Gnostic Revisions Of Genesis Stories And Early Jesus Traditions

The book examines the critical use of biblical and early Christian traditions in such Christian-Gnostic texts as the Apocryphon of John, The Nature of the Archons, The Apocalypse of Adam, The Testimony of Truth, The Apocalypse of Peter, The Letter of Peter to Philip, and the apocryphal Acts of John.

The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts--a body of hypothetical originals--but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.

This volume examines the 'counter-narratives' of the core Christian story, proposed by texts from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere. A noteworthy body of highly respected scholars examine material that is sometimes difficult and often overlooked, contributing to the ongoing effort to integrate Nag Hammadi and related literature into the mainstream of New Testament and early Christian studies. By retracing the major elements of the Christian story in sequence, they are able to discuss how and why each aspect was disputed on inner-Christian grounds, and to reflect on the different accounts of Christian identity underlying these disputes. Together the essays in this book address a central issue: towards the end of the second century, Irenaeus could claim that the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the world were agreed on a version of the core Christian story which is still recognisable today. Yet, as Irenaeus concedes and as the Nag Hammadi texts have confirmed, there were many who wished to tell the core Christian story differently. Those who criticized and rejected the standard story did so not because they were adherents of another religion, 'Gnosticism', but because they were Christians who believed that the standard account was wrong at point after point. Ranging from the Gospels of Judas and Mary to Galatians and Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, this volume provides a fascinating analysis of how the Christian story as we know it today developed against counter-readings from other early Christian traditions.

The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field. Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

An introduction to the multiplex relation between Creator and creation as an object both of theological construction and religious devotion in the early church. The book argues that patristic commentators were motivated less by cosmological concerns than the desire to depict creation as the enduring creative and redemptive strategy of the Trinity.

David Creech explores at length the Apocryphon of John's ambivalent treatment of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Although Moses is explicitly corrected at five points in the text, Genesis' account of creation is nonetheless the basis for the Apocryphon's cosmogony and anthropogony. Its uneven treatment of the biblical text is the result of a dispute between the authors of the Apocryphon and other early Catholics. At the earliest stage of the text the Christians who wrote and read the Apocryphon worshiped alongside other early catholic Christians without any sense of contradiction or inconsistency. The key shift in the Apocryphon occurred after Irenaeus of Lyons' assault on "Knowledge Falsely So-Called." In response to his concerted effort to bring the church under the authority of early catholic bishops, the framers inserted corrections to Moses. The corrections are primarily rhetorical and used to refute early catholic identity markers.

An examination of Gnostic religion in Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, using Greek, Latin and Coptic sources.

Who wrote the Gospel of John? The author identifies himself only as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and Christian tradition tells us that this disciple was the apostle John. However, during the past century, scholars have increasingly come to doubt that attribution. In 1902, Rudolf Steiner wrote that the author of the Gospel of John was in fact Lazarus. Steiner's position stemmed from his insight that Lazarus's encounter with death involved far more than people realized --an initiation into higher spiritual realities that uniquely qualified him to write this gospel. Edward Smith takes up this argument and shows that subsequent research has tended to favor Lazarus for reasons grounded in John's Gospel itself. More important, Smith shows that subsequent discoveries at Nag Hammadi and Mar Saba corroborate Steiner's reasoning about the nature of the raising of Lazarus, pointing to Lazarus as "the rich young ruler" of Mark's Gospel.