Remarriage in Early Christianity

Remarriage in Early Christianity

Author: A. Andrew Das

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2024-06-27

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1467467510

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What did early Christians believe about remarriage after divorce? The New Testament sends mixed messages about divorce. Jesus forbids it in Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels, but he seems to make an exception for victims of infidelity in Matthew’s Gospel. Paul permits divorce in 1 Corinthians when an unbeliever initiates it. Yet other Pauline passages imply that remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery. A. Andrew Das confronts this dissonance in Remarriage in Early Christianity. Challenging scholarly consensus, Das argues that early Christians did not approve of remarriage after divorce. His argument—covering contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts, the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and ante-Nicene interpretation—reveals greater consistency in early Christianity than is often assumed. Das pays special attention to the Greek words used in contemporary bills of divorce and in the New Testament, offering much-needed clarity on hotly contested concepts like porneia. At once sensitive and objective, Das finds an exegetically sound answer to the question of remarriage among early Christians. This bold study will challenge scholars and enlighten any Christian concerned with what Scripture has to say on this perennially relevant topic.


From Text to Performance

From Text to Performance

Author: Kelly R Iverson

Publisher: Lutterworth Press

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0718843924

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For the last two centuries biblical interpretation has been guided by perspectives that have largely ignored the oral context in which the gospels took shape. Only recently have scholars begun to explore how ancient media inform the interpretive process and an understanding of the Bible. This collection of essays, by authors who recognize that the Jesus tradition was a story heard and performed, seeks to reevaluate the constituent elements of narrative, including characters, structure, narrator, time, and intertextuality. In dialogue with traditional literary approaches, these essays demonstrate that an appreciation of performance yields fresh insights distinguishable in many respects from results of literary or narrative readings of the gospels.


History and Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls

History and Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Author: Travis B. Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-05-16

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1108493335

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Charts a new methodological course in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship by employing memory theory to inform historical research. This is an instructive resource for scholars who are seeking an alternative to currently constructed approaches to the subject, and will be of appeal to those interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls more generally.


Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity

Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity

Author: Tom Thatcher

Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit

Published: 2014-08-29

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1589839544

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Essential reading for scholars and students interested in sociology and biblical studies In this collection scholars of biblical texts and rabbinics engage the work of Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Schwartz provides an introductory essay on the study of collective memory. Articles that follow integrate his work into the study of early Jewish and Christian texts. The volume concludes with a response from Schwartz that continues this warm and fruitful dialogue between fields. Features: Articles that integrate the study of collective memory and social psychology into religious studies Essays from Barry Schwartz Theories applied rather than left as abstract principles


Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Author: Matthew Levering

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0192575619

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The Resurrection of Jesus is at the very root of Christian faith; without belief in Jesus Christianity dies. In this thought-provoking work, Matthew Levering defends the credibility of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Drawing on the work of N. T. Wright, Levering shows that the historical evidence vindicates this assumption, and reveals that the Gospels were backed by eyewitnesses who were living and telling their stories even during the time of the writing of the Gospels. The author also emphasises the importance of evaluating the Old Testament to validate Jesus' Resurrection. By highlighting the desire--both in the ancient world and now--to make the Resurrection more comprehensible by spiritualizing it, Levering argues that the fact that the disciples themselves did not do this provides a further clue to reliability. Finally, the author addresses the question of why Jesus does not continue to show himself in his glorified flesh after his resurrection, which is often seen as a strong case for scepticism. However, he shows that Jesus' entire mission is predicated upon helping us to avoid cleaving to the present world over God. He is leading us to where he is--the kingdom of God, the beginning of the new creation at the Father's right hand. By developing these arguments for the historical reality of Jesus' Resurrection, this ground-breaking study expertly draws together historical and theological reasons for believing that Jesus' Resurrection happened.


Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers

Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers

Author: Stephen E. Young

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9783161510106

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This dissertation reevaluates the tradition of Jesus' sayings in the Apostolic Fathers in light of the growing recognition of the impact of orality upon early Christianity and its writings. At the beginning of the last century it was common to hold that the Apostolic Fathers made wide use of the canonical Gospels. While a number of studies have since called this view into question, many of them simply replace the theory of dependence upon canonical Gospels with one of dependence upon other written sources. No full-scale study of Jesus tradition in the Apostolic Fathers has been published which takes into account the last four decades of new research into oral tradition in the wake of the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. Based on this new research, the present dissertation advances the thesis that an oral-traditional source best explains the form and content of the explicit appeals to Jesus tradition in the Apostolic Fathers that predate 2 Clement. In the course of the discussion, attention is drawn to the ways in which the Jesus tradition in the Apostolic Fathers informs our understanding of the use of oral tradition in Christian antiquity.


The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media

Author: Tom Thatcher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 0567678385

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The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media is a convenient and authoritative reference tool, introducing specific terms and concepts helpful to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Since the early 1980s, biblical scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture and ritual. Over time these theories have been combined with considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins, and rabbinics. The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a source of reference that offers clear definitions, and in-depth discussions of relevant terms and concepts, and the relationships between them. The volume begins with an overview of 'ancient media studies' and a brief history of research to orient the reader to the field and the broader research context of the book, with individual entries on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/ concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic, paying particular attention to its relevance for the study of the Bible and related literature


Remembrance of Things Past?

Remembrance of Things Past?

Author: Michael J. Thate

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9783161526336

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In this book, Michael J. Thate offers an experiment in reception criticism in its consideration of the formation and reception of the historical Jesus discourse. He also attempts to historicize Leben-Jesu-Forschung within debates and narratives of secularization. These two foci guide the book through its two parts. First Thate explicates Schweitzer's dominant archival function in Leben-Jesu-Forschung, while aiming to make fragile the "grand architect's" receptive hegemony. Then he combines critical memory theory and other theoretical readings of the material in an attempt to refocus the study of the historical Jesus as early Christian memory politics in the service of identity explication. He attempts to problematize Schweitzer's legacy of a tidy systematic approach in which much of historical Jesus scholarship continues to operate.


Remembering Paul

Remembering Paul

Author: Benjamin Lee White

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0199370273

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Who was Paul of Tarsus? Radical visionary of a new age? Gender-liberating progressive? Great defender of orthodoxy? In Remembering Paul, Benjamin L. White offers a critique of early Christian claims about the "real" Paul in the second century C.E.--a period in which apostolic memory was highly contested--and sets these ancient contests alongside their modern counterpart: attempts to rescue the "historical" Paul from his "canonical" entrapments. White charts the rise and fall of various narratives about Paul and argues that Christians of the second century had no access to the "real" Paul. Through the selection, combination, and interpretation of pieces of a diverse earlier layer of the Pauline tradition, Christians defended images of the Apostle that were important for forming collective identity.