Browse

Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus

Stephen J. Davis

Christ Child is a book about Christian, Jewish, and Muslim memories of Jesus’ childhood. Its focus is the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a collection of stories originally entitled “The ... More

Christ Child is a book about Christian, Jewish, and Muslim memories of Jesus’ childhood. Its focus is the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a collection of stories originally entitled “The Childhood Deeds of Jesus.” In these stories, Jesus turns clay birds into live ones, curses people to death, and displays preternatural knowledge in school. Drawing on sociologies of cultural memory, the book explores how such infancy tales were transmitted and transformed by different generations of readers, how the figure of a young Jesus was “constantly reimagined … to conform to the eye and image of the beholder” (p. 197). The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 (chapters 1–2) provides an introduction to studies on memory and childhood, and documents the infancy stories’ controversial history of interpretation from antiquity to the present day. Part 2 (chapters 3–5) investigates “sites of memory” in the Graeco-Roman world—texts and material artifacts connected with birds, cursing, and elementary education—in order to understand how ancient readers would have tried to make sense of this enigmatic young Jesus. Part 3 (chapters 6–7) focuses on the way these stories were contested and reshaped in the context of Jewish-Christian and Christian-Muslim religious encounters. An epilogue and three appendixes include discussions of visual art connected with Jesus’ childhood and English translations of important primary sources. The end result is a fascinating book that traces how the Christ child occupied “a unique but ever-shifting place in late ancient and early medieval cultural memory” (p. 44).Less

Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups

Giovanni B. Bazzana

The earliest Christian writings are filled with stories of spirit possession and exorcism, which were crucial for the activity of the historical Jesus and for the practice of his earliest followers. ... More

The earliest Christian writings are filled with stories of spirit possession and exorcism, which were crucial for the activity of the historical Jesus and for the practice of his earliest followers. Possession, besides being a harmful event that should be exorcized, can also have a positive role in many cultures. Often it helps individuals and groups to reflect on and reshape their identity, to plan their moral actions, and to remember in a most vivid way their past. This book illustrates some of the major ways in which a critical aspect of spirit possession can emerge in texts of the early Christ movement. It begins with a reading of some well-known texts in the light of a more sophisticated notion of spirit possession, which emphasizes the cultural and religious productivity inscribed in it as well as the significance of its performative nature. The book continues by looking at the fundamental role played by spirit possession in the religious experience of Paul and of his Christ groups, and the social and ethical functions of the religious experience of possession in the Pauline groups. In conclusion, when reviewing insights drawn from anthropological literature, the book attempts to treat the “spirits” involved in cases of possession seriously and not merely as mythical and metaphorical representations.Less

In Search of the Early Christians: Selected Essays

Wayne A. Meeks

Allen Hilton and H. Gregory Snyder (eds)

A central figure in the reconception of early Christian history over the last three decades, the author of this book offers here a selection of his most influential writings on the New Testament and ... More

A central figure in the reconception of early Christian history over the last three decades, the author of this book offers here a selection of his most influential writings on the New Testament and early Christianity. His essays illustrate recent changes in our thinking about the early Christian movement and pose questions regarding the history of this period. The author explores a range of topics, from the figure of the androgyne in antiquity to the timeless matter of God's reliability, from Paul's ethical rhetoric to New Testament pictures of Christianity's separation from Jewish communities. His introduction offers a retrospective on New Testament studies of the past thirty years, and explains the intersection of these studies with a variety of exploratory and revisionist movements in the humanities, embracing social theory, history, anthropology, and literature. In an epilogue the author reflects on future directions for New Testament scholarship.Less

The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery

Peter Jeffery

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript—a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who quotes an unknown, longer version of the ... More

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript—a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who quotes an unknown, longer version of the Gospel of Mark. When Smith published the letter in 1973, he set off a firestorm of controversy that has raged ever since. Is the text authentic, or a hoax? Is Smith's interpretation correct? Did Jesus really practice magic, or homosexuality? And if the letter is a forgery, then, why? Through close examination of the “discovered” manuscript's text, this book unravels the answers to the mystery and tells the tragic tale of an estranged Episcopalian priest who forged an ancient gospel and fooled many of the best biblical scholars of his time. It shows that Smith's Secret Gospel is steeped in anachronisms and that its construction was influenced by Oscar Wilde's Salome, twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith's personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.Less

Transient Apostle

Timothy Luckritz Marquis

In a significant reevaluation of Paul's place in the early Christian story, this book explores the theme of travel in the apostle's correspondence. It casts Paul's rhetorical strategies against the ... More

In a significant reevaluation of Paul's place in the early Christian story, this book explores the theme of travel in the apostle's correspondence. It casts Paul's rhetorical strategies against the background of Augustus's age, when Rome's wealth depended on conquests abroad, the international commerce they facilitated, and the incursion of foreign customs and peoples they brought about. In so doing, the book provides an explanation for how Paul created, maintained, and expanded his local communities in the larger, international Jesus movement and shows how Paul was a product of the material forces of his day. By integrating its extensive, erudite, and compelling citations of the Greco-Roman world in which Paul was writing with post-colonial and post-Marxist thinking, the book makes progress in understanding Paul's letters.Less