Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online

Charm comes into English via French from Latin carmen (“song,” “poem,” “incantation”), which is linked with canere (“sing,” “recite,” “say in a sing-song voice”) and cantare (“sing,” “declaim,” “chant”). The Latin words refer to chanting or speaking words rhythmically, and hence to the recitation of verse, and then to singing. In essence, therefore, a charm is a verbal utterance spoken in a sing-song fashion and is intended to have a magical effect, that is, to cause preternatural change in the natural order o…

Cherubs (or cherubim) are described as a class of heavenly or angelic beings. In Jewish and Christian cosmologies, cherubs are associated with the presence of God, either directly or indirectly, as they are depicted as having active or symbolic presences in diverse theophanic circumstances. Cherubs are among those celestial beings differentiated on the basis of function, as are their frequent counterparts seraphs (or seraphim). They are therefore set apart from and even above other angels, based on their special relationship to the presence of God.Origin of the Word and ConceptCheru…

Chiliasm/Millenarianism (or Millennialism) refers to a set of ideas and takes its inspiration from Rev 20:1–6, where the saints who had been beheaded for their testimony to Christ (Christ, Jesus, 01: Survey) reign with him for a 1,000 years (Bietenhard, 1955). During this period Satan (Devil) is confined so that he would not deceive the nations. What is crucial about this passage is that it looks forward to a messianic reign on earth. This was a widely held view that early Christianity inherited from Jewish eschatology (Scholem, 1971; Saperstein, 1992). Arguably,…

The origins of Christianity in China seem to go back to the first centuries CE, but it is very difficult to establish an exact date or even a period, since much depends on the interpretation of the relatively few sources (literary, archaeological, iconographic) at our disposal. A rather safe indication seems to be offered by Arnobius of Sicca, who around 300 CE states that the Christian message had been preached in China by that time, which points to the presence of at least some seeds of …

Chorbishop (Gk χωρεπίσκοπος, επίσκοπος τῆς χώρας; Lat. chorepiscopus, episcopus vicanus) is the term designating a bishop who had authority over rural (Gk χώρα or κώμη; Lat. pagus or vicus) Christian communities, whereas a bishop was the religious leader of an urban community (πόλις). This ministry emerged, as can be inferred from documents, in the East between the 2nd and the 3rd centuries CE, in both mainstream Christianity and Montanist and Novatianist milieus (Eus. Hist. eccl. 5.16.17; 7.30.10); the term is mentioned in Christian writings and conciliar documents …

The reception of classical culture in early Christianity was complex and diversified, depending on times, areas, authors, and the many aspects of the classical heritage that were absorbed and transformed, to various degrees, in Christian culture. The most interesting facets of this reception surely concern literature and philosophy. Most ancient Christian intellectuals who received a thorough literary and philosophical education belonged to the clergy and were presbyters, bishops, monks, …

When and why the ways of Jews and Christians parted is one of the most debated questions among New Testament scholars. In particular, insights about the pluriformity of early Judaism have set new benchmarks in the last decades.Early Jewish PluriformityIn earlier publications, it became customary to refer to “pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism” (Judaism) around the beginning of the Common Era as “normative Judaism.” Such ideas reflect the ideal of the later rabbis, who tried to date their roots back to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and saw th…

When and why the ways of Jews and Christians parted is one of the most debated questions among New Testament scholars. In particular, insights about the pluriformity of early Judaism have set new benchmarks in the last decades.Early Jewish PluriformityIn earlier publications, it became customary to refer to “pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism” (Judaism) around the beginning of the Common Era as “normative Judaism.” Such ideas reflect the ideal of the later rabbis, who tried to date their roots back to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and …

Only limited information about the birth and childhood of Jesus can be historically verified, and the earliest narratives have been embellished with elements from the Old Testament and contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions about events surrounding the birth of famous figures. The oldest references to and narratives of Jesus’ birth and childhood are in the New Testament: in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians; the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John; the Letter to the Hebrews; and…

