Work Bibliography - Research Paper Example

Prof’s Working Bibliography Annemarie Luijendijk. 2008. Papyri from the great persecution: Roman and Christian perspectives. Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (3): 341-69. This article is an outline (including full texts) of two documents that have survived from the persecutions associated with Julian the Apostate. The fist is an official document that served as an imperial record of the confiscation of church property, and reveals the depth to which persecution took place, and the Roman Empire re-embraced the persecution of Christians. It also points to an even more systematic persecution than had happened before, where persecutions would only be carried out in cases where Christians were overt in their worship, and would refuse to deal with Roman authorities, or when a local Roman Official was incredibly intent in the persecution. The acceptance of the Church in the decades before Julian’s reign, however, pushed Christianity into public life. This meant that the rise of persecution struck more deeply at the now open Christianity than previous persecutions had at closeted Christianity. This article also outlines a letter from a man to his wife that indicates the kinds of small personal resistances that Christians attempted to undertake in the face of this new brutal oppression. Though they would not often stand openly against the state, according to this article, they also did not bend to that oppression, and attempted to resist in the small ways that were available to them. Harrison, J. R. 2002. Paul and the Imperial Gospel at Thessaloniki. Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25 (1): 71-96. This article expands on the traditional argument that the Pax Romana helped the spread of the gospel by allowing for peaceful travel and communication over large swathes of area, which allowed for an intensely constructed religious network to appear and spread relatively quickly. It dives into the way that the Pax Romana’s system of governance helped spread the gospel through influencing the structure of the church. The Early Church quickly, as of the era of Paul, had begun to mirror the administrative structure of the Roman Empire, albeit on a small scale. This administrative structure allowed for the creation of Bishops who would preside over a certain area, and made the travel of Christians from one area to another easier, as well as allowing the birth of Christian communities in areas where there had not been ones previously easier, because they had a mold and a model to follow. Furthermore, it indicates that this administrative copying of the Roman Empire also had a profound impact on the theology of the Christian Church, allowing for the deciding of theological issues through councils of Bishops, but also reducing the populism of the earliest church in favor of a more top-down, authoritarian religious practice. den Boeft, J., and D. H. Williams. 1996. Ambrose of Milan and the end of the Arian-Nicene conflicts. Vigiliae Christianae 50 (3): 315. This text outlines the role of one of the most important early Bishops, Ambrose of Milan, in bringing to a close the Arian-Nicene conflict. Though the council of Nicene decided on an orthodoxy, declaring the Arian beliefs heterodox or heretical, this did not stop the continuation of Arian practices. This was a pattern that emerged though many church councils, where the losing side would continue to act in the ways they had previously, especially if, as was the case with the Arian heresy, the heresy was geographically concentrated. The article argues that without strong defense of orthodoxy, as was provided by Ambrose of Milan, it is quite possible that Arian beliefs would have continued to flourish for many years after the Nicean council. It outlines the steps Ambrose took to defend orthodoxy as decided by the Council of Nicene. But it also complicates the historical memory of Ambrose of Milan somewhat, by demonstrating that he had substantial investment in defending the orthodoxy for reasons other than theological ones. The author does not mean to undermine Ambrose’s well deserved reputation, but rather to seek out the true history behind the myth Ambrose of Milan. Nicholson, Oliver. 2000. Constantine's vision of the cross.Vigiliae Christianae 54 (3): 309-342. This text outlines the significance of Constantine’s vision of the Cross before his famous battle of Milvian Bridge, and attempts to situate it both in the wiser context of Roman rulers and of apparitions and visions of god in Christian contexts in the first several centuries after the death of Christ. The author argues, to some extent, that Constantine’s visions are in the line of the relationship between God and Emperor that had been essential the reign of every Emperor since Caesar. Emperors had always been chosen by gods, and were in fact semi-divine themselves in Roman understanding – Constantine’s vision of the cross simply shows that he was the chosen of the Christian god. In the highly accepting pluralistic state that was ancient Rome, this was perfectly acceptable: it was not uncommon for new gods to be added to the Roman pantheon as new peoples were conquered, or, alternatively, for Roman gods to serve as stand-ins for similar gods for other cultures. This article thus argues that Constantine’s conversion, though remarkable and revolutionary, was also not entirely out of sync with the history of the Emporer’s relationship with the divine. This article has to walk a fine line to understand and communicate the culture and history it is discussing, which included imperial relationships with god and a tradition of visions, without discounting the validity of Constantine’s religious experience. Eckhard Schnabel. 2004. The making of a Christian aristocracy: Social and religious change in the Western Roman Empire. Trinity Journal 25 (2): 277. This article argues that the fall of the Roman Empire allowed the Roman church to step in and act as a form of government during times with little other option, and thus become a more integral part of believer’s lives. There were many cases where, as the Roman government failed, the Roman church stayed strong or became even stronger in order to do what had to be done in difficult situations. During some of the Barbarian invasions, for instance, when Rome was sacked, the Pope would engage in negotiations on behalf of the citizens of Rome. The fall of the Western Roman Empire thus provided for the further development of the administrative capacity of the early church, making the church a much more corporeal, mundane and political entity than it had been before the fall of the Roman Empire. It also briefly touches on the anarchy that were associated with the later stages of the fall, that eventually led into the middle ages, and the role the church played in trying to combat that anarchy through both theological and legal traditions. This article does have, however, a somewhat negative tone, clearly preferring the populism of the early church to the hierarchy that grew up as a result of the Church’s contact with Western Roman practice through figures like Paul of Tarsus. Though some of these criticisms are doubtless valid to some degree, they still color the interpretation of the history significantly, making this article less objective and injecting religious and social commentary where it might not be wholly necessary. Ferreiro, Alberto. 2003. Simon magus, Nicolas of Antioch, and Muhammad. Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 72 (1): 53-70. This text argues that, though there was some relationship between heretical Christianity and the development of Islam (Muhammad certainly had some connection to Christian texts or Christians themselves, as he included references to Jesus and Mary in the Koran) the greatest connection between heretical Christian belief and Islam was actually forged by Christians themselves in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as a way to refute Islamic practice. These Christians learned small amounts of Islamic practice through direct contact with Muslims, and much more from exaggerated tales brought back from traders to the Middle East. They would then try to forge links between these Islamic practices and the practices of Christian heretics, as a way of understanding Islam as part of a Christian world and the grand Christian tradition. I thus diverges from more classical understandings of the role that heretical Christianity played in the formation of the Early Islamic practice. One of this article’s failings, however, rests in the fact that it does not deal with the relationship between the Christianity and the origins of Islam very well – it treats the construction of Islam as having originated out of heretical Christian practices as solely a construction of Medieval Christians, especially during the Crusades. This is problematic, however, because Islam is definitively in the same tradition as Christianity: an Abrahamic one. Muslims even see Christians as “people of the book” recognizing their shared heritage. So this article essentially talks about the construction of Muslims as heretical Christians without dealing with any truth that there might be to that construction – especially in Christian’s minds, much as early Jews may have seen Christianity as a heretical sect (which was, to some degree, a valid interpretation of the origin of the religion). Read More