Life of St. Martin article

Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2006

Review of Biblical Literature, 2022

This fascinating volume in the Inventing Christianity series derives from the author's doctoral research on Greek intellectual culture in Rome. The goal of the book is "to encourage scholars of Greek imperial literature to spend more time with works of this period authored by Christians" (vii). He notes two poles between the fields of early Christian studies and classics: the one tending to make "Christianity" the principal factor of analysis, the other often ignoring or excluding Christian authors. With this study, Secord hopes to provide a bridge between the fields. In many ways, particularly in its method of analysis, this study provides an important model for achieving this.

2003

XV drawn from proselytes and sympathizers of Jewish synagogues. The mi nority of "weak" Christians in Rome "are not to be identified against a Gentile background but rather against the background of Jewish prac tice of the law" (73). The evidence of persecution after the Roman fire of 64 C.E. indicates that those crucified and executed in other painful ways were not Roman citizens, whereas most Jews at that time enjoyed such citizenship. The evidence of the names in Romans 16, compared with thousands of inscriptions and literary references linked to Rome, shows that of those about which something definite can be concluded, "over two-thirds with a great degree of probability show indications of slave origin" (183). Tracing the evidence down through the end of the second century confirms the picture of a church that remained largely a slave and lower-class institution. While some members of Roman house churches came from high social status, even from senatorial families, the large majority consisted of lower-class immigrants. The divided nature of Roman Christianity is indicated by the evidence in Romans 16, showing five different "Christian islands," with other Roman Christians mentioned that could not have belonged to fewer than two additional groupings (359). Each of these groups worshiped separately and could be "referred to as a house community" (360). Lampe traces the history through the end of the second century, includ ing the evolution of later heresies, to show the divided nature of these Christian cells, each exhibiting peculiar traits going back to different origins and immigrants from specific parts of the empire. This view is sustained by a detailed exegesis of literary materials written in Rome as well as by a prosopographic analysis of each Christian leader and martyr through the end of the second century. This study is so masterful in its grasp of a vast array of evidence, so solid and innovative in its methodology, and so audacious in conception that it has already become a classic. With encyclopedic thoroughness and objectivity, every possible detail from history and archaeology is presented and evaluated. The treatments of Hermas, Justin, the Valen tinians, and dozens of other leaders comprise virtual monographs within the larger study, developing a variety of methods in assessing so cial roles and status.

2012

W ithin a few decades of Jesus' death, his followers began to spread their message beyond their Jewish audience to gentiles, that is, to non-Jews, especially Greeks and Romans. The missionaries had to cope with religious world larger and more diverse than the Judaism within which the Jesus Movement had been born. It is to that wide religious context that we turn now. By Jesus lifetime, the Roman Empire had united under its control the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and much of the inland territory. Until about 175, the empire continued to expand. The migrations in the Mediterranean area that had been going on at least since the fourth century BCE intensified in the empire. The ancient migrants brought their gods with them, just as modem migrants do. In American history each flew wave of immigrants has meant new re1igions-mostly Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (with small numbers of Jewish ad Catholic immigrants), large numbers of Catholics and Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and, more recently, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and others. For several centuries peoples and religions mixed on a large scale in the Roman Empire. W hen Christian missionaries approached gentiles with their message, they encountered a complex situation where their hearers already had many religious choices. The modem opinion that the Ronan Empire was somehow religiously deprived and yearned for Christianity is inaccurate. Christianity became one more choice in a religiously crowded society. Modern popular culture, especially in films, tends to portray the ancient Greeks and Romans in a lurid light orgies, gross banquets, and gladiatorial fights. Roman life was coarser and cruder than would fit most modem American or European sensibilities. The gap between rich and poor was huge, slavery was prominent, sports that shed the blood of animals and human beings were wildly popular, and a sex industry that catered to every taste flourished. But there was another side to the picture. Christianity appeared when the Greco-Roman world was in the m idst of a long-term religious revival, marked by a growing interest in otherworldly matters. It simplifies, but not too much to divide the religious development of the Greco-Roman world into three long phases. Before the fifth century BCE, the myths ("stories") about the gods and the rituals to worship them developed. In the second phase from the fifth to first centuries BEC, many intellectuals in the Greek world embraced an intense skepticism about the traditional myths and rituals. Philosophers in particular kept up withering attack on traditional beliefs and practices. In fact, it is hard to think of any modern criticism of religion that was not expressed by someone in those centuries. Without the means of mass communication, the waves of doubt and criticism probably influenced only educated elites and some urban

