Continuing Seminar:                                      Earliest Christian Writings

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SUN MON TUE    CONTINUING SEMINARS   SCHEDULE

SEMINAR'S HISTORY

Description

Even within its first couple of generations, early Christianity was well on its way to becoming a movement very much involved in the production, use, and transmission of a variety of genres of religious literature: hymns, epistolary treatises, gospels, apocalypses, acts, testaments, odes. Many, indeed most, of these “sacred” writings are now lost and will remain so forever. Others, in the course of the second and third centuries, became part of one of the various Christian anthologies of Sacred Scripture. Many of these books have remained part of Christian Bibles since late antiquity, some appear in biblical pandects only in limited ecclesiastical contexts, and a few were completely excised from collections of Scripture. Whether the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Peter, or the Diatessaron, whether the epistles of Paul or the Epistle of Barnabas, whether the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of Peter, or the Shepherd of Hermas, whether the Acts of the Apostles or the Acts of Paul, whether the Pastoral Epistles or 1 and 2 Clement – all such writings must be examined together as products of the same broad historical period and of not entirely dissimilar religio-historical contexts.

This Continuing Seminar allows members to present and discuss works in progress that deal with any of these earliest Christian writings or with the use of these texts in the first Christian centuries, as well as the opportunity to read together and discuss recent scholarship on this literature. Nascent concepts of Scripture in this period, in which Christians began to develop notions of an “Old Testament” and a “New Testament,” and during which the status of almost all of this literature was contested, demonstrate how fertile the ground is for continued academic research on these ancient sacred texts. CBA meetings provide the ideal setting for an informal, collegial conversation, one that will surely enhance the way we think about this earliest Christian literature.

Seminar Leader in 2023

• Timothy B. Sailors, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
  

Program Details for 2023

Focus:  TBA

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HISTORY

• 2022

  • Olivia Stewart Lester, Loyola University Chicago
    "Christian Sibylline Oracles and the Making of Sacred Texts"
  • Discussion:
    "The Past, Present, and Future of Diatessaronic Studies: A Discussion of Tatian's Diatessaron: Composition, Redaction, Recension, and Reception (Oxford 2022) by James W. Barker"
  • Open Sesssion:
    "Early Christian Literature at the CBA and Our Continuing Seminar: Retrospect and Prospect"

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