This thesis will look at the changes brought about in the perception of women's role in society by the advent of Christianity. The early chapters will discuss the actual status of women in ancient Graeco-Roman and Jewish society, so far as that can be discovered; followed by St Paul's views on women, which heavily influenced St Augustine. I shall then examine the status assigned to women and slaves by Plato in his two outlines for ideal societies, the Republic and the Laws, and shall finish with an examination of Augustine's attitudes to women and slavery. Plato believed that intelligent women were just as capable as men of achieving the philosophical ideal, and he believed that there would be many intelligent women in any given society. Many of Augustine's Letters are addressed to 'holy women", though he was reluctant to accept that these women were not exceptional. Augustine had many female correspondents, most but not all of whom were consecrated virgins or chaste widows. It is quite clear that Augustine believed that these women could achieve salvation on their own account, and also that he respected the intellect of some of them. However, even these women were to live subdued, enclosed lives. In the City of God he follows Paul in circumscribing the actions of women, but his estimation of their intellect is consistently higher than Paul's. The major difference between Plato and the Christians on this issue was that for Plato, sex was a part of normal life, and indeed essential to the continuation of the State; whereas for Christians it had become a problem and a hindrance to salvation. Neither Paul nor Augustine considered it necessary to combat slavery, probably because they were more concerned with securing the afterlife than with correcting conditions in this life.

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The central concept in this thesis is the Encaenia, particularly the Jerusalem Encaenia of the Martyrium Basilica and the anniversary feast of the same name, but also other, lesser known, inaugurations of churches which occurred in the fourth century. The thesis commences with a review of the recent scholarship on early Christian buildings, the Holy Land, and the Jerusalem Encaenia feast. Chapter two discusses the appearance of "εγκαίυια" in the Septuagint and early Christian literature before considering the first documented occasion of an encaenia feast, the inauguration of the basilica in Tyre. Chapter three is a detailed study of Constantine’s 'New Jerusalem' from the finding of the Cross to the inauguration of the Martyrium basilica in 335. A distinction is drawn between the work of Constantine and the interpretation of Eusebius. The subsequent chapter draws attention to the growth and uniform pattern of imperial involvement in the inauguration of churches under Constantius, paying particular attention to the alleged Encaenia of an Alexandrian basilica by Athanasius without imperial consent. The study of the Jerusalem Encaenia, the anniversary of the Martyrium inauguration, commences in chapter five with an analysis of the feast m the Journal of Egeria and the brief account recorded by Sozomen. Both writers portray the Encaenia as a pilgrim feast. Chapter six examines the liturgical content of the feast reconstructed from the earliest Jerusalem lectionaries and calendar. The theology of the feast is discerned from the biblical texts prescribed for the liturgy. Many of the observations made in previous chapters are drawn together in chapter eight which proposes the Encaenia as a Christian interpretation of the Jewish feast of Tabernacles. The conclusion to the thesis discusses the prominence of the Jerusalem Encaenia in the liturgical calendar, and locates the rite and feast of the Encaenia within the wider context of the dedication of churches in the east and western liturgy. Further avenues of research are outlined regarding the rites and surviving homilies for the dedication of a church.

<p>My dissertation analyzes early Christian representations of Jewish sexuality and explores how early Christian writers attacked opponents by depicting them as subjects of perverse or excessive sexual desires. Beginning with the New Testament, I examine how Paul employed sexual stereotypes to distinguish the community of believers in Christ from the wider Gentile world. In the decades after Paul, Greek writers such as Justin Martyr and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas turned accusations of sexual licentiousness and literalist interpretive practices against the Jews. Origen of Alexandria, moreover, utilized accusations of carnality, fleshliness, and sexual licentiousness to produce Jewish-Christian difference; he drew on dichotomies of "flesh" and "spirit" in Paul's letters to support his argument for the superiority of Christian "spiritual" exegesis over Jewish "carnal" exegesis. Examining the writings of major Christian writers such as Origen and John Chrysostom, I argue that Christian sexual slander against Jews intensified as Christian exegetes endeavored to claim Jewish scripture for Christian use in the third and fourth centuries. My research examines these literary constructions of Jewish sexuality in early Christian writings of Greek Fathers and illuminates how these constructions function in relation to the development of Christian biblical hermeneutics, the formation of Christian practices of self-mastery, and the expansion of Christian imperial power. By exploring how early Christian writers appealed to categories of gender and sexuality to produce Jewish-Christian difference, I aim to contribute to recent scholarship on the variety of strategies by which early Christians negotiated identity and defined Otherness.</p> / Dissertation

