Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online

Among the most venomous of false doctrines constructed by the relentless heresy hunters of the early church were groups that supposedly worshipped snakes. Two imaginary Christian groups with imposed reptilian names received such a questionable honor: the Ophites and the Naassenes (from the Greek and Hebrew words for snake, ὄφις, and nāḥāš, respectively). While such groups probably never existed – let alone formed a coherent movement – texts with developed snake mythology and ingenious exegesis of biblical snake-passages did exist. Some of th…

Optatus, bishop of Milevis (d. c. 390 CE), was a North African bishop and apologist for the Caecilianist (Caecilian) faction of the African church during the 4th-century CE schism. His treatise On the Donatist Schism provides the earliest history of the controversy. The work also reflects important developments in the western understanding of ecclesiology, the sacraments, Petrine priority, and the relations of the church to the empire. His arguments profoundly shaped Augustine of Hippo’s anti-Donatist writings a generation later.BiographyKnowledge of Optatus’ life  can be…

Optatus (fl. 388?–398 CE) was the Donatist (Donatism/Donatists) bishop of Thamugadi (Timgad), a prominent Roman military colony founded by the emperor Trajan inland among the Aurès mountain range. His episcopacy, which according to Augustine of Hippo spanned at least a decade (Aug. Parm. 2.2.4; C. litt. Petil. 1.24.26), or from approximately 388 to 398 CE, presided over a critical period in Donatist history. The details of Optatus’ life and character are only known to us through the writings of Augustine, who often characterized him as a brutal tyrant and companion of the rebel comes Af…

The various ancient words in the domains of foresight and divination are established to different degrees in pagan and Judaeo-Christian tradition. Of the two standard words for “oracles,” χρησμοί/ chrēsmoi and λόγια/ logia, the former is occasionally (Clem. Strom. 2.7.34.3) and the latter not infrequently ( PGL A.3.b) applied to Scripture. μαντεία/ manteia (“divination”) is strongly pagan. But προφήτης/ prophētes (“prophet”), and the associated verb προφητεύειν/ prophēteuein, both signifies the “forth-teller,” the human channel through which the divine mess…

The Second Council of Orange met on Jul 3, 529 CE. Its purpose was to settle continuing controversies involving the role of divine grace.The Controversy over Grace in the 5th Century CEGallic theologians had been involved in discussions of grace since early in the 5th century CE. They attacked Pelagius, whose denial of original sin and contention that it was possible to live without sin necessarily restricted the role of grace. For the same reason, they also parted company with Augustine of Hippo on the issue of predestination. For example, The Gallic Chronicle of 452 stated under the ye…

The Latin word orans literally means “prayer.” However, in terms of iconography, scholars utilize the term orant (or orante) to refer to the image of a praying person. The emphasis on featuring a person in the prayer position is not uncommon in non-Christian texts, even examples that predate the beginnings of Christian iconography. Virgil most notably highlights the dutiful piety of Aeneas in the Aeneid, particularly in Book 6 as he travels to the underworld. Aeneas honors and respects the gods in Virgil’s epic, and as Augustus was intentionally connected to…

Ordination is the rite by which a person is elevated from the laity to one of the minor orders or one of the major orders of the clergy (bishops, priests, or deacons). There are four aspects to ordination:1. the person who administers the ordination; 2. the person who receives the ordination; 3. the act of ordination; 4. and the effect of it.The person who ordains has been authorized to do so by the church, and during the ordination he pronounces prayers in which God is invoked as the one who actually ordains. The act itself consists of several element…

Origen (c. 185–254 CE) was born into a Christian family in Alexandria, the Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish city at the edge of Egypt, circa 185 CE. As a young man he instructed catechumens in preparation for baptism. He made several journeys and was asked to mediate in controversies about the Christian faith. After a conflict with his bishop in Alexandria, he settled in Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, where he had been ordained a priest, and founded a theological school. He wrote a large numb…

The reception of Origen of Alexandria’s work sparked two major controversies in late antiquity, the first of which occurred in the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE and the second of which took place in the middle of the 6th century CE. The latter controversy ended with the anathemata associated with the 5th Ecumenical Council (553 CE; Constantinople, 03: Second Council of [Fifth Ecumenical Council; 553 CE]).These disputes centered around the concepts attributed to Origen which have come to be known as “Origenism.” These concern ἀποκατάστασις/ apokatastasis (the eschatological r…

One of the most popular characters of Greek mythology among early Christians is the Thracian bard Orpheus. He is often mentioned by several authors, notably Clement of Alexandria, between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and he also appears in some iconographic evidence. Christian apologists, on the wake of their Jewish predecessors, highlight and transform some particular dimensions of Orpheus’ myth in their debates around Greek culture and religion. His consideration in Christian sources …

Although the term orthodoxia was not assigned a normative doctrinal denotation until the 4th century CE, already in the 2nd century CE a notion of its content developed in the refutation of heresies as representations of world, human, and religious images different from Christianity. These were understood, in whole or in part, as contradicting Christian doctrine, as it was thought to have been handed down by the apostles. According to this “genealogical” method (Le Boulluec 1985), heresies…

The term οὐσία/ ousia an abstract noun associated with the verb “to be” (εἰμί/ eimi), which signifies various notions and was traditionally translated into Latin as substantia. Although it is an abstract term in Greek, it can be ascribed not only to general but also to specific designates. Ousia appears three times in the Bible, in Tob 14:13 and in Luke 15:12–13 in the common meaning of “possession” or “property.” From pre-philosophical the term evolved probably by such substantivization of the verb “to be” as it was understood in its a…