Barry, Jennifer., 2019. Bishops in Flight Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 224 p. $ 34.95 / £ 27.00. ISBN: 9780520300378. E-BOOK
Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Childers, Jeff W., 2020. Divining Gospel. Oracles of Interpretation in a Syriac Manuscript of John. Manuscripta Biblica 4. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. XI, 230 p. € 86.95. ISBN: 9783110617214.
Ancient manuscripts of John’s Gospel containing hermeneiai have long puzzled scholars, provoking debate about their origins, purpose, and use. The fragmentary nature of the early evidence has impeded progress towards a better understanding of these specialized books. The present study shows that these books are “Divining Gospels” – editions of John’s Gospel incorporating lots of divination materials for use in fortune-telling. The study centers on material presented here for the first time: the text and translation of a unique sixth-century Syriac manuscript, the earliest and most complete example of a hermeneia Gospel. An analysis of the Syriac along with evidence from Greek, Coptic, Latin, and Armenian versions show they all preserve vestiges of the same apparatus, disseminated widely at an early time throughout many different Christian communities. These books must be situated squarely within the development of divinatory practices in early and late antique Christianity. However, they represent a true hermeneutic, a method by which interpreters brought the potency of the Bible to bear on the everyday concerns of people who consulted them for help. Furthermore, the Divining Gospel draws on the special aura that John’s Gospel held in the Christian imagination, both as text and as textual object. An analysis of the interplay between the biblical text and sacred codex, the oracles, the ritual practitioner, and the client enrich our appreciation of this distinctive hermeneutic. Contextualizing these materials in popular use illuminates the fraught relationships between the ecclesial establishment, ritual experts operating on the margins of orthodox respectability, and lay clients seeking knowledge and help.
Frazier, Françoise., 2019. Quelques aspects du platonisme de Plutarque. Philosopher en commun, tourner sa pensée vers Dieu. Brill’s Plutarch Studies 4. Leiden and Boston. XVI, 548 p. € 177,00 / $ 213,00. ISBN: 9789004415980. E-BOOK (PDF)
Françoise Frazier’s Quelques aspects du platonisme de Plutarque: Philosopher en commun, Tourner sa pensée vers Dieu includes 20 essays on several philosophical tractates in Plutarch’s Moralia. Interesting both for Classists and Historians of Religion alike, the chapters provide an in-depth interpretation of several essential aspects of Plutarch’s philosophical dialogues that pays special heed both to the divine and the communication between God and humans. The book includes three sections. While the first is mainly concerned with Plutarch’s Amatorius, the second focuses on Plutarch’s relationship to Plato, especially in his myths of the afterlife. The third part, finally, deals with an important investigation that occupied Professor Frazier lately, namely the concept of pistis in the religious context of the first centuries CE.
Frey, Jörg, Matthijs den Dulk and Jan van der Watt (eds.), 2019. 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter: Towards a New Perspective. Biblical Interpretation 174. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 336 p. € 119.00 / $ 144.00. ISBN: 9789004399549. E-BOOK
In the 2016 Radboud Prestige Lectures, published in this volume, Jörg Frey develops a new perspective on 2 Peter by arguing that the letter is dependent on the Apocalypse of Peter. Frey argues that reading 2 Peter against the backdrop of the Apocalypse of Peter sheds new light on many longstanding interpretative questions and offers fresh insights into the history of second-century Christianity. Frey’s lectures are followed by responses from leading scholars in the field, who discuss Frey’s proposal in ways both critical and constructive. Contributors include Richard Bauckham, Jan Bremmer, Terrance Callan, Paul Foster, Jeremy Hultin, Tobias Nicklas, David Nienhuis and Martin Ruf.
Ghica, Victor., 2017. Les Actes de Pierre et des douze apôtres (NH VI, 1). Bibliotheque Copte de Nag Hammadi: Section Textes 37. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. 484 p. € 115. ISBN: 9789042932685.
Acta apostolorum and fantastic tale, post-resurrection narrative and parable of the quest for the Kingdom, hymn to resistance in the face of persecution but also founding myth of the Christian mission, work of propaganda as much as precise escape, the first writing in Nag Hammadi Codex VI lends itself to multiple readings. This polysemy stems from a complex editorial process, of which the text preserves numerous traces, which crystallizes into four distinct discourses concealed in so many narratives that are both autonomous and interdependent: a plurivocal theology, at the same time ecstatic and symbolic, conveyed by the hybrid story of Lithargoel, at once an allegory of the salvation of the soul and a psychanody, a euthymic teaching transmitted by the resurrected Jesus of an epiphanic scene, a diaconal theology and an innovative theory of Christian mission, corollaries of a missionary narrative, and finally an ascetic theology and an apology of the perpetuation of the Church, enclosed in an ample metaphor of endurance. If the last stage of its composition can be attributed to a Meletian circle of the early fourth century, this apocryphon seems to circulate, not only in Egypt but also in Rome, Nubia and Palestine, at least until the twelfth century.
