in the Panopticon, the prison-house whose creator, Jeremy Bentham, designed to regulate inmates through observation. While Foucault thought that this technology marked a new age in the history of discipline and punishment, this essay argues that Bentham’s discussion of the panoptic gaze and its effects on those surveiled can be found in the literature of antiquity. Early Christian writers used panoptic rhetoric both to establish the authority of God, Jesus, and early Christian leaders and to encourage their audiences to watch over themselves and others. They thus sought to establish a ‘technology of the self’ and circumscribe communal boundaries based upon a system marked by surveillant discipline.

Early Christian literature contains numerous commentaries on the books of the Holy Scripture, including the Revelation of St. John. Among the many symbols it contains, we can find an intriguing theme related to the sign of a Woman clothed with the sun (cf. Rev 12:1–6). Nowadays, the above-mentioned passage is most often interpreted in the Mariological spirit. An ecclesiological explanation is provided frequently too. It turns out that in the writings of the early Church authors, the reference to the Church was decidedly the dominant one, while the interpretation favoring Mary was almost marginal. A mixed interpretation was formulated too, for example, by Quodvultdeus. It features three images: ecclesial, Christological, and Mariological. This paper will present the statements made by early Christian authors, representing both the Eastern and the Western Church, on the meaning of the sign of the Woman in the Revelation, and on the ways they interpreted it in commentaries on this book of the Bible.

Jennifer Otto’s study, which originated as a 2014 McGill University doctoral thesis, is the first monograph devoted to Philo’s place in early Christian literature since my own overview of the subject published in 1993 (Philo in Early Christian Literature: a Survey). Though for the most part confined to the Alexandrian tradition...

Reviewed by: Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature Frederick W. Norris Robert M. Grant . Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993. Pp. x + 180. $17.00. Grant is at his best when his attention is focused on problems which many of us have looked at in pieces but have neither gathered together nor expressed with his clean prose and sharp wit. The audience this book can most help includes scholars who look with disdain on the "pre-critical" winners of early Christian struggles and Christian fundamentalists who know that "criticism" is the devilish invention of the Enlightenment or the not-so-enlightening creation of the Devil. As might be expected, however, those of us in between will be its most avid readers. The thesis is clear: Christians who became known as "heretics" had by the second century employed the critical tools of Hellenistic scholarship on the texts of the Christian tradition, particularly its emerging canon. But by the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria had used those tools in more "orthodox" projects. Later Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria and Jerome, as well as others, continued the process until both "lower and higher" criticism were commonly applied to the Bible. [End Page 361] The first remarkable critical project of early Christianity was that of Marcion who laid out a gospel that had no truck with Mark, Matthew or John or even found numerous interpolations in trusted Luke's text. Marcion's project was primarily a theological one, but he also used grammatical and stylistic judgments in making decisions. His work forced other Christian theologians to form various critical judgments. Irenaeus gave few reasons we find compelling, but he did settle on four gospels and a collection of Paul's letters. His results probably represent both Roman and Asia Minor traditions. Origen employed many Hellenistic textual and grammatical tools worked out by Hellenists on their tradition. Both Julius Africanus and Jerome brought such historical-critical efforts into the discussions among more "orthodox" theologians with the result that centrist Christianity baptized these methods for following generations. One of the strengths of Grant's book is that he looks at the efforts of Ptolemaeus and Apelles, Gnostic Christian critics, not only in separate chapters but also in the context of the general study of texts during the period. He devotes one chapter to "literary criticism in early Christian times" and another to Galen's writings on the problems with texts of Hippocrates. The questions dealt with in this volume continue to agitate us. Queries about the authorship of New Testament documents or some patristic pieces are rats' nests, particularly when we have so little literature written by ancient Christians and too often nearly nothing about them. Some New Testament books are actually anonymous, including the crucial gospels, while most if not all Gnostic gospels claim to be written by an apostle. At times when names are given, we do not know which John, James or Jude. The criteria we apply can be odd although very old. The pastoral epistles were not written by Paul because the vocabulary and themes are so different from the seven authentic letters. Vocabulary lists were used by ancient critics to establish authorship. Dionysius of Alexandria, on the basis of grammar, vocabulary and style, judged the Apocalypse to be the work of some John other than the one who wrote the Gospel and I John. What frustrated ancient critics still frustrates us. If we had the same measly information about Wittengenstein or Heidegger that we have for New Testament authors, and the same tantalizing kinds of apparent cross references, would we be able to tell that their early and late works were written by the same persons? Certainly not on the basis of vocabulary and theme. And if authorial intent is so difficult to discover even for volumes whose authors have good biographies, we may press it too far in many of our interpretations. The interpolation industry, warned about in the Apocalypse, was operating well in the Hellenistic era. Long before that period Herodotus had insisted that Onomacritus "edited the oracles of Musaeus and...