The belief in Christ’s descent into hell developed quickly in early Christianity. The descent is usually thought to have taken place between Christ’s death and his resurrection (with exceptions such as Clem. Exc. 18). Hell, in this context, is most often an underground world where the dead arrive after death and where they may be subject to torment. However, in so-called gnostic texts (e.g. Trim. Prot. 36; 43–44; Teach. Silv. 103–104), hell is the created world, as Irenaeus of Lyon pointed out (Iren. Haer. 5.31.2).The descent into hell is part of the undisputed stock of belief…

Matthew and Luke in their Gospels have given us the genealogy of Christ differently, and many suppose that they contradict each other. Since as a consequence every believer, in ignorance of the truth, has been zealous to invent some explanation to explain these passages. (Eus. Hist. eccl. 1.7.1)Early Christian commentators have put forth interpretative strategies to harmonize the two very different accounts of Jesus’ genealogy. Conversely, modern exegesis sees each genealogy as a theological and literary construct that serves specific purposes in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels:1.  J…

Matthew and Luke in their Gospels have given us the genealogy of Christ differently, and many suppose that they contradict each other. Since as a consequence every believer, in ignorance of the truth, has been zealous to invent some explanation to explain these passages. (Eus. Hist. eccl. 1.7.1) Early Christian commentators have put forth interpretative strategies to harmonize the two very different accounts of Jesus’ genealogy. Conversely, modern exegesis sees each genealogy as a theological and literary construct that serves specific purposes in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels: 1.  J…

The term “Quest of the Historical Jesus” has been in use since 1910 when A. Schweitzer had his 1906 book on the subject translated into English under this title (Schweitzer, 1906a; ET: 1910). It was chosen for marketing purposes, and the fact that the term “quest” is still in use indicates that it was a successful choice. The expanded version of A. Schweitzer’s work was published in German in 1913 under the epoch-making title Geschichte der Leben-Jesu Forschung, and this was not translated until 2001 (Schweitzer, 1913; 2001). In the field of research into the historical…

Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. The day of the feast is called repeatedly by Augustine of Hippo  natalis ( Domini), and the day of the birth nativitas ( Christi/Domini nostri Iesu Christi); for a compilation of places where Augustine uses the respective terms to denominate the festival see M. Klöckener (2012, 151). These two Latin words are generic words used for celebrations and birthdays, respectively. There exists no proper name in antiquity to name the feast Christmas. Despite its popularity (attempts to abo…

From the historical viewpoint, the 3rd century CE was crucial to the development of thoughts about Christ both in his relation to the two other persons of the Trinity and in his composition of humanity and divinity.In the early 3rd century CE, Bardaisan of Edessa, a Christian philosopher and theologian influenced by Middle Platonism and Stoicism and well versed in Greek and Syriac, developed a remarkable logos Christology that revolved around the notion of the cosmic Christ (Ramelli, 2009a; 2013b). He elaborated a Middle Platonic concept of Christ- logos as the seat of the id…

The Christology of the patristic period directly confronted three great questions. The first two concerned the relationships between humanity and divinity in Christ and between the Son and God the Father, with the first of these being specific to Christology and the second pertaining to Trinitarian theology. In this overview, both questions are considered, since a drastic separation between Christology and Trinitarian theology is untenable. The third question revolves around the salvific …

Chromatius was born around 335 or 340 CE (d. 407 CE), probably at Aquileia, a north Italian city on the Adriatic coast. The town was of strategic importance during the later Roman Empire and an important seat of the western church. Legend has it that the apostle Mark came to the city, although the earliest Christian evidence dates from the 3rd century CE. In the course of the 4th century CE, the city became the chief ecclesiastical center for this region, later known as Venetia and Istria…

The Chronograph of 354 is a compilation produced in late 353 or early 354 CE for an otherwise unknown Roman senator by the name of Valentinus. He employed the well-known calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus to copy the text of his manuscript, and Filocalus probably provided the artist(s) for its many illustrations. There can be no doubt that the result was an expensive deluxe codex that was a treasured family heirloom. Apart from the dedication, nothing in this codex was written specifically for this compilation; it was compiled from preexisting works and illustrations.A Descriptio…