Linjamaa, Paul., 2019. The Ethics of The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5). A Study of Determinism and Early Christian Philosophy of Ethics. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 95. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 326 p. € 136.00 / $ 164.00. ISBN: 9789004407763. E-BOOK
In The Ethics of The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5) Paul Linjamaa offers the first full length thematical monograph on the longest Valentinian text extant today. By investigating the ethics of The Tripartite Tractate, this study offers in-depth exploration of the text’s ontology, epistemology, theory of will, and passions, as well as the anthropology and social setting of the text. Valentinians have often been associated with determinism, which has been presented as “Gnostic” and then not taken seriously or been disregarded as an invention of ancient intra-Christian polemics. Linjamaa challenges this conception and presents insights into how early Christian determinism actually worked and how it effectively sustained viable and functioning ethics.
Mansour, Tanios Bou., 2020. Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive. Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacques de Saroug et Narsaï. Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements 156. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishing. xviii, 604 p. € 196.00 / $ 236.00. ISBN: 9789004415126. E-BOOK (PDF)
In Le ministère sacerdotal dans la tradition syriaque primitive, Tanios Bou Mansour analyzes the Christian priesthood in four Syriac writers: Aphraate, Ephrem, Jacob of Sarug and Narsaï. Their conception of priesthood is illuminated by the Priesthood of Christ and contextualized within the continuity of the priesthood of the Old Testament. These authors’ originality and actuality lies in their conception of election, of apostolic succession, of “sacerdotal” traits attributed to women in the Bible, and especially of the priest who, commissioned by the Church, executes the action of the Christ and the Spirit.
Oort, Johannes van., 2020. Mani and Augustine. Collected Essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 97. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 632 p. € 153.00 / $ 184.00. ISBN: 9789004417595. E-BOOK
Mani and Augustine: collected essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine gathers in one volume contributions on Manichaean scholarship made by the internationally renowned scholar Johannes van Oort. The first part of the book focuses on the Babylonian prophet Mani (216–277) who styled himself an “apostle of Jesus Christ,” on Jewish elements in Manichaeism and on “human semen eucharist,” eschatology and imagery of Christ as “God’s Right Hand.” The second part of the book concentrates on the question to what extent the former ‘auditor’ Augustine became acquainted with Mani’s gnostic world religion and his canonical writings and explores to what extent Manichaeism had a lasting impact on the most influential church father of the West.
Tarrant, Harold, François Renaud, Dirk Baltzly, and Danielle A. Layne (eds.), 2018. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity. Brill’s Companions to Classical Reception 13. Leiden and Boston: Brill. xxii, 657 p. € 187.00 / $ 216.00. ISBN: 9789004355385 E-Book (PDF)
Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity offers a comprehensive account of the ways in which ancient readers responded to Plato, as philosopher, as author, and more generally as a central figure in the intellectual heritage of Classical Greece, from his death in the fourth century BCE until the Platonist and Aristotelian commentators in the sixth century CE. The volume is divided into three sections: “Early Developments in Reception” (four chapters), “Early Imperial Reception” (nine chapters), and “Early Christianity and Late Antique Platonism” (eighteen chapters). Sectional introductions cover matters of importance that could not easily be covered in dedicated chapters. The book demonstrates the great variety of approaches to and interpretations of Plato among even his most dedicated ancient readers, offering some salutary lessons for his modern readers too.
Thorsteinsson, Runar M., 2018. Jesus as Philosopher. The Moral Sage in the Synoptic Gospels. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 224 p. £ 32.49. ISBN: 9780198815228. E-BOOK
This book examines the possible ways in which the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, were inspired by philosophical traditions. It considers how the author in question speak of Jesus in relation to contemporary philosophy and whether we see Jesus take on a certain “philosophical” role in the Gospels, either by his statements and reasoning or his way of life. It concludes that the Gospel authors inherited stories and sayings of Jesus that they wanted to improve upon and recount as truthfully as possible, and they did so in part by making use of philosophical traditions about the ideal sage, especially that of Stoicism and Cynicism.
