Early Christian Writings Research Articles

David Flusser und seine Bedeutung für den jüdisch-christlichen Dialog

The life story of David Flusser (1917 Vienna – 2000 Jerusalem) extends from interwar Czechoslovakia, where he grew up and studied, to the broad research and teaching activities of an erudite professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a leading authority on Second Temple Judaism as well as early Christian writings. His contribution to the Jewish-Christian dialogue lies above all in his deep understanding of early Christianity, which he approached with great interest, openness and friendliness. For him, both Jesus and the apostle Paul are inspirational personalities who can only be properly understood in the context of the Jewish tradition of the time. The presented article focuses on how Flusser perceives their relationship to Jewish law (Torah) and how he sees Jewish attitudes to Jesus’ crucifixion.

Comparative Studies of the Oral and Literary Culture in the First Century and Its Implications for African Christianity Today

This study explores the interplay between oral and literary traditions in early Christianity and contemporary African Christian practices. While early Christian communities relied heavily on oral traditions, the transition to written texts significantly shaped the formation of Christian theology and scripture. However, contemporary African Christianity continues to preserve oral traditions, particularly in worship and evangelism. By comparing these two contexts, the study highlights how Reader-Response Theory helps bridge historical and modern interpretive practices. Methodologically, the study employs textual analysis of early Christian writings and fieldwork observations of African Christian communities. Key findings show that oral traditions remain crucial for biblical engagement and theological discourse in low-literacy settings. The study recommends incorporating oral traditions into African Christian theological education to enhance faith practice.

The Lexical and Syntactical Calque superaedificare in the Latin Tradition of the New Testament Epistles

Abstract The prefixed verb superaedificare, which is a calque of ἐποικοδοµέω, governs prepositional phrases and plain cases in the Latin New Testament Epistles. The Vulgate and Old Latin manuscripts feature constructions of superaedificare in agreement with the Greek source text. However, alternative translations are attested when the biblical text is cited by early Christian writers. In citations where the biblical passage is included in the author’s text, aedificare is frequently used instead of superaedificare. By contrast, when the biblical text is quoted for the first time and its source is acknowledged, superaedificare is employed and its construction matches that of the Greek text. These citation habits show that the construction of superaedificare is a syntactical calque of the Greek source text, which is attested when the citations are marked as such but is not used when the biblical text is embedded in the patristic text.

Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum (review)

Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum (review)

Ridiculing Astrologers Origen’s Sources and His Legacy

This article examines the early Christian critique of astrology, focusing on its perceived conflict with the concept of free will. Key figures such as Origen, Tatian, and Bardesanes are highlighted for their contributions to this discourse. Origen's works, including his homilies and commentaries on the book of Genesis, notably oppose the deterministic implications of astrology by asserting human free will and divine omnipotence. Tatian's writings, particularly his "Oratio ad Graecos," condemn astrology as a demonic invention that undermines Christian doctrines. Bardesanes, who is well-informed in astrology, differentiates between cosmic influences and moral decisions, arguing that ethical behavior is not determined by the stars. The article also explores the theological and philosophical foundations of these arguments, tracing influences from earlier thinkers like Philo of Alexandria and Carneades. Overall, the text provides a comprehensive analysis of how early Christian writers engaged with and refuted astrological beliefs.

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.

Menstrual Blood: an icon of the kenotic atonement of Christ— A Better Way with Better Blood

For centuries, theologians have sought to understand the meaning and significance of Christ’s death. However, the current motifs and interpretations of the atonement have constrained Christology by situating Christ within a paradigm of domination and subordination. I propose that the “inferior” porous and excessively moist female body—as presumed by Greco-Roman classicists and early Christian writers—expresses the unboundaried, mutual, self-giving relationality within the Godhead. Christ’s blood, represented by menstrual blood, reveals divine love as “for” the empowerment and flourishing of others, bringing reconciliation to divine-human relationality, invoking the remembering of menstruating bodies, and supporting the healing of human-other relationships. Menstruation is an embodied icon of the kenotic atonement of Christ.

