Peter’s Legacy in Early Christianity. The Appropriation and Use of Peter’s Authority in the First Three Centuries, written by John-Christian Eurell

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Law and Lawlessness in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

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.

Reviewed by: The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts by Ronald Charles Mary Ann Beavis ronald charles, The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts (Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World; London: Routledge, 2020). Pp. xvii + 272. $124. This book sets out to examine a wide range of early Jewish and Christian texts in which enslaved figures are represented and, according to Charles, rendered silent, by their authors, “who had no intrinsic interest in slaves . . . used, abused, and silenced their enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions” (p. 1) The Jewish texts considered all belong to the so-called Pseudepigrapha: Sibylline Oracles, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job, Letter of Aristeas, Jubilees, Joseph and Aseneth, and Wisdom writings that include Ahiqar, 3 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides, and the Sentences of the Syriac Menander. The early Christian writings are both canonical and extra-canonical: 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, the Gospels, Acts, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Acta Perpetuae, Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, and the Acts of Andrew. C. approaches these texts through the lenses of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing [End Page 330] the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), and Subaltern studies, to “uncover small tales constructed around slaves, or better, to consider how particular narratives could be understood differently if the reader pays attention to enslaved persons in their characterizations in the texts” (p. 12). Not surprisingly in a project that covers so much ground, the results are uneven. In my reading, several “small tales” stand out: the slave woman in the Testament of Job who gives her own loaf of bread to Satan, disguised as a stranger, when Job snubs him (7:5). Admittedly, the woman is rebuked for her kind act, but by Satan, hardly a reliable character. C. pays special attention to the slave characters—an unnamed slave girl and Malchus, the male slave of the high priest named in John 18:10—who figure in the scene of the denial of Peter (Mark 14:66–68; Matt 26:69–71; Luke 22:56; John 18:15–26), meticulously detailing the unique features of each narrative. C. highlights both the devalued figure of Rhoda (Acts 12:1–16) and the unnamed fortune-teller of Acts 16:16–18, characters often neglected by interpreters. Although all act/speak truthfully (and, in the case of the slave woman in Testament of Job, righteously), their words are dismissed, like the true words of the women disciples in Luke 24:11. Similarly, the slave Felicitas is sidelined by the freeborn Perpetua in the Passion, and both women are silenced in the Acts. In the Acts of Andrew, the body of the slave woman Euclia is used, abused, and discarded to preserve the chastity of her Christian mistress Maximilla: “The body of the elite woman is protected, while the body of the slave is exploited” (p. 196). Several of C.’s interpretive moves are less compelling. Some of the references to slaves in the pseudepigraphal writings he includes are slight or nonexplicit, as with the figure of Hermon in 3 Maccabees 5, who “is not explicitly called one [a slave] in the text” (p. 47). The observation that “he is an administrative person, who is in danger of being killed because of the king’s caprice” (p. 47), suffices to explain his vulnerability. C. adopts the traditional, but highly contested, hypothesis that Onesimus (Phlm 10) was a runaway slave, although why a fugitive slave would seek refuge by visiting a Roman prisoner is not explained. C. assumes that Epaphroditus (Phil 2:19, 25; 4:18) was a freedman (and thus outside the scope of the study), although he could just as likely have been enslaved or freeborn. To be sure, Eusebius’s construction of Blandina as a Christ figure whose death has cosmic significance (p. 182) subordinates her to a “highly theologized salvation history” (p. 183), but this is no different from his portrayal of other martyrs, enslaved or free. Charles’s study features a conclusion that thoroughly summarizes his analysis, chapter by chapter, seemingly in response to the critiques of...

