[DOWNLOAD] "Catholic Or Catholic? Biblical Scholarship at the Center." by Journal of Biblical Literature " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Catholic Or Catholic? Biblical Scholarship at the Center.
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 215 KB
Description
Sometime in the first decade of the second century, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, was condemned to death ad bestias, that is, by wild animals in the amphitheater. He was sent under guard with other prisoners to Rome for the games there, probably in the Flavian Amphitheater, what today we call the Colosseum. As his party made its way up the western coast of Asia Minor, he wrote to a string of Christian communities there after he had received visits from their envoys. When writing to the Christians of Smyrna, he remarks that the Eucharist should be celebrated only by the bishop or someone he delegates, for "wherever the bishop appears, let the whole community be gathered, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Smyrn. 8.2). A generation later, in the same city, old bishop Polycarp was about to be martyred in the amphitheater. But the narrator of his martyrdom reports that when the police came to arrest him in a country house where he had taken refuge, since it was dinnertime, he ordered food and drink to be set out for them, while he went aside and prayed aloud for two hours. In his prayer, he remembered everyone he had ever encountered and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] throughout the world. The narrator finished the report of Polycarp's martyrdom by concluding that now Polycarp is enjoying the glory of God and Jesus Christ, shepherd of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] throughout the world (Mart. Pol. 8.1; 19.2). The word [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] was in general use in Hellenistic Greek, meaning "general" or "universal" Thus Iamblichus (Life of Pythagoras 15.65) speaks of "universal harmony" and Epictetus speaks of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as general principles or standards (4.4.29; 2.12.7). Indeed, today we are accustomed to calling the NT Letters of James, Jude, 1-2 Peter and John the "catholic epistles," mostly because we really do not have a clue whence they came or whither they were destined. Similarly, the fourth-century Christian historian Eusebius, quoting the anti-Montanist Apollonius, recalls a Montanist writer Themisto, who wrote an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "in imitation of the apostle" (Hist. eccl. 5.18.5). By the fourth century, the word was taking on a more specific meaning of orthodox Christianity, as when Constantine, quoted in Eusebius, refers to the church represented by Eusebius as the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], perhaps best translated as the catholic religion (Hist. eccl. 10.6.1).