Critical Reflections on the Role of the Canon in New Testament Scholarship

AbstractThe modern discipline of New Testament Studies has subjected the various components of the New Testament to close scrutiny, yet it persistently fails to ask critical questions about the New Testament considered as a whole. In its familiar twenty-seven book form, the New Testament may be seen as a fourth-century anthology of early Christian writings based on earlier collections or sub-collections (the fourfold gospel, the Pauline letter collection), yet innovative in establishing a sharply defined boundary between included and excluded texts. An analysis of contributions to this journal over a recent five-year period demonstrates the pervasive influence of this fourth-century construct in determining the scope and priorities of (so-called) ‘mainstream’ scholarship. Greater attention to the contingencies of canon-formation will enable us to locate the texts that came to form the New Testament within a wider early Christian literary landscape.

Az abortusz megítélése megítélése az ókeresztény korban

The study aims to prove that the views of the movements fighting for abortion freedom are not at all compatible with the Catholic tradition. It is true that in some early Christian works we come across the view that the foetus only becomes a human when it is formed. However, those statements are all related to that part of the Septuagint that the translators formulated under the influence of Greek philosophy, and they differ significantly from the original Hebrew text. Nowhere in the early Christian writings is there even a faint hint that early abortion was permissible. The foetus was considered as an object of divine providence from its conception; it was believed that the foetus already possessed all the characteristics that would develop later. The applicability and extent of the church punishment for abortion was therefore independent of the stage of pregnancy in which the abortion took place.

Ecclesio-Mariological Interpretation of Rev 12:1–6 in Early Christian Writings

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.

The Strange Significance of the Name Carpocrates in Early Christian Polemic

Abstract In this philological study we establish and reckon with the fact that the name Carpocrates was exceedingly rare and strange in antiquity. The rarity, we argue, was due to the name being a variant spelling or (purposeful) misspelling of the Greco-Egyptian deity Harpokrates. We also show how bizarre and even comical the name would have sounded to Hellenephone audiences. Greek parents, so far as the evidence suggests, were not naming their sons Carpocrates. We further explain how both the rarity and strangeness of the name functioned as a polemical weapon in the hands of some early Christian writers.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My: Imprisoned Animals and Humans in the Acts of Paul

Abstract This paper will explore the carceral logics affecting nonhuman and human animals in a popular second-century Christian text, the Acts of Paul. Two parallel scenes feature imprisoned animals pitted against imprisoned humans in the punitive entertainment spectacle of the amphitheater. Through these scenes, this paper will examine the ancient practice of animal captivity, the “de-animalizing” effects of imprisonment on human and nonhuman victims, and the problematic witness of early Christian writings to these phenomena as the texts, and the humans in them, variously exploit, fear, threaten, anthropomorphize, are protected by, compete with, and enter into solidarity with other imprisoned animals. Finally, it will discuss the (potentially) inclusive role of this text in naming animals as “confessors,” or imprisoned, suffering witnesses to the gospel, in a carcerally-controlled world.

General

Two splendid Oxford Handbooks deserve the opening slot of my review. The Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography contains forty chapters, each of which closes with a helpful section on recommended further reading. The editors have organized the material in five very well-conceived parts. The first section, ‘Mythography from Archaic Greece to the Empire’, naturally wrestles with the question: When does mythography start? Two initial chapters provide their answers, and the rest of the contributions in this section offer an overview of mythography in Greek (Hellenistic and Imperial period) and Latin. The second section aims to provide an overview of individual mythographers: the stars of this section are Apollodorus, Antoninus Liberalis, Parthenius, Conon, and Hyginus. The eighteen chapters provide informative and concise introductions to authors who specialized in mythography, but also to the mythographic tendencies in authors such as Pausanias or Ovid, as well as in the scholia and even mythographical papyri. The third section is on the typical genres or interpretative models with which mythography tends to intersect: rationalizing historical approaches, philosophical allegoresis, etymologizing, catasterism, local historiography, paradoxography, creative approaches to mythography in ancient education, the role of mythography in political discourse, geography, and, finally, an investigation of the ancient terms used to designate the activity and the writings of a mythographer. The fourth section, ‘Mythography and the visual arts’, is a provocative and highly interesting experiment in viewing visual representations of myth as a mythography of sorts: can vases, frescoes, and sarcophagi be seen as visual pendants to literary mythography? These three contributions are all highly rewarding and thought-provoking. The closing, fifth, section offers richly rewarding discussions of the role of mythography in the age of Christianity, starting with the way early Christian writers draw on Greek and Latin mythographers, followed by chapters on mythography in the Byzantine Empire, the Latin West, and in the Renaissance.

