Contents1 Introduction: The Dismantling and Reassembling of the Categories of New Testament Scholarship2 Kerygma and History in the New Testament3 LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q4 GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity5 One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels6 The Structure and Criteria of Early Christian Beliefs7 The Johannine Trajectory8 Conclusion: The Intention and Scope of Trajectories

This work concerns the early Christians' self-definitions and self-representations in the context of pagan-Christian conflict, reflected in the literatures from the mid-second to the early third centuries (ca. 150 - 225 CE).

Evaluates the evidence for the early church's interest in Jesus as a believer in God.

Contents 1 Introduction: The Dismantling and Reassembling of the Categories of New Testament Scholarship 2 Kerygma and History in the New Testament 3 LOGOI SOPHON: On the Gattung of Q 4 GNOMAI DIAPHOROI: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of Early Christianity 5 One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels 6 The Structure and Criteria of Early Christian Beliefs 7 The Johannine Trajectory 8 Conclusion: The Intention and Scope of Trajectories

A Trusted Introduction to the Church Fathers This concise introduction to the church fathers connects evangelical students and readers to twelve key figures from the early church. Bryan Litfin engages readers with actual people, not just abstract doctrines or impersonal events, to help them understand the fathers as spiritual ancestors in the faith. The first edition has been well received and widely used. This updated and revised edition adds chapters on Ephrem of Syria and Patrick of Ireland. The book requires no previous knowledge of the patristic period and includes original, easy-to-read translations that give a brief taste of each writer's thought.

This volume investigates the Jewish cultural matrix that gave rise to the veneration of Jesus in the early Christianity. Specifically, this study examines Christian origins, the context of Jewish monotheism, Jewish divine mediator figures and the Christian practice of worshipping Jesus.

This study demonstrates that angel and angel-related traditions, especially those growing from the so-called "Angel of the Lord" in the Hebrew Bible, had a significant impact on the origins and early development of Christology to the point that an Angelomorphic Christology is discernable in several first century texts. Significant effort is given to tracing the antecedents of this Christology in the angels and divine hypostases of the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature. The primary content of this volume is the presentation of pre-150 CE textual evidence of Angelomorphic Christology. This religio-historical study does not spawn a new Christology among the many scholarly "Christologies" already extant. Instead, it shows the interrelationship of various Christological trajectories and their adaptation from Jewish angelomorphic traditions.

A ground-breaking introductory textbook for the study of the New Testament and the first Christians, written for the next generation of students Comparing Christianities: An Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians maps the historical rise of Christianity out of a network of early Christian movements. This major new textbook systematically explores the struggles to define the faith by presenting Christianity as the result of a lengthy process of religious consolidation which emerged from a landscape of persistent Christian diversity. The book delves into the history of the first five generations of Christians, from Paul to Origen. The first chapter considers the challenges of constructing Christian histories and offers a new model of Christian families to organize and explain the emergence and competition of different varieties of Christianity. Each successive chapter focuses on key issues that Christian leaders engaged over the centuries, demonstrating how the questions they posed and the answers they provided gave Christianity its distinct shape. As the movements competed for social advantage, Christians began identifying certain Christian movements as enemies and consolidated against them. The final chapter schematizes the Christians studied in the book into three families of Christian movements based on the particular God they worshipped and other shared patterns of thought and practice. This chapter also explains where the varieties of Christianities came from and how the process of consolidation undertaken by some churches shaped Christian identity within a forge of intolerance that still affects us today. Comparing Christianities explores the answers to questions: Who were the early Christians and what did they write? What did Christians think about sex, women, immortality, Judaism, suffering and death? What rituals did the first Christians practice, and what did their religious experiences mean to them? How did Christians live in a Roman-dominated world? How did the first Christians explain the origins of their movement? Comparing Christianities: An Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians serves as an excellent primary textbook in undergraduate classrooms for Introduction to Christianity, Introduction to Religion, New Testament Studies, Christian Origins, World Religions, and Western World Religions, and a thought-provoking resource for anyone wishing to know more about Christianity.