Primitive Christianity Research Articles

Palma Farm: characteristics of a Latvian community in the hinterland of São Paulo

This text discusses the architecture and daily life of Palma Farm, established from 1923 by Latvian immigrants in the district of Varpa, Tupã (SP), emphasizing the importance of both work and life pattern based on mutual aid, rooted in primitive Christianity, and propagated by the Baptist Church, shaping the overall structure. The farm was distinct from the rural environment of São Paulo at that time, dominated by coffee farming and Catholicism. The buildings were communal and constructed, wholly or partially, from wood. After a period of decline, remains of the structures, documentation, and movable assets are been restored and opened for visitation as part of Tupã's tourist itinerary. Towards documenting and analyzing its architecture and way of life, this research involves photographic and metric surveys of the remaining buildings, interviews with individuals connected to the place, and analyses primary documents and related literature, with a focus on authors such as Milia Tupes, Osvaldo Ronis, and Henrique Manoel da Silva.

John Robinson and primitive Christian eschatology: contexts and comparisons then and now

This article explores Bishop John Robinson’s approaches to New Testament eschatology in the 1950s and documents some scholars’ parallels and responses.

“I Dreamed of an Alliance between the Authority of Dogma and Political Liberty”: Mormonism and Socialism in France in the Nineteenth Century

“I Dreamed of an Alliance between the Authority of Dogma and Political Liberty”: Mormonism and Socialism in France in the Nineteenth Century

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

Matt Jackson-McCabe. Jewish Christianity: The Making of the Christianity-Judaism Divide. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

Matt Jackson-McCabe. <i>Jewish Christianity: The Making of the Christianity-Judaism Divide.</i> Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

Cristianismo primitivo rumo à institucionalização: contexto imperial romano (séc. I)

The present study considers the experience of the new Christian religion in the context of the Roman Empire of the first century, seeking to highlight several aspects of its earliest institutionalization. Primitive Christianity was not a singular movement but was instead reflected in the existence of many small domestic communities without an orthodoxy standardized in faith, an ecclesiastical hierarchy, or centralized institutions. The study will reveal the ways in which Christianity spread through the imperial and synagogal infrastructures, as well as through the use of Greek cultural references. It will also discuss the dominant types of Christian organization, which would benefit from the socially entrenched arrangement of the old patriarchal house as a framework for the centralized and hierarchized institutional development to take root in Christianity, in a manner analogous to imperial bureaucratic architecture.

A Divine Rebellion: Indigenous Sacraments among Global “Lamanites”

This essay engages with some of the experiences and metaphysics of Indigenous peoples who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism/LDS/the Church) by responding to their structural construction as “Lamanites”. Lamanites have been interpreted within Mormonism to be ancestors of various global Indigenous peoples of the “Americas” and “Polynesia”. This essay reveals how contemporary Indigenous agency by presumed descendants of the Lamanites, who embrace both an Indigenous and a Mormon identity, shifts the cosmology of the Church. Interpretations of TheBook of Mormon that empower contemporary Indigenous agency paradoxically materialize a divinely inspired cultural rebellion within the Church itself. However, this tension that is mediated by Lamanites in the Church is not framed as an exclusive response to the Church itself but, rather, to a larger global hegemony of coloniality to which the Church is subject. These Lamanite worldviews can be understood as a process of restoring ancestral Indigenous sacraments (rituals) through Mormon paradigms, which are found and nurtured in the cracks and fissures of both the material and ontological infrastructure of Mormonism’s dominant paradigm. When Indigenous Mormons assert autonomous authorship of their own cosmogony and metaphysics, the Church beliefs of restoring a ‘primitive Christian church’ and ‘becoming Gods’ is creatively transformed into a more relevant and liberating possibility here and now.

El abordaje del cuerpo en "Habeas corpus" de Jorge Acha: indeterminación, imagen crística y subversión sexual

