Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World
About the Book Series
Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World offers monographs and edited collections which explore the most cutting-edge research in Early Christianity. Covering all aspects of world of early Christianity, from theology, archaeology and history, to urbanism, class, economics, and sexuality and gender, the series aims to situate these early Christians within the wider context of Late Antiquity.
Comprising both regional studies and broader thematic surveys, this series explores what changed with the advent of Christianity, what remained the same, and how early Christians interacted with, made sense of, and shaped the world around them. Aimed at early Christian scholars, classicists and historians alike, Studies in the Early Christian World is an invaluable resource for anyone researching this fascinating period.
The Visual Rhetoric of the Married Laity in Late Antiquity: Iconography, the Christianization of Marriage, and Alternatives to the Ascetic Ideal
1st Edition
By Mark D. Ellison
April 14, 2025
This study examines third- and fourth-century portraits of married Christians and associated images, reading them as visual rhetoric in early Christian conversations about marriage and celibacy, and recovering lay perspectives underrepresented or missing in literary sources. Historians of early ...
The Making of Syriac Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Syriac Literature of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
1st Edition
By Catalin-Stefan Popa
November 28, 2024
This book discusses hagiographic, historiographical, hymnological, and theological sources that contributed to the formation of the sacred picture of the physical as well as metaphysical Jerusalem in the literature of two Eastern Christian denominations, East and West Syrians. Popa analyses the ...
Living Martyrs in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Surviving Martyrdom
1st Edition
By Diane Fruchtman
October 28, 2024
This book demonstrates that living martyrdom was an important spiritual aspiration in the late antique Latin west and argues that, consequently, attempts to define, study, or locate martyrdom must move away from conceptualizations that require or center on death. After an introduction that traces ...
Valentinus’ Legacy and Polyphony of Voices
1st Edition
By Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski
October 09, 2024
This book challenges the popular use of ‘Valentinian’ to describe a Christian school of thought in the second century CE by analysing documents ascribed to ‘Valentinians’ by early Christian Apologists, and more recently by modern scholars after the discovery of codices near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. ...
A New Perspective on the Use of Paul in the Gospel of Mark
1st Edition
By Cameron Evan Ferguson
May 27, 2024
This volume presents a detailed case for the plausible literary dependence of the Gospel of Mark on select letters of the apostle Paul. The book argues that Mark and Paul share a gospel narrative that tells the story of the life, death, resurrection, and second coming of Jesus Christ "in accordance...
Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes: Three Early Christian Teachers of Alexandria and Rome
1st Edition
By M. David Litwa
January 29, 2024
Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes is the definitive study of the early Christian theologian Carpocrates, his son Epiphanes, and the leader of the Carpocratian movement in Rome, Marcellina. It contains the first full-length study of and commentary on the fragments of Epiphanes, the ...
A Social History of Christian Origins: The Rejected Jesus
1st Edition
By Simon J. Joseph
December 30, 2022
A Social History of Christian Origins explores how the theme of the Jewish rejection of Jesus – embedded in Paul’s letters and the New Testament Gospels – represents the ethnic, social, cultural, and theological conflicts that facilitated the construction of Christian identity. Readers of this book...
Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference
1st Edition
By Taylor Petrey
December 12, 2019
During the late second and early third centuries C.E. the resurrection became a central question for intellectual commentary, with increasingly tense divisions between those who interpreted the resurrection as a bodily experience and those who did not. The relationship between the resurrected ...
The Legacy of Demetrius of Alexandria 189-232 CE: The Form and Function of Hagiography in Late Antique and Islamic Egypt
1st Edition
By Maged Mikhail
December 12, 2019
This is the first full-length study of Demetrius of Alexandria (189–232 ce), who generated a neglected, yet remarkable hagiographic program that secured him a positive legacy throughout the Middle Ages and the modern era. Drawing upon Patristic, Coptic, and Arabic sources spanning a millennium, the...
Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought
1st Edition
Edited
By Mark Edwards, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu
December 12, 2019
This volume illustrates the complexity and variety of early Christian thought on the subject of the image of God as a theological concept, and the difficulties that arise even in the interpretation of particular authors who gave a cardinal place to the image of God in their expositions of Christian...
The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage: Near-Death Experiences, Ancestor Cult, and the Archaeology of Paradise
1st Edition
By Stephen E. Potthoff
January 11, 2019
The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage explores how the visionary experiences of early Christian martyrs shaped and informed early Christian ancestor cult and the construction of the cemetery as paradise. Taking the early Christian cemeteries in Carthage as a case study, the volume broadens our ...