Reviewed by: Jews and Christians? Second Century ‘Christian’ Perspectives on the ‘Parting of the Ways’ (Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013) by Tobias Nicklas Joshua Ezra Burns Tobias Nicklas Jews and Christians? Second Century ‘Christian’ Perspectives on the ‘Parting of the Ways’ (Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013) Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014 Pp. ix + 233. €29.00. Some years ago, the conventional wisdom that was the “parting of the ways” between Christianity and Judaism was challenged on the grounds that certain self-professed Christians and Jews appear to have maintained close contact with one another for centuries after the supposed date of their separation. This trend arguably reached its fullest expression in Daniel Boyarin’s 2004 study Border Lines, in which he argued that the convergence of early Jewish and Christian thought exemplifies a hybrid a “Judeo-Christianity” free of the orthodox strictures set upon its constituent traditions following the Christianization of Rome. In the volume presently under review, Tobias Nicklas responds to that argument by returning the focus of the unsettled conversation to the abundant record of evidence indicating that many Christian authors of the second century were convinced that being a Christian meant, among other things, not being a Jew. Consequently, he contends, that position bore considerable influence upon the direction of the Church from a fairly early stage in its development. Following an introduction addressing the aforementioned critical reevaluation, Nicklas proceeds to account how early Christian authors utilized images of the Jew in their efforts to articulate their definitions of Christianity. Although the resulting characterization of the Jew as a negative antitype to the Christian did not necessarily reflect reality, it served to create a rhetorical distance between Christian and Jew no less meaningful to the subsequent history of their encounter. The second chapter delves into early Christian concepts of covenant and their attendant expressions of difference between the new Israel supposedly embodied in the Church and the old, ethnically delimited Israel that preceded it. Nicklas acknowledges that the need to account for existing Jewish ideas yielded Christian arguments variously at odds and in agreement with Judaism. But that, he maintains, is only to be expected given the lineage of the Christian enterprise. Similar insights arise in the third chapter, which Nicklas devotes to early Christian modes of exegesis. Again noting continuities and discontinuities with earlier Jewish approaches to scriptural interpretation, he assesses their Christian adaptations through the lens of the “Christ-event” (119), the moment of prophetic fulfillment when early followers of Jesus perceived the religious system inscribed upon the Jewish Scriptures to have been transformed into the new system of Christianity. Whether that transformation demanded an outright rejection of the old system or merely its adaptation elicited a debate ultimately won in favor of maintaining the Jewish Scriptures as the Christian Old Testament. Nicklas gives the fourth and final chapter to the reception of the Jewish law among early Christian communities alternatively opposed and given to its practice. He thereby recognizes that Christianity’s rejection of Judaism did not elicit a uniform response among its adherents with respect to the practical ramifications of that decision. Nicklas concludes his treatment with a summary statement affirming that the categories of Christian and Jew are not quite as clearly inscribed upon the [End Page 491] early Christian record as certain of its authors presumed to believe. Questioning, therefore, the validity of casting Christianity and Judaism as discrete religious systems in that era, he advises caution when parsing the appearance of such terms in the literature in question. In other words, although Nicklas maintains the reader’s prerogative to speak of “Christians” and “Jews” in the context of the second century, he acknowledges the methodological liabilities of accepting those distinctions at face value. The process whereby those terms took on their contemporary meanings, he therefore affirms, was more complicated than a bilateral split between two parties. But it was a process already well underway during the period under consideration. If Boyarin et al. succeeded in highlighting the subtle means by which Judaism and Christianity remained deeply enmeshed with one another following the age of the apostles, I would say that Nicklas succeeds in highlighting the more obvious means by which they grew...

The world of early Egyptian Christianity. Language, literature, and social context. Essays in honour of David W. Johnson. Edited by James E. Goehring and Janet A. Timbie. (CUA Studies in Early Christianity.) Pp. xix+226. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. $39.95. 10 0 8132 1480 1; 10 0 8132 1480 7 - Volume 59 Issue 3

