Donatist Martyr Stories

Donatist Martyr Stories PDF Author: Maureen A. Tilley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9780853239314
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
With this volume, Donatism regains its voice and its hagiography is available in English for the first time. The stories included provide a unique opportunity to glimpse the daily life of the church which for over a century was the faith of the majority of North African Christians. The narratives represent the lives and deaths of Christians who carried on pre-Constantine traditions from the fourth century to the advent of Islam.

Donatist Martyr Stories

Donatist Martyr Stories PDF Author: Maureen A. Tilley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9780853239314
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Get Book

Book Description
With this volume, Donatism regains its voice and its hagiography is available in English for the first time. The stories included provide a unique opportunity to glimpse the daily life of the church which for over a century was the faith of the majority of North African Christians. The narratives represent the lives and deaths of Christians who carried on pre-Constantine traditions from the fourth century to the advent of Islam.

Donatist Martyr Stories

Donatist Martyr Stories PDF Author: Maureen A. Tilley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christian martyrs
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description


The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age

The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age PDF Author: Jesse A. Hoover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192559419
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age examines an apocalypse that never happened, seen through the eyes of a dissident church that no longer exists. Jesse A. Hoover considers Donatists, members of an ecclesiastical communion that for a brief moment formed the majority church in Roman North Africa—modern Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya—before fading away sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries. Hoover studies how Donatists perceived the end of the world to offer a glimpse into the inner life of the dissident communion: what it valued, whom it feared, and how it defined its place in history while on the cusp of history's end. By recovering these appeals to apocalyptic themes in surviving Donatist writings, this study uncovers a significant element within the dissident movement's self-perception that has so far gone unexamined. In contrast to previous assessments, it argues that such eschatological expectations are not out of sync with the wider world of Latin Christianity in late antiquity, and that they functioned as an effective polemical strategy designed to counter their opponents' claim to be the true church in North Africa.

The Myth of Persecution

The Myth of Persecution PDF Author: Candida Moss
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062104543
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.

Augustine, Martyrdom, and Classical Rhetoric

Augustine, Martyrdom, and Classical Rhetoric PDF Author: Adam Ployd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190914149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
"This monograph places Augustine's martyr discourse in the context of classical rhetoric in order to flesh out the claim that such discourse is inherently rhetorical. It is argued that Augustine's martyr discourse can be understood as rhetorical in three ways: First, Augustine develops and deploys his understanding of martyrdom within particular rhetorical contexts. This is the weakest and most general sense of "rhetorical" that will appear in this study, falling short of, yet providing the necessary context for, the more technical analyses that make up the heart of the book. Second, Augustine uses techniques of classical rhetorical argumentation to construct his martyrs and to create their theological significance. This claim refers less to techniques of ornamentation or style than it does to those techniques more associated with the category of inventio and to some degree dispositio. Third, in Augustine's depiction, the martyrs themselves are ideal Christian rhetors"--

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church PDF Author: William Hugh Clifford Frend
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Martyrs
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description


Christian Martyrdom and Political Violence

Christian Martyrdom and Political Violence PDF Author: Rubén Rosario Rodríguez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316949753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In recent years, martyrdom and political violence have been conflated in the public imagination. Rubén Rosario Rodríguez argues that martyr narratives deserve consideration as resources for resisting political violence in contemporary theological reflection. Underlying the three Abrahamic monotheistic traditions is a shared belief that God requires liberation for the oppressed, justice for the victims and, most demanding of all, love for the political enemy. Christian, Jewish and Muslim martyr narratives that condone political violence - whether terrorist or state-sponsored - are examined alongside each religion's canon, in order to evaluate how central or marginalized these discourses are within their respective traditions. Primarily a work of Christian theology in conversation with Judaism and Islam, this book aims to model religious pluralism and cooperation by retrieving distinctly Christian sources that nurture tolerance and facilitate coexistence, while respecting religious difference.

The Bible in Christian North Africa

The Bible in Christian North Africa PDF Author: Maureen A. Tilley
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451414523
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In today's demands for moral absolutes, the puritanism of early Christian Donatists is reflected. Maureen A. Tilley's study gives new insight into the Donatist church by focusing attention on the surviving Donatist controversies. She persuasively shows how Donatist interpretations of Scripture correlate with changes in the social setting of their church.

Paul the Martyr

Paul the Martyr PDF Author: David L. Eastman
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589835158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Ancient iconography of Paul is dominated by one image: Paul as martyr. Whether he is carrying a sword--the traditional instrument of his execution--or receiving a martyr's crown from Christ, the apostle was remembered and honored for his faithfulness to the point of death. As a result, Christians created a cult of Paul, centered on particular holy sites and characterized by practices such as the telling of stories, pilgrimage, and the veneration of relics. This study integrates literary, archaeological, artistic, and liturgical evidence to describe the development of the Pauline cult within the cultural context of the late antique West.

The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age

The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age PDF Author: Jesse A. Hoover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019882551X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book explores how the Donatist church, a schismatic movement that for a brief moment formed the majority church in Roman North Africa interpreted the apocalypse during the first two centuries of its existence (c. 300-500).