Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity

Collected Essays I

by Jan N. Bremmer

Book cover: Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity

Extent: 501 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Religious Studies

Series: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Series volume number: 379

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(July 2017)

ISBN: 9783161544507

6.57 x 9.13 inches

Price: $243.00

In stock

Why did the early followers of Jesus call themselves “Christians”? What was their social and religious capital? Why did Christianity attract both poor widows and wealthy women? What did pagans think of early Christians? Integrating the major apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the study of Christianity and the ancient world, Jan N. Bremmer illustrates their prominence of women and their, sometimes surprising, usage of magic as well as establishing a new chronology and place of composition for these Acts. He also shows that the early Christian tours of hell derive from both Jewish and Greek models, although they become increasingly Christianised. The author concludes by decoding the intriguing visions in the Passion of Perpetua by placing them in the contemporary world, thereby compelling us to sympathize with the hopes and fears of young Christian martyrs. It is the close attention to both pagan and Christian traditions that make these papers, which have all been updated and some of them revised, an exciting read for scholars and advanced students alike.

  • By (author) Jan N Bremmer

"The greatest merit of this volume is the author's ability to identify questions for investigation that are not being studied and his juxtapositions of sources (e.g., Christian texts and the Greek Magical Papyri) that are even now only rarely brought into conversation with each other. In this way, Bremmer has undertaken the great and laudable effort of mending the old divide between Classics and Early Christian Studies." --Daniel J. Crosby, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.06.34
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