Jörg Ulrich - Böcker

Der Sammelband enthält dreizehn Aufsätze von Hanns Christof Brennecke, die zeigen, wie das Christentum der Kaiserzeit und der Spätantike in den Kontext des Imperium Romanum eingebettet ist. Das Themenspektrum reicht von den frühen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Christentum und der paganen Welt über trinitätstheologische und christologische Fragen bis zu Analysen des syrischen Mönchtums. Die Aufsätze haben aufgrund ihrer detaillierten Quellenanalysen die Forschung nachhaltig beeinflusst.

Das Imperium Romanum interagierte vielfältig und differenziert mit Kirche und Theologie – und umgekehrt. Die vorliegenden Studien untersuchen diese wechselvolle Beziehung und spannen einen weiten Bogen vom ersten bis zum sechsten Jahrhundert. Dabei nehmen die Beiträge den Osten wie den Westen des Imperium Romanum und seiner Nachfolgestaaten in den Blick und erörtern das Thema unter Rückgriff auf eine Vielfalt literarischer Gattungen.Der Band ist Hanns Christof Brennecke zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet.

This book contains the contributions to a workshop on apologetics in early Christianity which took place at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford in the summer of 2007. The workshop was arranged by scholars from Germany, Finland and Denmark who had for some time worked together in a project on early Christian apologetics. The aim of the workshop was thus to present and discuss some of the results and still unsolved problems which arose from this project. The book presents the contributions to the workshop. Hereby the editors hope to reach a larger audience and thus to be able to further the discussion of the topic of early Christian apologetics.

In Defence of Christianity examines the early Christian apologists in their context in thirteen articles divided in four parts. Part I provides an introduction to apology and apologetics in antiquity, an overview of the early Christian apologists, and an outline of their argumentation. The nine articles of Part II each cover one of the early apologists: Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, the author of the Letter to Diognetus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. Part III contextualises the apologists by providing an English translation of contemporary pagan criticism of Christianity and by discussing this critique. Part IV consists of a single article discussing how Eusebius depicted and used the apologists in his Ecclesiastical History.

This volume assembles written versions of lectures presented and discussed at the conference «Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation – Discursive Fights Over Religious Traditions In Antiquity» held at Aarhus and Ebeltoft in Denmark in the spring of 2010. Most of the religious texts studied in the contributions were drawn from Early Judaism and Early Christianity. The interest in these was on the one hand elucidating different aspects of the role they played in the formation and transformation of the religions, and on the other hand investigating the role these same texts played in cooperation and conflict between these two religions. The topics of the essays focus on four particular themes, namely Reuse, Rewriting and Usurpation of Biblical and Classical Texts, Invention and Maintenance of Religious Traditions, Orthodoxy and Heresy, and Formation of the Biblical Canon.

Epistemological theories of the patristic authors seldom attract attention of the researchers. This unfortunate status quo contrasts with a crucial place of the theory of knowledge in the thought of such prominent authors as Origen and the Cappadocian fathers. This book surveys the patristic epistemological discourse in its various settings. In the context of the Church history it revolves around the Eunomian controversy, Eunomius’ language theory and Gregory Nazianzen’s cognitive theory, where the ideas of Apostle Paul were creatively combined with the Peripatetic teaching. In the framework of Biblical exegesis, it touches upon the issues of the textual criticism of the Homeric and Jewish scholarship, which had significantly shaped Origen’s paradigm of the Biblical studies.