A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Ritual Boundaries, ...Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Christians experienced religion in lived practice through the study of magical objects, such as amulets and grimoires. Against the prevailing view of late antiquity as a time when only so-called elites were interested in religious and ritual differentiation, the evidence presented here reveals that the desire to distinguish between religious and ritual insiders and outsiders cut across diverse social strata. The magical evidence also offers unique insight into early biblical reception, exposing a textual world in which scriptural reading was multisensory and multitraditional. As they addressed sickness, demonic struggle, and interpersonal conflicts, Mediterranean people thus acted in ways that challenge our conceptual boundaries between Christians and non-Christians; elites and non-elites; and words, materials, and images. Sanzo helps us rethink how early Christians imagined similarity and difference among texts, traditions, groups, and rituals as they went about their daily lives.  
In his letters, the church scholar Jerome describes a deep inner rift between Virgil and the gospels, between Cicero and the apostles. This volume traces late ancient processes of cultural ...hybridization using methods from digital quote analysis. By looking at quotes from the Aeneid, it examines the narrative strategies employed by Jerome to process the tension-filled relationship between classical antiquity and Christianity.
In seinen rhetorisch äußerst versierten Briefen thematisiert der Kirchenlehrer Hieronymus eine tiefe innere Zerrissenheit zwischen Vergil und den Evangelien, zwischen Cicero und den Aposteln. Der vorliegende Band spürt diesen kulturellen Transformationsprozessen anhand der Intertextualitätsstrategie des Hieronymus nach. Das Erkenntnisinteresse ist dabei zweigeteilt in einen methodischen und einen inhaltlichen Teil. Einerseits werden digitale Verfahren der Zitatanalyse (weiter)entwickelt und evaluiert. Mit den computergestützten Verfahren wird der Bestand an Zitaten am Beispiel der Aeneis um mehr als ein Drittel deutlich erweitert und dabei zugleich das theoretische Zitatkonzept maßgeblich geschärft. Andererseits wird mit hermeneutischen Verfahren eine Zitattypologie erstellt, mittels derer nicht nur die ‚Grenze‘ der Textinterpretation aufgezeigt, sondern auch ein differenzierteres Bild der Zitiertechnik des Hieronymus gezeichnet wird. Die Arbeit legt eine sprachlich-stilistische Hybridisierung offen, die eine modifizierte und vertiefte Einsicht in die tatsächlichen, untergründigen Anverwandlungen des klassisch-heidnischen Literaturerbes durch den frühchristlichen Autor ermöglicht.
This article proposes guidelines to interpret historically Ealy Christianity, from the first to the beginning of the third Century, in the light of recent work on Popular Culture in the Ancient ...Mediterranean World. That research perspective tries to put Ealy Christian practices in relationship with cultural perceptions, concrete needs, and expectations of the subaltern groups of the Roman Empire. Ancient Christianity should then be studied mainly by its magical practices, and its popular modes of narrative, who focused on domestic relationships.
Justification Matthew J. Thomas
St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology,
10/2023
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Within Christian theology, justification refers to the act whereby human beings are established as righteous before God. The doctrine of justification is distinct within the history of theology both ...for the importance ascribed to it – Martin Luther, as one prominent example, asserts that the church is built by this doctrine alone (Luther’s Works LW 26.10) – and for the large number of questions and controversies surrounding it. To take a few examples: is justification essentially a legal action in which humans are forgiven, or an effective one in which they are transformed? Does justification refer to a present reality, a future one, or both? How does justification – a doctrine normally associated with the writings of the apostle Paul – cohere or conflict with teachings found elsewhere in the Christian scriptures? While such questions have not proved contentious in every age, conflicts surrounding them at key points in the history of theology have contributed to divisions between churches and denominations, many of which persist to the present day. This article will offer an overview of the Christian doctrine of justification in five sections. Following (1) the introduction, it will present overviews of (2) justification in the Old and New Testaments; (3) disputed questions on the doctrine of justification; (4) justification in the history of Christian theology; and (5) justification in contemporary theology.
Écrite entre 408 et 409 dans l’effervescence d’une forte résistance païenne à une christianisation accélérée, la correspondance entre Augustin d’Hippone et Nectarius de Calama est un concentré de ...problématiques néoplatoniciennes qui tournent autour des formes et des sens de l’appartenance à la Cité (terrestre), de la justice et du bonheur. S’y ajoute un débat de type théologique autour des significations de la Cité céleste, de dieu et du pardon. Grâce à ces quatre lettres qui font parler en même temps un évêque et un « sage » bien instruit, nous pouvons approcher davantage la mentalité des élites africaines païenne et chrétienne de l’époque romaine tardive.
Written between 408 and 409 A.D. in the effervescence of strong pagan resistance to the accelerated Christianization of the Roman society, the correspondence between Augustine of Hippo and Nectarius of Calama is a concentrate of Neoplatonic issues that revolve around the forms and meanings of belonging to the earthly City, of the justice, and the happiness. Added to this is a theological type of debate around the meanings of the celestial City, God, and forgiveness. Through these four letters which enable to a bishop and a well-educated wise man to communicate, we can get closer to the mentality of the African pagan and Christian elites of the Later Roman Empire.
Reconceiving Religious Conflict deconstructs instances of religious conflict within the formative centuries of Christianity, the first six centuries CE. It explores the theoretical foundations of ...religious conflict; the dynamics of religious conflict within the context of persecution and martyrdom; the social and moral intersections that undergird the phenomenon of religious conflict; and the relationship between religious conflict and religious identity. It is unique in that it does not solely focus on religious violence as it is physically manifested, but on religious conflict (and tolerance), looking too at dynamics of religious discourse and practice that often precede and accompany overt religious violence.
