According to the available evidence not many pagans knew the Greek Bible (Septuagint) before the advent of Christianity. Those pagans who later became aware of Christian texts were among the first, according to the surviving data, to seriously explore the Septuagint. They found the Bible to be difficult reading. The pagans who reacted to biblical texts include Celsus (II C.E.), Porphyry (III C.E.), and Julian the Apostate (IV C.E.). These authors thought that if they could refute one of the primary foundations of Christianity, namely its use or interpretation of the Septuagint, then the new religion would perhaps crumble. John Granger Cook analyzes these pagans' voice and elaborates on its importance, since it shows how Septuagint texts appeared in the eyes of Greco-Roman intellectuals. Theirs was not an abstract interest, however, because they knew that Christianity posed a grave danger to some of their dearest beliefs, self-understanding, and way of life.

According to the available evidence not many pagans knew the Greek Bible (Septuagint) before the advent of Christianity. Those pagans who later became aware of Christian texts were among the first, according to the surviving data, to seriously explore the Septuagint. They found the Bible to be difficult reading. The pagans who reacted to biblical texts include Celsus (II C.E.), Porphyry (III C.E.), and Julian the Apostate (IV C.E.). These authors thought that if they could refute one of the primary foundations of Christianity, namely its use or interpretation of the Septuagint, then the new religion would perhaps crumble. John Granger Cook analyzes these pagans' voice and elaborates on its importance, since it shows how Septuagint texts appeared in the eyes of Greco-Roman intellectuals. Theirs was not an abstract interest, however, because they knew that Christianity posed a grave danger to some of their dearest beliefs, self-understanding, and way of life.

Publisher Description

Presenting a fresh inquiry into early Christianity and Greco-Roman paganism, Luke Timothy Johnson begins with a broad definition of religion as a way of life organized around convictions and experiences concerning ultimate power.

The volume is a Festschrift offered to Charles Kannengiesser on the occasion of his 80th birthday and honours him for his numerous scholarly accomplishments. Its twenty-five contributions discuss some of the major issues pertaining to the reception and interpretation of the Bible in late antique Christianity and Judaism. They focus on the ways in which communities and individuals understood the Bible and interpreted its traditions to address their historical, social, and theological requirements. Since the Bible was by far the most important book during these centuries, a discussion of its influence in such contexts will illuminate significant aspects of the formation of western civilisation.

The divine commands to annihilate the seven nations living in Canaan (to 'devote them to destruction', herem in Biblical Hebrew) are perhaps the most morally troubling texts of the Hebrew and Christian bibles. Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages addreses the challenges these texts pose. It presents the various ways in which interpreters from the first century to the twenty-first have attempted to make sense of them. The most troubling approach was no doubt to read them as divine sanction and inspiration for violence and war: the analysis of the use of herem texts in the crusades, the inquisition, and various colonial conquests illustrates this violent way of reading the texts, which has such alarming contemporary relevance. Three additional approaches can also be traced to antiquity, viz. pre-critical, non-literal, and divine-command-theory readings. Finally, critics of Christianity from antiquity via the Enlightenment to today have referenced herem texts: their critical voices are included as well. Christian Hofreiter combines a presentation of a wide range of historical sources with careful analysis that scrutinizes the arguments made and locates the texts in their wider contexts. Influential contributions of such well-known figures as Augustine, Origen, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin are included, as well as those of critics such as Marcion, Celsus and Matthew Tindal, and less widely known texts such as crusading histories, songs and sermons, colonial conquest accounts, and inquisition manuals. The book thus sheds new light on the ways in which these texts have shaped the thoughts and actions of their readers through the centuries, and offers pertinent insights into how readers might be able to make sense of them today.

In this book, Charles Cosgrove undertakes a comprehensive examination of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786, an ancient Greek Christian hymn dating to the late third century that offers the most ancient surviving example of a notated Christian melody. The author analyzes the text and music of the hymn, situating it in the context of the Greek literary and hymnic tradition, ancient Greek music, early Christian liturgy and devotion, and the social setting of Oxyrhynchus circa 300 C.E. The broad sweep of the commentary touches the interests of classical philologists, specialists in ancient Greek music, church historians, and students of church music history.