Early Christian Studies

The greatest Christian split of all has been that between East and West, between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, a rift that is still apparent today. This book provides a balanced account of the emergence of divisions between Rome and Constantinople. Drawing on an encyclopaedic command of the literature, the book starts with the roots of the divergence in apostolic times and takes the story right up to the Council of Florence in the 15th century. The book is based on much experience as an ecumenist, which informs the discussion of Christians in relation to each other, to Jews, and to non-Christian Gentiles. The book shows a concern for the factors — theological, personal, political, and cultural — that caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation.

Dionysius Exiguus composed a 95‐year list of Easter dates beginning in what he designates as the year 532 from Christ. His list was a continuation of an Alexandrian table that ended in the year 247 from Diocletian. How Dionysius knew that 247 Diocletian should be followed by the year 532 of the Lord has puzzled scholars for almost 1500 years. His year AD 1 seems inconsistent with the evidence of the New Testament for the chronology of Christ. This book argues that Dionysius did not calculate a new date at all. He adopted the Christian era of Julius Africanus, which was based on a date for the crucifixion in AD 31 and the assumption that Jesus was 30 years old at that time. This date was transmitted to Dionysius Exiguus through the Easter calculations of Alexandria. About the same time, the Armenian church adopted a national era whose first year they synchronized with the year 553 from Christ. This Armenian Christian era agrees with that of Dionysius, but adjusted to the Armenian calendar. The Armenians received this numbering of the years from Christ independently from Dionysius, through the Alexandrian Easter tables.

Embodiment in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa is a much-debated topic. Boersma argues that this-worldly realities of time and space—which include embodiment—are not the focus of Gregory’s theology. Instead, embodiment plays a distinctly subordinate role. The key to his theology, argues Boersma, is anagogy—going upward in order to participate in the life of God. This book looks at a variety of topics connected to embodiment in Gregory’s thought: time and space; allegory; gender, sexuality, and virginity; death and mourning; slavery, homelessness, and poverty; and the church as the body of Christ. In each instance, Boersma maintains, Gregory values embodiment only inasmuch as it enables us to go upward in the intellectual realm of the heavenly future. Boersma suggests that for Gregory embodiment and virtue serve the anagogical pursuit of otherworldly realities. Countering recent trends in scholarship that highlight Gregory’s appreciation of the goodness of creation, this book argues that Gregory looks at embodiment as a means for human beings to grow in virtue and so to participate in the divine life. It is true that, as a Christian thinker, Gregory regards the creator–creature distinction as basic. But he also works with the distinction between spirit and matter. Nyssen is convinced that in the hereafter the categories of time and space will disappear—while the human body will undergo an inconceivable transformation. This book, then, serves as a reminder of the profoundly otherworldly cast of Gregory’s theology.

The task of the early Christian apologists was fundamentally one of constructing, maintaining, and manipulating the identities of Christianity and its rivals — Greeks, Jews, Romans, and others. Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio Evangelica, written in the early part of the 4th century, is the most comprehensive and sustained attempt in early apologetic literature to represent Christian, Greek, and Jewish ethnic identity as the basis for its defence of Christianity. This book traces the manipulations of ethnicity in Eusebius’ Praeparatio and highlights the implications of such ethnic argumentation for the understanding of Christian-Jewish and Christian-Greek relations, as well as the limits of modern notions of ‘religion’ to early Christian identity. Christianity is seen as a new nation (ethnos) — and at the same time a restoration of the oldest nation, that of the Hebrews — and is distinguished from the other nations of the Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Jews, and Romans who are all shown to possess inferior ethnic identities. Eusebius’ apologetic argument rests not on a defence of Christian doctrine or belief, but upon a vision of the ancient ethnic landscape, which manipulates national histories and boundaries so as to elevate Christians (as Hebrews) to a level of superiority in their national character and antiquity.

