A discussion of 'primitive' Christianity - Christianity in its original form, this work was first given as Speaker's Lectures in Oxford. Covering the first five centuries of Christianity, it argues that neither a theology of the New Testament nor a history of the early Church can do justice to all the dimensions of the earliest Christianity. It explores in depth the formation of primitive Christianity and studies the effect of the two great crises of primitive Christianity: the split with Judaism and the threat from Gnosticism. It is aimed at academic theologians.
Ladd's magisterial work on New Testament theology has well served scores of seminary students since 1974. Now this comprehensive, standard evangelical text has been carefully revised by Hagner to include an update of Ladd's survey of the history of the field of New Testament theology, an augmented bibliography, and an entirely new subject index.
How the Catholic Church got started. Covers Sts. Peter and Paul; first Popes; the written and unwritten word; Council of Jerusalem; persecutions; religious life of early Christians; early popes and martyrs; birth of the New Testament.
The New Testament writings are the foundational documents of early Christianity. But to fully understand them we need a broad historical awareness of the wider social, economic, political and religious context that produced them. Exploring the transition from an oral to a written tradition, this fascinating primer depicts the growth of the early church amid the Roman and Hellenistic Empires. Focusing on the composition and content of the Synoptic Gospels – those of Matthew, Mark and Luke – W. R. Telford furnishes the reader with an appreciation of the methods contemporary scholars apply to the Gospels and also offers an assured, in-depth guide to the texts themselves. Broaching difficult questions about the differing accounts of Jesus’ life that the New Testament has left us, this is an invaluable starting point for anyone looking to understand the roots of Christianity.
The most thorough grounding available in the various disciplines of NT study, this is an invaluable tool for students, scholars and other serious readers of the earliest Christian writings. With a full survey of scholarship on each topic, in 600 packed pages the volume gives a reliable, in-depth presentation of: the history of interpretation – the NT canon – text criticism – the language of the NT – the historical and literary context – methods and approaches.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, popular works of literature attracted--as they attract today--sequels, prequels, franchises, continuations, and parodies. Sequels of all kinds demonstrate the economic realities of the literary marketplace. This represents something fundamental about the way human beings process narrative information. We crave narrative closure, but we also resist its finality, making such closure both inevitable and inadequate in human narratives. Many cultures incorporate this fundamental ambiguity towards closure in the mythic frameworks that fuel their narrative imaginations. New Testaments: Cognition, Closure and the Figural Logic of the Sequel, 1660-1740 examines both the inevitability and the inadequacy of closure in the sequels to four major works of literature written in England between 1660 and 1740: Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and Pamela. Each of these works spawned sequels, which--while often different from the original works--connected themselves through rhetorical strategies that can be loosely defined as figural. Such strategies came directly from the culture's two dominant religious narratives: the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible--two vastly dissimilar works seen universally as complementary parts of a unified and coherent narrative.
Exploring New Testament theology based on the conference table approach, this book examines the plan and the need for salvation as expressed by the writers of the New Testament.
Gerd Theissen describes the emergence of the New Testament canon out of the wide variety of early Christian literature, drawing on Max Weber's discussion of the evolution of religious organizations. Theissen describes a series of phases in the life of the early Christian movement: the charismatic, the "pseudepigraphic," the "functional," and the "canonical."
When John Smyth organized the first Baptist church, he wanted to establish the New Testament church; believer's baptism was the missing link. Baptists of subsequent eras often continued the search to embody "New Testament Christianity." Unique to surveys of Baptist life, Doug Weaver highlights this restorationist theme as a way to understand Baptist identity. Weaver does not force the theme, but the "search" is ever present. It is found in the insistence upon believer's baptism, but also in examples like the Sabbath worship of Seventh Day Baptists, the "nine rites" of colonial Separate Baptists, the women preachers of Free Will Baptists, the "trail of blood" of Landmarkism, the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, the "fundamentals" of fundamentalism and the ministry of the European pioneer Johann Oncken. Like other recent Baptist studies, Weaver describes Baptist diversity. Still, he highlights the persistent commitment of most Baptists to an informal constellation of "Baptist distinctives." Alongside the quest for the New Testament church (and congregational community), Weaver especially highlights the Baptist commitment to religious liberty and the individual conscience. This emphasis, while later reinforced by Enlightenment ideals, could already be found in the biblicist piety of the earliest Baptists who insisted that individual believers must have the right to choose their religious beliefs because they would stand alone before God at the final judgment. Both chronological and thematic, this book addresses such themes as the role of women, the social gospel, ecumenism, charismatic influences, and theological emphases in Baptist life. The book's focus is America, but it also includes helpful introductory chapters on early English Baptists and international Baptists.