New Vistas on Early Judaism and Christianity: From Enoch to Montréal and Back

Reviewed by: Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity by John David Penniman R. Alan Streett john david penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (Synkrisis; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Pp. xvii + 328. $85. Raised on Christian Milk is a revision of Penniman's doctoral dissertation (Fordham University, 2015, supervised by Benjamin Dunning) and, as such, is aimed at a scholarly audience. Comprising an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, the book examines how early Christians received, interpreted, and appropriated the apostle Paul's admonition in 1 Cor 3:1-3, particularly his words, "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food" (NRSV). Penniman limits his conversation partners to Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine of Hippo. His interaction with each is full and rich, if not exhaustive. The introduction lays the foundation of the book. Starting with Feuerbach's dictum "Man is what he eats" (p. 1), P. explores how eating well is the basis for human formation and group identity. For instance, eating kosher/clean foods was an identity marker of God's people. Likewise, in the Roman Empire, what one ate and where one sat at a formal meal (deipnon) determined one's status. Hence, humans become what they eat. By using the language of food, the apostle Paul likewise draws a relationship between nourishment and identity formation. But for Paul "food" is more than a mere metaphor; it is a symbol of reality (p. 19). He believes church members feed on actual food, albeit spiritual in nature. To use Tertullian's description of Emperor Severus's son Caracalla: he was "raised on Christian milk" (p. 9). In chap. 1, P. examines the complex history of food within the ancient and early Greco-Roman context, interacting primarily with Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Since human consumption takes place in a cultural setting, both biology and sociology play a significant role in human development. In the Roman imperial era, breast milk was considered a crucial part of locating one's place in the Roman Imperium (p. 50). The breast from which one ate—elite, slave, citizen, poor—determined one's status. A mother's breast and her milk were deemed the source and means of a child's initial nourishment and potential development—physical, sociological, intellectual, and psychological. Chapter 2 finds P. in conversation with his interlocutors in order to gain insight into how early Jewish and Christian communities viewed spiritual food as a source of strength. He moves from Philo, a hellenized Jew, whose life spanned the late Republic and early empire to the apostle Paul, the Pharisee turned Christ-follower, who spoke of milk as a dynamic symbol of spiritual immaturity. But P. is not concerned with the meaning of Paul's words in the text, as much as he is with how they were received by the early church. In chap. 3, P. interacts with Irenaeus and Clement. The former used breast-feeding as symbolic of spiritual nourishment for believers while living in the world. The milk of the Word sustained them in their journey through life. Clement, on the other hand, believed a child born into the world grew into manhood through acts of disobedience and had to be born again, that is, to revert to infancy and innocence. Then the newborn Christian looked to the milk of the Word to sustain him throughout his Christian life (p. 94). Clement also saw spiritual "breast-feeding" as a means of combating Gnosticism. [End Page 140] In chap. 4, the reader discovers that Origen divided Christian food into three categories—milk, vegetables, and meat—representing three stages of maturity. These tiers were fixed, and believers within each category remained there. Origen designed curriculum to support those within each respective group. Hence, food was apportioned to the capacity of the soul. For Origen, breast-feeding was nourishment for infants only, a stark contrast with Irenaeus and Clement. In chap. 5, P. discusses Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on Saint Basil, which he used to show that...

