Roman gods : a conceptual approach /
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The book is concerned with the question of how the concept of \'god\' in urban Rome can be analyzed along the lines of six constituent concepts, id est space, time, personnel, function, iconography and ritual. While older publications tended to focus on the conceptual nature of Roman gods only in those (comparatively rare) instances in which different concepts patently overlapped (as in the case of the deified emperor or hero-worship), this book develops general criteria for an analysis of pagan, Jewish and Christian concepts of gods in ancient Rome (and by extension elsewhere). While the argument of the book is exclusively based on the evidence from the capital up to the age of Constantine, in the concluding section the results are compared to other religious belief systems, thus demonstrating the general applicability of this conceptual approach.
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1 online resource (219 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-209) and index. :
9789047428480 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman world /
: Papers presented at an international symposium at the University of Utrecht, 1986 on the occasion of the University's 350th anniversary. : 1 online resource (vi, 290 pages) : Includes bibliographical references and indexes. : 9789004296671 : 0531-1950 ; : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jewish identity in the Greco-Roman world =Jüdische identität in der griechisch-römischen welt /
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The articles discuss various aspects of Jewish identity in the Greco-Roman period. Was there a common 'Jewish' identity, and how could it be defined? How could different groups develop and maintain their identity within the challenge of Hellenistic and early Roman culture? What about the images of 'others'? How could some of those 'others' adopt a Jewish lifestyle or identity, whereas others, abandoned their inherited identity? Among the questions discussed are the translation of Ioudaios, Jewish and universal identity in Philo, the status of women and their conversion to Judaism, the participation of non-Jews in the temple cult, the practice of Emperor worship in Judaea, and the image of Egypt and the Nile as 'others' in Philo. Two articles enter the debate whether Jewish identity had an ongoing influence within early Christianity, in Paul and in the rules known as the Apostolic Decree.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047421559 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Scriptural interpretation and community self-definition in Luke-Acts and the writings of Justin Marty r
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Scholars of Christian origins often regard Luke-Acts and the writings of Justin Martyr as similar accounts of the replacement of Israel by the non-Jewish church. According to this view, both authors commandeer the Jewish scriptures as the sole possession of non-Jewish Christ-believers, rather than of Jews. Offering a fresh analysis of the exegesis of Luke and Justin, this book uncovers significant differences between their respective depictions of the privileged status that Christ-believers hold in relation to the Jewish scriptures. Although both authors argue that Christ-believers alone possess an inspired capacity to interpret the Jewish scriptures, unlike Justin, Luke envisages an ongoing role for the Jewish people as recipients of the promises that God pledged to Israel.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-310) and index. :
9789004201590 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Portraits of spiritual authority : religious power in early Christianity, Byzantium, and the Christian Orient /
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This volume deals with several figures of spiritual authority in Christianity during late antiquity and the early middle ages, and seeks to illuminate the way in which the struggle for religious influence evolved with changes in church and society. A number of literary portraits are examined, portraits which, in various literary genres, are themselves designed to establish and propagate the authority of the people whose lives and activities they describe. The sequence begins with visionary and prophetic figures of the second and third centuries, proceeds through several testimonies from the fourth century to the power of holy persons, moves on to Syriac portraits of the fifth to seventh centuries, and ends with the demise of the authority of the holy man in the eighth.
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1 online resource (xiii, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004295919 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions /
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This collection of papers from two workshops - held in Heidelberg, Germany, in July 1996 and Jerusalem, Israel, in October 1997 - is concerned with anthropological rather than theological aspects of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, ranging from the 'primary' religions of the archaic period and their complex developments in Egypt and Mesopotamia to the 'soteriological' movements and 'secondary' religions that emerged in Late Antiquity. The first part of the book focuses on \'Confession and Conversion\', while the second part is devoted to the topic of \'Guilt, Sin and Rituals of Purification\'. The primary purpose of this volume is to convey a sense of the dynamics and dialectical relationships between the various Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions from the archaic period to Late Antiquity.
