Christian Origins And Hellenistic Judaism

In Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism, Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through reference to Hellenistic Judaism and its literary forms. Each essay moves forward the current understanding of how primitive Christianity situated itself in relation to evolving Greco-Roman Jewish culture. Some essays focus on configuring the social context for the origins of the Jesus movement and beyond, while others assess the literary relation between early Christian and Hellenistic Jewish texts.

These studies break new ground in the exploration of early Christianity and Judaism towards the end of the Second Temple period.Professor Borgen introduces fresh perspectives on many central issues in the complexity of Judaism both within Palestine and in the Diaspora. He also examines the variety of tendencies which existed within Christianity as it emerged within Judaism and spread out into other nations.An invaluable study for all scholars, teachers and students of the New Testament in general and of Judaica, Classics and Hellenism

This short but highly significant study is the first real sequel to Professor Martin Hengel's classic and monumental work 'Judaism and Hellenism'. It demonstrates from a wealth of evidence, much of it made readily available here for the first time, that in the New Testament period Hellenization was so widespread in Palestine that the usual distinction between Hellenistic Judaism and Palestinian Judaism is not a valid one and that the word Hellenistic and related terms are so vague as to be meaningless. The consequences of this for New Testament study are, of course, considerable.

In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Christian scholars portrayed Judaism as the dark religious backdrop to the liberating events of Jesus' life and the rise of the early church. Since the 1950s, however, a dramatic shift has occurred in the study of Judaism, driven by new manuscript and archaeological discoveries and new methods and tools for analyzing sources. George Nickelsburg here provides a broad and synthesizing picture of the results of the past fifty years of scholarship on early Judaism and Christianity. He organizes his discussion around a number of traditional topics: scripture and tradition, Torah and the righteous life, God's activity on humanity's behalf, agents of God's activity, eschatology, historical circumstances, and social settings. Each of the chapters discusses the findings of contemporary research on early Judaism, and then sketches the implications of this research for a possible reinter-pretation of Christianity. Still, in the author's view, there remains a major Jewish-Christian agenda yet to be developed and implemented.

Almost all scholars look to Acts 6:1-8:3 as providing the bedrock of early Christian tradition. The incident between the Hebrews and the Hellenists are understood to reflect real historical and theological problems in the early Jerusalem community, demonstrating the Hellenist role as a historical bridge between Jesus and Paul. Penner's study challenges the fundamental assumptions of this approach. Penner emphasizes the rhetorical and moral dimensions of ancient historiographical theory, especially the centrality of narrative and plot, the use of vivid description, the application of comparison using various type-scenes, and the role of speeches in terms of characterization and the presentation of narrative style. Todd Penner is the Assistant Professor of Religion at Austin College and the co-editor with Caroline Vander Stichele of Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse.

Martin Hengel gathers an encyclopedic amount of material, ancient and modern, to present an exhaustive survey of the early course of Hellenistic civilization as it related to developing Judaism. The result is a highly readable account of a largely unfamiliar world which is indispensable for those interested in Judaism and the birth of Christianity alike. An extensive section of notes and bibliography is included.

This volume focuses on the role of Judaism, particularly that of Philo, and of Gnosticism, as two important forces shaping the response of early Christianity to the Hellenistic Greco-Roman culture of its time. The sections which examine Hellenistic Judaism investigate themes from Greek philosophy, like 'reason controlling the passions, ' which are also crucial in shaping Philo's perception of the feminine. The manner in which Jewish authors of this period attempt to synthesize Old Testament with Greek philosophical themes like creation/cosmology receives specific treatment. Essays dealing with Gnosticism re-examine themes from Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle in Gnostic documents, but also look at the role of Hellenistic Judaism with its interests in Sophia. Co-published with the Institute for Christian Studies

A substantial portion of the New Testament was either written in the Jewish Diaspora or addressed to members of the Diaspora. This means that Hellenistic Judaism outside of Palestine was to a great extent the matrix from which New Testament thought developed, so that New Testament teachings and presuppositions about the relationship of the followers of Jesus to the "Old Covenant" must be understood in terms of Hellenistic Jewish understandings of that covenant. These papers, which were presented at a conference held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in 1992, investigate different aspects of the relationship of formative Christianity to its Hellenistic Jewish matrix. Contributors are European scholars, such as the volume editors and Marinus de Jonge, and Americans, including James Charlesworth and Adela Yarbro Collins. Topics include: ownership of the covenant according to the "Epistle of Barnabas; "Alexandrian Jewish religious life as seen in texts prior to Philo; the universality of Torah in Hellenistic Judaism as a preparation for gentile Christianity; the Jewishness of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" and of certain magical texts; the Jewish background of Mark's empty tomb account, Mark's "theios aner" christology, and the New Testament love command; comparisons of Philonic and Pauline biblical exegesis; the role of Hellenistic philosophy in the Corinthian conflict; the influence of passion traditions on Pauline hardship catalogs; and the semiotics of the Adam-Christ typology in Romans. All articles are in English, including one newly translated from German for this edition.

In Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism, Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through reference to Hellenistic Judaism and its literary forms.