Reviewed by: Cynics and Christian Origins Richard I. Pervo F. Gerald Downing . Cynics and Christian Origins. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992. Pp. ix + 377. This serves as a synthesis and extension of Gerald Downing's decade of labor on the relevance of ancient Cynicism to early Christianity. Renewed interest in Cynicism has emerged in the course of attention to the historical Jesus and the related investigation of "Q," no longer viewed as a hypothetical synoptic sayings source but as a hypothetical "gospel," the limits, structure, genre, history, and meaning of which deserve analysis. The underlying historical issue is the basic preference of the emergent catholic church for an ethos more like Paul's than that of Jesus. The nineteenth-century liberal quest for the historical Jesus produced many romantic understandings of his ethics. Church historians are aware that such movements are by no means limited to the past one hundred years but represent a recurrent [End Page 62] phenomenon. Specifically, historians of early Christianity are aware that antisocial, ascetic, world-denying manifestations of the faith survived in marginal or heretical groups and became more or less regularized within monasticism. Downing's object is to elucidate this phenomenon within its social and intellectual context. Cynicism supplies the most likely context—and a bag full of problems. Although the movement was of great duration, it lacked formal organizations, like the Academy, generally disdained "schools" of even the ancient sort, and had no formal dogmatics. Furthermore, it had two major wings, a "harsh" kind of tradition that nearly everyone reviled, and a "gentle" embodiment from which nearly everyone cribbed. Finally, one may ask, how does Cynicism fit into rural, first-century Galilee? M.-O.Goulet-Cazé has clarified the problem of description (ANRW II 36.4, 2720-2823). While scholars have been challenging such oppositions as "Hellenistic" and "Jewish," archaeologists have been revealing a Galilee deeply immersed in an urban network. Granting these advances, Downing must still face the problems of identifying and evaluating "influences" and "parallels." Even those inclined to dispute his conclusions must admit that he is quite explicit about his methods and the texts he selects, that his research comprehends a full range of primary and secondary works, that he dodges no problems, and that he recognizes the difficulties. The conclusion is that "from very early days Christianity looked like a variant of a popular . . . Cynicism, and that this Cynic strand went on being obvious and entirely acceptable to informed Christian writers in the early centuries . . ." (p. 302). One must read the book to appreciate the strength of his case. Downing's repeated emphasis upon the lack of embarrassment relates to his program for contemporary church and society. His focus upon how others might see at least some early Christians is historically apposite. Much criticism of early Christianity's effort to inculcate virtue in men and women of every status, as well as its exhibitionism and disrespect for social convention and structure, closely resembles what critics had to say about at least some Cynics. The two most formidable obstacles to this comparison are religion and dogma, both of which aroused considerable Cynic ire. Much of the prophetic element of emergent Christianity, as well as the missions of John the Baptizer and others, is quite congenial to a Cynic perspective and model. Eschatology, specifically apocalyptic eschatology, is not. (At this point I should note that some students of the Jesus tradition, such as J. D. Crossan, regard the historical Jesus as anti-apocalyptic, but do accept the Cynic strains.) Downing's solution to the question of eschatology is not very convincing. On religion in general he can show that both Cynics and Christians were contemptuous of conventional religion, but the root problem is more basic: prior to c. 250 there was little in the Greco-Roman world that would conform to our understanding of a religion. Comparison with philosophy was normal in descriptions of Judaism and early Christianity. Lucian mocks miracle and exorcism (e.g., Philopseudes) without mentioning Christians. When he does use the term, it is in conjunction with Epicureans (Alexander the False Prophet) and, of course, in his story of the Cynic Peregrinus. In terms of ancient models, Downing...

Reviewed by: The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown Dennis Trout The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity Peter Brown Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xix + 262. ISBN 978–0-674–96758–8 [End Page 442] The Ransom of the Soul is an inquiry into why “certain notions of the Christian afterlife” developed as they did from the third to the seventh century. Why did it happen that early Christian visions of a leisurely anticipated “Big Future of the Resurrection” became late antiquity’s “finely differentiated story of the journey of innumerable souls” through a “twilight zone” of dread and danger (8–17)? From Tertullian to Julian of Toledo, Peter Brown contends, against the backdrop of a changing society, western Christianity’s maps of the future devoted ever more space to a “grey zone” of disembodied souls waiting final assignment. By the later fourth century, with persecution left behind and the church on its way “to swallowing Roman society whole,” the questions of “average Christians” (54–5) had become searchlights sweeping that liminal expanse: how could the living refresh the dead? How might the special dead be incited to intercede for the living? Of what use in this respect were almsgiving and prayer? How might wealth be commuted to treasure in heaven or deployed to purchase smooth passage through that “strange world beyond the grave” (59)? By the time Julian penned his Prognosticon (a “futurology of the Christian soul”)—and late ancient Christianity’s embrace of wealth, sin, and penance had progressed to its limits—the spirits of the dead might be envisioned as “stragglers” in a marathon, strung out, dogged by demons, uncertain of finishing (15). The Ransom of the Soul, which takes off from a series of lectures in 2012, thrives on such metaphors, just as Brown’s ancient interlocutors stretched language to imagine the soul’s journey to that far celestial shore. After an introduction and first chapter (“Memory of the Dead in Early Christianity”), two chapters interrogate Augustine. On matters of the afterlife, Brown reminds us, Augustine was “sternly minimalist” (63). Peppered with questions about the soul’s future, this Augustine seems uncharacteristically “myopic” (64). Could the dead truly appear to the living, as they seemed to do? Might not the soul be sheathed in some “ethereal” body able to infiltrate dreams? Would burial near a martyr benefit the soul of the deceased? Augustine famously discouraged speculation, denied legitimacy to visions, dampened confidence in the human capacity to see beyond death, and stripped burial ad sanctos of all utility except the possibility that prominent burial might inspire more frequent mention in prayer. Yet, not Augustine’s sobering replies but the anxieties revealed by his overflowing in-box take center stage here. For, Brown stresses, Augustine took his stance in a North Africa confident in the validity of visionary visitations and against the judgment of an Italian aristocracy whose mausolea crowded in on the martyrs’ tombs. It is also a sign of the times, however, that Augustine softened his position, finally extending his belief that modest daily alms to the poor could offset the “humdrum sins of daily life” (101) to include money’s ability to ransom even the souls of the dead. Here was “a doctrine for the long haul” (104)—a preacher’s response to Pelagian ideas of perfectibility and radical renunciation that had accompanied the flow of millionaire refugees to Africa after 410. Sin and its remediation are familiar Augustinian themes, of course, but on this topic, Brown avers, we glimpse Augustine “from an unusual angle” (106): prepared to allow alms an ameliorating affect on average souls stranded in that “twilight zone, between human time and eternity” [End Page 443] (108). Although Augustine’s ill-defined “purging fire” would eventually assume an imaginative force he could not have foreseen, in the moment it is the clamor of Augustine’s “innumerable Christian questioners” (114) that indexes the anxieties rippling through a church now comprised of so many “average” Christian sinners. Despite his concessions, Augustine kept grim visions of the soul’s fate at arms length. It was in Gaul...