Almost fifty-five years following the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, academic studies are now being published in large numbers that address the new knowledge about early Christianity. Thus, allowing us to view the Gospels through the lens of their original language. This dissertation rests on the assumptions that Hebrew was the spoken language of Jesus' day, not Greek or Aramaic, and that through the years recounted in the New Testament, strong Hebraic traditions continued to influence Christianity's development within the Hellenized culture of the Roman Empire. In view of late historical evidence, there is no doubt that the language and culture before, during, and after Jesus' day were Hebraic or Mishnaic, and that there was a parallel Hebraic culture existing side by side with that of the Hellenistic culture, strong enough to influence those who translated and compiled the canonized text of our Gospels. In this dissertation, I pursue how these parallel cultures influenced the subsequent adaptations of the Gospels, as scholars were at pains to divorce the record of Jesus' early teaching from his Jewish roots and context, and to establish early Christian culture within the cultural and political imperatives of the Roman Empire. First, I pursue a concept well known in Christian literature, "The Kingdom of Heaven," to show how the historical setting unlocks fresh new meanings of the texts in which it appears. Hellenized readings of the passage stress future promises and theology, while in the context of Jewish learning this concept referred mainly to community and political concerns of the day. Thereafter, I follow how this concept helps to open a familiar set of passages from the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter Five --the Beatitudes. Here, I contrast a reading informed by knowledge of the early Common Era's Jewish cultures with those offered by modem commentators who retain a Hellenistic vision of the era. The conclusion returns to the methodological process in which translations are used to carefully reflect specific translators or commentators' ideologies. / text

This thesis will attempt to gauge the accuracy of Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem, particularly in the area of theology. Sources other than Tertullian, mostly his fellow heresiologists, will be used to form a picture of Marcionite thought, against which I will compare Tertullian's representation in the Adversus Marcionem. From this comparison I hope to be able to shed some light on how accurate Tertullian is in his discussion of Marcionite theology. The thesis will focus mainly on books 1-3 of the Adversus Marcionem.

Previous attempts at understanding Revelation have stressed the common links between it and the rest of the New Testament writings, or else have tended to ignore entirely its distinctive perspective on the world. This thesis illuminates the content of John's unique message in respect to its particular life-situation. There are nine chapters and the first deals with a review of the date and authorship of the Apocalypse while the second looks at how genre criticism can help us understand the audience's predispositions and the author's strategy. The third chapter is also concerned with literary criticism in that it looks at how John presents himself to his audience and how this gives us clues to his social standing within the seven assemblies named in the text. Chapters four and five look in detail at John's use of two important titles, God as 'the Almighty' and Jesus as 'the Lamb'. Chapter six deals with the usefulness of sociology in helping us understand the dynamics of the life-setting in Asia Minor by reference to research on sects and millenarian movements. Chapter seven covers the manner in which Rome ruled and compares this to the brutal and vindictive images in Revelation. Chapter eight looks at how the Apocalypse differs from the indigenous religions of Asia Minor (especially the cult of Ephesian Artemis), the Jews in Sardis and the early Christian works of 1 Peter and Ignatius of Antioch. The ninth chapter forms our conclusions. John of Patmos wrote an apocalypse to seven named assemblies in Western Asia Minor. This was a genre with which his audience was familiar. He attempted to gain their confidence in Rev 1-5 by using a number of literary devices which stressed that he was a legitimate bearer of a transcendent message. The message was so unusual in its malevolent imagery that he needed to assure his audience that they could be confident in accepting his analysis of the world around them. John and his followers can be best characterised as a revolutionist sect and even a millenarian movement. Such groups separate themselves from the wider world and expect its imminent end. They tend to come from marginalised groups deprived of power and status. John's message was unique among the early Christian texts in that it presents Jesus in the role of a theriomorphic avenger and God is seen as the Almighty who wreaks indiscriminate torture and then utterly destroys his enemies. Such images are drawn as a counterpoint to John's understanding of Roman rule as violent and repressive. In response to this understanding he forms a theology based on brutality, vengeance and cruelty and desires power, honour and wealth, the crucial values in the Roman world, for the Almighty God and his most ardent followers.

