Excerpt from The Apology and Acts of Apollonius and Other Monuments of Early Christianity: A General Preface Introductions Notes Etc The object of the following translations is to give the reader, in a succession of vivid pictures or glimpses, an insight into the practical working of Christianity during the first three centuries of its history. While we freely admire the heroism of the martyrs, we must not suppose that the highest temper of the new religion was displayed in these desperate struggles, through which its champions bore witness to the truth, as they deemed it, of their beliefs, and in engaging in which they were, on any view, asserting the rights of individual conscience and private judgment against the overbearing weight of a government despotic in its form, and supported in its assaults by innumerable popular forces and scruples, social, religious, and political. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Sometime in the second century, an early Christian text began to circulate called the Acts of Paul and Thecla . Since then, the tale of the apostle Paul, along with his strong heroine co-worker named Thecla, has received much attention as an independent source of information about earliest Christianity for what it might tell us about the role of women in ministry and the relationship women may have had to Paul in his missionary activities. In this volume, Jeremy W. Barrier provides a critical introduction and commentary on the Acts of Paul and Thecla, to serve as a user-friendly starting point for anyone interested in entering into the many discussions and academic writings surrounding the Acts of Paul and Thecla . Apart from a critical text with English translation, followed by textual notes and general comments, the author also offers an extensive introduction to the text.

Situates Pauline analysis within the context of early Christian institutions. Examines the hermeneutics of reception-historical studies.

Written by experts in the field, the essays in this volume examine the early Christian book from a wide range of disciplines: religion, art history, history, Near Eastern studies, and classics.

This book deals with questions or problems encountered in the Bible where answers can be found in the ante-Nicene fathers. The fathers were uniquely qualified by being close in time and culture to Christ himself, when his unwritten teachings and Scripture interpretations, and those of the apostles, were still fresh in Christian memory. It is designed for sincere readers of the Bible who may from time to time be puzzled by the occasional passage which seems out-of-step with the rest of the Scriptures or our usual impression of Christian teaching. This work is written for individual and group Bible students without advanced theological qualifications, rather than the intellectual market. It is written for use in Bible studies in local congregations, or church history classes, especially in sessions when the pastor or teacher is unable to attend. Bible Problems Solved by Early Christians is different from almost all other works and ministries, which give solutions to problems or questions, because the answers in the book come not from a modern-day comparison of different verses within the Bible itself or from the interpretations of any particular religious denomination, but from Christian writers who lived in the first centuries after Jesus.