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Heaven and temple in the Second Temple period: A taxonomy

It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely been content either to recognize a basic relationship, or to distinguish temple-in-heaven from temple-as-universe, sometimes construing the former as “apocalyptic” and the latter as “Hellenistic.” Jonathan Klawans’ work represents an important articulation of this distinction. This article summarizes his contribution, and critiques it on the grounds that it remains overly dichotomous and does not do full justice to the evidence. Instead, a fresh taxonomy is proposed with four key categories, each illustrated from Second Temple and biblical texts. None of these categories is discrete; rather they demarcate a spectrum or scale of ways that ancient Jewish and early Christian writers conceptualized the heaven–temple relationship.

Between Nature and Spirit: Lucretian Resonances in Paulinus’ Carmen 23

Abstract This paper contributes to the reassessment of the role of Lucretius’ De rerum natura and Epicurean philosophy in early Christian writings by conducting a close study of Carmen 23 composed by the poet Paulinus of Nola. While previous scholarship has examined classical influences on Paulinus’ poetry, especially from Vergil, no existing study has attended to Paulinus’ incorporation of Epicurean elements. This paper argues that in Carmen 23 Paulinus incorporates Epicurean doctrines and Lucretius’ poetic imagery to appeal to an audience familiar with Epicurean ideas. Through the creative fusion of Epicurean physics with Christian metaphysics, Paulinus conjures up a poetic world in which the natural and spiritual realms constantly interact. While using Lucretian imagery to direct his audience’s gaze toward the natural world, Paulinus nevertheless reveals a higher reality in which the invisible operation of God’s spirit governs and perfects the mechanism of nature. In thus stretching his poetic imagination to encompass the working of nature and spirit, Paulinus invents a new eclectic literary form and a kind of physiological miracle account that blends naturalism and mysticism. As such, Carmen 23 attests to Paulinus’ literary achievement in repurposing a classic of Epicurean philosophy and Latin poetry for Christian panegyric and hagiography.

From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity by Robin Jensen (review)

