Book Review: The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries

I'd read these if I could afford them; it would take some time but would offer a great insight into understanding early Christianity's antecedents and development across many historical perspectives. This is to say the bible was not dropped out of heaven already pre-formed but is a commentary on the lives of ancient societal knowledge struggling with the meaning and import to their lives. More simply it boils down to "Who is Jesus and what do I do with Him?"

R.E. Slater

December 22, 2019

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In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, Chris L. Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi and Jens Schröter, together with an international cast of more than 70 contributors, provide a methodologically sophisticated resource, showing the reception history of Jesus and the Jesus tradition in early Christianity. The three volumes focus upon the diversity of receptions of the Jesus tradition in this time period, with memory theory providing the framework for approaching the complex interactions between the past of the tradition and the present of its receptions. Rather than addressing texts specifically as canonical or non-canonical, the volumes show the more complex reality of the reception of the Jesus tradition in early Christianity.

Core literary texts such as Gospels and other early Christian writings are discussed in detail, as well as non-literary contexts outside the gospel genre; including the Apostolic Fathers, patristic writers, traditions such as the Abgar Legend, and modifications to the gospel genre such as the Diatesseron. Evidence from material culture, such as pictographic representations of Jesus in iconography and graffiti (e.g. the staurogram and Alexamenos Graffito), as well as representations of Jesus tradition in sarcophagi and in liturgy are also included, in order to fully reflect the transmission and reception of the Jesus tradition.

Volume 1 provides an extensive introduction and, in 18 chapters, covers literary representations of Jesus in the first century, featuring gospel literature and other early Christian writings.

Volume 2 examines all the literary texts from the second and third centuries, across 40 chapters, examining both gospel writing and other texts.

Volume 3 examines visual, liturgical and non-Christian receptions of Jesus in the second and third centuries, across 24 chapters.

About the Authors

Chris Keith is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, UK.

Helen K. Bond is Professor in Christian Origins and New Testament at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Christine Jacobi teaches at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

Jens Schröter is Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Theology, and New Testament Apocrypha, at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

Amazon Link - 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0567000192/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_apa_i_0e4.DbSFDMW0A?fbclid=IwAR0N68UhmlzV4bAiy1XfO9_i8-CHCqJxPQ6fxQBSdJv8QURj2ToBJZ5gCp0

Reflections: Winter Solstice Day + One

The contemplation of nature means that we see all things, persons and moments as signs and sacraments of God. In our spiritual vision we are not only to see each thing in sharp relief, standing out in all the brilliance of its specific being, but we are also to see each thing as transparent: in and through each created thing we are to discern the Creator. Discovering the uniqueness of each thing, we discover also how each points beyond itself to him who made it. So we learn, in Henry Suso's words, to see the inward in the outward: “He who can see the inward in the outward, to him the inward is more inward than to him who can only see the inward in the inward.”

- Bishop Ware, Kallistos, Bishop of Diokleia, The Orthodox Way, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Kindle Edition

Christ Be Our Light

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Winter Solstice:

A Crisis of Growth Amidst the Darkness

by H. Coverston.

Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin observed processes of evolution taking place all around him in a world in which all is moving toward an Omega Point of reunification with the One. For Chardin, writing amidst the horrors of WWI, all events play a role in the evolution of our world. Even dark times like our own were necessary parts of the larger picture.

On this Winter Solstice Day when the darkness holds the northern hemisphere in its deepest grip, it is comforting to consider that even in the midst of our most anguished moments as peoples living in unsettling times, we shall not perish. No evolution can occur without the leaving behind of that which has preceded it, the new creation transcending and leaving behind those aspects of its former self which are no longer viable while transforming and bringing forward those aspects which continue to be useful to the new creation.

This may well be “a crisis of growth” we are experiencing, but even that is “more reason to hope.” For far sighted prophets and their words of hope, I give thanks this Solstice night.

“Whatever disorder we are confronted by, the first thing we must say to ourselves is that we shall not perish. This is not a mortal sickness: it is a crisis of growth. It well may be that the evil has never seemed so deep-rooted nor the symptoms so grave; but, in one sense, is that not precisely one more reason for hope? The height of a peak is a measure of the depths of the abysses it overtops.”

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin