Early Christian Tradition Research Articles

An Earlier terminus ante quem for the Epistle of James? The Influence of James on Clement of Alexandria’s Transmission of 1 Clement 17

Abstract: The current terminus ante quem for the Epistle of James is the third century, with the first clear quotations of the epistle located in Origen. Aside from a few contentious correspondences with the Apostolic Fathers, no earlier allusions to James have received any serious consideration. I argue that an earlier reference should in fact be detected in Origen’s predecessor, Clement of Alexandria. In book 4 of his Stromata , the Alexandrian quotes from 1 Clement 17, a text that presents the figure of Job as an exemplum of humility. Clement significantly alters his source text in such a way that seems to betray knowledge of James, producing a synthesis of Joban tradition in early Christianity. If this claim is substantiated, it would effectively push the terminus ante quem for James back by one generation, to the late second century c.e.

Концепция души христианских учителей Ранней Церкви

The article is devoted to the teachings about the soul, which were developed in the early Christian tradition before the 4th century. There is no shortage of research on this topic, how-ever, in this article, firstly, no attempt is made to develop a uni-versal patristic teaching, but, on the contrary, an overview of the entire variety of ideas that were formed in the Early Church is give; secondly, the observation is made that the opinion ac-cepted among scientists about the unconditional adherence of Christian authors to one or the other philosophical schools are not supported by the sources. Christian writers argue with their contemporary philosophy, and at the same time rely more on the authority of St. Scriptures and the church tradition, creative-ly reworking the philosophical heritage. Christians use only the general idea of the soul, which was developed by the Greek philosophical schools. Idealistic teaching was spread among the Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora. Christian church teachers used both the «Platonic» immaterial concept of the soul, as well as the «Aristotelian» materialistic one. The author of the article concludes that the choice in favor of one or another model de-pended more on regional specifics. In those provinces of the West and East where the degree of Hellenization was higher, there is a greater attraction to Platonic idealism. On the contra-ry, in Roman North Africa, where Hellenistic culture did not spread, and as the local population as a whole tended to reli-gious literalism and materialism, typical for Punic culture, the materialistic doctrine of the soul also spread. Since it is in Ro-man Africa that Latin Christianity was born, it is in it that Christian materialism would develop. It is precisely caused by cultural specifics of the Mediterranean regions, and not by the difference in Greek and Latin languages, that is usually esti-mated as a core factor of the split between teachings of the soul in the Eastern and Western Christian thought.

The Souring of the Ways: Anti-Jewish Readings of Psalm 69 and the Wine Offerings to Jesus

Abstract This essay traces one particular way that the passion tradition of mixed/sour wine offered to Jesus developed in extracanonical gospels, broader New Testament Apocrypha, Tatian’s Diatessaron, and other early Christian writings. Notably, the divergent details of these offerings in the passion narratives of the four canonical gospels were often simplified out of a growing awareness of an allusion to Ps 69:22 (68:22 LXX) with its reference to gall and sour wine. The early Christian tradition comes to be stabilized as a single offering of sour wine and gall, even though that pairing does not appear in the canonical gospels. Further evidence that early Christians used Ps 69 to simplify the various traditions is seen from the way they also drew upon the imprecations from the broader context of the psalm for polemical leverage against the Jews. This hermeneutical and apologetic trajectory developed despite the fact that (a) the gospels show varying degrees of awareness of the psalm in their respective passion accounts, and (b) the gospels do not indict anyone making the offer, except for Luke (implicitly), when the Roman soldiers do so mockingly.

Pneumatological Self-Confidence, Scriptural Interpretation, and the Making of Scripture in the Letter to the Hebrews

Abstract The Letter to the Hebrews has long been overlooked in discussions regarding New Testament pneumatology or even considered ‘inferior’ compared to other New Testament traditions. However, this is a mistake, as the unknown author of this letter demonstrates a remarkable awareness of pneumatology, which plays a key role in the transmission of early Christian traditions and significantly shapes the formation of the New Testament canon. Hebrews presupposes the presence of the Spirit and explicitly associates it with the revelation of God throughout history. Furthermore, the author identifies his own theological and literary work with the Spirit’s function of actualizing scripture, granting him a remarkable position among New Testament and early Christian authors.

