Showing posts with label Roman Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roman Empire. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 11, 2020

So who reigns?

›
Other terms that we today traditionally associate with Christianity were also popular as part of imperial propaganda. In the broader Greco-R...
Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Old-time religion?

›
The early Christian emphasis on, and teaching about, everyday behavior as central to Christian commitment is yet another distinctive feature...
Monday, June 12, 2017

Those blasted atheists!

›
When considered as a religion in that time, the most obvious oddity was Christianity’s “atheism”—that is, the refusal to worship the traditi...
Friday, June 09, 2017

Marcus Aurelius and tolerance

›
Sophisticated pagans such as Celsus and Marcus Aurelius apparently regarded Christianity as not simply unbelievable but, it appears, utterly...
Thursday, June 08, 2017

You just don't fit in!

›
Granted, the early Christian household-code texts give general directions to the various categories of believers addressed, and their actual...
Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Do ethics matter?

›
The notion that any treatment of slaves could be unjust suffering was a rather unusual one in the Roman period.— Destroyer of the gods: Ea...
Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Shame-based behavior or God-based behavior?

›
[T]he early Christian texts reflect a rather strong effort to promote widely in circles of believers a collective commitment to the strict b...
Saturday, June 03, 2017

Early Christianity vs. Roman views on adultery

›
I emphasize again that, more typically in the Roman era, sex with prostitutes and courtesans, and with young boys as well, was not only tole...
4 comments:
Thursday, June 01, 2017

A different standard

›
The bottom line in the passage [1 Cor 6] is that the diverse sexual activities covered in Paul’s use of porneia , though they may have been ...
Wednesday, May 31, 2017

You sure you want to go back to this?

›
Wives were generally held to one standard of behavior, strict marital chastity, and husbands to quite another one. Men, husbands included, w...
Tuesday, May 30, 2017

A higher standard

›
It is interesting to note that in pagan Greek texts, the term porneia simply designates prostitution, the sale of women’s bodies for sex. B...
Monday, May 29, 2017

That's not religion!

›
Recall that what we mean by “religion” in the Roman period typically focused on ritual actions and responsibilities involving sacrifice, alt...
Monday, May 15, 2017

Which is harder?

›
Especially in the first three centuries, therefore, when Christianity was regarded widely as a strange and dubious new religion, Christians ...
Thursday, May 11, 2017

Just toss them in the trash!

›
Justin is representative of the revulsion at the practice of infant abandonment that is expressed in early Christian writings. As one recent...
Monday, May 08, 2017

Write it down!

›
The number and substance of the writings produced is all the more remarkable when we remember that all through this early period Christians ...
Friday, May 05, 2017

Uniquely people of the book

›
[A]long with the scriptures inherited from the Jewish tradition, the “Old Testament,” early Christian writings as well were read, and read a...
Tuesday, May 02, 2017

You mean I can read it, too?

›
So, the practice of reading sacred texts as a regular part of communal worship was shared by synagogues and he early churches, and in this t...
Friday, April 28, 2017

Unique in Roman times

›
[E]arly Christian religious identity was distinctive in replacing all others for its devotees. It was an exclusive religious identity, defin...
Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Yes, it really is something new!

›
[T]he consistent line taken in the various texts that make up the New Testament and that came to be affirmed with growing force as represent...
Tuesday, April 25, 2017

One and one only

›
To be sure, participation in Isis worship, for example, comprised a noteworthy exercise in voluntary religiousness. So, to reiterate the poi...