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A provocative book from a highly original scholar, challenging much of what we know about early Christian manuscripts In this bold and groundbreaking book, Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian manuscripts and demonstrates that much of what we thought we knew about these books and fragments is mistaken. While biblical scholars have expended much effort in their study of the texts contained within our earliest Christian manuscripts, there has been a surprising lack of interest in thinking about these books as material objects with individual, unique histories. We have too often ignored the ways that the antiquities market obscures our knowledge of the origins of these manuscripts. Through painstaking archival research and detailed studies of our most important collections of early Christian manuscripts, Nongbri vividly shows how the earliest Christian books are more than just carriers of texts or samples of handwriting. They are three-dimensional archaeological artifacts with fascinating stories to tell, if we’re willing to listen.
The story of the woman taken in adultery features a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over whether the adulteress should be stoned as the law commands. In response, Jesus famously states, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” To Cast the First Stone traces the history of this provocative story from its first appearance to its enduring presence today. Likely added to the Gospel of John in the third century, the passage is often held up by modern critics as an example of textual corruption by early Christian scribes and editors, yet a judgment of corruption obscures the warm embrace the story actually received. Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wass...
This Festschrift dedicated to S. Scott Bartchy comes on the occasion of his retirement from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. This volume contains seventeen essays contributed by Professor Bartchy's esteemed colleagues, associates, friends, and former graduate students. Beginning with his groundbreaking work on Greco-Roman slavery, Bartchy's teaching and research have been marked both by his use of social-scientific methods for studying the New Testament and by an interest in the social history of early Christianity, including the role of women in the early Christian assemblies, the Christian critique of traditional views of male honor, and the practic...
Richard J. Britton uses the critical theory of Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, and others to examine the financial, gift, and olive tree metaphors of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Drawing upon papyri about money, gifts, and friendship, Greek and Roman farming handbooks, and later sources, including the Book of Mormon and writings from colonized places, Britton questions the way some people understand faith, grace, and identity in the New Testament and beyond. Britton asserts that the believer is not a passive recipient of God’s grace and righteousness but rather an interpreter, reader, and decision maker actively involved in reciprocal exchange and enhancement of God’s eschatological and soteriological project. Believers, he concludes, negotiate meaning through their own interaction with texts and traditions in combination with their own personal relationship with the divine and the world. Turning to the contemporary world, Britton contends that, if we want to upend the oppression of established religion and ideology, we must first appreciate the believer as a powerful and responsible agent within God’s cosmic project.
This volume of Kleine Schriften reflects Francois Bovon's two major fields of research: Luke-Acts on the one hand, and early Christian Apocrypha on the other. He insists on the ethical and missionary practices of the early Christian communities. The apostle Paul's ethical concern is presented not as an opposition between good and evil, but as a crescendo from the good to the best. The authority of John, the author of the Book of Revelation, is described in a nonhierarchical way as the care of a brother for his brothers and sisters rather than of a father. Women ministry is attested in recently discovered portions of the Acts of Philip. This collection of essays shows also how doctrinal positions were reached in the middle of strong tensions. Such is the witness of the Fragment Oxyrhynchus 840 in favor of a spiritual purification. Francois Bovon is also attentive to the reception of the earliest Christian documents in the Late Antiquity period. As a whole he describes aspects of early Christianity in its variety but also in its unity.
The Nag Hammadi Story is not a history of research in the usual sense of a Forschungsbericht, which would report on the massive amount of scholarship that has been devoted to the content of the Nag Hammadi Codices for more than a half-century. Rather it is a socio-historical narration of just what went on during the thirty-two years from their discovery late in 1945, via their initial trafficking, and then the attempts to monopolize them, until finally, through the intervention of UNESCO, the whole collection of thirteen Codices was published in facsimiles and in English translation, both completed late in 1977.
A renewed interest in textual criticism has created an unfortunate proliferation of myths, mistakes, and misinformation about this technical area of biblical studies. Elijah Hixson and Peter Gurry, along with a team of New Testament textual critics, offer up-to-date, accurate information on the history and current state of the New Testament text that will serve apologists and offer a self-corrective to evangelical excesses.
Pursuit of Perfection explores the significance of the perfection motif in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It addresses the controversial interpretation of teleios ("perfection") in Hebrews where this notion is so central to the argument of the book. The investigation examines the meaning of perfection in an attempt to discover its significance on Hebrews theology. The need for the study is the lack of adequate treatment of the subject in the last three decades. The discussion focuses on the precise meaning to be attached to the notion of perfection and its significance for Hebrews interpretation. Through an exploration of major interpretative approaches to the notion of perfection, and its usag...
This book is a collection of nearly 175 documents?from saints, emperors, philosophers, satirists, inscriptions, graffiti, and other interesting types?that sheds light on the complex fabric of religious belief as it changed from a variety of non-Judeo-Christian movements to Christian in late antiquity. These texts illuminate and bring to life the bizarre and the banal of the social world of the Roman Empire, the world in which Christianity ultimately gained preeminence. This treasury of texts leads the reader through the matrix of beliefs among which Christianity grew. It includes both Christian and non-Christian sources, avoiding a common but obscuring division between the two. The material is presented as one single flow that satisfies natural curiosity and whets the reader's appetite for more. Brief explanatory introductions to the documents are included.