Ritual as a Sign and Means of Identity

The paper aims to show how it is possible to associate the conceptof identity with “ancestral customs” and “cultural memory”. Withthat purpose the author tries to outline a particular version of collectiveremembering grounded in the use of ritual resources. Withthat end in view, the special literature together with the field ethnographicdata collected by the author during the years 1976-89throughout Georgia had been used in the paper. Purposely, the ritualprocess associated with the early-Christian tradition had beendescribed not as a stereotyped activity, but as related events locatedwithin Georgian history. It has also been shown that the mentionedcustom bore the function of the ethnic and culturalidentification, as foreigners and aliens infiltrated from other countrieswho performed the custom, in that way were adopted and integratedinto the Georgian Christian culture. An emphasize hasbeen made on the importance of the performance of the ritualwhich became so inseparable and immanent among the inhabitantsof Georgia, that in spite of the confessional turbulences of thelater periods, it persisted in the environment of a new faith. Themain task of the paper was organized around the question:whether it is possible to experience the feeling of identity andwholeness within the Georgian culture throughout the centuriesby means of performing an established ancestral ritual. The analysisof the ethnographic data provided the author with clues to theidentity, culture and self-understanding of an age-old Georgian society.

Praesentia carnalis Christi. Incarnation Terminology in the Anti-heretical Polemic of Philastrius of Brescia

The terminology found in one of the oldest Latin catalogs of heresies, Diversarum hereseon liber, written by Philastrius, bishop of Brescia (330-387/388), was adapted to the needs of anti-heretical polemics, and at the same time reflected the way of talking about Christ’s earthly mission, characteristic of the Latin patristic literature of the second half of the 4th century. A detailed philological and theological analysis of Philastrius’s treatise led to the following conclusions: (1) The terminology used by the author was rooted in the early Christian tradition (caro, corpus, incarnatio, incorporatio), but also original through the use of his own formula praesentia carnalis; (2) The vocabulary used in the catalog was strictly dependent on the subject of the doctrinal dispute. In polemics with docetistic heresies, Philastrius used the term caro more often than corpus, describing the body and, indirectly, the entire human nature of Christ. In the discussion with heresies that did not directly address the subject of the body of Christ, and also when presenting the orthodox teaching of the Church on the Incarnation of the Son of God, he used the term incorporatio more often than incarnatio; (3) The favorite phrase used by the Bishop of Brescia to describe the Incarnation was praesentia carnalis Christi. With it, Philastrius emphasized several important aspects of the theology of the Incarnation: the real corporeality of the person of Christ; the presence of the Son of God among people and its salvific purpose; a long process of revealing God to man, related to the Old Testament prophecies, the fulfillment of which was the coming of the Savior to earth.

Miniature as Pictorial Interpretation of the Text in the Context of Medievil Culture Development

The purpose of the article is to consider the miniature as a pictorial interpretation of the text, as one of the elements of «entertainment» in the context of the development of medieval culture. The research methodology. An analytical method is used to collect theoretical material about the miniatures of the Mirovingian period (V–VII centuries), on the example of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum and Gellon Sacramentarium; the miniatures from the times of the Carolingian revival of the VIII-IX centuries, («Gospel of Godescalk», «Gospel of Ada», «Gospel from the monastery of St. Medard in Soissons»). A historical and cultural method is applied to analyse the role of the miniature in the socio-cultural life of Medieval Europe as one of the elements of ceremonial and ritual «entertainment». An art historical method that involves a detailed examination and description of a medieval book miniature, and a theoretical method are used to summarise the findings. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time the miniatures are considered as a pictorial interpretation of the text in the context of the development of the medieval culture, as a sensual form of knowledge of an ideal model, and one of the elements of the personification of ritualistic "entertainment" in the socio-cultural life of this historical period. Conclusions. The article examines the miniature as a visual interpretation of the text in the context of the development of the culture of the Middle Ages. It has been proven that since ancient times the miniature, on the example of the "Ambrosian Iliad", was the personification of ceremonial and ritual, and partly artistic "entertainment", which made it possible to outline the miniature as a pictorial component of this phenomenon, as well as a pictorial interpretation of the handwritten text which reflects the most current events of this historical era. The brightest examples of the miniatures in the early Christian tradition of Western Europe, which are presented in the Merovingian manuscripts of the V-VIII centuries, are considered using the example of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum and Gellon Sacramentarium. Graphic miniature decoration becomes not just a pictorial interpretation of the text, but turns into an element of worship. There are many images of birds, fish, animals, and plant ornaments, the emphasis is on red, yellow, and green. Great attention is paid to the decorative design of the capital letters of the sections, they become special symbolic signs that are even attributed with magical meaning. The miniature begins to act as a sensual form of knowledge of the ideal model, which is available to the chosen ones. This tradition continues on the example of Carolingian manuscripts, the miniatures «Source of Life» («Gospel of Godescalcus»), «Adoration of the Lamb» and «Source of Life» («Gospel from the Monastery of St. Medard in Soissons») are symbolic, personifying the theocentric worldview, that the Gospel is the source of eternal life.
 Key words: miniature, culture of the Middle Ages, «entertainment», «Ambrosian Iliad», Carolingian manuscripts, Merovingian manuscripts, ornament.

