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2 results

  • 9 - Christian teaching

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 91-104

  • Summary

    The literary deposit of early Christianity is most often used as source material for tracing the development of doctrine. For the reading of Scripture at Christian assemblies there was, of course, Jewish precedent, and it was the Jewish Scriptures that were read throughout the second century. The Jews had their own distinct body of literature: even Hellenized Jews like Philo who were given to reading their Scriptures with Platonist spectacles. This literature gave them their national history, as Greek literature did for the Greeks. Early Christian texts, canonical and non-canonical, betray the influence of apocalyptic literature and of oracular exegesis of the prophets. Christian teaching begins with the fact that God, the Maker of all, has an eye on everything, and there will be judgment. The lifestyle Christians chose was taught by Christ and followed Gospel precepts. Irenaeus is usually treated as the first great Christian theologian.

  • 40 - Retrospect: interpretation and appropriation

  • from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION
  • Edited by Frances Young, University of Birmingham, Lewis Ayres, Emory University, Atlanta, Andrew Louth, University of Durham
  • Assisted by Augustine Casiday, University of Durham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 2004, pp 485-494

  • Summary

    In the eighteenth century, John Wesley took up the study of ancient Christian literature in Oxford. Wesley provides a clear example of how the Fathers have been valued, particularly as providing a hermeneutic of Scripture. The medium of language is both transparent and opaque; interpretation is vital. The standard analyses of figures of speech, logic and grammar were borrowed to enable exegesis. Gregory of Nyssa insisted that a literal interpretation of 'Son of God' was false if it implied physical begetting; yet God condescended to use human language and expressed the truth as nearly as possible in this inadequate medium. Christian discourse was fundamentally intertextual. The writings of the New Testament constantly quote, mirror or allude to the Jewish Scriptures. Postmodern critical theory enables a new appreciation of a body of literature whose features have often seemed alien to the modern world.