The Didache is a short text, which was likely intended to be committed to memory, offering training in ‘The Way’ of the Lord, the practices of the churches, and in the community’s hope for the future. Dating from the first century, and quite plausible from before 70 AD, it offers us a unique vantage point into the concerns, attitudes, and praxis of the communities who would have heard our gospels from the lips of the evangelists. The purpose of this paper (...) is to bring it to light in the hope that this can be further studied in relations to the gospels and mission. (shrink)

Adomnán of Iona's work on the holy places of Jerusalem and surrounding regions has been used as a guide to seventh-century Palestine. In particular, its plans of monuments such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have been used by archaeologists for information about buildings, while their form interests historians of cartography. However, these plans must be read with the book's several purposes in mind. They attempt to harmonize biblical data visually. In addition, they project elements of Iona's monastic liturgy (...) into an alien liturgical space. The plans are not simply illustrations to clarify the text but constitute a distinct, parallel text of their own, with elements shown that Adomnán would not have asserted in writing. They indicate that, for Adomnán, there were different orders of verification for written texts and visual materials such as plans. (shrink)

This paper is focussed on a passage from the fourth-century Christian treatise, De uiris illustribus. This is the oldest extant witness to some traditions about Jesus that is often lumped together as ‘apocrypha’. The passage in question addresses the issue of a post-resurrection meal. The passage suggests that we need a more all embracing notion of sacramentality of Christians eating at table than one where a sacramental dimension is linked to ritual or even ceremonial form.

From, at least, the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth-century AD a controversy concerning a seemingly trivial fact engaged Christian scholars: when did Methuselah die? Although most of the major Latin fathers were drawn into the fray — and echoes of the debate continued in Latin exegesis for another five centuries — this controversy has escaped historians and is today unknown. So this paper has a double task. First, uncover from its remnants what we can know of this problem that elicited (...) much exertion on the part of Jerome and Augustine at its height, and was discussed urgently before them by Hilary of Poitiers , and after them by Eucherius of Lyons . Second, to examine some of the effects of this controversy on the Latin theology, and, in particular, the Latin church’s understanding of scripture. While any conscious awareness of the controversy itself has disappeared, many of the ideas which underwent development in the controversy, such as the notion of inerrancy and of the fundamental role of the Hebrew text, became part of the life-blood of Latin theology. (shrink)