God, Religion, and War: Language, Concept, and the Problem of Definition from Genesis to Jihad to Levinas

Using a discussion of the etymology of re-lig-io as a starting point, this essay begins by considering the problem of religion—of understanding God, and of language as an instrument for achieving the ends of religion and that understanding—and the problem for religion of revelation and interpretation. It follows to the consequences of this double complication for understanding “war” in the biblical and early Christian traditions. The essay leads, then, to a tri-valent discussion of “jihad”, and from this jihad centerpiece toward further versions of these complications as they apply to mysticism, medieval Jewish thought and thence toward and into modernity, from Spinoza to Levinas.

“When You Give Alms, Do Not Let Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand Is Doing”: Alms and Salvation in the Early Christian Tradition

The article is devoted to the analysis of ideas about charity in early Christianity, Judaism and in the Greco-Roman pagan tradition. The focus is on the formation of the doctrine of “correct” alms in the New Testament texts, “Didache”, in Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, in the “Shepherd” of Hermas, in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. These authors discussed questions about who and how to help, and what kind of reward awaits benefactors. At this time (1st — 2nd centuries), two discussions were going on in parallel in early Christian literature: about martyrdom “according to Christ” and about “correct” alms, and comparison of these discussions gives interesting results.

Holy Spirit Mother, the Baptismal Womb, and the Walesby Tank: Excavating Early Christian Women Baptizers

Writers starting with Tertullian and the author behind the Didascalia Apostolorum attest to the presence of early Christian women baptizers, as do a variety of later writers. The early Christian tradition of Holy Spirit as female and mother, her womb the font of new birth (Jn 3.3-5), helps illuminate why women may have been seen as the midwives, or ministers, of this birthing ritual. Likewise, the identification of the font as a womb adds to Jocelyn Toynbee’s 1964 proposal that a scene on the Walesby Tank, a fourth-century Romano-British baptismal font, portrayed two clothed women assisting a nude female neophyte at her baptism.

The Chapel of St. Casimir in Vilnius – A Counter-Reformation Landmark

Summary The present study takes issue with the accepted view (cf. Vikipedija) that the Chapel of St. Casimir in the Cathedral of Vilnius (1623–1636) resembles the Pauline and the Sistine Chapels in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. A closer look and comparison of the dimensions, geometry, materials, and internal décor, however, reveals significant differences. The defining architectural features of the Chapel of St. Casimir do not derive from these Baroque chapels but from multiple Biblical and Early Christian sources. (This study focused on the Chapel’s interior features that survived the 1655–1661 occupation of Vilnius.) Its cubic core recalls the twenty-cubit amplitude of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The black marble walls (noir de Namur) allude to the blackening acacia wood of the Ark of the Covenant holding the Ten Commandment stone tablets that Moses received from the Lord on Mt. Sinai. The ox-blood colored pilasters (vieux rouge de Rance) recall the porphyry columns of the Aedicule that sheltered the Tomb of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem. The Chapel’s reduced Greek cross plan derives from Vitruvius and recalls Early Christian mausoleums. The Ionic column capitals in the Chapel duplicate the ones in the entrance portals of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and in the Confessio above the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle in the Roman necropolis underneath the Basilica. The Council of Trent upheld Early Christian customs, precedents, and traditions. Materializing the Council’s values, the Chapel became a landmark of the Counter-Reformation. The study at hand relied heavily on the indispensable archival documents gleaned by Povilas Reklaitis, Paulius Rabikauskas, SJ, Zenonas Ivinskis, Mintautas Čiurinskas, Birutė Rūta Vitkauskienė, and Piotr Jacek Jamski.