Autor raspravlja o fenomenu ranokršćanskih i srednjovjekovnih trikonhosa na istočnoj obali Jadrana, pretežno u Dalmaciji. Prema formi, funkciji i vremenu nastanka razvrstava ih u pet skupina. Prvu tvore relativno rane, malene cellae trichorae koje prvotno bijahu funerarne memorije na privatnome posjedu. Nastale su, čini se, pretežno do sredine 5. stoljeća. Drugu tvore nešto složeniji triconchosi koji za razliku od prethodnih cela imaju ispred svetišta dugi naos. Nalaze se na području antičke Dalmacije po čemu ih autor i naziva dalmatinskim trikonhosima. Oni sadržajem i množinom predstavljaju problemsko težište članka koji je po njima i naslovljen. Nastali su uglavnom poslije sredine 5. ili početkom 6. stoljeća. Treću skupinu tvore oni primjeri iz prve i druge grupe koji su od prvotne memorije naknadno postali trikonhosi kao kompleksne bazilike. Poput ostalih tipova prvotnih memorija koje su naknadno preuređene u kongregacijske crkve i oni su prepravljeni uglavnom poslije sredine 6. stoljeća. Četvrtu skupinu tvore predromanički trikonhosi, morfološki vrlo zanimljiva skupina centralnih građevina, ali i dviju longitudinalnih, koje su nastale pretežno tijekom 9. stoljeća, međutim s primjerima već u 8. stoljeću (rotonda Sv. Trojstva u Zadru), te još u 10. stoljeću (rotonda u Ošlju). Konačno, petu skupinu tvore romanički trolisti nastali pretežno u 12. stoljeću.

