Early Christian Lives Progress Report

Progress report for the Early Christian Lives, Digging into Data Challenge round 3, project.

Heb 5.7, Jesus' Prayer on the Mount of Olives and Jewish Christianity: Hearing Early Christian Voices in Canonical and Apocryphal Texts

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) The book of Hebrews has often been the Cinderella of the New Testament, overlooked and marginalized; and yet it is one of the most interesting and theologically significant books in the New Testament. A Cloud of Witness examines the theology of the book in the light of its ancient historical context. There are chapters devoted to the structure of Hebrews, the person of Jesus Christ, Hebrews within the context of Second Temple Judaism and the Greco-Roman empire and the role of Hebrews in early Christian thought.

Imagery of Early Christian Rituals in the Greek Physiologus

The paper focuses on the imagery of early Christian rituals (esp. of the eucharist and baptism) as they are found in allegorical interpretations of beasts in the Greek Physiologus and trace the way of selected motifs from the New Testament to this first Christian interpretation of nature in context of early Christian literature and theology. A special attention is given to the pelican, which is one of the most famous symbols of the eucharist, and to impressive baptismal imageries in the chapter on the eagle, on the snake and in some other chapters. The aim of the analysis is to explore the theological roots of the ritual imagery of Physiologus and to show that this work of early Egyptian Christianity is anything but 'unsakramental' as argued by E. Peterson (1959).