An extensive study of the Quartodeciman paschal liturgy. It centres on Melito's "Peri Pascha," which is examined in its rhetorical and liturgical context, and reveals the work as the liturgical text employed in the Quartodeciman celebration at Sardis.
This is the first full-length study of the origins of preaching in Christiantiy. It traces communication in the Christian assembly from its household origins to the emergence of recognizable homiletic discourse in the third century.
An extensive study of the Quartodeciman paschal liturgy. It centres on Melito's "Peri Pascha," which is examined in its rhetorical and liturgical context, and reveals the work as the liturgical text employed in the Quartodeciman celebration at Sardis.
What’s the difference between eucharist and agape? And how did each come to be? The liturgies of early Christians are often obscure and variegated in the historical record. This is especially true of the eucharist, where the basic practice of communal eating is difficult to disentangle from other contemporary meals, whether Greco-Roman or Jewish practices—or the ill-defined agape meal. In Breaking Bread, Alistair C. Stewart cuts through scholarly confusion about early Christian eating. Stewart pinpoints the split in agape and eucharist to the shift in celebrating the eucharist on Sunday morning, leading to the inception of agape as an evening meal. The former sought divine union, the latter, communal harmony. In the final chapter he explores a breadth of Syriac, Greek, and Latin primary sources on a variety of local eucharistic traditions, tracing their development into the familiar prayers and distribution of token amounts of bread and wine, which emerged in the third century. Nuanced and well-researched, Breaking Bread clarifies the development of the blessed sacrament and its lesser-known counterpart. Theologians and historians of early Christianity will find Stewart’s work foundational in approaching a topic of enduring scholarly interest but elusive consensus.
This is the first full-length study of the origins of preaching in Christiantiy. It traces communication in the Christian assembly from its household origins to the emergence of recognizable homiletic discourse in the third century.
A Jesus Creed 2015 Book of the Year This work provides a new starting point for studying the origins of church offices. Alistair Stewart, a leading authority on early Christianity and a meticulous scholar, provides essential groundwork for historical and theological discussions. Stewart refutes a long-held consensus that church offices emerged from collective leadership at the end of the first century. He argues that governance by elders was unknown in the first centuries and that bishops emerged at the beginning of the church; however, they were nothing like bishops of a later period. The church offices as presently known emerged in the late second century. Stewart debunks widespread assumptions and misunderstandings, offers carefully nuanced readings of the ancient evidence, and fully interacts with pertinent secondary scholarship.
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