This project examines the prevalence of acclamation formulas inscribed on late Roman amulets. It argues that acclamations in amuletic form were believed to have the power to protect due to the powers that people in late antiquity attributed to actual acclamatory performance. Crowds shouted acclamations in public gatherings and liturgical processions for a variety of pragmatic reasons, including voicing dissent against an emperor or in response to natural disasters. Late antique texts also demonstrate that crowds were thought to possess extraordinary, even miraculous, qualities when shouting acclamations. Crowds chanted “Kyrie Eleison” to ward off plagues. Chanting “Holy, Holy, Holy” was believed to invoke angelic presence. This late antique culture of attributing efficacy to acclamatory performance should direct how we interpret the appearance of acclamations on amulets. These amulets illustrate the range of acclamations that constituted a veritable repertoire of efficacious formulas which could be materialized in portable or visual form for protection. Whereas prior scholarship on such acclamations focused primarily on their political and theological meanings, this thesis demonstrates how their functions extended well beyond communication. Inscribing an amulet with a popular chant recalls the memory of these powerful performances and extends that power in material form. This thesis further illustrates that this material efficacy of amulets could be integrated into the built environment when inscribed on monumental building stones or as graffiti in the streets of late antique towns.

In this thesis I argue, against much recent scholarship on early Christian exegesis, that the traditional distinction between the two exegetical schools of Alexandria and Antioch, the allegorists and the literalists respectively, ought to be maintained. Despite much overlap in terms of the school members’ training in grammar and rhetoric (one of the major arguments put forward by those who wish to do away with the two schools), a critical distinction lies in the ways the exegetes of the two early Christian centres used Scripture for the spiritual development of their audiences. This I demonstrate through a close analysis of the exegetical treatments of five passages from the Gospel of John by four authors, two Alexandrians, Origen and Cyril, and two Antiochenes, John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia. I attend to my authors’ use of a shared exegetical principle that Scripture is inherently “beneficial” or “useful,” and therefore it is the exegete’s duty to draw out Scripture’s benefits, whether from the literal narrative or by moving beyond the letter to the non-literal plane. Examination of this principle allows us to understand these authors’ rationale—namely, the spiritual development of their audiences—for providing either a literal or a non-literal reading, rather than simplistically designating Alexandrians as “allegorists” and Antiochenes as “literalists.” I demonstrate that other than one brief instance, the Antiochenes remain at the literal level of the text to draw out Scripture’s benefits, whereas in every case the Alexandrians draw out benefit from the literal and the non-literal levels of the text. Moreover, I argue that one of the distinctive features of Alexandrian exegesis was that one of the most important benefits provided by the biblical text was its direct application to these authors’ contemporary church settings, situations, and even to the individual Christian souls. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this thesis I seek to provide an answer to the question of whether there were two distinct schools of scriptural interpretation in the two major centres of Alexandria and Antioch in the church of late antiquity. Traditionally scholars have characterized the Alexandrian exegesis as allegorical or spiritual and Antiochene as historical or literal. In recent decades, scholars have sought to do away with the distinction, tending to focus on the school members’ shared training in rhetoric and grammar. I argue that the traditional distinction ought to be maintained, but I draw attention to a critical distinction between the two schools, namely, the ways in which the exegetes of the two centres apply Scripture to their respective church settings. I demonstrate this by comparing the interpretations of five passages from the Gospel of John by two Alexandrian authors, Origen and Cyril, and two Antiochenes, John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

The Roman idea of pietas was an important value during the Augustan revival of Rome in the first century. Ovid wrote about a unique ritual in the poem Fasti that focused on piety towards ancestors called Lemuria. The original meaning of the Lemuria ritual has changed through the centuries by the power of the Christian Church and modern Christian bias. The anachronistic language used in the translations of Ovid’s Fasti and the choice of words that historians have used to interpret it portrays the Lemuria in an occult-like expulsive way. The Lemuria is not comparable to Christian ritual as some have understood it. The Lemuria is simply a ritual of pietas, and Ovid’s version was to promote popular Roman moral values such as piety while gaining favor with Emperor Augustus.