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Two contributions in German, one in French. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004379084 :
0169-8834 ;
Violence, scripture, and textual practice in early Judaism and Christianity /
: Proceedings of a conference held Oct. 6-8, 2007 at the University of Minnesota. : 1 online resource. : Includes bibliographical references and indexes. : 9789047444787 : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Other worlds and their relation to this world : early Jewish and ancient Christian traditions /
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Is there a future after death and what does this future look like? What kind of life can we expect, and in what kind of world? Is there another, hopefully better world than the one we live in? The articles collected in this volume, all written by leading experts in the field, deal with the question how ancient Jewish and Christian authors describe "otherworldly places and situations". They investigate why various forms of texts were created to address the questions above, how these texts functioned, and how they have to be understood. It is shown how ancient descriptions of the "otherworld" are taking over and reworking existing motifs, forms and genres, but also that they mirror concrete problems, ideas, experiences, and questions of their authors and the first readers.
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Proceedings of a conference held Mar. 21-23, 2007 at Radboud University. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004190733 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Psychanodia /
: A Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral--Sorbonne, 1980) under the title: Expériences de l'extase et symboles de l'ascension, de l'Hellénisme à l'Islam. : 1 online resource (xv, 81 pages) : Includes bibliographical references. : 9789004296503 : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Marriage in the Western Church : the Christianization of marriage during the patristic and early medieval periods /
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Marriage in the Western Church examines how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Western Church from the patristic through Carolingian periods. It shows how theologians came to regard marriage as an ecclesiastical institution and how they developed a Christian theology of marriage. The first part of the book deals with marriage and divorce in Roman and Germanic law. Other parts deal with marriage and divorce in ecclesiastical law, with the Latin Fathers' distinction between the divine and human laws of marriage, and with the customary stages by which persons became married. Several chapters are devoted to Augustine's views on marriage and sexuality. The author shows how the doctrine of indissolubility became the West's chief means of christianizing marriage, and how theologians found here their preferred arguments for affirming the holiness and the 'sacramentality' of marriage. The author argues that the Western regime of indissolubility was the product of a fourth century reform movement. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource (xxx, 436 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 420-427) and index. :
9789004312913 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The spirit in first century Judaism /
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Conceptions of the divine spirit underwent complex metamorphoses in Jewish biblical interpretation during the Greco-Roman era. This monograph explores those permutations in the writings of Philo Judaeus, Josephus, and Pseudo-Philo ( Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum ). The first section, 'An Anomalous Prophet', unfolds surprisingly divergent transformations of the inspiration of Balaam. The second section, 'An Eclectic Era', unearths both faint and conspicuous traces of Greco-Roman conceptions in early Jewish interpretations. The third section, 'An Extraordinary Mind', undermines the view that the spirit was associated primarily with ecstasy rather than with intellectual insight. By analyzing these interpretations in light of other contemporary Greco-Roman and Jewish writings, this volume offers original and essential data for further study of inspiration in Antiquity, including early Judaism, early Christianity, and the Greco-Roman world. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource (xiv, 302 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 276-279) and indexes. :
9789004332829 :
0169-734X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sōtēria: salvation in early Christianity and antiquity : festschrift in honour of Cilliers Breytenbach on the occasion of his 65th birthday /
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In Sōtēria: Salvation in Early Christianity and Antiquity, an international team of scholars assembles to honour the distinguished academic career of New Testament scholar Cilliers Breytenbach. Colleagues and friends consider in which manner concepts of salvation were constructed in early Christianity and its Jewish and Graeco-Roman contexts. Studies on aspects of soteriology in the New Testament writings, such as in the narratives on Jesus' life and work, and theological interpretations of his life and death in the epistolary literature, are supplemented by studies on salvation in the Apostolic Fathers, Marcion, early Christian inscriptions and Antiochian theology. The volume starts with some exemplary studies on salvation in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea scrolls, the Septuagint, and popular Graeco-Roman literature and philosophy. Furthermore, some contributions shed light on the ancient cultural background of early Christian soteriological concepts.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004396883
