Heiden Und Christen Im 5 Jahrhundert

Heiden und Christen im 5. Jahrhundert - so lautete das Thema der Tagung der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft, die in 1997 in Bochum stattfand. Die in diesem Band vorgelegten Beitrage eroffnen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven hochst originelle Einblicke in die wirklichen Verhaltnisse wahrend des sog. Konstantinischen Zeitalters. Wie stellte sich das Heidentum dar; wie und wo blieb es deutlich erkennbar? Wie stand es um die Rolle des christlichen Kaisertums, die Heidengesetzgebung und ihren Erfolg, die (auch in christlichen Kreisen geubte) Magie, die Beurteilung der paganen Religiositat durch die christlichen Historiker, die literarische Verarbeitung des Falls Roms bei Heiden und Christen? Diese und ahnliche Fragen - wie z.B. Bedeutung der Widerlegung von Julians Contra Galileos durch Cyrill von Alexandrien - werden eingehend behandelt.

Vatican II created an experimental space to be employed by a variety of different domains. The council led, in addition, to a new understanding of the church, namely that of a church in the service of the world.

The development of Early Christian rituals in connection with death and burial has so far not sufficiently been explored. Volp’s study focuses on the surviving literary sources—both pagan and Christian—, together with inscriptions and other archaeological remains while taking into account recent results from science and humanities. A summary of death and ritual in the ancient Mediterranean religions is followed by detailed analyses of the Christian sources from the 2nd to the 5th century. Thus, basic developments are being discovered which led to and accompanied the forming of Christian rituals, such as ritual purity or the social structure of family and society. Being the first such interdisciplinary approach, it also represents the first monographic work on the topic since 1941.

This book explores the construction of Christian identity in fourth and fifth centuries through inventing, fabricating and sharpening binary oppositions. Such oppositions, for example Christians - pagans; truth - falsehood; the one true god - the multitude of demons; the right religion - superstition, served to create and reinforce the Christian self-identity. The author examines how the Christian argumentation against pagans was intertwined with self-perception and self-affirmation. Discussing the relations and interaction between pagan and Christian cultures, this book aims at widening historical understanding of the cultural conflicts and the otherness in world history, thus contributing to the ongoing discussion about the historical and conceptual basis of cultural tolerance and intolerance. This book offers a valuable contribution to contemporary scholarly debate about Late Antique religious history and the relationship between Christianity and other religions.

Most surveys of religious tolerance and intolerance start from the medieval and early modern period, either passing over or making brief mention of discussions of religious moderation and coercion in Greco-Roman antiquity. Here Maijastina Kahlos widens the historical perspective to encompass late antiquity, examining ancient discussions of religious moderation and coercion in their historical contexts. The relations and interactions between various religious groups, especially pagans and Christians, are scrutinized, and the stark contrast often drawn between a tolerant polytheism and an intolerant Christianity is replaced by a more refined portrait of the complex late antique world.

This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the archaeology of 'paganism' in late antiquity. Papers explore the end of the temples, the nature of ritual deposits, the fate of religious statues and the iconography in material culutre. These are complemented by two extensive bibliographic essays.

'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This innovative study sets the emergence of Christian identity in the first two centuries, as it is constructed by the broad range of surviving literature, within the wider context of Jewish and Graeco-Roman identity. It uses a number of models from contemporary constructionist views of identity formation to explore how what comes to be seen as 'Christian' literature creates a sense of what to be 'a Christian' means, and traces both continuities and discontinuities with the ways in which Jewish and Graeco-Roman identity were also being constructed through their texts. It seeks to acknowledge the centrality of texts in shaping early Christianity, historically as well as in our perception of it, while also exploring how we might move from those texts to the individuals and communities who preserved them. Such an approach challenges more traditional emphases on the development of institutions, whether structures or credal and ethical formulations, which often fail to recognize the rhetorical function of the texts on which they draw, and the uncertainties of how well these reflect the actual practice and experience of individuals and communities. While building on recent recognition of the diversity of early Christianity, the book goes on to explore the question whether it is possible to speak of a distinctive Christian identity across both the range of early texts and as a pressing historical and theological question in the contemporary world.