El presente artículo analiza la película Habeas Corpus del cineasta argentino Jorge Acha a partir de la figura del cuerpo del detenido-desaparecido en ella retratada y, en paralelo, cómo es contrastada con otras representaciones corporales. De esta forma, intenta desplegar un movimiento argumentativo que contempla el estado de indeterminación que implica esta figura. Para ello, se apela al pensamiento de Hito Steyerl, quien incorpora el experimento mental del “gato de Schrödinger” a la reflexión sobre el estatuto político del desaparecido. También es importante, en un segundo momento, la analogía con la figura de Cristo, la cual dispara una reflexión crítica acerca del rol de la Iglesia Católica en la última dictadura argentina. El detenido-desaparecido es presentado como un doble de Cristo. La paradoja estriba en que la propia Iglesia actúe como verdugo y productora de mártires. La alegoría cristológica es introducida mediante otra figura metonímica, la del pez, de importancia en el cristianismo primitivo y que la película incorpora como motivo central. El último movimiento es el abordaje que el filme hace de la sexualidad con relación a la experiencia de sometimiento. Es de utilidad aquí el pensamiento de Wilhelm Reich respecto de la forma problemática en la que el fascismo se relaciona con la sexualidad y cómo el homoerotismo de Habeas Corpus busca subvertir el carácter reaccionario de la cosmovisión dictatorial. Al mismo tiempo, se produce un contraste entre el modelo de cuerpo del detenido-desaparecido y los cuerpos hipertrofiados y diseñados de los fisicoculturistas admirados por el torturador.

Christian and Modernist Utopia in Coetzee’s Novels The Childhood of Jesus and Schooldays of Jesus

Abstract: This article addresses, in its first part, the many critics who have difficulty in making sense of Coetzee’s two novels The Childhood of Jesus and Schooldays of Jesus, offering clues for an understanding of Coetzee’s utopian thought experiment within the framework of Christian ideals. The second argument reconstructs Coetzee’s ironic musings about the future of the traditions of Western culture and art. Setting his fictional reflection in a utopian society which has achieved a truly equalitarian order, patterned on the ideals of Primitive Christianity and monastic humility, Coetzee explores the question whether in such a society there is still space and need for the arts, or if the success of our rational utopian endeavors will lead to the disappearance of art as we have known it for millennia.

The First One Hundred Years of Christianity: An Introduction to Its History, Literature, and Development by Udo Schnelle

Reviewed by: The First One Hundred Years of Christianity: An Introduction to Its History, Literature, and Development by Udo Schnelle Florence Morgan Gillman udo schnelle, The First One Hundred Years of Christianity: An Introduction to Its History, Literature, and Development (trans. James W. Thompson; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). Pp. xxiii + 662. $60. Udo Schnelle, Professor of New Testament at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, originally published this large tome as Die ersten 100 Jahre des Christentums: Die Entstehungsgeschichte einer Weltreligion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015; 3rd rev. ed., 2019). He states that there is one major question upon which the study is focused: "How did the insignificant Jesus movement in Galilee and Jerusalem become a powerful religious community and spread in a brief period throughout the Roman Empire?" (p. xiii). In his view three crucial factors were determinative: (1) the diversity of the movement enabled survival, since the demise of one stream did not result in ending the entire movement; (2) a conceptual unity combining the history of events and ideas was formed at the beginning, which gave rise to theological interpretation, and those ideas made history; and (3) the new movement was characterized by a high literary production, which S. holds must be regarded as an educational phenomenon. According to S., "[V]ery early an independent identity emerged, and the developing Christianity possessed a charismatic, social, and intellectual power of attraction" (p. xiii). Following a brief introductory chapter on historical method, in chap. 2, S. sets forth his preference for referring to the epoch he is focused on as "early Christianity" (Frühchristentum) vs. "primitive Christianity" (Urchristentum), holding that the former is the more neutral terminus technicus. In the next chapter, S. surveys presuppositions and contexts, such as the world culture of Hellenism, Greco-Roman culture, Greek religion, Roman and mystery religions, philosophical movements, Judaism, and the political and economic situation in the Roman Empire. In chap. 4, S. launches into his treatment of Jesus and the Jesus movement by discussing the Easter events and the emergence therefrom of nascent christology. In his view, the early Christians founded a new religious discourse that drew from both Jewish theological foundations (e.g., God as one, as creator) and Greek concepts (God becoming human in Jesus). He observes that, from the very beginning, Christian discourse was not actually compatible with either set of views. "The affirmation that a crucified man was the messiah was perceived as blasphemy" from the Jewish perspective as well as "a theological offense," while to the Greco-Roman world worshiping a crucified man appeared "as lunacy" (p. 91). S. thus affirms that "at the beginning of the new movement stood a thoroughly creative process … by which the Christ-believers introduced nothing less than the founder of a new discourse into the existing religious world and ascribed to him an unlimited soteriological power" (p. 92). He comments that it should not therefore be surprising that the church in Jerusalem came into conflict with official Judaism from the beginning. In chap. 5, S. deals with the Jerusalem church in terms of, for example, its structure, leadership, conflicts, and theological institutions. A notable position he espouses is that, in contrast to Lucan traditions, Paul's admitted persecution of Christ-believers could not have taken place in Jerusalem since he stated in Gal 1:22: "I was unknown by sight to the churches in Judea." S. locates Paul's anti-Christ-believers activity rather in Damascus "before or at his conversion" and suggests that "there where he acts against the message of Jesus, he is won over to it" (p. 117). Schnelle envisions baptism and the Lord's Supper as among the first basic elements [End Page 709] of institutionalization of the Christ-believers in Jerusalem. He finds the deepest reason for adopting the practice of baptism to be that "the announcements of the Baptist were unexpectedly fulfilled" with the Easter events around Jesus (p. 119). He holds that in continuity with John's baptism "the baptism among Christians was a once-for-all act" (p. 119) and thus was distinguished from ritual washings in Judaism. In his sixth chapter, S. identifies three great currents at the beginning of Christianity...