This monograph offers a historical and theological re-evaluation of the polemical writings of Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (328-73) and their influence upon modern interpretations of the so-called ‘Arian Controversy’. It examines in detail the methodology of Athanasius’ polemic, and focuses on his representation of his opponents as a single ‘Arian party’, hoi peri Eusebion (‘the ones around Eusebius [of Nicomedia]’ or the ‘Eusebians’). After an initial chronological catalogue of Athanasius’ polemical works, it traces the evolution of his construction of the ‘Eusebians’ from his own condemnation at the Council of Tyre in 335 onwards, and assesses the actions and the ‘Arian’ theology that Athanasius attributes to his foes. This examination of Athanasius’ polemic and of what little external evidence survives against which the polemic can be compared reveals that the ‘Eusebians’ were neither a ‘party’ nor ‘Arian’. Athanasius’ image of a 4th century Church polarized between his own ‘orthodoxy’ and the ‘Arianism’ of the ‘Eusebians’ as a polemical construct. The distortions inherent within this construct must be recognized to fully understand the 4th century Church, the men whom Athanasius branded as ‘Eusebians’, and Athanasius himself.

Evagrius of Pontus (c.345–99) was one of the most prominent figures among the monks of the desert settlements of Nitria, Sketis, and Kellia in Lower Egypt. Through the course of his ascetic writings he formulated a systematic presentation of the teaching of the semi-eremitic monks of these settlements. The works of Evagrius had a profound influence on Eastern Orthodox monastic teaching and passed to the West through the writings of John Cassian (c.365–435). This book provides an English translation of Evagrius' Greek ascetic writings, based on modern critical editions, where available, and, where they are not, on collations of the principal manuscripts. Two appendices provide variant readings for the Greek texts and the complete text of the long recension of Eulogios. The translations are accompanied by a commentary to guide the reader through the intricacies of Evagrian thought by offering explanatory comments and references to other Evagrian texts and relevant scholarly literature. Finally, detailed indexes are provided to allow the reader to identify and study the numerous themes of Evagrian teaching.

The fatherhood of God has a central, if increasingly controversial, place in Christian thinking about God. Yet although Christians have referred to God as Father from the earliest days of the faith, it was not until Athanasius in the 4th century that the idea of God as Father became a topic of sustained analysis. Looking at the genesis of Athanasius' understanding of divine fatherhood against the background of the Alexandrian tradition, the author of this book demonstrates how the concept came to occupy such a prominent place in Christian theology. He argues that there is a continuity in the Alexandrian tradition that runs from Origen to Athanasius, and shows how in the detail of their language and in the structure of their arguments, the 3rd and 4th century Alexandrians drew on Origen's portrayal of God as Father. For Origen, the fatherhood of God lay at the heart of the Christian faith: to know God fully and thus to be saved is to know God as Father. For Athanasius, the fatherhood of God was integral to the defence of the divinity of the Son against the Arian challenge: Fatherhood identified God as the loving and fruitful source of all things and as the one who has sought to meet us in his Son Jesus Christ. Arius, however, was an important exception, and for him it was logically possible to refer to God without calling him Father.

This book investigates representations of the emblematic first woman by examining one of the earliest and most influential accounts of Adam and Eve subsequent to the Hebrew Bible, namely the apocryphal Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE) from antiquity. It further considers the cultural and ideological significance of these representations. Previous studies of the GLAE’s complex historical and literary development have paved the way for considering additional thematic issues. One such issue is the representation of Eve. Treating the figure of Eve as a culturally constructed representation of woman, this book employs observations from contemporary sociological perspectives, traditional biblical scholarship, studies of the Books of Adam and Eve, and critical feminist theory to examine pivotal issues that have not yet been investigated in previous scholarship. The book offers a nuanced examination of the GLAE’s multifaceted and at times contradictory depictions of Eve/femininity. It situates these literary depictions within the hybrid Greco-Roman cultural world in which they emerged and looks at the extent to which they both reflect and construct contemporaneous concepts in regard to Eve’s/women’s standing, role, authority, and realms of experiences. Finally, the book considers how the GLAE narrative endows the biblical story of Eve with new contemporaneous details and meanings that, in turn, establish building blocks for later traditions. Aiming to introduce a dynamic study of the GLAE’s Eve, each chapter investigates a distinct representation of the first woman, revealing a web of traditions and voices—be they official, dogmatic, popular, or subversive—that converge in a multivocal dialogue over Eve/femininity in the cultural landscape of antiquity.