Biblical scholars have come to appreciate that social memory theory can inform historians about the development of the early Christian movement. This contribution is recognized in Memory and Memories in Early Christianity, which consists of papers delivered at a 2016 conference on memory in early Christianity held at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne. The authors employ the concepts of theorists, such as Jan Assman, to hypothesize how cultural memories were created for and utilized by early Christians.The book is divided into four sections. In the first, “Memory Studies and Nascent Christianity,” Sandra Huebenthal’s essay “‘Frozen Moments’: Early Christianity through the Lens of Social Memory Theory,” discusses how the “collective memory” of the first Christian community became ossified over time into a “cultural memory” of the later church. In “Remembering and Writing: Their Substantial Differences,” Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce describe writing as a creative act. They argue that scholars, such as Bauckham, who appeal to the influence of “eyewitnesses,” misunderstand the “nature of a written text” (p. 48), which itself creates new memory. These insights are further supported by Jens Schröter in “Memory and Memories in Early Christianity: The Remembered Jesus as a Test Case.” Schröter appeals to Assman’s definition of historical memory as being a reconstruction of a remembered past rather than of the actual past (p. 85). Thus, the Gospel tradition is the record less of the acts of the historical Jesus than it is of the church’s memory about the importance of Jesus. The two are not identical.The second section, “Memory, Authority and Modalities,” begins with an essay by Simon Butticaz, “The Transformation of ‘Collective Memory’ in Early Christianity as Reflected in the Letters of Paul.” Butticaz asserts that Paul’s letters are not only artifacts of apostolic memory but, in the deutero-Pauline tradition, the apostle himself becomes the guarantor of apostolic tradition. Judith Lieu, in “Letters and the Construction of Early Christian Memory,” observes how letters as well as the Gospel traditions provided a useful means for preservation of Christian memory. Finally, Christoph Markschies, in “Erinnerungen bei Irenaeus an Figuren des apostolischen und nachapostolischen Zeitalters,” proposes that Irenaeus developed the concept of apostolic heritage in order to combat the counter-memory of his “heretical” opponents.The third section, “Memory, Identity and the Construction of Origins,” opens with Daniel Marguerat’s “De Jésus á Paul: L’invention du christianisme dans les Actes des apôtres,” which hypothesizes that Luke, rather than recording the details of the church’s beginning, built an ideal memory of Christian origins in Acts. Likewise, Claudio Zamagni, in “Reinventing Christian Origins,” analyzes selected postapostolic texts to conclude that second-century writers created a memory of church hierarchy to support the legitimacy of the emerging “orthodox” church against more egalitarian “heretical” movements. A contrary memory was created by Marcion to support his own program, as Enrico Norelli observes in “La Construction polémique des origens chrétienes par Marcion.” The discussion of Christian memory’s development in the postapostolic period is concluded with Cecilia Antonelli’s analysis of how Eusebius likely altered Hegesippius’s explanation of the Galilean and Judaean origins of the Palestinian church in “La construction de la mémorie des ‘origens’ par Hégésippe chez Eusèbe.”The fourth section, “Early Christianity, Memory, and Theology,” begins with Jörg Frey’s “The Gospel of John as a Narrative Memory of Jesus,” which contends that the purpose of John’s Gospel was to create a new memory of Jesus rather than reproduce reliable, nonsynoptic tradition. Andreas Dettwiler’s “Erinnerung und Identität” proposes that Colossians and Ephesians represent theological memory that transforms Paul’s theology and leads it in new directions. Finally, Jean Zumstein’s “La memoire créatrice des premiers chrétiens” examines the nature of early Christian memory, noting that it established a link not only with the past but with the future as well. This observation leads to the consideration of how today’s church also transmits Christian memory.The essays in Memory and Memories in Early Christianity provide insight into how biblical scholars employ social memory theory. In particular, the reader discovers that early Christian memories were more communal than individual. Bauckham’s appeal to apostolic memories as guarantors of reliable traditions is not supported. Furthermore, memory formation continued into the second century and beyond, when “social memories” were created that were useful for specific constituencies. In the process, later constructs, particularly of church order, were imposed upon earlier generations. One wonders, however, if the essays also display a bias of Continental scholarship that favors the creative role of the early church over its devotion to preserving tradition, as reflected in 1 Cor 7:10–16.