The symbolism of national glory in the “Freischütz” by K. M. Weber

The purpose of the study is to highlight in the generalized expressiveness of the famous opera by K.M. Weber the means of embodying national glory through the spiritual greatness of heroes in accordance with the mysterious and theatrical traditions of the German cultural world. The methodological basis is the analytical, historical, comparative, interdisciplinary methods presented in the works of A. Losev, V. Lychkovakh, as well as the hermeneutic section of the intonational musicological expedition, which we find in the works of B. Asafiev, as well as in the works of E. Markova, O. Muravskaya, etc. The scientific novelty is due to the innovative perspective of expressing the named opera by K. M. Weber as the embodiment of the religious ideals of the Undivided Church, which were in the center of attention of Biedermeier as national-artistic refraction of the ideas of the Restoration. Conclusions. The national fame as the cultural and artistic heritage of the German nation in the conditions of the state and confessional delimitations was recognized in the Biedermeier wave at the level of revealing the spiritual chosenness of heroes, consecrated in the musical interpretation by the traditions of the «Hubert Mass» with indicative symbols of horn heights and timbre, and in the plot, the nomination of the figure of the Hermit as a vestige of primitive Christian virtues, placing the chosen one at the rank of a feat of action of Agatha in Atonement but. The final chorus raises female devotion to the level of national glorification; and this represents a new turn in national thinking in memory of the forgotten and revived glory of the first Christian sacrifice.

Response to AAR Articles

Response to AAR Articles

Olaudah Equiano's Ecclesial World

This paper argues that Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative refashions and redeploys an eighteenth-century evangelical discourse of "primitive Christianity" in order to advocate for the end of the slave trade and the creation of an inclusive community at once British, Christian, and African. While studies of the origin of early African American literature have recognized the complex role that evangelical Christianity plays in eighteenth-century transatlantic black writing, this article shifts the focus to ecclesiology specifically, highlighting the way that Equiano grounds his appeal in contemporary thinking about the nature and purpose of religious institutions. Inspired by an evangelical preoccupation with the New Testament book of Acts, Equiano points to a diasporic first-century Christian church as a model of justice, generosity, and racial harmony. In this way, he condemns the exploitation and abuse of the transatlantic slave system and posits that a spiritual kinship that transcends racial difference should serve as the foundation of reform.

Urchristentum, Primitive Christianity, Early Christianity, the Jesus Movement

Urchristentum, Primitive Christianity, Early Christianity, the Jesus Movement

Sibilas: a sobrevivência das profetisas pagãs no mundo cristão

Os mitos antigos não estão mortos. A partir desta afirmação fundamentada nas obras de autores como Warburg, Jean Seznec, Erwin Panofsky e Fritz Saxl, este trabalho pretende apontar os caminhos históricos que legitimaram a sobrevivência do mito das sibilas no mundo cristão, em sua estreita relação com a astrologia. O paganismo não renasceu após o medievo, mas esteve sempre presente no cristianismo, não só como símbolos, mas como efetiva influência essencial sobre os homens e as suas vidas. Alguns momentos históricos em particular são privilegiados neste caminho, desde os padres apologistas do cristianismo primitivo até o nascimento da ciência moderna. Sibilas e astrologia, como testemunhos “de fora” são presença constante seja na teologia cristã, seja na literatura e na música, ou nas representações plásticas do mundo cristão, que aqui privilegiamos. A sua sobrevivência ou pós-vida (Naschleben) é ora afirmada também pela legitimação de grandes nomes da patrística e da escolástica, e ainda por meio da influência de Albumasar, teólogo muçulmano nascido no século VIII e que faz o elo entre sibilas, astrologia e a Virgem Maria. O que fazem as sibilas nos tetos das igrejas católicas? É esta a pergunta que o presente trabalho pretende, em grande medida, responder.