New Light on Jewish Tradition in Early Christianity

New Light on Jewish Tradition in Early Christianity

“Taken Up in Glory”: Early Christian Traditions of the Ascension in Light of 1 Timothy 3:16

I revive a chronological approach to the hymn in 1 Timothy 3:16, a reading which has frequently been dismissed on the basis of the alleged misplacement of the ascension after the Gentile missionary movement. Behind the rejection of a chronological reading has been the normativity of the narrative of Luke- Acts—or at least a conventional reading of it. This study argues that the peculiar chronology of the hymn arose from attempts to harmonise the multiple ascension reports in Luke 24 and Acts 1 along with the tradition reported by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Lying behind the hymn is an interpretation of Luke- Acts as implying multiple and ongoing post-resurrection appearances and ascensions which culminate in a final ascension after the appearance to Paul, which occurs in the narrative of Luke-Acts just after the Christian proclamation expands to Gentiles through the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch.

Początki koncepcji natchnienia biblijnego w dyskursie religijnym

The category of “Biblical inspiration” dates back to the biblical period. Subsequently, the early Jewish and Christian traditions made many attempts to describe it definitively. Over the centuries, many ways have emerged to understand the nature of the inspiration and to explain its relationship to the human author. One difficulty is the overly simple understanding of the inspiration model of the prophetic texts in the Bible.

Talmudic Torment: Late Antique Jewish Texts on Pain and Suffering Between Medicine, Martyrdom, and Askesis

According to recent studies, pain can be conceptualised both as a bodily sensation and as a complex sociocultural phenomenon shaped by experience, expectations, and presumptions. This article analyses descriptions of agonising intestinal and inflammatory ailments with their various sensual and socio-religious implications as specific rabbinic expressions of and reactions to broader ancient understandings of pain. The study of two talmudic narratives explores a complex network of late antique Jewish ideas about pain, especially connected to bodily swellings and bowel disease, in which religious, legal, ethical, cognitive, and medical aspects intertwine. I submit that the depiction of eminent rabbinic scholars as “suffering selves” fits well into the broader cultures of pain in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. In these traditions, the always mediated (re)presentations of pain and experiences of suffering were often torn between fascination and aversion. Up to a certain point, the rabbis shared a cultural matrix and ideas on illness and agony with their contemporaries, especially religious experts like Christian authors, monastics, and ascetics. Therefore, these stories about self-afflicted pain and suffering were possibly formed as alternative Jewish answers reacting to and interacting with Graeco-Roman “cultures of pain” as well as emerging Jewish and Christian conceptions of martyrdom, asceticism, and the suffering self in late antiquity. Through a comparison with earlier texts, this article examines how this rabbinic counter-discourse feeds on and appropriates but also rejects Graeco-Roman and early Christian traditions about the punitive, refining, ascetic, and sanctifying purposes of bodily suffering and abdominal agony.

“The Staff of Isaiah”: Catacomb Discourse in Arseny Tarkovsky’s Poetry

This article analyses the work of A. Tarkovsky (1907–1989), for whom 1917 became a turning point which subsequently determined his “internal emigration”. The most important creative mission for Tarkovsky was the restoration of the interrupted cultural tradition of Russian modernism. As its representative, Akhmatova is a model of the creative and ethical behaviour of the artist for Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky’s poetry from the 1930s–1960s is considered from the point of view of the catacomb secret discourse (coding, subtext, background). Through images of the desert, sand, heat, and closed eyes, it expresses alienation from new culture and politics, a stoic opposition to oblivion, and desire to preserve cultural memory (Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva) that binds history into a single whole. In the situation of a cultural desert, such values as an individual’s dignity, Christian humility, and life are significant for Tarkovsky. In his model of the poet, Tarkovsky focuses on the biblical and early Christian tradition, in which the poet appears as a prophet, messiah, spiritual leader of the people (Isaiah, John the Baptist, Christ), emphasising not mystical or ritual but social ethics, characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century, with its moral uncompromisingness (“straight” ways). An important context for understanding Tarkovsky’s catacomb discourse and his image of the poet is the reflection on the people and the intelligentsia in L. Chukovskaya’s Notes on Anna Akhmatova (1938–1966). Polemising with the Narodism rejection of the intelligentsia in the Soviet period, Akhmatova and Chukovskaya express the key values of the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (personal dignity, freedom, ethical uncompromisingness, criticism of ethical relativism, truth and justice, prophetic ministry, sacrifice, and poverty). Tarkovsky’s poetic discourse and his image of a prophet poet also oppose Narodism simplification expressing the core values of the Russian intelligentsia and preserving the modernist complexity of poetics (openness and involvement in world culture, intertextuality, neomythologism, and associativity).

