Larry W. Hurtado – författare

Silly,"" ""stupid,"" ""irrational,"" ""simple."" ""Wicked,"" ""hateful,"" ""obstinate,"" ""anti-social."" ""Extravagant,"" ""perverse."" The Roman world rendered harsh judgments upon early Christianity - including branding Christianity ""new."" Novelty was no Roman religious virtue.Nevertheless, as Larry W. Hurtado shows in Destroyer of the gods, Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive features and opposition to them. Unlike nearly all other religious groups, Christianity utterly rejected the traditional gods of the Roman world. Christianity also offered a new and different kind of religious identity, one not based on ethnicity. Christianity was distinctively a ""bookish"" religion, with the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, even preferring a distinctive book-form, the codex. Christianity insisted that its adherents behave differently: unlike the simple ritual observances characteristic of the pagan religious environment, embracing Christian faith meant a behavioral transformation, with particular and novel ethical demands for men. Unquestionably, to the Roman world, Christianity was both new and different, and, to a good many, it threatened social and religious conventions of the day.In the rejection of the gods and in the centrality of texts, early Christianity obviously reflected commitments inherited from its Jewish origins. But these particular features were no longer identified with Jewish ethnicity and early Christianity quickly became aggressively trans-ethnic - a novel kind of religious movement. Its ethical teaching, too, bore some resemblance to the philosophers of the day, yet in contrast with these great teachers and their small circles of dedicated students, early Christianity laid its hard demands upon all adherents from the moment of conversion, producing a novel social project. Christianity's novelty was no badge of honor. Called atheists and suspected of political subversion, Christians earned Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts. Yet, as Destroyer of the gods demonstrates, in an irony of history the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another.

This book is the first ever collection of scholarly essays in English devoted specifically to the theme of the expression 'son of man'. It describes the major competing theories which have addressed questions such as: What is the original Aramaic expression which lies behind the Greek phrase, and what was its original connotation? How do the gospel writers use the expression 'son of man'? Is it a Christological title, pregnant with meaning, much like the titles son of God, Christ/Messiah, and son of David? Is it used as a way of designating Jesus as a human being of unique redemptive significance? Or does it rather originate in a nuanced use (obscured in Greek translation) of an Aramaic expression used in place of the first person pronoun, as an indefinite pronoun, or for generic statements about human beings? Larry Hurtado and Paul Owen have brought together contributing scholars on the basis of their expertise in Aramaic, historical Jesus research, the son of man debate itself, and related fields of research.

This bookis the first ever collection of scholarly essays in English devoted specifically to the theme of the expression 'son of man'. Itdescribes the major competing theories which have addressed questions such as: What is the original Aramaic expression which lies behind the Greek phrase, and what was its original connotation? How do the gospel writers use the expression 'son of man'? Is it a Christological title, pregnant with meaning, much like the titles son of God, Christ/Messiah, and son of David? Is it used as a way of designating Jesus as a human being of unique redemptive significance? Or does it rather originate in a nuanced use (obscured in Greek translation) of an Aramaic expression used in place of the first person pronoun, as an indefinite pronoun, or for generic statements about human beings? Larry Hurtado and Paul Owen have brought together contributing scholars on the basis of theirexpertise in Aramaic, historical Jesus research, the son of man debate itself, and related fields of research.

Larry Hurtado's One God, One Lord has been described as 'one of the most important and provocative Christologies of all time' (Alan F. Segal). The book has taken its place among works on Jesus as one consistently cited, consistently read, and consistently examined in scholarly discourse. Hurtado examines the early cultic devotion to Jesus through a range of Jewish sources. Hurtado outlines an early 'high' Christological theology, showing how the Christ of faith emerges from monotheistic Judaism. The book has already found a home on the shelves of many in its two previous editions. In this new Cornerstones edition Hurtado provides a substantial epilogue of some twenty-thousand words, which brings this ground-breaking work to the fore once more, in a format accessible to scholars and students alike.

The essays included in this volume present Larry W. Hurtado’s steadfast analysis of the earliest Christian manuscripts. In these chapters, Hurtado considers not only standard text-critical issues which seek to uncover an earliest possible version of a text, but also the very manuscripts that are available to us. As one of the pre-eminent scholars of the field, Hurtado examines often overlooked 2nd and 3rd century artefacts, which are among the earliest manuscripts available, drawing fascinating conclusions about the features of early Christianity. Divided into two halves, the first part of the volume addresses text-critical and text-historical issues about the textual transmission of various New Testament writings. The second part looks at manuscripts as physical and visual artefacts themselves, exploring the metadata and sociology of their context and the nature of their first readers, for the light cast upon early Christianity. Whilst these essays are presented together here as a republished collection, Hurtado has made several updates across the collection to draw them together and to reflect on the developing nature of the issues that they address since they were first written.

The essays included in this volume present Larry W. Hurtado’s steadfast analysis of the earliest Christian manuscripts. In these chapters, Hurtado considers not only standard text-critical issues which seek to uncover an earliest possible version of a text, but also the very manuscripts that are available to us. As one of the pre-eminent scholars of the field, Hurtado examines often overlooked 2nd and 3rd century artefacts, which are among the earliest manuscripts available, drawing fascinating conclusions about the features of early Christianity. Divided into two halves, the first part of the volume addresses text-critical and text-historical issues about the textual transmission of various New Testament writings. The second part looks at manuscripts as physical and visual artefacts themselves, exploring the metadata and sociology of their context and the nature of their first readers, for the light cast upon early Christianity. Whilst these essays are presented together here as a republished collection, Hurtado has made several updates across the collection to draw them together and to reflect on the developing nature of the issues that they address since they were first written.