Religious Studies Review, 2012

Jerusalem to Rome is marked by a series of turf battles between the apostles and representatives of Hellenistic religious practices." Whether a clash with sorcerers at Samaria (Acts 8) or Paphos (Acts 13), pagan prophets at Philippi (Acts 16), or powerful brokers of the cult of Artemis at Ephesus (Acts 19), early Christian messengers required both familiarity with and necessary tools for confrontation with these varied beliefs and practices. Such narratives also echo countless pastoral warnings by Peter, John, and Paul concerning the former lives of believers who "had turned from idols to serve. .. God" (1 Thess. 1:9). Johnson exhibits disappointment with a long-standing scholarly tradition that gives minimal attention to the role of first century "pagan" religion or adheres to old and artificial structures that merely regionalize Judaism and Greco-Roman culture. To counter, Johnson identifies four pervasive religious domains. Seekers typically pursue salvation for personal benefits, moral transformation, transcendent experience, and/or societal stabilization. Each "type" shares various fundamental quests, yet interacts and competes with core dynamics of Christianity. This outstanding volume should become the standard for customary graduate/seminary courses on NT backgrounds. (Johnson includes over one hundred pages of footnotes filled with invaluable primary sources.) Finally, Johnson suggests proponents of contemporary Christian advancement require similar breadth for engagement of present-day religions; perhaps a more careful reading of the NT will encourage readers to better understand and wrestle with the complexities of our contemporary mosaic of global religions.

2023

Preface are grateful to the ve anonymous readers for the Press, whose feedback helped to improve the volume. We hope that this collection of case studies may stimulate further investigation of how early Christian epistemologies a ected individual and communal norms and shaped discourses, institutions, and embodied practices in late antiquity.

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

I started reading this book while teaching an undergraduate course on the historical Jesus. Beforehand, I would ascribe certain gospel ideas, sources, or trajectories to a gospel writer's "community" unthinkingly. It made intuitive sense to me, and it was how I was trained to think. The gospel writers did not write in isolation; they wrote within a community. And while some of what makes each gospel unique can be ascribed to authorial, that is independent, creativity and proclivities, some things must be ascribable to the community from which each gospel writer hails. I spent the rest of the course trying to avoid the use of the word "community" in these conversations, and cringed every time I failed. Walsh begins (chap. 1) by problematizing what she calls the Big Bang "myth" of Christian origins, which stems from Acts: that the Jesus movement grew quickly, that its institutions were established firmly and early, and that the communities were deeply cohesive. This narrative is enabled by the use of many terms without theoretical nuance, foremost among which is the term religion. The ubiquitous assumption that religion in antiquity was a stand-alone institution (as it is thought to be in the modern world) leads scholars to presume that only well-formed, discrete religious communities could possibly have given rise to writings as obviously religious as the gospels. But if religion was not a discrete social institution in Mediterranean antiquity, then there likely could not have been communities whose primary source of identity was their distinct religious commitments (as opposed to their ethnic commitments or social locations). Further, the scholarly interest in and reliance on the "community" behind early Christian writings is unique to Christian origins scholarship. Classicists commonly assume that written works naturally emanate from elite cultural producers working within elite circles and networks. One of many strengths to this book is Walsh's insistence that the distinction between early Christian and Greco-Roman writings needs to be abandoned. Early Christian writings are Greco-Roman writings in every conceivable way. Walsh traces the idiosyncratic tendency to treat early Christian writings differently from Greco-Roman writings to the influence of nineteenth-century German Romantic Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 1-3 ª The Author(s) / Le(s) auteur(s), 2021 Article reuse guidelines/ Directives de réutilisation des articles: sagepub.com/journals-permissions