Early Christian Discourses on Jesus’ Prayer at Gethsemane
Early Christian Discourses on Jesus’ Prayer at Gethsemane

Author: Karl Olav Sandnes

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9004309640

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From early on, Christians passed down the account of Jesus’s agony at the prospect of his own death and his prayer that the cup should pass from him (Gethsemane). Yet, this is a troublesome aspect of Christian tradition. Jesus was committed to his death, but as it approached, he prayed for his escape, even as he submitted himself to God’s will. Ancient critics mocked Jesus and his followers for the events at Gethsemane. The ‘hero’ failed to meet the cultural standards for noble death and masculinity. As such, this story calls for further reflection and interpretation. The present book unfolds discourses from the earliest centuries of Christianity to determine what strategies were developed to come to terms with Gethsemane.

Visions and Faces of the Tragic
Visions and Faces of the Tragic

Author: Paul M. Blowers

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0192595938

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Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Constantine, this monograph demonstrates the increasing attention of late-ancient Christian authors to the genre of tragedy as a basis to explore the complexities of human finitude, suffering, and mortality in relation to the wisdom, justice, and providence of God. The book argues that various Christian writers, particularly in the post-Constantinian era, were keenly devoted to the mimesis, or imaginative re-presentation, of the tragic dimension of creaturely existence more than with simply mimicking the poetics of the classical Greek and Roman tragedians. It analyses a whole array of hermeneutical, literary, and rhetorical manifestations of “tragical mimesis” in early Christian writing, which, capitalizing on the elements of tragedy already perceptible in biblical revelation, aspired to deepen and edify Christian engagement with multiform evil and with the extreme vicissitudes of historical existence. Early Christian tragical mimetics included not only interpreting (and often amplifying) the Bible's own tragedies for contemporary audiences, but also developing models of the Christian self as a tragic self, revamping the Christian moral conscience as a tragical conscience, and cultivating a distinctively Christian tragical pathos. The study culminates in an extended consideration of the theological intelligence and accountability of “tragical vision” and tragical mimesis in early Christian literary culture, and the unique role of the theological virtue of hope in its repertoire of tragical emotions.

Prayer in John’s Farewell Discourse
Prayer in John’s Farewell Discourse

Author: Scott Adams

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1532686854

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It was reported that a doctoral student at Princeton once asked Albert Einstein, "What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?" He replied by saying, "Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer." Since Einstein's day, a great deal has been written on the topic of prayer in general. However, relatively little has been written about prayer in John's Farewell Discourse in particular. Therefore, this analysis not only seeks to understand the relationship between Johannine and Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Christian prayer traditions, but also seeks to discern the unique function and application of prayer as it is prescribed in the Farewell Discourse.

Know Yourself
Know Yourself

Author: Ole Jakob Filtvedt

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13: 3111083853

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The book explores ancient interpretations and usages of the famous Delphic maxim “know yourself”. The primary emphasis is on Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman sources from the first four centuries CE. The individual contributions examine both direct quotations of the maxim as well as more distant echoes. Most of the sources included in the book have never previously been studied in any detail with a view to their use and interpretation of the Delphic maxim. Thus, the book contributes significantly to the origin and different interpretations of the maxim in antiquity as well as to its reception history in ancient philosophical and theological discourses. The chapters of the book are linked to each other by numerous cross-references which makes it possible to compare the different views of the maxim with each other. It also helps readers to notice relationships and trajectories within the material. The explorations of the relevant sources are also set in the context of ongoing debates about the shape and nature of ancient conceptions of self and self-knowledge. The book thus demonstrates the wide variety of philosophical and theological approaches in that the injunction to know oneself could be viewed and how these interpretations provide windows into ancient discourses about self and self-knowledge.

