A study of animal sacrifice within Greek paganism, Judaism, and Christianity between 100 BC and AD 200. After a vivid account of the realities of sacrifice in the Greek East and in the Jerusalem Temple, Maria-Zoe Petropoulou explores the attitudes of early Christians towards this practice, and the reasons why they ultimately rejected it.
Sacrifice dominated the religious landscape of the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia, but its role and meaning changed dramatically with the rise of Christianity. Ullucci explores this transformation, in the process demonstrating the complexity of the concept of sacrifice in Roman, Greek, and Jewish religion.
Early Christians and Animals presents a lively study of the significance of animals in early Christian thought, tradition, text and art. Robert M. Grant: * examines the diverse and often conflicting sources, from the pagan antecedents Aristotle and Pliny, to Biblical animal references and the Church fathers * provides fresh translations of key texts concerning animals - the Physiologus, Basils homilies and Isidores chapters.
In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.
In this eloquent and provocative "open letter" to evangelicals, Ronald Osborn wrestles with the problem of biblical literalism and the ongoing challenge of animal suffering within an evolutionary understanding of the world. Osborn forces us to ask hard questions, not only of the Bible and church tradition, but also and especially of ourselves.
Animal rights is animal theology. The author argues that historical theology, creatively defined, must reject humanocentricity. He questions the assumption that if theology is to speak on this issue, 'it must only do so on the side of the oppressors.' His theological query investigates not only the abstractions of theory, but also the realities of hunting, animal experimentation, and genetic engineering. He is an important, pioneering, Christian voice speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.
An investigation of the multiple meanings and functions of sacrifice in diverse religious texts and practices from the late Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods.
Imagine the dangerous life of an early Christian. You've embraced your newfound faith in Christ but fear the risk of persecution or death at the hands of the pagans living around you. Then a trusted friend tells you about some of Jesus' followers who secretly meet. He whispers into your ear, "Look for a fish carved in a paving stone" by a certain home on the Via Tiburtina. You smile in gratitude. Still today, modern society recognizes those Christian symbols that kept the early Christians safely connected: they appear on churches, bumper stickers, mugs -- even mints and stuffed animals. Yet we are often ignorant of the rich meaning of these symbols: their origins in Scripture, in ancient culture, and in the preaching of the Church Fathers. In this book, noted author Mike Aquilina conducts an intriguing and insightful tour of the symbols that expressed the life and devotion of the Church through the first four centuries of its existence. He explains how Christians freely borrowed pagan and Jewish symbols, giving them new, distinctly Christian meanings. Recover the zeal of our spiritual ancestors as you learn to read their symbolic language -- and discover the impact the symbols still have on your life today. More than a hundred illustrations, reproduced by artist Lea Marie Ravotti from the ancient originals, beautifully complement the text. View a mulitmedia presentation and listen to an interview of the author here.
A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.
