Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?
Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?

Author: Dennis R. MacDonald

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0300129890

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div In this provocative challenge to prevailing views of New Testament sources, Dennis R. MacDonald argues that the origins of passages in the book of Acts are to be found not in early Christian legends but in the epics of Homer. MacDonald focuses on four passages in the book of Acts, examines their potential parallels in the Iliad, and concludes that the author of Acts composed them using famous scenes in Homer’s work as a model. Tracing the influence of passages from the Iliad on subsequent ancient literature, MacDonald shows how the story generated a vibrant, mimetic literary tradition long before Luke composed the Acts. Luke could have expected educated readers to recognize his transformation of these tales and to see that the Christian God and heroes were superior to Homeric gods and heroes. Building upon and extending the analytic methods of his earlier book, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, MacDonald opens an original and promising appreciation not only of Acts but also of the composition of early Christian narrative in general. /DIV

Narrativity in Biblical and Related Texts
Narrativity in Biblical and Related Texts

Author: George J. Brooke

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9789042908772

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Seventeen innovative studies are collected in this volume which has been produced under the aegis of the Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Manchester, and L'Institut des sciences bibliques, Universite de Lausanne. The majority of the studies engage with narrative through providing insightful working examples. Building on the many contributions of recent narratological research, for the most part the studies in this collection avoid the technical language of narratology as they present fresh insights at many levels. Some essays focus more on the implied author, some on the implied reader or hearer, and some on the way particular messages are constructed; some of the studies consider how author, message and reader are all interconnected. There are several creative proposals for refining genre definition, from law and wisdom to gospel and apocryphal writings. Some studies highlight the way in which narratives can contain ethical, religious, and cultural messages. Sensitivity to narrative is also shown by some contributors to expose in intruing ways the redactional processes behind the final form of texts. Students of narrative in the ancient world will find much to consider in this book, and others engaged with literary studies more generally will discover that scholars of the worlds of the Bible and Late Antiquity have much to offer them.

Among the Gentiles
Among the Gentiles

Author: Luke Timothy Johnson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0300156499

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Presenting a fresh inquiry into early Christianity and Greco-Roman paganism, Luke Timothy Johnson begins with a broad definition of religion as a way of life organized around convictions and experiences concerning ultimate power.

Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses
Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses

Author: Todd C. Penner

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 9004154477

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A collection of essays on early Christian, Jewish and Greco-Roman religious discourses in antiquity, focusing on the construction of gender in relationship to broader cultural and religious themes, argumentation and identity formation in the early centuries of the common era.

Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts
Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts

Author: Christy Cobb

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-10-03

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1793637857

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Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts examines instances of sexual violence within a diversity of early Christian texts carefully, ethically, and with an eye toward shining a light on the scourge of sexual violence that is so often manifest in both ancient and contemporary Christian communities.

The Christian World Around the New Testament
The Christian World Around the New Testament

Author: Richard Bauckham

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2017-10-20

Total Pages: 772

ISBN-13: 9783161533051

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Most of these thirty-one essays by Richard Bauckham, a well-known New Testament scholar, were first published between 1979 and 2015 in journals and multi-authored volumes. Two are previously unpublished and one has not been published in English before. They range widely over early Christianity and early Christian literature in both the New Testament period and the early patristic period, reflecting the author's conviction that the historical study of early Christianity should not isolate the New Testament literature from other early Christian sources, such as the apostolic fathers and the Christian apocryphal literature. Some of the essays develop further the themes of the author's books on aspects of the Gospels, such as the intended audiences of the Gospels, the way in which Gospel traditions were transmitted, the role of the eyewitnesses in the origins of the Gospels, the importance of Papias's evidence about Gospel traditions, and the relationship between canonical and Gnostic Gospels. Some of the essays relate to important persons, such as Peter, Barnabas, Paul and James. These include a full investigation of the evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and an attempt to locate the estate of Publius where Paul stayed on Malta. There are studies of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day in both the New Testament and patristic periods. There are studies that survey most of the main categories of apocryphal Christian literature, including apocryphal Gospels and Acts, and with a special focus on the non-canonical apocalypses, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Latin Vision of Ezra.

Insatiable Appetites
Insatiable Appetites

Author: Kelly L. Watson

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2017-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1479877654

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"In this comparative history of cross-cultural encounters in the early North Atlantic world, Kelly L. Watson argues that the persistent rumours of cannibalism surrounding Native Americans served a specific and practical purpose for European settlers. As they forged new identities and found ways to not only subdue but also co-exist with native peoples, the cannibal narrative helped to establish hierarchical categories of European superiority and Native inferiority upon which imperial power in the Americas was predicated."--Cover.