The origin and meaning of Ekklēsia in the early Jesus movement /
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In The Origin and Meaning of Ekklēsia in the Early Jesus Movement , Ralph J. Korner explores the ideological implications of Christ-follower associations self-designating collectively as ekklēsiai . Politically, Korner's inscriptional research suggests that an association named ekklēsia would have been perceived as a positive, rather than as a counter-imperial, participant within Imperial Greek cities. Socio-religiously, Korner argues that there was no universal ekklēsia to which all first generation Christ-followers belonged; ekklēsia was a permanent group designation used by Paul's associations. Ethno-religiously, Korner contends that ekklēsia usage by intra muros groups within pluriform Second Temple Judaism problematizes suggestions, not least at the institutional level, that Paul was "parting ways" with Judaism(s), 'Jewishness', or Jewish organizational forms.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004344990 :
1871-6636 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
John within Judaism : Religion, Ethnicity, and the Shaping of Jesus-Oriented Jewishness in the Fourth Gospel /
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In John within Judaism , Wally V. Cirafesi offers a reading of the Gospel of John as an expression of the fluid and flexible nature of Jewish identity in Greco-Roman antiquity. While many have noted John's general Jewishness, few have given it a seat at the ideologically congested table of ancient Jewish practice and belief. By interrogating the concept of "Judaism" in relation to the complex categories of "religion" and "ethnicity," Cirafesi argues that John negotiates Jewishness using strategies of ethnic identity formation paralleled in other Jewish sources from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. In this process of negotiation, including its use of "high christology" and critique of Ioudaioi, John coalesces with other expressions of ancient Jewish identity and, thus, can be read "within Judaism.".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004462946
9789004462939
The fate of the dead : studies on the Jewish and Christian apocalypses /
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These studies focus on personal eschatology in the Jewish and early Christian apocalypses. The apocalyptic tradition from its Jewish origins until the early middle ages is studied as a continuous literary tradition, in which both continuity of motifs and important changes in understanding of life after death can be charted. As well as better known apocalypses, major and often pioneering attention is given to those neglected apocalypses which portray human destiny after death in detail, such as the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens, the later apocalypses of Ezra, and the four apocalypses of the Virgin Mary. Relationships with Greco-Roman eschatology are explored. Several chapters show how specific New Testament texts are illuminated by close knowledge of this tradition of ideas and images of the hereafter.
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1 online resource (xvi, 425 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004267411 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sight and blindness in Luke-Acts : the use of physical features in characterization /
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The ancient world often thought in terms of physiognomics-the idea that character can be discerned by studying outward, physical features. That physical descriptions carry moral freight in characterization has been largely missed in modern biblical scholarship, and this study brings that to the forefront. Specifically, this is a study of one particular physical marker-blindness. When we look at Greco-Roman literature, a kind of literary topos begins to emerge, a set of assumptions that ancient audiences would typically make when encountering blind characters. Luke-Acts makes use of such a topos in a way that becomes programmatic, serving as a kind of interpretive key to Luke-Acts that is generally unnoticed in modern scholarship.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047432968 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Der Paradox Eine : antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert /
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These essays propose a new dating of, and historical setting for the letters of \'Ignatius of Antioch\'. In so doing this volume forms an important contribution to the study of Monarchianism and early church history as well. An examination of the fragments of Noëtus of Smyrna, the founder of Monarchianism, leads to the discovery of the oldest Regula fidei , and of its origin as part of anti-gnostic polemics. On the ground of late second-century parallels, especially Melito and Irenaeus, this Regula can be dated between 160 and 180 CE. It is within this context that the so-called Letters of Ignatius fit seamlessly. As a result of these findings this volume argues for a significant revision of our understanding of early church history. Monarchianism (\'Sabellianism\', \'Patripassianism\'), later considered heretical, is shown to have been the almost universally accepted belief within the Church up to the period of the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus.
