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Asceticism and the New Testament
As a complex historical phenomenon, asceticism raises the question about ordinary impulses, the orientation and practices, the power dynamics and politics with transcendental religions. The question of the role of asceticism has often been overlooked in examining the New Testament. This book is both comprehensive and comparative in its representation of how the question of asceticism might reorder the way in which we interpret the New Testament. Looking at the New Testament from an ascetic perspective asks questions about issues including the milieu of Jesus and Paul, and the social practices of self-denial, and considers the Scriptural texts in light of a desire to separate oneself from the world. In interpreting all the books in the New Testament, this collection is the first effort to take seriously the crucial role played by asceticism--and its detractors--in the formation of the New Testament.
Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity
Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity discusses the diverse cultural destinies of early Christianity, early Judaism, and other ancient religious groups as a question of social rivalry. The book is divided into three main sections. The first section debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately names the issue(s) that must be addressed when comparing and contrasting the social “success” of different religious groups in antiquity. The second is a critical assessment of the common modern category of “mission” to describe the inner dynamic of such a process; it discusses the early Christian apostle Paul, the early Jewish historian Josephus, and ancient Mithraism. The third section of the book is devoted to “the rise of Christianity,” primarily in response to the similarly titled work of the American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark. While it is not clear that any of these groups imagined its own success necessarily entailing the elimination of others, it does seem that early Christianity had certain habits, both of speech and practice, which made it particularly apt to succeed (in) the Roman Empire.
Sammlung
This volume brings the revised version of the full collection of 38 essays covering James Robinson's studies on Q, from his 1964 break-through article on the genre of Q to the corpus of hotly debated contributions on Q 12,27 which he published between 1998 and 2002 and his detailed presentation of the 'Critical Edition of Q' (2002). Edited by C. Heil and J. Verheyden.
The Making of the Self
A leading scholar of ascetical studies, Richard Valantasis explores a variety of ascetical traditions ranging from the Greco-Roman philosophy of Musonius Rufus, the asceticism found in the Nag Hammadi Library and in certain Gnostic texts, the Gospel of Thomas, and other early Christian texts. This collection gathers historical and theoretical essays that develop a theory of asceticism that informs the analysis of historical texts and opens the way for postmodern ascetical studies. Wide-ranging in historical scope and in developing theory, these essays address asceticism for scholar and student alike. The theory will be of particular interest to those interested in cultural theory and analysis, while the historical essays provide the researcher with easy access to a significant corpus of academic writing on asceticism.
Galilean Upstarts
This book is about Jesus' first followers in Palestine, those obscure upstarts responsible for gospel traditions that resulted from developments at the eastern end of the Mediterranean basin in the cradle of Syrian Christianity. Vaage sketches a social profile of these followers of Jesus, based on the literary stratum biblical scholars have designated as "Q", the other source text used by Matthew and Luke in the composition of the gospels.
Behold the Man
In this book, Colleen Conway looks at the construction of masculinity in New Testament depictions of Jesus. She argues that the New Testament writers necessarily engaged the predominant gender ideology of the Roman Empire, whether consciously or unconsciously. Although the notion of what constituted ideal masculinity in Greek and Roman cultures certainly pre-dated the Roman Empire, the emergence of the Principate concentrated this gender ideology on the figure of the emperor. Indeed, critical to the success of the empire was the portrayal of the emperor as the ideal man and the Roman citizen as one who aspired to be the same. Any person who was held up alongside the emperor as another source...
Abandoned to Lust
Early Christians used charges of adultery, incest, and lascivious behavior to demonize their opponents, police insiders, resist pagan rulers, and define what it meant to be a Christian. Christians frequently claimed that they, and they alone were sexually virtuous, comparing themselves to those marked as outsiders, especially non-believers and "heretics," who were said to be controlled by lust and unable to rein in their carnal desires. True or not, these charges allowed Christians to present themselves as different from and morally superior to those around them. Through careful, innovative readings, Jennifer Knust explores the writings of Paul, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and other ea...
The Origin and Meaning of Ekklēsia in the Early Jesus Movement
In The Origin and Meaning of Ekklēsia in the Early Jesus Movement, Ralph J. Korner explores the ideological implications of Christ-follower associations self-designating collectively as ekklēsiai. Politically, Korner’s inscriptional research suggests that an association named ekklēsia would have been perceived as a positive, rather than as a counter-imperial, participant within Imperial Greek cities. Socio-religiously, Korner argues that there was no universal ekklēsia to which all first generation Christ-followers belonged; ekklēsia was a permanent group designation used by Paul’s associations. Ethno-religiously, Korner contends that ekklēsia usage by intra muros groups within pluriform Second Temple Judaism problematizes suggestions, not least at the institutional level, that Paul was “parting ways” with Judaism(s), ‘Jewishness’, or Jewish organizational forms.
New Testament Masculinities
This collection considers themes of Christology, patriarchy, violence, colonialism, family structures, and sexual practices as it explores the construction and performance of masculinity in the New Testament and related early Christian texts. Examining the Gospels, Romans, the Pastorals, Revelation, and the "Shepherd of Hermas," it situates diverse masculinities within a Greco-Roman matrix and introduces biblical scholarship to a rich vein of classical scholarship on gender. The contributors include Janice Capel Anderson, David J. A. Clines, Colleen M. Conway, Mary Rose D'Angelo, Page duBois, Chris Frilingos, Jennifer A. Glancy, Maud W. Gleason, Stephen D. Moore, Jerome H. Neyrey, Seong Hee Kim, Jeffrey L. Staley, Diana M. Swancutt, Tat-siong Benny Liew and Eric Thurman. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).
Borderline Exegesis
In Borderline Exegesis, Leif Vaage presents an alternative approach to biblical interpretation, or exegesis—an approach that bends the boundaries of the traditional North American methodology to analyze the meaning of biblical texts for a wider audience. To accomplish this, Vaage engages in a practice he calls “borderline exegesis.” Adapting anthropological notions of borderlands, borderline exegesis writes biblical scholarship peripherally, unearthing the Bible’s textual and discursive borderlands and allowing biblical texts to be at play with the utopian imagination. The book’s main chapters comprise four case studies that engage in a “divergent reading” of the book of Job, t...
