Experiencing the Shepherd of Hermas
Experiencing the Shepherd of Hermas

Author: Angela Kim Harkins

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-06-06

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 3110780747

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The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the oldest and most well-attested Christian works. Its popularity arguably exceeded that of the canonical Gospels. Many early Christian thinkers regarded the Shepherd as authoritative and cited it in their own writings, even though its status as Scripture was controversial. The far-reaching influence of the Shepherd during the first few centuries is attested in part by the many languages in which it was copied: Latin, Ethiopic, Coptic, Middle Persian, and Georgian. The early dating and wide dissemination of the Shepherd of Hermas offers us access to a period when canonical boundaries were elastic. This volume treats religious experience in the Shepherd, a topic that has received little scholarly attention. It complements a growing body of literature that explores the text from social-historical perspectives. Leading scholars approach it from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including critical literary theory, anthropology, cognitive science, affect theory, gender studies, intersectionality, and text reception. In doing so, they pose fresh questions to one of the most widely read texts in the early church, offering new insights to scholars and students alike.

Hermas in Arcadia
Hermas in Arcadia

Author: J. Rendel Harris

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 1725218003

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In this volume, noted critic J. Rendel Harris provides two of his classic essays on critical problems connected with the text and interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas. To these are added three other pieces that provide methodological insight.

The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy
The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy

Author: Jonathan E Soyars

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-06-17

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9004402586

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In The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy, Jonathan E. Soyars traces the influence of Pauline literary traditions upon one of the most widely attested and influential apocalyptic texts from early Christianity. Scholarship largely considers Hermas to have known very little about Pauline letters, but by looking beyond verbatim quotations Soyars discovers extensive evidence of his adoption, adaptation, and synthesis of identifiable Pauline material in the Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes sections. Hermas emerges as a Pauline interpreter who creatively engages topics and themes developed within and across the Pauline letters through time. These results reconnect the Shepherd with early Paulinism and extend reconstructions of the sphere of Pauline influence in the second century C.E.

Personalities of the Early Church
Personalities of the Early Church

Author: Everett Ferguson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780815310617

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First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism
Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism

Author: David Hellholm

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-27

Total Pages: 2089

ISBN-13: 3110247534

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In the web of cultural processes of late antiquity ablution rites and initiation rites were performed in different forms and in different contexts. Such rites existed in Early Judaism and Greco-Roman cults and were also applied in early Christianity under the label “baptism”, however, not as one fixed rite uniformly performed and interpreted. Baptismal rites developed diversely corresponding to the diversity among Christian groups of which some later came to be perceived as heretical. Remains of art, architecture and texts from these contexts were discussed in two conferences gathering scholars who are excellent within their respective fields: text studies, studies of rites, archaeology, architecture, history of art, and cultural anthropology. These different fields of research have in recent years generated new knowledge that is relevant for the discussion of ablution and initiation rites and their function in late antiquity. At the same time interests of research have altered in favour of a growing cooperation across discipline borders. The present volumes are the outcome of two conferences in Rome 2008 and at Metochi (Lesbos) 2009.

The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon
The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon

Author: Geoffrey Mark Hahneman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780198263418

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The Muratorian Fragment, traditionally dated at the end of the second century, is by far the earliest known list of books of the New Testament. It is therefore an important milestone in understanding the formation of the Christian canon of scriptures. The traditional date of the fragment, however, was questioned in 1973 by Albert C. Sundberg, Jr, in an article of the Harvard Theological Review that has since been generally ignored or dismissed. In this book, Hahneman re-examines the traditional dating of the fragment in a complete and extensive study that concurs with Sundberg's findings. Arguing for a later placing of the fragment, Hahneman shows that the entire history of the Christian Bible must be recast as a much longer and more gradual process. As a result, the decisive period of canonical history moves from the end of the second century into the midst of the fourth. As a decisive contribution to our understanding of the development of the New Testament canon, this book will be of considerable importance and interest to New Testament scholars and historians of the early Church.