A fresh assessment of the Pastoral Letters which points to those elements of continuing value to today's readers.

The output of Christian literature between c.100 and c.400 represents one of the most influential periods of textual oeuvres in any religion. Written mainly in Greek, Latin and Syriac, it emanated from all parts of the early Christian world and helped extend its boundaries. This History offers a systematic account of that literature and its setting. The work of individual writers is considered alongside three general essays that survey the social, cultural and doctrinal context within which Christian literature arose.

This book challenges conventional accounts of early Christian exegesis of the Bible by placing its interpretation in the context of the Greco-Roman world. Professor Young describes how the Jewish scriptures were taken over, added to and reinterpreted as part of the process of forming the identity of the new Christian "race" with its distinct culture. Young emphasizes the importance of the way education was based on literature in the Roman Empire, and demonstrates how the methods and assumptions then taken for granted shaped Christian exegesis of scripture.

The output of Christian literature between c.100 and c.400 represents one of the most influential periods of textual oeuvres in any religion. Written mainly in Greek, Latin and Syriac, it emanated from all parts of the early Christian world and helped extend its boundaries. This History offers a systematic account of that literature and its setting. The work of individual writers is considered alongside three general essays that survey the social, cultural and doctrinal context within which Christian literature arose.

A renowned scholar's updated and expanded classic survey provides a reliable introduction to the writers and writings of the golden age of Greek patristics.

A study of the significance of the death of Christ in the early Church by one of the UK's leading Patristics scholars.

The -dry bones- of the title are the critical equipment of the Christian scholar, wrestling with Bible and tradition; and the -life- they may or may not be capable of is the enriching of that Christian perspective on things which transforms and renews the possibilities of action and imagination. So Dr Young is as passionate about the seriousness of professional, painstaking scholarship as she is about the need for a pastorally nourishing theology... The book overall illustrates the creative reappropriation of several levels of the Christian heritage movingly described in particular instances...

This volume consists of previously published articles by Frances Young, a scholar of early Christianity, well-known for her work Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, together with a few newly composed additions. The studies collected here are concerned with the New Testament, but their approach is often not in the modern historico-critical mode. Rather, they bring new insight through being informed by the author's patristic specialism, by methodological enquiries, by her interest in doctrinal and theological reading, and by exploration of the very nature and function of...