Reviewed by: Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature by Moshe Blidstein Shira L. Lander Moshe Blidstein Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions New York: Oxford University Press, 2017 Pp. 294. $100.00. Most treatments of early Christian notions of purity privilege a spiritualized version of the concept. Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature challenges this over-generalization to demonstrate "that purity was open for negotiation" through methodically analyzing a vast corpus of securely-provenanced second- and third-century Greek, Syriac, and Coptic Christian texts, both canonical and non-canonical (5). Blidstein has written the most comprehensive treatment of Christian attitudes toward purity and defilement to date. Drawing on recent methodologies that understand defilement as "a biological reaction of disgust towards certain actions and substances" (7), the author employs a "heuristic consisting of 'battle' and 'truce'" to explain how early Christian purity discourse functioned (11). The truce perception portrayed purity and impurity as statuses in order to define "the borders of social groups, spaces, and times" (11). The more prevalent battle perception, by contrast, conceived of purity and impurity as competing moral forces, often aligned with other opposing pairs like "holiness and unholiness, saint and demon, righteousness and sin, flesh and spirit, out-group and in-group" (11). After providing a cursory overview of the historical context for purity discourses in the Greco-Roman East and Judaism in Part I, Blidstein devotes each chapter to various ritual practices which are grouped both chronologically and according to their continuity or discontinuity with prevailing Jewish and Greco-Roman concepts. Thus, diet and death constitute "Part II: Breaking with the Past," while baptism, eucharist, and sexual relations form "Part III: Roots of a New Paradigm: The First Two Centuries." "Part IV: New Configurations: Purity, Body, and Community in the Third Century" examines Christian traditions inconsistent with the trajectories delineated in previous chapters, Jewish-Christian communities, and Origen. In Part II, Blidstein argues that early Christian writers construed dietary- and death-related purity regulations as irrelevant, i.e., annulled by Jesus, in order "to differentiate Christian from Jewish" customs. By detaching the practices' ritual elements from their moral dimension, Christian eating customs, and to a lesser [End Page 133] extent burial rites, were constructed "as representing internal purity, powered by human agency and linked to questions of good and evil" (90). This battle perspective emerged as a chief weapon of anti-Jewish polemics. Other examples of the growing battle perspective appear in Part III. Blidstein demonstrates how baptism, construed as forgiveness of sins, "became a major site for addressing . . . the relationship between ritual and moral purity, between external action and the inner disposition" (131). Attitudes toward sexual purity, on the other hand, exhibit both battle and truce perspectives. Entailing both body and soul, sexual impurity extended beyond illicit sexual activity, as understood in both Jewish and Greco-Roman culture, to include "sexual contact as a whole, even inside 'legitimate' marriage . . . toward the de-legitimization of sexuality" (180). Thus, Blidstein concludes that the moral dimension of sexuality constituted a battle perspective, while the physical dimension constituted a truce perspective. Unlike the first two Christian centuries of baptismal and sexual discourse, in eucharistic theology, purity was understood as a prerequisite for participation rather than its result (148). Not until the third century is the eucharist understood as purificatory. Part IV examines baptism, sexual purity, and diet in what Blidstein terms "Jewish-Christian writings": Pseudo-Clementine literature, the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Cologne Mani Codex, and the Protoevangelium of James. This section also contains an extensive discussion of menstrual impurity in the Pseudo-Clementines. As in some rabbinic circles, menstrual impurity and male genital emissions are connected to demons, menstrual blood and emissions are polluting, and washing rituals serve purificatory roles on both the moral and physical levels (190–91, 196). In the Didascalia Apostolorum, by contrast, menstruation does not require purification because the Holy Spirit has entered a woman's body during baptism and driven out her demons once and for all (195). Blidstein concludes that water purification, including baptism, exhibits continuity with Jewish notions of purification due to the broader context of demonology. Blidstein concludes...

Until recently, early Christian artistic representations of Abraham offering Isaac for sacrifice have been understood as symbols of Christ's passion and (simultaneously or alternately) typological references to the Eucharistic offering. This interpretation has been influenced by early Christian writings which understand Isaac to have been a type of Christ and his offering a prefigurement of Jesus' passion. In the past two decades some scholars have challenged that interpretation, particularly with reference to images that were made before the mid-fourth century CE, partly by offering arguments regarding the place of the artistic image in the religion's social matrix, and partly by distinguishing different purposes for images and texts. This paper examines the images themselves and re-opens the question of the artistic presentation of this biblical narrative and its interpretation. The first section of the study presents the most exemplary images, and then examines both early Christian and Jewish literature regarding the sacrifice of Isaac. The last section of the paper critiques various scholars' interpretations of the images' meaning in early Christian times by reflecting on the integration of text and image, as well as the methods and problems of iconographical study. Of particular concern is the question of what characterizes "popular" communication. The paper concludes that, although presented in a different form and possibly more available to a general audience, early Christian artistic representations may be vehicles for the same symbolic and allegorical typologies that are presented in documents from the same time period and geographical region.

