Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside

Essays on the Urban and Rural Worlds of Early Christianity

Markus Tiwald, Jürgen Zangenberg, Markus Tiwald, Jürgen Zangenberg, Martin Ebner, Peter Lampe, Stefan Schreiber, Jürgen Zangenberg, Heidrun E. Mader

• Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783525564943
• eBook ISBN: 9783647564944
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Ever since Jesus walked the hills of Galilee and Paul travelled the roads of Asia Minor and Greece, Christianity has shown a remarkable ability to adapt itself to various social and cultural environments. Recent research has demonstrated that these environments can only be very insufficiently termed as "rural" or "urban". Neither was Jesus' Galilee only rural, nor Paul's Asia only "urban". On the background of ongoing research on the diversity of social environments in the Early Empire, this volume will focus on various early Christian "worlds" as witnessed in canonical and non-canonical texts. How did Early Christians experience and react to "rural" and "urban" life? What were the mechanisms behind this adaptability? Papers will analyze the relation between urban Christian beginnings and the role of the rural Jesus-tradition. In what sense did the image of Jesus, the "Galilean village Jew", change when his message was carried into the cities of the Mediterranean world from Jerusalem to Athens or Rome? Papers will not only deal with various personalities or literary works whose various attitudes towards urban life became formative for future Christianity. They will also explore the different local milieus that demonstrate the wide range of Christian cultural perspectives.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Body
• Markus Tiwald / Jürgen K. Zangenberg: “Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside”
• “Town” and “Countryside” – Complement or Contrast? Methodological Reflections
• Frits Gerard Naerebout: ˋUrban' and ˋRural' in Early Christianity: Opposition or Complement?
• Reinhard von Bendemann: Interrelations between Urbanity and Rurality
• Martin Ebner: Das frühe Christentum und die Stadt
• Jesus and the Early Jesus Movement
• Jodi Magness: How Romanized Was Galilee in the Time of Jesus?
• Jürgen K. Zangenberg: Walking along the Lakeshore (Mt 4:18)
• Markus Tiwald: The Rural Roots of the Jesus Movement and the ˋGalilean Silence'
• Gerd Theißen: The Transition from Countryside to City
• Pauline Christianity
• Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte: Pauline Christianity as an Urban Phenomenon
• Lukas Bormann: Early Christians in the Lycus Valley
• Early Christian Environments from the First to the Second Century
• Jörg Frey: Urbanity in the Gospel of John?
• Tobias Nicklas in collaboration with Luigi Walt: Anti-Urban Sentiments in Early Christianity? Revelation and the Ascension of Isaiah
• Markus Öhler: Pliny and the Expansion of Christianity in Cities and Rural Areas of Pontus et Bithynia
• Karen P.S. Janssen: “All Turned on Us Like Beasts”
• Heidrun E. Mader: “Bigger Than a Little One”. Rural Christianity in Asia Minor, Second Century CE
• Beyond Christianity
• Daniel Schowalter: Gods in the Neighborhood: Proximate Religion in the Roman Empire
• Günter Stemberger: The Urban World of Rabbis in post-Bar Kochba Palestine
• Ze'ev Weiss: Urban and Rural Synagogues in Late Antique Palestine
• Contributors
• Indices