Intercession of Jesus in Hebrews
Intercession of Jesus in Hebrews

Author: Abeneazer G. Urga

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2023-03-20

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 3161610962

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Recent scholarship on Hebrews has focused on Christ's sacrifice, resurrection, atonement, and priesthood. Though these discussions focus on the pre-and-post ascension mediatorial role of Jesus, there has been minimal attention paid to "intercession" as the present mediatorial task of Jesus in heaven. In this volume, Abeneazer G. Urga examines the background and nature of Jesus' heavenly intercession in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He demonstrates that the author of Hebrews has primarily depended on the LXX and some texts of the New Testament - while remaining cognizant of the theme of intercession in Second Temple Literature - in the formulation of the motif of Jesus' high priestly intercession. Urga also argues that Jesus' heavenly intercession is vocalis et realis , and that his intercession is made in order to procure help and the forgiveness of sin for God's people in their time of need.

Jesus the Epic Hero
Jesus the Epic Hero

Author: Karl Olav Sandnes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1666908630

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The ancient cento-genre was prone to be used on all kinds of subjects. New texts were created out of the classical epics. Empress Eudocia followed this practice and composed the story of Jesus in lines lifted almost verbatim from Homer’s epics. Jesus and his relevance to her audience is thus presented within the confines of style and vocabulary offered by the Iliad and Odyssey. The lines picked to convey her theology are often clustered around key Homeric motifs or type scenes, such as warfare, homecoming, feast, reconciliation, hospitality. Jesus waging war against all evil and Hades in particular runs throughout this Homeric and simultaneously biblical epic. The story starts in the Old Testament which is conceived as a divine counsel on Mt. Olympus where a plan to save sinful humanity is presented. The narrative then follows the biographic lines of the canonical gospels, with John’s Gospel holding pride of place in the way she renders and interprets the Jesus-story. The story told suspends both the geography and time of Jesus. Eudocia preaches the story she tells. She emerges in this poem as one of the most, if not the most prolific female theologian and preacher in the first Christian centuries.

The Variety and Importance of the Scriptural Witnesses to the So-called ‘Western’ Text
The Variety and Importance of the Scriptural Witnesses to the So-called ‘Western’ Text

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-06-19

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9004539816

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The essays in this volume, offered to Dr. Jenny Read-Heimerdinger on the occasion of her 70th birthday, cover subjects in New Testament textual criticism that are central to her research. In particular, the volume contains text critical studies of the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the early testimony of New Testament Greek and Coptic manuscripts, scribal tendencies in the first centuries, and linguistic approaches to textual criticism.

Lev Shestov
Lev Shestov

Author: Matthew Beaumont

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-09-17

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1350151173

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The Jewish philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) is perhaps the great forgotten thinker of the twentieth century, but one whose revival seems timely and urgent in the twenty-first century. An important influence on Georges Bataille, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze and many others, Shestov developed a fascinating anti-Enlightenment philosophy that critiqued the limits of reason and triumphantly affirmed an ethics of hope in the face of hopelessness. In a wide-ranging reappraisal of his life and thought, which explores his ideas in relation to the history of literature and painting as well as philosophy, Matthew Beaumont restores Shestov to prominence as a thinker for turbulent times. In reconstructing Shestov's thought and asserting its continued relevance, the book's central theme is wakefulness. It argues that for Shestov, escape from the limits of rationalist Enlightenment thought comes from maintaining an insomniac vigilance in the face of the spiritual night to which his century appeared condemned. Shestov's engagement with the image of Christ remaining awake in the Garden of Gethsemane then, is at the core of his inspiring understanding of our ethical responsibilities after the horrors of the twentieth century.

Reading Bodies
Reading Bodies

Author: Callie Callon

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-01-10

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0567684423

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Callie Callon investigates how some early Christian authors utilized physiognomic thought as rhetorical strategy, particularly with respect to persuasion. Callon shows how this encompassed denigrating theological opponents and forging group boundaries (invective against heretics or defence of Christians), self-representation to demonstrate the moral superiority of early Christians to Greco-Roman outsiders, and the cultivation of collective self-identity. The work begins with an overview of how physiognomy was used in broader antiquity as a component of persuasion. Callon then examines how physiognomic thought was employed by early Christians and how physiognomic tropes were employed to “prove” their orthodoxy and moral superiority. Building on the conclusions of the earlier chapters, Callon then focuses on the representation of the physiognomies of early Christian martyrs, before addressing the problem of the acceptance or even promotion of the idea of a physically lacklustre Jesus by the same authors who otherwise utilize traditional physiognomic thought.