Reviewed by: From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity by Robin Jensen Katherine Marsengill Robin Jensen From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity Oakland: University of California Press, 2022 Pp. xv + 244. $65.00. Robin M. Jensen's latest monograph on the emergence and development of Christian images over the first six centuries c.e is a clear and informative presentation on an important topic. Across eight chapters, Jensen describes the rise of Christian art within a culture filled with images of the gods and the tension in the endeavor of church authorities to deny or justify the use of images in their own religious environments. Jensen begins with essential historiography, reasserting what scholars over the last few decades have come to understand: contrary to early historians like Edward Gibbon and biased churchmen of the Protestant Reformation who misinterpreted the earliest Christian writings, early Christians were not, in fact, categorically anti-art, nor aniconic; they did not adhere to nor cite Hebrew Bible/Old Testament law, nor follow a perceived Jewish precedent. Jensen goes through the early texts condemning idols, clarifying the nature of the apologiae on worshiping false gods. Early Christians objected to idolatry on the grounds that pagans worshiped non-existent deities and thus, by default, worshiped man-made objects fashioned out of stone, wood, and metal. Idols were images of beings who did not exist, or, if they had existed, were regular people, long-dead, and mistakenly elevated to divine status out of misguided fondness or grief. Although rife with hyperbole and simplifications of pagan practices, the apologiae were aimed at persuading Christians about the danger of engaging with paganism and its associated vices. Arguments against worshiping images of the gods were not uniquely Christian, since non-Christian philosophers of the second and third centuries also recognized [End Page 255] the dilemma. Jensen's discussion of the matter provides larger context for a belief system that imagined a divide between the physical and spiritual worlds and the supremacy of an invisible and incomprehensible deity who could not be represented. Some early Christian writers did indeed shun images, believing that the physical world did not find parallels in the spiritual world and thus that representations of it had no use as substitutes for spiritual things. And yet, as Jensen reminds us, early Christians did have images. Surviving examples date to the early third century, while texts point to possibly earlier images. By the fourth century, Christian pictorial art was displayed in churches, shrines, baptistries, tombs, and private homes, despite some protestations. One justification can be found already in ancient Greek and Roman texts: images of the gods provided the means for the less sophisticated to worship their gods. Images were meant to honor them and to inspire worship but were not meant to be "portraits" of them. Defenses of Christian images well into the fifth and sixth centuries often have similar arguments, claiming that images are useful for instruction, especially for those who needed visualization to aid them in mental contemplation. However, as Christian authorities noted, from Eusebius to Iconoclasm-era writers, a confusion between the image and that which was represented was to be avoided. Jensen then explains how Christians admitted into visual art the representation of the invisible divinity in the form of Christ. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament encounters with an otherwise invisible God could be understood in Christian terms and depicted in art if one recognized these appearances as the divine Logos and pre-Incarnate Word—Christ—whose Incarnation made the divinity visible to humans. This fundamental shift valued seeing with one's bodily eyes as a means of obtaining knowledge of God. Christian art transformed from symbols, to standardized figures placed in abbreviated biblical scenes, to portraits of Christ and the saints believed to be based on real appearances. This brings the reader to the advent of two-dimensional Christian portraiture (icons) in the fourth century and the accompanying criticism by church authorities of congregants who may have been too adoring of such images. Jensen describes the various contexts in which such portraits would have been found—at tombs, at martyria, and...

NATURE MAKES AN ASCENT FROM THE LOWER TO THE HIGHER: GREGORY OF NYSSA ON HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS

AbstractThis essay explores the way in which early Christian writers held an eschatological understanding of what it is to be human, something that is to be attained, through the transformation of death and resurrection, and something that requires our assent. In this context, the article offers a new reading of the late fourth‐century work entitled On the Human Image of God (otherwise known in English as On the Making of Man) by Gregory of Nyssa. It argues that Gregory structured his text in parallel to the three parts of Timaeus’ speech in Plato's dialogue. The resulting picture sees creation as a dynamic ascent from the lower forms of life to the higher, a growth which is recapitulated in the life‐span of each human being, and also the growth of the human race into the totality of human beings that together constitute the human being in the image of God, the body of Christ.

Naughty, Bold, and Blessed: Sixteenth-century Japanese Children's Voices Mediated in the Writings of Luís Fróis

This article examines the emotional value of sixteenth-century Japanese children's voices in some of the writings of Jesuit missionary Luís Fróis. First, I discuss class and gender issues when poor Japanese boys are described as mocking the Jesuits during the first years of their mission in Japan. Next, I draw attention to Fróis's descriptions of the impact convert children had on their communities, including the reversal of generational power relations. I then explain the emotional value of Japanese boys' voices in Fróis's report about the twenty-six Christian martyrs who were executed in Nagasaki on February 5, 1597. I argue that Fróis used Japanese children's words, especially boys', to highlight to his European readership the impact Jesuit missionaries had at the levels of local households and communities. I moreover suggest that Fróis likened Japanese children to holy martyr children of the early Roman Catholic Church so that his European readership would empathize with Japanese Christian children. More than earlier Christian writers, however, Fróis added vivid details of Japanese boys' emotional expressions in an effort to move European readers towards more support for the Jesuit missionary enterprise overseas.