The Gospel According to Marxism: Zhu Weizhi and the Making of Jesus the Proletarian (1950)

This article explores the integration of Marxism into the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bible in Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian (1950). It argues that Zhu in this Chinese Life of Jesus refashioned a Gospel according to Marxism, with a proletarian Jesus at its center, by creatively appropriating a wealth of global sources regarding historical Jesus and primitive Christianity. Zhu’s rewriting of Jesus can be appreciated as a precursor to the later Latin American liberation Christology.

The Law of Nature, Mosaic Judaism, and Primitive Christianity in John Locke and the English Deists

In their attempts to revive “true religion,” Locke and several English deists, such as Toland, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, and Annet, focused on the relationship between the Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and Christ’s teaching. However, Locke and the deists formulated different conceptions of the Law of Nature and its relationship with natural religion, Mosaic Judaism, and primitive Christianity. Locke saw the history of human knowledge of morality and religion as a process of gradual disclosure of divinely given truths—a process culminating in Christian revelation. He argued that the Law of Faith, established by Christ, had complemented the Law of Nature and superseded the Law of Moses. Conversely, the deists maintained that the only true religion was the universal, eternal, necessary, and sufficient religion of nature founded on the Law of Nature. They thought that Jesus had merely reaffirmed the Law of Nature, accessible to natural reason, without adding anything to it. Concerning Mosaic Judaism, there were significant differences between Toland and later deists. Toland considered Mosaic Judaism to be on a par with primitive Christianity, since he viewed both the Law of Moses and Christ’s precepts as essentially grounded in the Law of Nature. Conversely, Tindal and Chubb judged the ritual prescriptions of the Mosaic Law superseded by Christ’s revival of natural religion. Morgan and Annet went even further, for they identified true Christianity with the religion of nature, but criticized Mosaic Judaism as a corruption of natural religion. Briefly, Locke and the English deists aimed to recover true religion from long-lasting distortions. However, their rethinking of the relationship between the Law of Nature, the Mosaic Law, and Christ’s message led to different conceptions, uses, and appropriations of natural religion, Mosaic Judaism, and primitive Christianity in their attempts to restore what they perceived as true religion.

Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen

A book review of Rudolf Bultmann's Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting - translated from Czech into German by Ludger Hagedorn.

GNOSTICISMO: UM RESGATE CONCEITUAL MOTIVADO PELA EXORTAÇÃO APOSTÓLICA GAUDETE ET EXSULTATE

Objetiva-se neste artigo expor os resultados de pesquisa sobre o Gnosticismo, motivado pela Exortação Apostólica do Papa Francisco Gaudete et Exsultate. O gnosticismo aparece caracterizado como um sistema de conhecimento que tem como objetivo atingir a verdadeira gnose, ou seja, o conhecimento verdadeiro. As origens do movimento gnóstico não são fáceis de ser identificadas, mas seus vestígios podem ser encontrados já na filosofia de Platão, na literatura judaica e nos escritos apócrifos do cristianismo primitivo. Combatido como heresia, sobretudo por Irineu de Lion, os conceitos gnósticos não foram totalmente superados, sendo, de certa forma, resgatados na atualidade e que tem influenciado o modo de vida cristã de muitos católicos. Chamado pelo Papa Francisco de inimigo da santidade cristã, aponta-se no desenvolvimento do texto os principais conceitos gnósticos, sua formação como movimento, difusão nas comunidades cristãs e implicância na vida evangelizadora da Igreja Católica, nos tempos atuais.

Figuração das Sibilas como persuasão: sobrevivência e poder religiosos na Arte Cristã

Os mitos antigos não estão mortos. A partir desta afirmação este trabalho pretende apontar os caminhos históricos que legitimaram a sobrevivência do mito das sibilas no mundo cristão, em sua estreita relação com a astrologia, como forma de poder persuasivo da arte. O paganismo esteve sempre presente no cristianismo, não só como símbolos, mas como efetiva influência essencial sobre os homens e as suas vidas. Alguns momentos históricos em particular são privilegiados neste caminho, desde os padres apologistas do cristianismo primitivo até o nascimento da ciência moderna. Sibilas e astrologia, como testemunhos “de fora” são presença constante nas representações plásticas do mundo cristão, que aqui privilegiamos. A sua sobrevivência ou pós-vida (Naschleben) é ora afirmada também pela legitimação de grandes nomes da patrística e da escolástica, e por meio da influência de Albumasar, teólogo muçulmano que faz o elo entre as sibilas e sua representação como poder.