Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture: 36 (Studien und Texte zu Antike und ... ... and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity) - Softcover

Brent, Allen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 316148794X ISBN 13: 9783161487941

Publisher: JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2006

Synopsis

The letters of Ignatius of Antioch, whether considered genuine or pseudonymous, have been generally understood as addressing concerns and issues within the Church. Consequently, his language has been read as an expression of second century Judaeo Christianity or as a reply to Valentinianism, with little direct contact or concern with the surrounding pagan culture. Allen Brent submits Ignatius' language to a comprehensive analysis and seeks to show that both conceptually, and in terms of the form of his arguments, his language game is clearly that of the pagan, Greek city-states of Asia Minor in the Second Sophistic. The author shows from a variety of evidence, both literary, epigraphic and iconographic, that Ignatius' cultural background is in the world of the discourse of Hellenic autonomy against Roman imperial power, in the image-bearing mystery cults of the cities to whom he writes, in their embassies and Homonia treaties, and in their ideal of unity in a common culture expressed by their constitutions and cultural practices. Ignatius emerges as a brilliant missionary strategist, able to reshape ecclesial order in terms of secular social order and its conventions, whose work was scarcely comprehended by his more conservative Christian contemporaries and only later canonized by means of a gross distortion that obscured his original meaning.

About this title

Product Description:

Hard to find

About the Author:

Allen Brent, Born 1940; supernumary member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge.

About this edition

• Publisher: JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck)
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 316148794X
• ISBN 13: 9783161487941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 393