Harvard Theological Studies – serie

This volume brings together studies of Ephesos—a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world—by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology. The studies were presented at a spring 1994 Harvard Divinity School symposium on Ephesos, focusing on the results of one hundred years of archaeological work at Ephesos by members of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.The contributors to this volume discuss some of the most interesting and controversial results of recent investigations: the Processional Way of Artemis, the Hadrianic Olympieion and the Church of Mary, the so-called Temple of Domitian, and the heroes Androkolos and Arsinoe.Since very little about the Austrian excavations at Ephesos has been published in English, this volume should prove useful in introducing the archaeology of this metropolis to a wider readership.

This book discusses the history, topography, and urban development of Corinth with special attention to civic and private religious practices in the Roman colony. Expert analysis of the latest archaeological data is coupled with consideration of what can be known about the emergence and evolution of religions in Corinth. Several scholars consider specific aspects of archaeological evidence and ask how enhanced knowledge of such topics as burial practice, water supply, and city planning strengthens our understanding of religious identity and practice in the ancient city. This volume seeks to gain insight into the nature of the Greco-Roman city visited by Paul, and the ways in which Christianity gradually emerged as the dominant religion.This is a collaborative effort by scholars of archaeology, Greco-Roman studies, and early Christian literature who met at Harvard University in January 2002. It is the third in a series of volumes on ancient cities utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to understand urban life in ancient times. The earlier books are Ephesos, Metropolis of Asia (1995) and Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods (1998).

This book discusses the history, topography, and urban development of Corinth with special attention to civic and private religious practices in the Roman colony. Expert analysis of the latest archaeological data is coupled with consideration of what can be known about the emergence and evolution of religions in Corinth. Several scholars consider specific aspects of archaeological evidence and ask how enhanced knowledge of such topics as burial practice, water supply, and city planning strengthens our understanding of religious identity and practice in the ancient city. This volume seeks to gain insight into the nature of the Greco-Roman city visited by Paul, and the ways in which Christianity gradually emerged as the dominant religion.This is a collaborative effort by scholars of archaeology, Greco-Roman studies, and early Christian literature who met at Harvard University in January 2002. It is the third in a series of volumes on ancient cities utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to understand urban life in ancient times. The earlier books are Ephesos, Metropolis of Asia (1995) and Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods (1998).

The discovery and publication of the Apocryphon of James from Nag Hammadi has significantly expanded the spectrum of early Christian literature about Jesus. In this informative monograph, which has been out of print until now, Ron Cameron provides a form-critical analysis which aims to clarify the ways in which the sayings of Jesus were used and transformed in early Christian communities. By recognizing the importance of this particular document, scholars will no longer be able to regard the synoptic gospels of the New Testament as unique or sufficient for understanding the trajectory of the Jesus tradition. The "synoptic problem" must now be seen as a gospels problem.

Was Jesus a wisdom sage or an apocalyptic prophet? Did later followers view him as the Danielic "Son of Man" or did he use this expression for himself? These are familiar questions among historical Jesus scholars, and there has been much debate over Jesus' eschatological outlook since the controversial work of the Jesus Seminar. This book asks what is at stake in these debates and explores how scholarly constructions of Christian origins participate in contemporary efforts to confirm or challenge particular understandings of the essence of Christianity. Proposing that a Jesus-centered perspective has overly shaped our interpretation of the sayings source Q, Johnson-DeBaufre offers alternative readings to key Q texts, readings that place an interest in the community that shaped Jesus at the center of inquiry.

Does Christianity have an essence? How should the identity of Christianity be defined in the modern world? As early as 1903, German theologian Ernst Troeltsch began to question the then-popular concept of an “essence of Christianity.” In his search for alternative categories and methods for conceptualizing Christianity and its potential roles in modern society, Troeltsch immersed himself in the study and analysis of Christian history. This book demonstrates the intimate connection between Troeltsch’s philosophical writings on the essence of Christianity and his historical investigations of Christianity’s past, focusing on Troeltsch’s conceptions of Christian origins, historical development, and the ideal types of church-sect-mysticism.Lori Pearson argues that as a result of his historical work, Troeltsch moved beyond the category of essence and sought new ways of theorizing Christian identity in the context of modernity’s pluralistic yet fragmented society.

This description of the Americanization of a European institution, the Puritan ministry as it was transported to the New England colonies in the seventeenth century, offers a host of new insights into American religious history. By focusing on such areas as the ministers’ authority, church membership, and ecclesiastical organization, David D. Hall shows that, although the effects of the American experience might be considered liberalizing or democratizing in the first years of settlement, during the entire course of the seventeenth century the New World environment produced an institutional development that returned the churches to forms and doctrines that existed before the emigration from Europe.The Faithful Shepherd not only sustains a bold thesis about Americanization but also affords the reader one of the freshest and most comprehensive histories of the seventeenth-century New England mind and society. This new printing contains a new introduction reflecting on how our understanding of seventeenth-century New England has developed since the book was first published.

Rediscovered at the end of the nineteenth century in Coptic and Ethiopic versions, the Epistle of the Apostles (Epistula Apostolorum) is a "revelation dialogue," in which the risen Jesus converses with his disciples before his ascension and delivers instructions for strengthening the young church. In the first major study in English of this ancient document, Julian V. Hills probes its remarkable witness to the traditions that circulated in Jesus' name in the second century.Hills tackles the document's literary framework, collecting and assessing signals to its composition. In detailed analyses of passages about Jesus' miracles, the first appearance of the risen Lord, the second advent, and the commissioning of the Apostles, Hills shows how older traditions were reshaped and interpreted according to the distinctive communal situation and theological vision of the author.In Hills's careful and insightful work, scholars and students of early Christianity will find clues to the elusive reality of Christianity in the second century. This ancient Epistle can now become a prominent conversation partner among many newly accessible early post-resurrection traditions.This expanded edition of the out-of-print original, published in 1990, includes a new preface and bibliography.

This volume brings together international scholars of religion, archaeologists, and scholars of art and architectural history to investigate social, political, and religious life in Roman and early Christian Thessalonikē, an important metropolis in the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Christian periods and beyond. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary investigation of Roman and early Christian Thessalonikē in English and offers new data and new interpretations by scholars of ancient religion and archaeology. The book covers materials usually treated by a broad range of disciplines: New Testament and early Christian literature, art historical materials, urban planning in antiquity, material culture and daily life, and archaeological artifacts from the Roman to the late antique period.

Iblīs, the character in the Qur’an who refuses God’s command to bow to Adam and is punished by eviction from heaven, is commonly depicted as a fiendish character no different from Satan. However, some Sufi stories describe Iblīs as the ultimate monotheist, a lover of God, but tragically rejected. This volume seeks the origins of this alternative Iblīs within the Qur’an itself, by looking at each of the seven Qur’anic versions of the Iblīs story as a unique rendering of the basic narrative. Whitney Bodman finds that the likely earliest version of the Iblīs story presents him as a tragic figure, an elder sibling of Adam unjustly displaced from God’s favor. Subsequent renderings present an Iblīs more hostile to humanity, and in the last two abbreviated versions Iblīs becomes an incidental figure in the extended story of Adam.In modern Arab literature the character of Iblīs is deployed to reveal tragic dimensions of modern life. Although it is often said that there is no place for tragedy in Islam, Bodman’s careful examination of the Iblīs story shows that the tragic exists even in the Qur’an and forms part of the vision of medieval Sufi mystics and modern social critics alike.