What was life like among the first Christians? For the last thirty years, scholars have explored the historical and social contexts of the New Testament in order to sharpen their understanding of the text itself. This interest has led scholars to focus more and more on the social features of early Christian communities and less on their theologies or doctrines. Scholars are keen to understand what these communities were like, but the ritual life of early Christians remains largely unexplored. Studies of baptism and eucharist do exist, but they are very traditional, showing little awareness of the ritual world, let alone the broader social environment, in which Christians found themselves. Such studies make little or no use of the social sciences, Roman social history, or the archaeological record. This book argues that ritual was central to, and definitive for, early Christian life (as it is for all social orders), and explores the New Testament through a ritual lens. By grounding the exploration in ritual theory, Greco-Roman ritual life, and the material record of the ancient Mediterranean, it offers new and insightful perspectives on early Christian communities and their cultural environment. In doing justice to a central but slighted aspect of community life, it outlines an alternative approach to the New Testament, one that reveals what the lives of the first Christians were actually like.

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them. The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas—ritual, emotion, and materiality—engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world. Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.

What was the family like for the first Christians? Informed by archaeological work and illustrated by figures, this work is a remarkable window into the past, one that both informs and illuminates our current condition. The Family, Culture, and Religion series offers informed and responsible analyses of the state of the American family from a religious perspective and provides practical assistance for the family's revitalization.

The New Testament is a book of great significance in Western culture yet is often inaccessible to students because the modern world differs so significantly from the ancient Mediterranean one in which it was written. Here, the authors develop interpretative models for understanding such values as collectivism and kinship.

This volume offers valuable perspectives from biblical scholars on the background of the New Testament texts, including the Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures of the time. It ranges from the law of Moses and intertestamental period to the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66-73 and the canonization of the New Testament. Over forty New Testament scholars and experts contributed to this comprehensive volume. Here is just a small sampling of those writers: Robert L. Millet, John W. Welch, Andrew C. Skinner, Kent P. Jackson, Thomas A. Wayment, Terry B. Ball, Noel Reynolds, and Frank F. Judd. The book is divided into several themes, including Jesus in the Gospels, the Apostle Paul, New Testament issues and contexts, and what transpired after the New Testament.

This comprehensive New Testament introduction not only outlines historical, social, cultural, and rhetorical contexts, but it also points students preparing for ministry to relevant facets of biblical interpretation. Brimming with maps, photos, points of interest, and aids to learning, this beautiful, full-color second edition of an established textbook is the first choice for those who want to integrate scholarship and ministry.

Drawing on recent scholarship on the Pauline tradition within early Christianity, this book examines Paul's theology of baptism and highlights its practical application in ministry today. It considers what the rite represented and effected, in the light of the social and cultural milieu in which his letters were written, and of his strategies for mission and the formation and nurture of new Christian communities. The need to integrate recent scholarship with contemporary pastoral issues, and to do so in a theologically reflective way, is acute. Using a wide range of social scientific approaches to the ancient world and Christian origins, including identity, religious conversion, and ritual, the book explores the implications of this reconstruction for contemporary issues of baptismal practice, pastoral care and mission, aiming to bring the insights of specialists to those working on the frontline of pastoral practice.

This work offers new and insightful perspectives on early Christian communities and their cultural environment, through exploration of rituals central to Greco-Roman life.

Moral Infringement and Repair in Antiquity, is a series of publications related to a project on Dynamics of Moral Repair in Antiquity, run by Thomas Kazen and Rikard Roitto between 2017 and 2021, and funded by the Swedish Research Council. The volumes contain stand-alone articles and serve as supplements to the main outcome of the project, the volume Interpersonal Infringement and Moral Repair: Revenge, Compensation and Forgiveness in the Ancient World, forthcoming on Mohr Siebeck in 2023. Supplement 2: Group Dynamics, contains four articles and chapters by Rikard Roitto, republished in accordance with the publishers' general conditions for author reuse, or by special permission. 1. Rituals of Reintegration: Penance, Confession of Sins, Intercession 2. Reintegrative Shaming and a Prayer Ritual of Reintegration in Matthew 3. Enduring Shame as Costly Signalling 4. The Johannine Information War: A Social Network Analysis of the Information Flow Between Johannine Assemblies as Witnessed by 1-3 John

When Paul heard that a Christ-follower in Corinth was in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, the apostle insisted the man be removed immediately from the congregation. This dramatic response is surprising, as Paul responds to other serious situations with much less vehemence. Why did Paul react to the immoral man with such urgency and severity? Using socio-cultural tools, this study explains the importance of group identity and witness for Paul’s ecclesiology. The argument lays a foundation for contemporary readers to appraise contexts where an expulsive response to sin might be appropriate.