By combining a profound knowledge of the Greco-Roman world and early Christianity, Jan N. Bremmer sheds new light on many aspects of the early Christians: from women to magic, from apocalypses to the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, and from pagan observers to visionary martyrs.

In this work, Jan N. Bremmer aims to bring together the worlds of early Christianity and those of ancient history and classical literature - worlds that still all too rarely interlock. Contextualising the life and literature of the early Christians in their Greco-Roman environment, he focusses on four areas. A first section looks at more general aspects of early Christianity: the name of the Christians, their religious and social capital, prophecy and the place of widows and upper-class women in the Christian movement. Second, the chronology and place of composition of the early apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and Pseudo-Clementines are newly determined by paying close attention to their doctrinal contents, but also, innovatively, to their onomastics and social vocabulary. The author also analyses the frequent use of magic in the Acts and explains the prominence of women by comparing the Acts to the Greek novel. Third, an investigation into the theme of the tours of hell suggests a new chronological order, shows that the Christian tours were indebted to both Greek and Jewish models, and illustrates that in the course of time the genre dropped a large part of its Jewish heritage. The fourth and final section concentrates on the most famous and intriguing report of an ancient martyrdom: the Passion of Perpetua . It pays special attention to the motivation and visions of Perpetua, which are analyzed not by taking recourse to modern theories such as psychoanalysis, but by looking to the world in which Perpetua lived, both Christian and pagan. It is only by seeing the early Christians in their ancient world that we might begin to understand them and their emerging communities.

Autorentext
Born 1944; 1979 PhD; 1978-90 Associate Professor for ancient history at the University of Utrecht; 1990-2009 Chair of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen; 2019-20 Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies »Beyond Canon,« Regensburg.

Klappentext

Why did the early followers of Jesus call themselves "Christians"? What was their social and religious capital? Why did Christianity attract both poor widows and wealthy women? What did pagans think of early Christians? Integrating the major apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the study of Christianity and the ancient world, Jan N. Bremmer illustrates their prominence of women and their, sometimes surprising, usage of magic as well as establishing a new chronology and place of composition for these Acts. He also shows that the early Christian tours of hell derive from both Jewish and Greek models, although they become increasingly Christianised. The author concludes by decoding the intriguing visions in the Passion of Perpetua by placing them in the contemporary world, thereby compelling us to sympathize with the hopes and fears of young Christian martyrs. It is the close attention to both pagan and Christian traditions that make these papers, which have all been updated and some of them revised, an exciting read for scholars and advanced students alike.