Christianity in Ancient Rome PDF Download

Author: Bernard Green
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567032507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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of the Pope." --Book Jacket.

Author: Ralph Martin Novak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567018407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The rise of Christianity during the first four centuries of the common era was the pivotal development in Western history and profoundly influenced the later direction of all world history. Yet, for all that has been written on early Christian history, the primary sources for this history are widely scattered, difficult to find, and generally unknown to lay persons and to historians not specially trained in the field. In Christianity and the Roman Empire Ralph Novak interweaves these primary sources with a narrative text and constructs a single continuous account of these crucial centuries. The primary sources are selected to emphasize the manner in which the government and the people of the Roman Empire perceived Christians socially and politically; the ways in which these perceptions influenced the treatment of Christians within the Roman Empire; and the manner in which Christians established their political and religious dominance of the Roman Empire after Constantine the Great came to power in the early fourth century CE. Ralph Martin Novak holds a Masters Degree in Roman History from the University of Chicago. For: Undergraduates; seminarians; general audiences

Author: Ramsay MacMullen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300036428
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Offers a secular perspective on the growth of the Christian Church in ancient Rome, identifies nonreligious factors in conversion, and examines the influence of Constantine

Author: Marianne Sághy
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Do the terms 'pagan' and 'Christian,' 'transition from paganism to Christianity' still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting 'pagans' and 'Christians' in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between 'pagans' and 'Christians' replaced the old 'conflict model' with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if 'paganism' had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, 'Christianity' came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, 'pagans' and 'Christians' lived 'in between' polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.

Author: Leif E. Vaage
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889205361
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity discusses the diverse cultural destinies of early Christianity, early Judaism, and other ancient religious groups as a question of social rivalry. The book is divided into three main sections. The first section debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately names the issue(s) that must be addressed when comparing and contrasting the social “success” of different religious groups in antiquity. The second is a critical assessment of the common modern category of “mission” to describe the inner dynamic of such a process; it discusses the early Christian apostle Paul, the early Jewish historian Josephus, and ancient Mithraism. The third section of the book is devoted to “the rise of Christianity,” primarily in response to the similarly titled work of the American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark. While it is not clear that any of these groups imagined its own success necessarily entailing the elimination of others, it does seem that early Christianity had certain habits, both of speech and practice, which made it particularly apt to succeed (in) the Roman Empire.

Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300098396
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.

Author: Niko Huttunen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004428240
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire: Mutual Recognition Niko Huttunen challenges the interpretation of early Christian texts as anti-imperial documents. He presents examples of the positive relationship between early Christians and the Roman society. With the concept of “recognition” Huttunen describes a situation in which the parties can come to terms with each other without full agreement. Huttunen provides examples of non-Christian philosophers recognizing early Christians. He claims that recognition was a response to Christians who presented themselves as philosophers. Huttunen reads Romans 13 as a part of the ancient tradition of the law of the stronger. His pioneering study on early Christian soldiers uncovers the practical dimension of recognizing the empire.

Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468303007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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This “knowledgeable account” of the emperor who brought Christianity to Rome “provides valuable insight into Constantine’s era” (Kirkus Reviews). “By this sign conquer.” So began the reign of Constantine. In 312 A.D. a cross appeared in the sky above his army as he marched on Rome. In answer, Constantine bade his soldiers to inscribe the cross on their shield, and so fortified, they drove their rivals into the Tiber and claimed Rome for themselves. Constantine led Christianity and its adherents out of the shadow of persecution. He united the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire, raising a new city center in the east. When barbarian hordes consumed Rome itself, Constantinople remained as a beacon of Roman Christianity. Constantine is a fascinating survey of the life and enduring legacy of perhaps the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the Roman emperors—written by a richly gifted historian. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the idea of a unified Christian Europe underpinned by a commitment to religious tolerance. “Successfully combines historical documents, examples of Roman art, sculpture, and coinage with the lessons of geopolitics to produce a complex biography of the Emperor Constantine.” —Publishers Weekly

Author: Karl Galinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198744765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies.

Author: Marta Sordi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806126371
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
The Christians and the Roman Empire overturns the myth of an unrelenting persecution of the subversive, Christian "outlaw." Using contemporary sources and authentic documents --including imperial edicts and records of the deeds of non-legendary martyrs--Marta Sordi shows that the conflict was primarily religious and almost never political. The Christians actually continued to profess their loyalty to the Roman Empire during the periods of persecution, and the Empire, which almost never thought of the Christians as a threat to security, often found itself acting simply as the secular arm of religious authorities during these periods of social and cultural intolerance.