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1 online resource (xviii, 332 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-332) and index. :
9789004313163 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The development of Christology during the first hundred years, and other essays on early Christian Christolog y
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Entering the debate about the development of Christology among Jesus' earliest followers, this volume critiques both the traditional evolutionary view that posited an elementary early Jewish Christology that developed in complexity as it was increasingly Hellenized and the more recent attempt to see a full-orbed Christology both as early and as Jewish, not Hellenistic, in its categories. It contends that during the first 100 years Jesus' followers employed four models from their milieu, Jewish and Greco-Roman, both to understand and to communicate their Christologies. These models were appropriated because they were appropriate vehicles for expressing the impact of Jesus on them, past, present, and future.
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Part One comprises previously unpublished material; Part Two is a collection of previously published essays. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004203501 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The apostolic age in patristic thought /
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This volume deals with how Christians of the first centuries looked back on the period of the nascent Church. Thanks to the incomparable stature of its founder, Jesus Christ, who had descended from heaven and commissioned his Apostles, this period was authorative for all Christians in matters of doctrine, institutions, rites and morality, a new phenomenon in the Graeco-Roman world. Its implications are explored in sixteen essays dealing with various subjects such as liturgy, the canon of Scriptures, the role of miracles, art, monasticism, and ministry. All contributions, taking into account both the views of individual Church fathers and Gnostic and Manichaean texts, make a large amount of primary material available.
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1 online resource (xi, 257 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047404293 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Die Namen des Vaters : Studien zu ausgewählten neutestamentlichen Gottesbezeichnungen vor ihrem frühjüdischen und paganen Sprachhorizont /
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This book brings together studies on the most common designations for God in the New Testament, considering their use in ancient Jewish tradition as well as in Greek religion and Roman imperial cult. The introducing chapter on "the Father" is followed by studies on "the Lord" and different designations expressing sovereignty (pantokrator, basileus, despotes, dynastes et cetera), on "the Creator", "the living God" and "the life giving God" as well as on the genuine Christian designation "God, who has risen Jesus from the dead". The two final chapters are on "the one and only God" and on "the highest God". This compendium is not only a reference work full of interesting philological and religio-historical material, but also lays the foundation for future studies on the way in which the different New Testament- and other early Christian texts express their views on God. Conclusions at the end of each chapter facilitate the reading of the book, which aims to sharpen the view on the long neglected importance of God in the scriptures of the New Testament. *** "Die Namen des Vaters" geben einen Überblick über die häufigsten neutestamentlichen Gottesbezeichnungen unter Berücksichtigung ihrer frühjüdischen Tradition, aber auch der zeitgenössischen paganen Sprachkonvention in der griechischen Religion und im römischen Herrscherkult. Nach der Behandlung der "Vater"-Bezeichnung folgen die Analyse der Bezeichnungen Gottes als "Herr" und "Herrscher" (Allherrscher, König, Despotes, Dynastes et cetera), als "Schöpfer", als "lebendiger" und "lebendigmachender" sowie Gott als dem, "der Jesus von den Toten auferweckt hat" als genuin christlicher Redeweise. Den Abschluss bilden Studien zu "Der einzige Gott" und "Der höchste Gott". Dieser grundlegende Überblick eignet sich nicht nur als materialreiches Nachschlagewerk, sondern bildet zugleich einen hilfreichen Ausgangspunkt für alle weiteren Untersuchungen zu den Gottes-Vorstellungen einzelner Autoren der neutestamentlichen und weiterer frühchristlicher Schriften. Zahlreiche Zusammenfassungen erleichtern die Lektüre dieses Werks, das den Blick für die - lange vernachlässigte - Bedeutung Gottes in den neutestamentlichen Texten schärfen möchte.
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Revision of the author's Habilitationsschrift--Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 2005. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [617]-674) and index. :
9789047420026 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.