Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online

Ἀπάθεια, sometimes translated “impassivity” or “impassibility,” means the absence of passions or bad emotions, πάθη, as opposed to good emotions or εὐπάθειαι . Thus, it is not the absence of emotions tout court (see Graver, 2007; Ramelli, 2008), as it is sometimes misrepresented . Apatheia was a core ethical ideal in Stoicism and in most of Platonism, including Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. Porphyry of Tyre, for example, stated that the soul is joined to the body when it converts to the passions that originate from the body, but apatheia frees the soul (Porph. Sent. 7). The ideal o…

Apelles, who died after 180 CE, was the most prominent disciple of Marcion, as well as a Christian teacher and headmaster of a school. He taught in Rome, where he engaged in philosophical and religious disputes (e.g. with Rhodon, a student of Tatian). Tertullian’s remark that Apelles became familiar with Platonic philosophy in Alexandria (Tert. Praesc. 30.5–6) is probably a polemical device, like the claim that Apelles abandoned Marcionitism by rejecting radical Marcionite asceticism and “falling into women” (Tert. Carn. chr. 6.1).Apelles was the author of at least two works…

Aphrahat (c. 270–c. 345 CE), “the Persian sage,” was a Christian ascetic and author who lived in Adiabene (northern Mesopotamia), within the Persian Empire. His very name, Aphrahat, seems to be the Syriacized version of a Persian name, but when he entered the Christian, or the monastic, life, he took on the Jewish-Christian name Jacob. He wrote in Syriac, likely between 337 and 344 CE, 23 Demonstrations, or Expositions, for his fellow ascetics, the “children [i.e. members] of the covenant.” Aphr.  Dem. 1, for instance, is on faith, Dem. 2 on charity, Dem. 3 on fasting, Dem. 4 on prayer, Dem. 8…

This article will discuss several themes that emerge from the reception history of Jewish apocalypticism in the early church, both in terms of the production of new apocalypses, the integration of an apocalyptic worldview and the development of early patristic eschatology.One overarching theme is the on-even history of the canonization of the book of Revelation in the early church. Another theme is how the church fathers reflected theologically on the book of Revelation, in addition to the book of Daniel, and how they connected it…

The apocrisiarius or apocrisarius ( lit. “answerer”) was the point of contact among the four patriarchates of Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, and the headquarters of the imperial church in Constantinople. Extant from the 5th century CE, the office was institutionalized in law under Justinian I (527–565 CE). The apocrisiarius could be a cleric functioning as the diplomatic representative or legate of a bishop of the patriarch to the Byzantine imperial court, or his permanent re…

A certain Macarius Magnes, or “Makarios the Magnesian,” compiled a work known under the title “A.”. It is one of three surviving comparable apologies dealing with and quoting extensively from pagan intellectual attacks on Christianity. However, the A. has received less interest than Origen’s Contra Celsum or Cyril of Alexandria’s Contra Julianum by modern scholarship so far (see Volp, 2013b, ix–xxxii). Dating and localizing the A. is still a matter of controversy (see below). The meaning and implications of the full title Μακαρίου Μάγνητος …

The notion of apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις) is that of restoration or restitution to an original state, from ἀποκαθίστημι, “I restore, reconstitute, return.”In Greek the term apokatastasis had a variety of applications, from the medical field (somebody’s restoration to health from illness; a displaced limb’s restoration to its proper place) to the military or political (somebody’s restoration to one’s military unit or homeland after expulsion or exile) and especially the astronomical (the return of a heavenly bo…

Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, was an early Christian apologist who flourished in the 2nd century CE during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He wrote a number of texts referred to by early Christian historians; he focused on attacking the “Phrygian heresy” (Montanism/Montanists) and Marcion (Marcion/Marcionites/Marcionism). Unfortunately some of the evidence about this is erroneous; Eusebius of Caesarea ( Hist. eccl. 5.16–18) contradicts himself in the details he provides. In common with many of the heretics whose works were refuted by…

A dichotomous view of Apollinarius of Laodicea (c. 315–c. 390 CE) prevailed throughout antiquity. On the one hand, he was the poet, the commentator on biblical works, the contemporary of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus (Philost. Hist. eccl. 8.13), the teacher and exponent of Nicene orthodoxy. On the other hand, he was the source of a heresy, and his followers were condemned from 377 CE onward at various synods, the first in Rome, and then from 383 CE on through imperial edicts. It was clearly proving increasingly di…

Apollinaris (c. 450/460–c. 520/524 CE) was bishop of Valentia (present-day Valence), a suffragan diocese of Vienne in the Burgundian kingdom. He is among the first identifiable bishops of Valence (Duchesne, 1907, 223), in office well before 517 CE, probably already in the 490s CE (or even earlier, if we can believe the figure of 34 years in office from the Vita; a bishops’ list from Valence states that he was installed by his brother Alcimus Avitus “in the reign of Zeno,” emperor from 474 till 491 CE; see Duchesne, 1907, 217). He was probably born …

As far as can be seen from scanty historical evidence, Apollonius of Tyana was a Neo-Pythagorean philosopher and wandering wonderworker of the 1st century CE. He was born shortly after the turn of the century and likely died in the reign of Nerva (96–98 CE). While the historical Apollonius remains a sketchy and shadowy figure, the literary Apollonius is anything but. Apollonius “the legend” was created by Philostratus, and then took on a life of its own, independent of the historical fig…

In Greek an ἀπολογία is a speech for the defense, but thanks to the compositions of Plato and Xenophon on behalf of their master Socrates, the term passed into philosophy without losing its forensic associations. Eusebius of Caesarea was the first to apply the term “apologetic” to Christian literature (Eus. Hist. eccl. 4.3; 4.13 etc.), but the works that are commonly brought under this rubric by modern scholars fall into four overlapping categories:1.   vindicatory writings, which expose the falsity of pagan charges; 2.   polemical assaults on Judaism, Greek philosophy, or Ro…

Almost all that can be said about Aponius (often Apponius) comes from the voluminous commentary on the Song of Songs that bears his name. The editors of the 1986 critical edition (B. de Vregille & L. Neyrand) argued for a dating in the first decade of the 5th century CE and the location as most likely northern Italy. By the time of their annotated translation some two decades later, they had revised their estimate of its dating between 420 and 430 CE. One reason for this was that the author knew Augustine of Hippo's City of God – yet it has to be said that any knowledge of Augustine is …