Andreas Merkt – författare

Das Heilige Land ist mehr als ein geheiligter geographischer Raum innerhalb der Grenzen der römischen Provinz Palästina. Es ist vor allem ein vorgestellter und imaginierter Raum, der durch das Zusammenspiel von Texten, Ritualen und materialer Kultur entstanden ist. Die Autoren der Beiträge dieses Bandes arbeiten heraus, welche Rolle die extrakanonischen und parabiblischen, oft missverständlich als apokryph bezeichneten Traditionen bei der Konstruktion des Heiligen Landes spielten.

Es gilt mittlerweile, gerade auch im Bereich der antiken und spätantiken Religionsgeschichte, als akademische Binsenweisheit, dass Grenzziehungen, die das Eigene eingrenzen und vom Anderen abgrenzen, einen zentralen Faktor religiöser Identitätskonstruktionen bilden. In diesem Zusammenhang wird allerdings kaum über die Bedeutung von Grenzüberschreitungen reflektiert, obwohl zahlreiche jüngere Publikationen zum frühen und spätantiken Christentum den Fokus auf Phänomene der Transgressivität (Gender, Körper, Jenseitsreisen usw.) legen. Dieser Sammelband verbindet nun beide Diskurse (zu religiöser Identität und zu Transgressivität), indem er anhand zahlreicher Beispiele der Frage nachgeht: Welche Rolle haben in den ersten Jahrhunderten Grenzüberschreitungen für die religiöse Identitätsbildung christlicher Gruppierungen und Individuen gespielt?

The Apocalypse of John belongs to the most puzzling texts of the New Testament. Historical-critical exegesis has been stressing that the book above all wishes to give a message of hope and comfort for a community under threat. Yet readers have also always been impressed and terrified by the many images of violence, including war, destruction, persecution and martyrdom, and the appearance of the devil and his demons. This book does not allow its readers to remain neutral.The present volume offers the proceedings of a conference that was held in Leuven, Belgium, in September 2009 and was organised by the general editors of the Novum Testamentum Patristicum. The conference focused on how early Christian and Patristic authors have coped with all these many passages that deal with various sorts of violence. The volume contains essays on most of the important commentators, Origen, Tyconius, Lactance, Victorin of Pettau, and those of a somewhat later age, Andreas of Caesarea, Oecumenius, and Bede, but also looks at the reception history on a larger scale. It also deals with issues of method in reading the Book of Revelation, with important themes (the 1000-year reign), the Jewish background of some of these motifs, and the reception of Patristic thought in the most important medieval commentator of the book, Joachim of Fiore.

While the so-called New perspective in Paul has been in the focus of New Testament exegesis for more than 25 years now, ancient interpretations of Pauline texts and ideas have been neglected widely. The present volume aims to fill this gap. Its articles concentrate on three different foci of modern exegesis: interpretations of Pauls conversion, his ideas about the relation of grace and works and the fate of Israel. Several additional articles contrast these ancient perspectives with answers of modern exegesis.

The present volume contains the proceedings of the fourth symposium of the Novum Testamentum Patristicum project (NTP), an international re-search project on the reception history of the New Testament in the early Church. The symposium was held in October 2012 at the University of Leuven. It was organised by Joseph Verheyden, Tobias Nicklas, and An-dreas Merkt, the coordinators of NTP. The topic of the meeting was the reception of the resurrection and empty tomb stories and the development of the belief in resurrection in the early Church.The belief in the resurrection constitutes the core issue of Christianity and of Christian tradition. The earliest references to the resurrection and witnesses to such a belief are found in the canonical gospels and in the letters of Paul, but the topic obviously remained of the utmost importance all through the early Church. Contributions to this volume offer studies on reception of the resurrection and empty tomb stories and the development of the belief in resurrection in the early Church by examining the most important early references on this topic.

This volume deals with the sermons of St. Maximus I, Bishop of Turin about AD 305-420. It presents an exemplary study which, besides clarifying problems of dating and authorship, points out the importance of context for an appropriate interpretation of sermon literature. The sermons are thus placed in the contexts of contemporary history, of society and of liturgy. The liturgical contextualisation forms the core of the book. The author reconstructs the liturgical year of late-Antique Turin and takes it as the basis of a detailed diachronic analysis of the bishop's preaching from advent to pentecost.Additionally, the Feasts of the Saints are seen in their kerygmatic function. In a concluding chapter the author tackles such problems as the exegetical nature of preaching and the importance of the Bible.

The patristic principle demands that theological quarrels be settled by resorting to the church fathers. This volume presents the first comprehensive reflexion on the historical evolution of the present crisis of this ancient theological principle.Focusing on the theory of the consensus quinquesaecularis, the author surveys the development of patristic authority from the 16th to the 20th centuries and relates it to other problems of the Church in modern times such as the crisis of tradition, the conflict between ecclesiastical authority and academic theology, and ecumenism.The concluding chapter tackles the question whether a renewal of the patristic principle is possible and feasible today.

Passion und Auferstehung Jesu von Nazaret gehören zu den entscheidenden Grunddaten des christlichen Glaubens. Die ältesten Zeugnisse dafür finden sich bekanntlich im Neuen Testament. Wie bedeutsam sie aber für Christen verschiedenster Richtungen und Prägungen waren, zeigt sich auch darin, dass sie auch später in unterschiedlichsten historischen Kontexten neu erzählt und ausgelegt wurden. Der vorliegende Band bietet beispielhaft Einblick in die wichtigsten Richtungen der Entwicklung von Texten, Motiven, Vorstellungen und Ideen im Zusammenhang mit Passion und Auferstehung Jesu von Nazaret in verschiedenen Gruppen und Richtungen des antiken Christentums. Untersucht werden dabei Auslegungen des Neuen Testaments bei bedeutenden Autoren der Alten Kirche, wichtige apokryphe Texte, aber auch bisher wenig beachtete ikonographische Zeugnisse.