The first English translation and study of St. Hippolytus' fascinating, early third-century commentary 'On the Song of Songs'. Important for the history of biblical interpretation, rival identities of early Christians, liturgy, and mystagogy in the pre-Constantinian church.

This book examines the development of Augustine of Hippo’s theology of the Jewish people and Judaism. Formulating a typological association between the biblical figure of Cain and the Jews, he crafts a highly intricate theology that justifies and even demands the continuing presence of Jews and their religious practices in a Christian society. Such a theology emerges out of his highly original interpretation of Genesis 4:1–15 and yet mirrors and theologically justifies the reality of Jews and Judaism in the late Roman Empire.

Early lists of bishops, identified by Walter Bauer as "literary propaganda," mark critical points in the development of the doctrine of the apostolic succession of bishops. This study delves into the political struggles surrounding the lists and the doctrine they served to define. Ecclesiastical politics in each case reflects the threat to the bishop's authority and clarifies the meaning of apostolic succession in the Church's development. This social history approach, examining the function of the literature within its historical circumstances, reveals how theology developed from politics....

This book serves to correct the now accepted understanding of Irenaeus’s theodicy. This assumption of Hick’s theodicy as legitimately “Irenaean” remains due the gulf between Irenaean scholarship and discussion of the problem of evil. The present work offers a bridge between the two to allow for the continued discussion of both theologian’s distinct views.

Cline advances a suggestive reading of Justin Martyr's Apologies as a subjective appropriation of the forms and practices of the Roman system of petition and response. He offers an historical contextualization of the Apologies within both contemporary administrative culture and the wider literary environment, comparing the Apologies with extant Roman-era petitions, and using this comparison to shed light on Justin's transformations of the genre and their communicative significance.

The 3rd century theologian Origen of Alexandria has traditionally been famous for his belief in universal salvation. Yet, Origen is also famous for his insistence on moral autonomy, the fact that God allows each creature to freely choose to move in the direction of good or evil. How can these two beliefs not result in a paradox or logical inconsistency in Origen’s theology, as many contemporary scholars suggest they do? This book explores the intersection between moral autonomy and God’s foreordained universal salvation in Origen’s writings. Origen was, in fact, aware of the apparent...

How the Jewish and Christian communities that emerged in the early Roman Empire navigated a "Hellenistic" world is a longstanding and unsettled question. Recent scholarship on the intellectual cultures that developed among Greek subjects of Rome in the so-called Second Sophistic as well as models for culture and competition informed by mathematical and economic game theories have provided new ideas to address this question. This study offers a model for a kind of culture-making that accounts for how the cultural ecosystems of the Roman Empire enabled these religious communities could win...

The Orations against the Arians are an important landmark in the development of Christological and Trinitarian doctrine. This monograph offers a rhetorical analysis of the Orations against the Arians to demonstrate the interplay of scriptural reasoning and polemic in Athanasius' work.