The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place Early Judaism and Christianity, by Huub van de Sandt and David Flussser. CRINT sect. 3: Jewish Traditions Early Christian Literature 5. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. Pp. 431. $58.00 (cloth). In this book, the Didache is examined and found to be nexus between Judaism, Jewish-Christianity, and Gentile-Christianity. It is mapped to late-first-century Syria a network of villages and small towns . . . rural Christian congregation some Greek speaking part of [Western] Syria or, possibly, the borderland between Syria and Palestine at the close of the first century, [p. 52]). It contains substantial Instruction on the Two Ways (Did. 1-6), as well as Instruction on Baptism-Fasting/Praying-Eucharist (Did. 7-10), Instruction on Teachers-Apostles-Prophets (Did. 11-15), and brief End Times Prediction (Did. 16). The burden of the authors is to show that no part of any of these Instructions is without genesis Jewish traditions of some kind, be they scriptural, rabbinic, those documented from Qumran (sometimes Essene), or apocalyptic. A chief exception to this is Did. 9.4, 10.5, where the authors detect Gentile preference for envisioning gathering of the church instead of gathering of Israel; this is taken to be indicative of how the Didache community had grown more Gentile than Jewish members' families of origin. Even Did. 7.3 (baptism the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) has roots Jewish traditions. First, there is the rabbinic idiom in the name of (bsm; e.g. m. Avot 6:6) used to identify from whom teachings originate. Second, the twelfth-century rabbinic texts Sefer Hamanhig and Sefer Hasidim document possible ancient traditions of tripartite immersions. Put it all together and you might get three water actions, each accompanied by bsm. The latter is not the best example the book of this type of work and the authors admit an argument hinging on two twelfth-century texts is weak. Yet the authors rarely have to stretch to such lengths to find plausible Jewish for elements the Didache. Just the opposite is the case. The book is marvel of close reading of chronologically relevant texts, from the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs to various rabbinic texts to IQS to the Epistle of Barnabas to the Doctrina Apostolorum. Especially an examination of the Two Ways, early Christian testimony to the persistence and integrity of this tradition is brought out clearly and detail. The testimonies of Athanasius's Festal Letter and of Ps.-Didymus are taken to show how the Two Ways was fixed its use pre-baptismal catechism, or exactly the way which the authors suggest the Two Ways first functioned (as represented the Didache). So we find this book remarkable breadth of scope, ranging from numerous Jewish documentary precedents to long history of early Christian testimony. Examination of the Two Ways is fact the largest portion of the book, and its mention the book's title of sources is no misdirection to the reader. The manuscript for our Didache today are reviewed (Manuscript of Jerusalem H, POxy 1782, Coptic fragment, the Ethiopic Canones Ecclesiastici, and indirectly the Apostolic Constitutions). Questions about traditional within the documents arise when examination is made of the Two Ways material the Epistle of Barnabas 18-20 and the Doctrina Apostolorum (varying manuscript traditions are included). How are these texts related to the Didache? Can time line be established between them? Did one serve as source to another? A turn to source analysis is absolutely primary the authors' method. Admission is made that, the Hellenistic world, traditions of Two Ways (especially the Herakles story) were common and fluid. These were not the source for the Jewish-Christian Two Ways. Rather, besides some general scriptural models (life/death, blessing/cursing), more specific are identified Sir 33:11 (in different paths He has them walk), T. …

The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings provides the definitive anthology of early Christian texts, from ca. 100 CE to ca. 650 CE. Its volumes reflect the cultural, intellectual, and linguistic diversity of early Christianity, and are organized thematically on the topics of God, Practice, Christ, and Community. 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 fifth and final volume focuses on the theme of community within early Christian writings-how Christians joined the community, how they managed the community, how they conceptualized the community, and how they policed the community. It will be an invaluable resource for students and academic researchers in early Christian studies, history of Christianity, theology and religious studies, and late antique Roman history.

The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts analyzes a large corpus of early Christian texts and Pseudepigraphic materials to understand how the authors of these texts used, abused and silenced enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions. The focus is on excavating the texts "from below" or "against the grain" in order to notice the slaves, and in so doing, to problematize and (re)imagine the narratives. Noticing the slaves as literary iterations means paying attention to broader theological, ideological, and rhetorical aims of the texts within which enslaved bodies are constructed. The analysis demonstrates that by silencing slaves and using a rhetoric of violence, the authors of these texts contributed to the construction of myths in which slaves functioned as a useful trope to support the combined power of religion and empire. Thus was created not only the perfect template for the rise and development of a Christian discourse of slavery, but also a rationale for subsequent violence exercised against slave bodies within the Christian Empire. The study demonstrates the value of using the tools and applying the insights of subaltern studies to the study of the Pseudepigrapha and in early Christian texts. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars of early Christianity, but also to those working on the history of slavery and subaltern studies in antiquity.