Thomas J. Kraus – författare

As the value and importance of the non-canonical Jesus tradition continues to be recognized, there is an ever-increasing need for scholarly introductions to this tradition. This co-edited edition comprises the Greek critical editions, with full translations, of several key gospel fragments including P.Egerton 2, P. Oxy. 840, and P.Oxy. 1224. These fragments, preserved despite the widespread destruction of non-canonical manuscripts, are invaluable primary witnesses of ancient Christianity and the transmission of early Christian texts. Introductions to the fragments discuss dates, origins, interpretations, and the relationship of the texts to the canonical gospels. Detailed commentaries expand points of interest to facilitate further scholarly research on these texts in the future.

The book presents diplomatic transcriptions (in Greek) and translations (in German and English) of all the known textual fragments which can be attributed to what is known as the Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter or which scholars are discussing as possible elements of these texts. In addition, the documentation of the texts in ancient times is considered, and there is a brief discussion of the philological problems involved. With concordances.

Das Evangelium nach Petrus gehört zu den faszinierendsten apokryphen Texten des 2. Jahrhunderts. Die Arbeiten des vorliegenden Bandes beschäftigen sich mit der Frage nach der Rekonstruktion seines Textes und damit verbundenen philologischen Fragen, nach den möglichen Kontexten seiner Entstehung und nach Intertexten, die für seine Interpretation bedeutsam werden können. Dabei gelingen zum Teil überraschende, zum Teil kontroverse Einsichten in die Theologie dieses Textes.

Die Apokalypse ist ein ganz besonderer Text und ihre spezielle Bedeutung im frühen Christentum wird durch ihre handschriftliche Bezeugung, Überlieferung und literarische Bezüge einerseits und Diskussionen unter den frühen christlichen Schriftstellern andererseits belegt. Genau diese spezielle Bedeutung bildet den Kern dieser Aufsatzsammlung und wird aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven beleuchtet. Natürlich ist aus moderner Sicht die Apokalypse zu einer Art Fundgrube für Künstler, Komponisten, Dichter und Autoren geworden, denn sie bietet Motive, die heute berühmt und vertraut sind. Gleichzeitig erscheint es wie ein bon mot, dass ihre handschriftliche Überlieferung recht spärlich und eigenartig ist.Durch die Orientierung an Einzelphänomenen, welche die besondere Bezeugung und Überlieferung der Apokalypse betreffen, erhellen die Autoren die Besonderheit der Apokalypse, die bereits in den ersten Jahrhunderten des Christentums wahrgenommen wurde. Ihre handschriftliche Bezeugung und die lebhafte Kontroverse über ihren Wert und ihre Orthodoxie führten dazu, dass die Apokalypse speziell rezipiert wurde.

Das antike Alexandria war eines der zentralen Drehkreuze der hellenistischen Welt und ein kulturelles und religiöses Kaleidoskop. Geschäftsleute und Migrierende, Gelehrte, Philosophen und die religiöse Avantgarde strömten aus aller Welt in diese Metropole. Entsprechend wurde Alexandria zu einem Ort, an dem hellenistische, ägyptische, jüdische und frühchristliche Identitäten entstanden, koexistierten, sich gegenseitigen beeinflussten und miteinander rivalisierten. Die Prozesse der Identitätsbildung sind aus verschiedenen interdisziplinären Blickwinkeln zu beleuchten, um der Vielfalt des urbanen Lebens und dem Reichtum der literarischen und nicht-literarischen Quellen gerecht zu werden. Der vorliegende Band versammelt sechsundzwanzig Beiträge aus den Bereichen der Archäologie, der Alten Geschichte, der Klassischen Philologie, der Religionswissenschaften, der Philosophie, der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft, der Narratologie, der Judaistik, der Papyrologie und der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft.

As the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament the Septuagint is probably the first great translation project of Greco-Roman antiquity. Together with the Septuagint text the religion and culture of ancient Judaism came to the fore of a Greek speaking audience, which did not have any access to the holy scriptures of the Jews in Hebrew. That translation project also manifested a transfer of religious, social, and anthropological categories and concepts of Semitic origin to another cultural world of language and science that itself was shaped by Hellenism.Over the last years the Septuagint has gradually edged closer into the interest of Biblical scholars and into the centre of historical and philological research. In the course of this main attention has not only been paid to further particulars of its origination in Alexandria but also on various linguistic specifics and distinctive features with regards to content of the Greek Bible. The question, however, which has hardly been studied so far, is to what extent the Greek translation of the Bible consists of stylistic and rhetorical elements that are not present in the Hebrew source text. Did the translators made use of their rhetoric and stylistic skills to give their translations a distinctive ornatus? Can we, according to Augustine, rightly claim that not only the authors of the Biblical texts but also the translators knew to formulate et eloquenter et sapienter, i.e. in an eloquent and wise manner? This issue, neglected in current research, is taken up in this collected volume. Seven scholars investigate into stylistic and rhetorical elements present in various books of the Bible (e.g., Psalms, Amos, and Solomon's Book of Wisdom) and establish a field of work that deserves to receive more attention in the future.Contributors are Eberhard Bons, Jennifer M. Dines, Katrin Hauspie, Jan Joosten, Thomas J. Kraus, A. Léonas, and K. Usener.

As the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament the Septuagint is probably the first great translation project of Greco-Roman antiquity. Together with the Septuagint text the religion and culture of ancient Judaism came to the fore of a Greek speaking audience, which did not have any access to the holy scriptures of the Jews in Hebrew. That translation project also manifested a transfer of religious, social, and anthropological categories and concepts of Semitic origin to another cultural world of language and science that itself was shaped by Hellenism.Over the last years the Septuagint has gradually edged closer into the interest of Biblical scholars and into the centre of historical and philological research. In the course of this main attention has not only been paid to further particulars of its origination in Alexandria but also on various linguistic specifics and distinctive features with regards to content of the Greek Bible. The question, however, which has hardly been studied so far, is to what extent the Greek translation of the Bible consists of stylistic and rhetorical elements that are not present in the Hebrew source text. Did the translators made use of their rhetoric and stylistic skills to give their translations a distinctive ornatus? Can we, according to Augustine, rightly claim that not only the authors of the Biblical texts but also the translators knew to formulate et eloquenter et sapienter, i.e. in an eloquent and wise manner? This issue, neglected in current research, is taken up in this collected volume. Seven scholars investigate into stylistic and rhetorical elements present in various books of the Bible (e.g., Psalms, Amos, and Solomon''s Book of Wisdom) and establish a field of work that deserves to receive more attention in the future.Contributors are Eberhard Bons, Jennifer M. Dines, Katrin Hauspie, Jan Joosten, Thomas J. Kraus, A. Léonas, and K. Usener.

For the reconstruction of early Christianity, the lives of early Christians, their world of ideas, their ways of living, and their literature. Early Christian manuscripts - documents and literary texts - are pivotal archaeological artefacts. However, the manuscripts often came to us in fragmentary conditions, incomplete or with gaps and missing lines. Others appear to form a corpus, belong to an archive, or are connected with each other as far as theme or purpose are concerned. The present collection comprises of nine essays about individual or a set of certain manuscripts. With their essays the authors aim to present special approaches to early Christian manuscripts and, consequently, demonstrate methodically how to deal with them. The scope of topics ranges from the reconstruction of fragmentary manuscripts to the significance of amulets and from the discussion of individual fragments to the handling of the known manuscripts of a specific Christian text or a whole archive of papyri.