The Pseudo-Clementines are best known for preserving early Jewish Christian traditions, but have not been appreciated as a resource for understanding the struggles over identity and orthodoxy among fourth-century Christians, Jews, and pagans. Using the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Nicole Kelley analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by the Recognitions . These strategies discredit the knowledge of philosophers and astrologers, and establish Peter and Clement as the exclusive stewards of prophetic knowledge, which has been handed down to them by Jesus. This analysis reveals that the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions is not a jumbled collection of earlier source materials, as previous interpreters have thought, but a coherent narrative concerned primarily with epistemological issues. The author understands the Recognitions as a reflection of complex rivalries between several types of Christian and non-Christian groups such as that found in fourth-century Antioch or Edessa.

In very different ways the writings of the New Testament have shaped cultures until today. The Novum Testamentum Patristicum project will give a full documentation of ancient Christian receptions of the New Testament in late antiquity. This volume focuses on the different mainly narrative receptions of New Testament texts in ancient Christian apocryphal literature. While it has been accepted for a long time that apocryphal writings mainly wanted to fill the gaps of New Testament texts in more or less fantastic ways, the articles in this volume discover a rich and very different variety of re-writings, relectures, and receptions of New Testament texts, motifs and ideas.

Qur'ānic Studies Today brings together specialists in the field of Islamic studies to provide a range of essays that reflect the depth and breadth of scholarship on the Qur'ān. Combining theoretical and methodological clarity with close readings of qur’ānic texts, these contributions provide close analysis of specific passages, themes, and issues within the Qurʾān, even as they attend to the disciplinary challenges within the field of qur’ānic studies today. Chapters are arranged into three parts, treating specific figures appearing in the Qurʾān, analysing particular suras, and finally reflecting on the Qur’ān and its "others." They explore the internal dimensions and interior chronology of the Qur’ān as text, its possible conversations with biblical and non-biblical traditions in Late Antiquity, and its role as scripture in modern exegesis and recitation. Together, they are indispensable for students and scholars who seek an understanding of the Qur’ān founded on the most recent scholarly achievements. Offering both a reflection of and a reflection on the discipline of qur’ānic studies, the strong, scholarly examinations of the Qur’ān in this volume provide a valuable contribution to Islamic and qur’ānic studies.

James A. Kelhoffer examines an often overlooked aspect of New Testament constructions of legitimacy, namely the value of Christians' withstanding persecution as a means of corroborating their religious identity as Christ's followers. The introductory chapter defines the problem in interaction with sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital. Chapters 2-10 examine the depictions of persecuted Christians in the Pauline letters, First Peter, Hebrews, Revelation, the NT Gospels, and Acts. These exegetical analyses support the conclusion that assertions of standing, authority, and power claimed on the basis of persecution play a significant and heretofore under-appreciated role in much of the NT. It is also argued that depictions of persecution can have both positive implications for the persecuted and negative implications for the depicted persecutors in constructions of legitimation.An epilogue considers later examples of early Christian martyrs and confessors, as well as John Foxe's Book of Martyrs . The epilogue also addresses the ethical and hermeneutical problem of asserting the withstanding of persecution as a basis of legitimacy in ancient and modern contexts. This problem stems from the observation that, although the NT authors present their construals of withstanding persecution as a basis of legitimation as if they were self-evident, such assertions are actually the culmination of numerous presuppositions and are therefore open to dissenting viewpoints. Yet the NT authors do not acknowledge the possibility of competing interpretations, or that oppressed Christians could someday become oppressors. Accordingly, this exegetical study calls attention to an ethical and hermeneutical problem that the NT bequeaths to the modern interpreter, a problem inviting input from ethicists and other theologians.

A complete geographical and thematic overview of the village in an antiquity and its role in the rise of Christianity. The volume begins with a “state-of-question” introduction by Thomas Robinson, assessing the interrelation of the village and city with the rise of early Christianity. Alan Cadwallader then articulates a methodology for future New Testament studies on this topic, employing a series of case studies to illustrate the methodological issues raised. From there contributors explore three areas of village life in different geographical areas, by means of a series of studies, written by experts in each discipline. They discuss the ancient near east (Egypt and Israel), mainland and Isthmian Greece, Asia Minor, and the Italian Peninsula. This geographic focus sheds light upon the villages associated with the biblical cities (Israel; Corinth; Galatia; Ephesus; Philippi; Thessalonica; Rome), including potential insights into the rural nature of the churches located there. A final section of thematic studies explores central issues of local village life (indigenous and imperial cults, funerary culture, and agricultural and economic life).

In this volume, Michael Flexsenhar III advances the argument that imperial slaves and freedpersons in the Roman Empire were essential to early Christians’ self-conception as a distinct people in the Mediterranean and played a multifaceted role in the making of early Christianity. Scholarship in early Christianity has for centuries viewed Roman emperors’ slaves and freedmen as responsible for ushering Christianity onto the world stage, traditionally using Paul’s allusion to “the saints from Caesar’s household” in Philippians 4:22 as a core literary lens. Merging textual and material evidence with diaspora and memory studies, Flexsenhar expands on this narrative to explore new and more nuanced representations of this group, showing how the long-accepted stories of Christian slaves and freepersons in Caesar’s household should not be taken at face value but should instead be understood within the context of Christian myth- and meaning-making. Flexsenhar analyzes textual and material evidence from the first to the sixth century, spanning Roman Asia, the Aegean rim, Gaul, and the coast of North Africa as well as the imperial capital itself. As a result, this book shows how stories of the emperor’s slaves were integral to key developments in the spread of Christianity, generating origin myths in Rome and establishing a shared history and geography there, differentiating and negotiating assimilation with other groups, and expressing commemorative language, ritual acts, and a material culture. With its thoughtful critical readings of literary and material sources and its fresh analysis of the lived experiences of imperial slaves and freedpersons, Christians in Caesar’s Household is indispensable reading for scholars of early Christianity, the origins of religion, and the Roman Empire.

In the generation after Constantine the Great elevated Christianity to a dominant position in the Roman Empire, his nephew, the Emperor Julian, sought to reinstate the old gods to their former place of prominence—in the face of intense opposition from the newly powerful Christian church. In early 363 c.e., while living in Syrian Antioch, Julian redoubled his efforts to hellenize the Roman Empire by turning to an unlikely source: the Jews. With a war against Persia on the horizon, Julian thought it crucial that all Romans propitiate the true gods and gain their favor through proper practice. To convince his people, he drew on Jews, whom he characterized as Judeans, using their scriptures, institutions, practices, and heroes sometimes as sources for his program and often as models to emulate. In The Specter of the Jews, Ari Finkelstein examines Julian’s writings and views on Jews as Judeans, a venerable group whose religious practices and values would help delegitimize Christianity and, surprisingly, shape a new imperial Hellenic pagan identity.