Volume 29, Issue 1

The letter of Lyon has attracted both researchers of the history of early Christianity because it gives many insights on the rise of Christian communities in the Roman province of Gaul and researchers of biblical studies because it is deeply embedded in biblical language and testifies to the spread of New Testament writings to the West of the Empire as early as the second century A.D. In the present study, I focus on the reception of John’s Apocalypse as we find it in the Letter of Lyon by firstly analyzing the forms of the letters and showing their socio-historical implications for the networks among Christian communities in the second century A.D. and secondly how the Letter of Lyon references and alludes to specific texts and motifs of John’s Apocalypse. Thereby, I draw conclusions on the Apocalypse’s relevance for the church in the second century and argue that both the Apocalypse of John and the Letter of Lyon could be classified as apocalyptic letters .

This article examines early Christian interpretations of Wisdom 1:13 and 2:23 from the middle of the third century to the end of the fourth century. These verses were important to Christian articulations of the goodness of creation—both the cosmos as a whole and the human creature. Christian theologians and exegetes broadly agreed in their usage of these verses, arguing against alternative philosophical perspectives that God’s creation is good, while the source of evil is human sin. However, these verses were also a source of disagreement, beginning in the mid-third century with Methodius of Olympus and Origen of Alexandria. The disagreement revolved around the meaning of “death,” which God did not create, mentioned in Wisdom 1:13: does this refer to natural death (the separation of body and soul) or spiritual death (the separation of the soul from God)? The article places these exegetical discussions within larger debates concerning sin and embodiment that also began with Origen and Methodius, and which revolved around the creation narratives in Genesis 1–2 and the nature of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

The tangled influence of Origen’s theology on the fourth-century dispute between Alexander of Alexandria and Arius has not yet been entirely unraveled. Recent scholarship on the anti-Monarchian and anti-Valentinian aspects of Origen’s trinitarian theology has offered insight into not only Origen’s thought but also its reception both before and after the Council of Nicaea (325 C. E.). Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to a distinctive aspect of Origen’s trinitarian theology that sets him apart from many of his Greek Christian predecessors, namely, his refusal to characterize the divine Son’s origin according to two stages (i. e., first dwelling within God as God’s reason, and then, in a second stage, uttered forth as a distinct entity). Tied to Origen’s departure from this two-stage Logos theology is the conviction that the divine Son is always Son throughout his entire existence. I argue that, their theological differences notwithstanding, Arius and Alexander espoused this unique feature of Origen’s theology and that this common ground between the two fourth-century Alexandrians sheds greater light on their dispute over the Son’s origin.