Heavenly Stories: Tiered Salvation in the New Testament and Ancient Christianity by Alexander Kocar

Reviewed by: Heavenly Stories: Tiered Salvation in the New Testament and Ancient Christianity by Alexander Kocar Carl Johan Berglund Alexander Kocar Heavenly Stories: Tiered Salvation in the New Testament and Ancient Christianity Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021 Pp. 312. $69.95. In this revised doctoral dissertation (Princeton, 2016), Alexander Kocar offers intriguing and thoughtful readings of a wide-ranging selection of early Christian writings—the Revelation of John, Paul’s letters, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocryphon of John, Clement’s Excerpts from Theodotus, the Tripartite Tractate, and Heracleon’s Commentary on John—presented under a thematic umbrella that fails to add anything of value to the individual studies. Regarding Revelation, Kocar questions the common assumption that all references to Jews are coded allusions to Christians, and he reasonably proposes that if the author and his intended audience still considered themselves to be Jews, the 144,000 (Rev 7.4) may actually be the Jewish tribes, the great multitude (Rev 7.9) depicts gentile Christians, and those who falsely claim to be Jews (Rev 2.9, 3.9) represent Christian supersessionists claiming to have replaced the Jewish nation. Using Old Testament prophecies of an eschatological feast for both Jews and gentiles (cf. Isa 25.6–10), Kocar finds that John lays out different paths to salvation for Jews and gentiles, where only Jews are allowed within the new Jerusalem, and the rest of the new earth functions as an enlarged Court of the Gentiles. In conformity with the radical new perspective on Paul, Kocar argues that the apostle remained a Jew and demanded that Christian Jews continued to observe Jewish traditions, but only asked for communal solidarity and respect from gentile Christians—thus advocating for two different paths to salvation, coupled with two different ethical standards. In his two chapters on the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocryphon of John, Kocar finds an intriguing new perspective on how the two writings grapple with [End Page 109] the interconnected issues of converted Christians who relapse into sin and the dynamics between free will and demonic influence. In Kocar’s view, neither text views human sinfulness and wrongdoing as wholly internal or external to a person, but as a combination of one’s own actions with irresistible influence from spiritual agents such as the devil (Herm. Man. 12.5), an evil angel (Herm. Man. 6), or the Counterfeit Spirit (Ap. John). Under such evil influences, people are not fully accountable for their actions, but still have the responsibility of defending their souls against attack. Thereby, the Shepherd and Apocryphon can discern between ideal Christians, whose conduct is worth emulating, and repenting sinners, while admitting both to the afterlife. By using the same questions and theoretical framework on both of these texts, Kocar commendably moves beyond traditional categorizations of early Christian texts as either proto-orthodox or heretical. In a similar vein, Kocar argues that the strict tripartite anthropology of the Tripartite Tractate and the Excerpts from Theodotus is intended to explain differing results of the authorial group’s evangelistic efforts. Using a Stoic theoretical model in which moral responsibility is limited to areas where the moral subject has agency, Kocar argues that these two texts maintain disparate ethical demands for their three different categories of people. The more privileged category, which is more naturally inclined toward good action, has a responsibility for evangelizing, teaching, and inspiring others, while the less privileged is only accountable for themselves. Thereby, Kocar is able to present a more nuanced picture of early Christian determinism than the traditional understanding based on Irenaeus’s heresiological efforts. Kocar’s approach to Heracleon is based on the traditional view, in which Heracleon’s Valentinian identity is beyond question and Origen can be implicitly trusted to transmit his words more or less verbatim. From that basis, he does well to admit the difficulties of delimiting Heracleon’s words from Origen’s epexegetical insertions, to acknowledge that Heracleon never deploys sweeping cosmological narratives in which different natures explain moral differences, and to point out that Origen might be accusing Heracleon of commitments that he did not hold. With such a good start, Kocar’s analysis would...