Stephen Saylor is a gifted writer of novels about the Roman Republic. His central character, Gordianus the finder, is by the time of this novel, long in the tooth— celebrating his 66th birthday, and his days of being the ancient equivalent of Sherlock Holmes have mostly passed. Indeed, for most of this novel Gordianus seems to be in a fog about things that are going on around him— he looks but he does not see, or as Sherlock would have–... Read more
The Great Church was fundamentally committed to the defense and promotion of the doctrinal mainstream, defined in ever more precise terms. Wholly new concepts of orthodoxy became commonplace, together with new vocabularies. It was around 200 that the brilliant African theologian Tertullian (c.160-220) first applied the Latin word trinitas to the Christian deity. As with the poor Quartodecimans, those who espoused yesterday’s normality suddenly became today’s heterodoxy. A brief summary of this era would include the following “firsts” – the... Read more
When the Jesus Movement Became the Christian Church BY PHILIP JENKINS I have blogged quite a bit recently on early Christian history, and the further I get into this material, the more interested I become in one particular period – quite a narrow period in fact, of a quarter century or so. I keep coming back to these years as the critical turning point in early Christian history, and it rarely receives the respect it demands. For all the attention... Read more
Here is an excellent post by Larry Hurtado, which I am reposting here….. See what you think. BW3 On Representing the Views of Others by larryhurtado The following exhortation about representing the views of others is primarily directed to students and younger scholars. One of the aims I’ve striven for over the 40+ years of my scholarly work has been to represent the views of other scholars fairly, and especially those views with which I take issue. I owe a... Read more
With the increase in interest in the subject of intertextuality (see e.g. my three books Isaiah Old and New, Psalms Old and New, and Torah Old and New, all published for Fortress) it is useful to study in depth the citations from the Bible that occur in other sources up to the middle ages, not least because sometimes the citations in those sources are more primitive and likely more original than the ones in straight up Biblical papyri. Here is... Read more
The following is a recent post by my friend and colleague, Larry Hurtado. Pay attention especially to his three main points listed below. BW3 Exorcism and Healing in Early Christianity by larryhurtado On the weekend last I returned from a short (but very interesting) conference on “Healing and Exorcism in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity,” held in Orebro School of Theology (Orebro, Sweden). The focus, contributors and paper-titles are listed here. My own presentation was, “The Ritual Use of... Read more
The following pictures were taken on the first day of Spring break for Asbury University— March 12th. Read more
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