Eine genaue Untersuchung und Einordnung von zwei Zitaten aus der Liturgie im Werk des Marius Victorinus zeigt, dass dieser entgegen der von Klauser formulierten communis opinio kein Zeuge dafür ist, dass die Liturgie Roms in der Mitte des vierten Jahrhunderts noch grundsätzlich auf Griechisch gefeiert wurde. Das griechische Zitat aus der Liturgie in Adversus Arium 2,8 wird in diesem Beitrag in den Argumentationskontext gegen lateinische Homöer eingeordnet und erscheint vielmehr als Beleg für ein Nebeneinander der Liturgiesprachen in Rom. Die homöischen Gegner des Victorinus lehnen Griechisch als Sprache von Kirche und Theologie grundsätzlich ab und kennen keinen griechischen Gottesdienst in Rom mehr. Eine solche Gruppe ist in anderen Texten nicht fassbar, daher ist Adversus Arium 2 eine wichtige Schrift zur Rekonstruktion der homöischen Bewegung im Westen. Es wird plausibel gemacht, dass Victorinus die griechische Liturgie in Adversus Arium 1,30 selbst ins Lateinische übersetzt und für die Übersetzung und Ausdeutung des zitierten liturgischen Fragments auf exegetische Überlegungen des Origenes zu Mt 6,11; Tit 2,14 und Joh 6 zurückgreift. In Adversus Arium 1,30 liegt damit kein Beleg für eine lateinische Liturgie vor, die zum gottesdienstlichen Gebrauch aus dem Griechischen übersetzt worden wäre. Ferner wird ein bisher nicht zugeordnetes Zitat in Adversus Arium 1,31 vor dem Hintergrund einer Parallele in einer äthiopischen Liturgie als weiteres Fragment einer römischen Liturgie angesprochen. Der theologische Gehalt dieses Fragments lässt es wahrscheinlich erscheinen, dass Victorinus in seiner Trinitätstheologie punktuell an die gottesdienstliche Praxis rückgebunden ist. Insgesamt werden aus diesen Beobachtungen wertvolle Ergebnisse für die Geschichte der römischen Liturgie und für die Einordnung des Victorinus gewonnen: In Rom sind schon Mitte des vierten Jahrhunderts verschiedensprachige Liturgien vorauszusetzen und keine Sprachreform durch Damasus anzunehmen. Die bei Victorinus fassbaren lateinischen Homöer könnten aber auch ein Motor für die feststellbare fortschreitende Latinisierung der römischen Kirche Ende des vierten Jahrhunderts gewesen sein, da sie Griechisch insgesamt abgelehnt haben. Mit dem bisher nicht zugeordneten Zitat in 1,31 liegt möglicherweise ein neues Bruchstück einer römischen Liturgie um 360 vor. Victorinus erscheint durch diese Untersuchung stärker an kirchliche Institutionen angebunden, als die ältere Forschung sehen konnte. Ebenso zeigt sich, dass er gegen die Einschätzung der älteren Forschung direkt oder indirekt Origenes rezipiert hat.

This article presents previously unpublished fragments of the lost Syriac version of the Homilies against the Jews by John Chrysostom. The three excerpts, preserved in West Syrian collections of patristic texts, bear an important witness to the textual tradition of the Homilies and shed light on the dynamics of reception and transmission of the Greek Adversus Judaeos compositions among Syriac Christians during the early Islamic period. The texts are accompanied with an English translation and discussion.

In this article, I argue that the place of the Apis bull in Cyril of Alexandria’s thought and his depiction of it demonstrate the continual impression of local religion on Egyptian Christians despite the on-going process of Alexandria’s Christianization. To support this point, I compare Cyril’s references to Apis with that of Jerome and Porphyry. The juxtaposition between Cyril and Jerome demonstrates how Apis’ presence in Alexandria influences the former’s exegesis, while non-Egyptian views conflate local Egyptian deities. This analysis provides support for the idea that Jerome’s exegetical work was not a source for Cyril’s own writing. Then, a comparison with Porphyry regarding the details of Apis in material portrayals reveals Cyril’s lack of familiarity with the traditional understanding of the bull in Egyptian religion. This article, therefore, contributes to further understanding the influence of local interactions and cohabitation of Christian and non-Christian elements upon Egyptian theologians in Late Antiquity.

In this article, we discuss examples of Augustine of Hippo's use of the rhetorical technique of enargeia , which strives to make a subject matter mentally visible or evident through vivid narrative descriptions. These examples are found in the anti-Manichaean passages of his Confessions . We posit that illustrative representations of Manichaean doctrine and practice are constructed “before the eyes” ( sub oculos ) of the audience in a way that allows the narrator to elicit and manipulate their emotional response, acquiring their goodwill and inviting them to reject or ridicule the opposing side. We find that enargeia is also used to encourage the audience not only to visualise what is placed before them, but to actualise it into their lives. The aim hereby might be to incite the audience to emulate the path to conversion which stands as a remedy to adhering to Manichaean principles. What’s more, enargeia serves a didactic purpose, whereby counterintuitive concepts are made immediately available through images that express relatable human movements, motivations and emotions. By elucidating aspects of the organic use of enargeia in the Confessions , this article posits a framework within which similar rhetorical strategies in Augustine’s writings, and ancient Christian rhetoric more broadly, might be further explored.