The “Father of Church History,” the fourth-century bishop Eusebius was the first to chronicle the development of Christianity from its earliest days among the followers of Jesus, up throug
Despite novel approaches to the study of Early Christianity – New Historicity, New Philology, Gender and Queer Studies; many turns – Material, Linguistic, Cultural; and developments in Reception History, Cultural Transfer, and Entangled History, much scholarship on this topic differs little from that written a century ago. In this study, Markus Vinzent challenges the interpretation of the sources that have been used in the study of the Early Christian era. He brings a new approach to the topic by reading history backwards. Applying this methodology to four case studies, and using a range of media, he poses radically new questions on the famous 'Abercius' inscription, on the first extant apologist Aristides of Athens, on the prolific Hippolytus of Rome, and on Ignatius and the first non-canonical collection of letters. Vinzent's novel methodology of a retrospective writing thus challenges many fundamental and anachronistic assumptions about Early Christian history.
This book addresses a particular and little-known form of writing, the prose dialogue, during the Late Antique period, when Christian authors adopted and transformed the dialogue form to suit the new
In the early twentieth century, a new generation of liberal professors sought to prove Christianity's compatibility with contemporary currents in philosophy, scientific discovery, historical study, an
What did it mean to be a Christian in the Roman Empire? In one of the inaugural titles of Oxford's new Essentials in Biblical Studies series, Harry O. Maier considers the multilayered social contexts
This volume offers a new translation of the Pseudo-Clementine family narrative here known as The Sorrows of Mattidia. It contains a full introduction which explores the obscured origins of the text, t
Enslaved persons were ubiquitous in the first- and second-century CE Roman Empire, and early Christian texts reflect this fact. Yet the implications of enslaved presence in religious practices are und
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) became world famous as the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of the early Christian era, he wrote: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roma
Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity offers a collection of essays that deal with perceptions of wisdom, femaleness, and their interconnections in a wide range of ancient sources, including papyr
