With this volume, Donatism regains its voice and its hagiography is available in English for the first time. The stories included provide a unique opportunity to glimpse the daily life of the church which for over a century was the faith of the majority of North African Christians. The narratives represent the lives and deaths of Christians who carried on pre-Constantine traditions from the fourth century to the advent of Islam.
A unique, wide-ranging volume exploring the historical, religious, cultural, political, and social aspects of Christian martyrdom Although a well-studied and researched topic in early Christianity, martyrdom had become a relatively neglected subject of scholarship by the latter half of the 20th century. However, in the years following the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the study of martyrdom has experienced a remarkable resurgence. Heightened cultural, religious, and political debates about Islamic martyrdom have, in a large part, prompted increased interest in the role of martyrdom in the Christian tradition. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom is a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon from its beginnings to its role in the present day. This timely volume presents essays written by 30 prominent scholars that explore the fundamental concepts, key questions, and contemporary debates surrounding martyrdom in Christianity. Broad in scope, this volume explores topics ranging from the origins, influences, and theology of martyrdom in the early church, with particular emphasis placed on the Martyr Acts, to contemporary issues of gender, identity construction, and the place of martyrdom in the modern church. Essays address the role of martyrdom after the establishment of Christendom, especially its crucial contribution during and after the Reformation period in the development of Christian and European national-building, as well as its role in forming Christian identities in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This important contribution to Christian scholarship: Offers the first comprehensive reference work to examine the topic of martyrdom throughout Christian history Includes an exploration of martyrdom and its links to traditions in Judaism and Islam Covers extensive geographical zones, time periods, and perspectives Provides topical commentary on Islamic martyrdom and its parallels to the Christian church Discusses hotly debated topics such as the extent of the Roman persecution of early Christians The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of religious studies, theology, and Christian history, as well as readers with interest in the topic of Christian martyrdom.
In today's demands for moral absolutes, the puritanism of early Christian Donatists is reflected. Maureen A. Tilley's study gives new insight into the Donatist church by focusing attention on the surviving Donatist controversies. She persuasively shows how Donatist interpretations of Scripture correlate with changes in the social setting of their church.
The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age examines an apocalypse that never happened, seen through the eyes of a dissident church that no longer exists. Jesse A. Hoover considers Donatists, members of an ecclesiastical communion that for a brief moment formed the majority church in Roman North Africa—modern Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya—before fading away sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries. Hoover studies how Donatists perceived the end of the world to offer a glimpse into the inner life of the dissident communion: what it valued, whom it feared, and how it defined its place in history while on the cusp of history's end. By recovering these appeals to apocalyptic themes in surviving Donatist writings, this study uncovers a significant element within the dissident movement's self-perception that has so far gone unexamined. In contrast to previous assessments, it argues that such eschatological expectations are not out of sync with the wider world of Latin Christianity in late antiquity, and that they functioned as an effective polemical strategy designed to counter their opponents' claim to be the true church in North Africa.
Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways Christian theology has shaped centuries of violence from Christianity's first centuries up to our own day, through the crusades, the French Revolution, and more recent American wars.
This book examines the commonalities of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and presents martyr narratives as a resource for resisting political violence.
In this volume, Karol Piotr Kulpa offers a coherent analysis of the reception of 2 Thess. 2:3-12 by Tyconius in his Liber Regularum and his reconstructed Expositio Apocalypseos . The author proposes and applies his own method for a reception history composed of historical, literary, and theological levels, which is constructive as well as analytical. In this way he writes a history of reception that not only finds its anchor in the past, but also builds bridges to theological questions of the present. In particular, the author identifies that motifs of homo peccati , mysterium facinoris , and discessio drawn from 2 Thess. 2:3 and 2:7 become Tyconius' "world-constructing verses" in his understanding of Scripture, and of the bipartition in the church's reality, in human nature, and in eschatological temporality. As a result, he offers a refreshingly 'ecumenical' reading of Tyconius, refusing to reduce his significance to that of a 'heretical voice' but re-envisaging him as a potentially authoritative theologian and exegete.
The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies responds to and celebrates the explosion of research in this inter-disciplinary field over recent decades. As a one-volume reference work, it provides an introduction to the academic study of early Christianity (c. 100-600 AD) and examines the vast geographical area impacted by the early church, in western and eastern late antiquity. It is thematically arranged to encompass history, literature, thought, practices, and material culture. It contains authoritative and up-to-date surveys of current thinking and research in the various sub-specialties of early Christian studies, written by leading figures in the discipline. The essays orientate readers to a given topic, as well as to the trajectory of research developments over the past 30-50 years within the scholarship itself. Guidance for future research is also given. Each essay points the reader towards relevant forms of extant evidence (texts, documents, or examples of material culture), as well as to the appropriate research tools available for the area. This volume will be useful to advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as to specialists in any area who wish to consult a brief review of the 'state of the question' in a particular area or sub-specialty of early Christian studies, especially one different from their own.