One of the tasks of the Messiah is to recover the blindness of human being. Blindness is an important topic in the New Testament. The act of recovering sight to the blind is the act of Messiah fulfilled by Jesus in his ministry. This important task is prophesied in the Old Testament. This prophecy is found in Isaiah 61: 1, 2. The role of Jesus as Messiah is to recover the sight to the blind, to bring justice, and to give people righteousness. Throughout the New Testament mentions the role of Jesus to recover the blindness. The uniqueness of the word ‘blindness’ is that it is mentions together with the word ‘poor.’ Clear message is given to the people in the New Testament that Jesus given the power of the Holy Spirit to do these wonderful things. There is strong connection of the ministry of Jesus to recover the sight to the blind and Sabbath. Keywords: Blindness; Messiah; Ministry; Sabbath References Barker, Kenneth L. ed., NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 1532 Walter Bauer, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick W. Danker, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), BibleWorks. V.7. Beaulieu, Stephane. Isaiah’s Messiah: Adventist Identity for the Last Days. Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 27/1-2 (2016): 3-23), Available from http://archive.atsjats.org/Beaulieu%20BZ.pdf; accessed at 12 August 2019 Betz, Hans Dieter. The Sermon on the Mount: Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis, 1995. Braun, Willi. Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Bruno, Christoper R. “Jesus is Our Jubilee” . . . But How? The OT Background and Lukan Fulfillment of the Ethics of Jubilee. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53/1 81-101, March 2010 Carson. D. A. Ed. the Gospel According to John. Apollos Leicester: England, 1984. Cranfield, C. B. E., the Gospel According to Saint Mark: An Introduction and Commentary. Cambridge University Press: United Kingdom, 2000. Culpepper, R Alan. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design. Fortress: Philadelphia, 1983.discipletree.com%2F05Courses%2FChurchGrowth%2F07Week%2FLuke%25204.16-20.doc), accessed at October 7, 2019 Fowler, James A. A Commentary on the Revelation of John. C.I.Y. Publishing Fallbrook: California, 2013. Fowler, James A. Jesus Confronts Religion: A Commentary on the Four Gospel. Christocentric Commentary Series. California: C.I.Y Publishing, 2006. Gaebelein, Frank E., Ed., Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984. Jordan, Richard. Exegetical Notes on Luke 4:14-21 (Journal Online, available from: http://richardajordan.com/Bible_Study/luke4.pdf), accessed at June 12, 2019 Koech, Joseph. the Spirit Motif in Luke 4:14-30; Acts 1:8. African Journal of Evangelical Theology 27.2 2008. Monshouwer, D. The Reading of the Prophet in the Synagogue at Nazareth. en Bib 72 199. Nichol, Fancis, ed. Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1976-1980. Park, Jim. The Role of the Sabbath/Jubilee in Luke 4:16-18. Journal Online, available from:https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3A%2F%2F Sanders, J. A. From Isaiah 61 to Luke 4, in Christianity, Judaism, and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. J. Neusner. Leiden: Brill, 1975. Siker, Jeffrey S. First to the Gentiles: A literally Analysis of Luke 4:16-30. Journal of Biblical Literature III/1, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045, 1992. Stevanovic, Ranko. Revelation of Jesus Christ: Commentary on the book of Revelation Andrews University Press: Berrien Spring, Michigan, 2002. Steyn, J. & A. Yousaf, Jesus and the Marginalized: Attaching Pastoral Meaning to Luke 4: 14-30. Journal of Acta Theologia, February 2012. Turner, Max. The Work of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts. Journal Online, available from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c5c8/29f9ca024844d73a43aca40a0444d0765f6f.pdf. accessed at September, 13, 2019 Utley, Bob. Study Guide Commentary Series New Testament, Vol. 3. A. Texas: Bible Lessons International, Marshall, 2004. Win, Adam. The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda. Mohr Siebeck, Tubingen: Germany, 2008.

The Evolution of Early Christianity: a Genetic Study of First-Century Christianity in Relation to its Religious Environment, By Shirley Jackson Case, of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, University of Chicago. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1914. Pp. ix, 385.) Get access The Evolution of Early Christianity: a Genetic Study of First-Century Christianity in Relation to its Religious Environment. By Case Shirley Jackson, of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, University of Chicago. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1914. Pp. ix, 385.) Francis A. Christie Francis A. Christie Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 20, Issue 3, April 1915, Pages 616–618, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/20.3.616 Published: 01 April 1915