Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture

Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture

Brent, Allen

Paperback

Series: Studien Und Texte Zu Antike Und Christentum / Studies And Te, Book 36

Biographies GeneralGeneral Christianity

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 316148794X
ISBN13: 9783161487941
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Published: Apr 1 2006
Pages: 377
Weight: 1.35
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.11 Depth: 9.11
Language: English
The letters of Ignatius of Antioch, whether considered genuine or pseudonymous, have been generally understood as addressing concerns and issues within the Church. Consequently, his language has been read as an expression of second century Judaeo Christianity or as a reply to Valentinianism, with little direct contact or concern with the surrounding pagan culture. Allen Brent submits Ignatius' language to a comprehensive analysis and seeks to show that both conceptually, and in terms of the form of his arguments, his language game is clearly that of the pagan, Greek city-states of Asia Minor in the Second Sophistic. The author shows from a variety of evidence, both literary, epigraphic and iconographic, that Ignatius' cultural background is in the world of the discourse of Hellenic autonomy against Roman imperial power, in the image-bearing mystery cults of the cities to whom he writes, in their embassies and Homonia treaties, and in their ideal of unity in a common culture expressed by their constitutions and cultural practices. Ignatius emerges as a brilliant missionary strategist, able to reshape ecclesial order in terms of secular social order and its conventions, whose work was scarcely comprehended by his more conservative Christian contemporaries and only later canonized by means of a gross distortion that obscured his original meaning.

Also in

Biographies General

View All