‘He Gave to Adam Knowledge’: A Competing Creation Tradition in Early Judaism and Early Christianity

Abstract The Eden narrative in Genesis recounts the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from God’s paradise because they consumed fruit from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While the creation account in Genesis 2–3 is well known to modern readers of the Bible, this paper demonstrates that a competing creation tradition existed in Second Temple Judaism. According to this tradition, which circulated at least as early as the Persian period, God intentionally gave knowledge or wisdom to the primordial human(s) as a benevolent gift, and it was this knowledge that set the primordial human(s) apart from other earthly creatures. During the late Second Temple period, the creation account in Genesis 2–3 and the tradition that God gave knowledge to the primordial human(s) came into direct conflict. Consequently, many Jewish writers attempted to accommodate both creation traditions, often by suppressing certain elements of the Eden narrative such as the specific details of Adam’s transgression or the negative portrayal of the tree of knowledge.

The Spirit in Hebrews

Abstract There are surprisingly few references to the Holy Spirit in the letter to the Hebrews, though there are more than some may recognize. The author of Hebrews believes that the recipients of his letter/sermon should be fully grounded in their communal life in the Spirit, but he is most interested in how the Holy Spirit is exhorting and guiding the community to further truth during their critical time of need. Therefore, it is the content of what the Spirit is communicating that is his focus, and that content contains some of the most profound statements in the letter/sermon. There are possibly seven references to the Holy Spirit in the letter to the Hebrews. Two of them are consistent with the early Christian traditions about the work of the Spirit: three of them concern the Holy Spirit’s confrontation and communication to the readers through Scripture, and two are disputed as references to the Holy Spirit, although, if they apply, they may reflect a perception of the divinity of the Spirit. The importance of the contexts in which the author mentions the Holy Spirit indicates a role for the Holy Spirit in the sermon/letter that extends beyond the texts in which the Spirit is directly referenced.

A Hidden Agenda of Imperial Appropriation and Power Play? Iconological Considerations Concerning Apse Images and Their Role in the Iconoclast Controversy

Abstract According to the written sources, the Iconoclast controversy was all about the veneration of icons. It started in the late seventh century, after most iconodule provinces had been lost to Byzantine rule, and lasted until the turn of the millennium or so, when icon veneration became generally established in the remaining parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, as far as material evidence and actual images are concerned, the Iconoclast controversy centred on apse images and other, equally large and monumental representations, none of which were ever venerated. Prior to Iconoclasm, such images had not been customary at Constantinople, where the early Christian tradition had been largely aniconic and focused on the symbol of the cross. Thus, the introduction of monumental Christian imagery to Constantinople appears to have been a major aspect of the Iconoclast controversy. This paper asks why and finds that the images in question, whilst not for veneration and therefore not essential to the theological debate, stood out for imperial propaganda. They led to close visual integration of the emperor and the church that had previously been kept apart, because aniconic traditions used to limit imperial presence inside Constantinopolitan church buildings. It seems, then, that the Iconoclast controversy, although conducted in religious terms, was partly driven by a hidden agenda of imperial appropriation and power play.

Alexander the Great in the Early Christian Tradition: Classical Reception and Patristic Literature. By Christian Thrue Djurslev. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. x + 232 pp. $120.00 hardcover.

Alexander the Great in the Early Christian Tradition: Classical Reception and Patristic Literature. By Christian Thrue Djurslev. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. x + 232 pp. $120.00 hardcover. - Volume 90 Issue 3