This essay will investigate the relations between the Christian church and the Roman Empire in the patristic age, mainly from the institutional point of view. It will first examine the possible reasons for the persecution of Christians in the empire, vetting the information regarding the  senatusconsultum  under Tiberius, attested by Tertullian, by the Acts of Apollonius, by Porphyry of Tyre or the “pagan” (Pagan/Paganism) polemicist in Macarius’  Apocriticus, and, indirectly, by Origen. Then, the essay will examine, in chronological order, the sources concer…

The sources pertaining to the early church concur that all church authority comes from God (Ring, 1975, 64). Jesus (Christ, Jesus, 01: Survey) himself already gave the church all essential rules of discipline during his lifetime. The authoritative mediators and interpreters of these rules are the twelve apostles (Apostle/Disciple), insofar as they genuinely witnessed the proclamation of Jesus with their own eyes and ears. God himself caused many of these rules to be written down in the Ne…

Buildings specifically intended for Christian worship, especially for the eucharistic synaxis, are known as church buildings (Church Buildings, 02: Basilica and Baptistery). It can be assumed, that only after public recognition of the Christian religion in 313 CE, new buildings were designed specifically for the liturgical meetings of the Christian community in the Roman Empire.Until then, Christian communities celebrated the liturgy in existing buildings, which had been adapted for that purpose. The only archaeological evidence from this period is the so-called domus eccles…

Eucharist on Sunday is part of Christian worship since the 1st century CE, following the mandate of Jesus Christ during the Last Supper (see e.g. Luke 22:19). Later, Justin Martyr (1 Apol . 67.7; 2nd cent. CE) and Cyprian of Carthage ( Ep. 63.16.2; 3rd cent. CE) martyrs stressed that resurrection (Resurrection of Jesus Christ), the Paschal Mystery of Christ, is what Christians celebrate on Sunday Eucharist. On the other hand, Jesus Christ asked his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the…

This is the Acts of Martyrs in the form of an epistula (“letter”) written by the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, and it was sent to the sister communities of Asia and Frygia in order to inform them about the events of the year 177 CE, that is to say, the martyrdom suffered by the Christians of Gaul on that date and of which the victim was a very numerous group of individuals from those two cities.Authenticity, Date and ContentIn spite of the fact that almost all the historians from Christianity’s first centuries came across this memorable letter and accepted it as authenti…

Soon after the Easter events, baptism became the act through which believers were incorporated into the church (Gaudemet, 1989, 55–69; Ferguson, 2009, 132–198), a relationship that was exclusive. According to early Christian understanding, it precludes all other paths to salvation in the sense of a religious pluralism. Accordingly, excommunication signifies the forsaking of salvation in this world and the next, at least as long as it is not rescinded. Membership in the church always has two dime…

The early history of the Roman church can be divided into two distinct but overlapping topics: first, the structure and administration of the church headed by the city’s bishop, the pope; and second, Rome’s wider claims to leadership across the Christian world. Neither development was linear nor inevitable. While its association with the apostle Peter meant that the Roman church was widely considered to be special, the evolution of its bureaucratic infrastructure and authority, both within and beyond its traditional episcopal jurisdiction, was haphazard and often contested.The Ch…

From the very beginning, the organization of the ancient church found itself in a process of increasing complexity that remains without parallel in the history of ancient religions.Development of the Local Congregation in the First Three Centuries CEThe process began with a variety of different congregational models. While the Corinthian congregation of Paul’s (Paul [Apostle])  lifetime only exhibited a low degree of organization and probably got by without a formal congregational leadership, officials vested with leadership f…

Circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin, which functions among male Jews a sign of covenant membership, was early on rejected by Christian groups of predominantly gentile membership. Nevertheless, gentile Christians remained fascinated with the practice of Jewish circumcision, and it appears regularly throughout early Christian texts in both literal and symbolic forms.Circumcision as a Jewish Mark and StereotypeAlthough other ethnic groups practiced routine male circumcision in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East (Hdt. 2.36; 2.104; Diod. Sic. Bib. hist. 1.28…

Claudian (Claudius Claudianus), circa 370–404 CE, probably a native of Greek-speaking Alexandria, came to Italy as a young man no later than 394 CE, where he first gained access to the Christian Anicii family (in Rome), and then to the court of Honorius, the Christian ruler of the western Roman Empire (first in Milan and from 402 CE in Ravenna), to hold the rank of tribunus et notarius (“tribune and imperial secretary”).Claudian composed an impressive series of longer Latin poems in dactylic hexameters ( carmina maiora; some have prefaces in elegiac distichs): a mythological ep…

Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus (10 BCE–54 CE) was the fourth emperor of Rome and ruled between 41 and 54 CE. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Antonia Minor and Nero Claudius Drusus, brother of Germanicus, nephew of Tiberius, and uncle of Gaius Caligula. Due to a youthful physical ailment (the ancient sources mention a limp and a stammer), he was marginalized in the imperial family and kept from public office until later in life. Instead Claudius turned to intel…

Cleanthes (c. 330–233/231 BCE) was the second school leader of the ancient Stoa, after Zeno and before Chrysippus, who was Cleanthes’ disciple.Cleanthes is especially famous for his Hymn to Zeus, which manifests his profound religiosity in a Stoic framework. He did not divide philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics, which is the standard Stoic partition, but into six parts, which result from the duplication of the aforementioned three: dialectics and rhetoric, ethics and politics, and physics and theology ( SVF 1.482; Ramelli, 2011). The last two, physics and theology,…

1 Clement is one of the earliest extant works of Christian literature apart from New Testament. It contains 65 chapters and encourages peace and concord in the church ( 1 Clem. 1:1; 63:1–2).Manuscripts and EditionsFew manuscripts survive with 1 Clement from early antiquity. The Codex Alexandrinus (5th cent. CE) is a reliable witness, although it has some orthographic errors and lacks 1 Clem. 57:7–63:3. The complete Greek text of 1 Clement survives in only the Codex Hierosolymitanus (1056 CE). It exhibits many formal corrections whether from the scribe who identi…

2 Clement is a sermon written by an anonymous presbyter (Priest/Presbyter) in the mid-2nd century CE. It is based upon Isa 54:1 and urges purity.Manuscripts and EditionsThree copies of 2 Clement are extant. Codex Alexandrinus (A) contains 2 Clem. 1:1–12:5a and is of good quality. Codex Hierosolymitanus (C) from 1056 CE contains all of 2 Clement. It contains changes that reflect dogmatic motivations. Codex S is written in Syriac and dates from approximately 1170. It paraphrases and is verbose in comparison with the Greek manuscripts.In 1633, P. Young published the first printed …

Besides the two epistles attributed to Clement of Rome, there exists also a series of apocryphal works of varied types under his name. The Apostolic Constitutions  and the Pseudo-Clementine writings (also known as the Clementines) are the most well known. This last work has been transmitted to us in two different versions: the Greek Homilies and the Latin Recognitions, in Rufinus of Aquileia's translation. Aside from these relatively complete versions, there exists also partial Syriac translations of the two texts as well as several Armenian fragments; the Homilies themselves are …

Born in 466/477 CE to King Childeric (r. 458–481/482 CE) and Queen Basina, little is known about Clovis before his accession to the Frankish throne in 481/482 CE (Greg. T. Hist. 2.12; 25). What is known is that his father served as a Germanic general in the Roman army and that the Franks occupied territory within the Roman Empire, but on its borders as foederati, barbarian troops under their own leader’s command. These foederati agreed to serve in the Roman army and fight alongside Roman forces against external and internal threats. In the case of the Franks, they occupied the Roman province of G…