In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how critical race theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enable a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and sociopolitical processes that criminalize. Williams’ study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus’ followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

Since late antiquity, bishops have been regarded as possessing the highest authority among Christians. But there was no linear path leading there. Rather, there were different bearers of authority among Christians: James, as the respected brother of Jesus, was a key figure at the beginning; intellectuals were able to gain importance as teachers, prophets also appeared after Jesus, among them many women; widows and virgins attained a special position; finally, the authority of ascetics increased. Basically, authority could be derived from an office within the church or from personal charisma, which was considered God given. Good bishops tried to combine both, but charismatics could always challenge them and would continue to do so throughout the history of Christianity.

Early Christians used biblical narratives and motifs often and extensively. Supplementing literary evidence, Christian funerary inscriptions and inscriptions in church buildings reveal the dissemination of biblical tradition by the naming of children and by allusions to and citations from the Bible. Ekphrastic reference to and depiction of scenes from the Bible—like Moses splitting the Red Sea, Jonah and the big fish, the seven-eyed lamb of the Apocalypse or the paradisiacal peace of Isaiah 11—in stone or as mosaics and dipinti could be admired in churches or on graveyards. Through inscriptions, mosaics, literary works (such as those of Pseudo-Athanasius, Theodoret of Cyrus, or Amphilochius of Iconium), and liturgical practices, biblical stories and traditions were kept alive and woven into a network of knowledge and imagination, connecting Christians all over the ancient world.

Chapter 2 addresses the history of Byzantine Africa 533–46. It argues that the principal challenges to imperial rule in Africa came from within the administration, rather than external pressure from hostile ‘Moorish’ groups as has conventionally been assumed. These internal tensions were manifested most clearly in a series of mutinies and revolts within the army, leading ultimately to a coup, probably in early 546, when the Dux Numidiarum Guntharith seized authority in Carthage. That many of the leading figures in the administration seem to have come to terms with this tyrant testifies to the weaknesses within the imperial system, and the challenges which faced John at the time of his landing around six months later. This chapter briefly explores the nature of relations between frontier commanders and their ‘barbarian’ neighbours, many of whom aspired to office within the imperial system. It suggests that the ‘Moorish’ crisis John faced in 546 (which had smouldered for three or four years by that stage), was the direct consequence of internecine struggles within the imperial system, as allies increasingly acted in their own interest

The final chapter explores first the religious underpinnings of the text and notes that the Iohannis rested on Christian assumptions even as it used the imagery and rhetoric of classical epic to recount an essentially secular narrative. The epic includes recognizable portraits of two African churchmen who were spokesmen in the ‘Three Chapters’ controversy. Far from ignoring contemporary religious problems, Corippus may have intended his poem to accentuate the support of the entire African populace for the imperial military programme. The chapter then turns to representations of ‘Moorish’ religious practices within the poem. While it is tempting to suppose that Corippus presents a timeless image of African religion, the Iohannis was very much a product of the mid-sixth century. The poet drew upon literary models, but the details of his account may betray contemporary practices. The Iohannis was composed at a time when the imperial authorities in Africa were consolidating the recent military victories with a programme of evangelism into the frontier regions, pre-desert and oasis communities. The chapter concludes with a discussion of this programme and of how this changes our understanding of Corippus’ text.

The focus of this chapter is Gregory’s ordering of exegetical, spiritual, administrative, intellectual, emotional, and gendered knowledge across his oeuvre. The sections are organised by genre into three groups according to the kind of knowledge ordered within. Gregory’s homilies and commentaries on scripture were primarily intended to convey exegetical knowledge within a framework that prioritised divine law as the primary ordering principle in the social hierarchy. His Pastoral Rule and the Dialogues both employed knowledge of the human passions to teach spiritual truths and offer practical advice for living a Christian life in emotional communities. Gregory’s many letters inscribed his strictly hierarchical social order, with special attention to networks of women of influence outside Rome. A constant feature across Gregory’s oeuvre was the coupling of spiritual and intellectual knowledge for the benefit of all levels of society and for the sake of the church.

The church fathers made a significant contribution to the almost complete preservation of the Placita of Aëtius. In this chapter I investigate what motivated them to use it so extensively. I first introduce the Placita, outlining six features that give this work a distinctive mode of ordering knowledge. Philo of Alexandria, the first of eight authors to be discussed, is not a Christian. Nevertheless his approach to the variety of philosophical doctrines recorded in the antecdent tradition of the Placita will be crucial for his Christian successors. These commence with Athenagoras and Hermias, followed by three fourth-century authors, Eusebius, Pseudo-Justin and Nemesius, and conclude with two fifth-century writers, Cyril of Alexandrian and Theodoret. Although the Placita bring order into the vast body of contradictory doctrines put forward by the philosophers, this ‘structured disorder’ is in sharp contrast to the ordering of Christian knowledge, which is presented as being founded on a unified body of revealed truth.

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how critical race theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enable a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and sociopolitical processes that criminalize. Williams’ study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus’ followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

In 1932, Karl Rahner’s article ‘Le début d’une doctrine des cinq sens spirituels chez Origène’ marked the beginning of twentieth-century debate about the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses’. In 2012, Gavrilyuk and Coakley’s The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity marked a renaissance of interest in this theme. Gavrilyuk and Coakley harked back to Rahner as the father of the debate but revised his definition of the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses, rendering it flexible enough to include a wider range of theologians. However, they drew their further examplars only from among theologians later than Origen, without considering earlier Christian material. In this chapter, select portions of Clement of Alexandria and of the New Testament are discussed, with a view to showing that Christian material earlier than Origen uses the language of sense perception in ways that are historically and conceptually significant for the spiritual senses tradition.

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how critical race theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enable a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and sociopolitical processes that criminalize. Williams’ study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus’ followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

This chapter considers the Book of the Laws of the Countries, attributed to Bardaisan of Edessa (d. c. 222), as an exemplar of modes of knowing in early Syriac literature. Despite reports of a wide-ranging corpus, the only work surviving under Bardaisan’s name is this text, which innovatively combines two genres into one. The first half, a dialogue in a Platonic mode transcribed by his student Philip, considers the question of free will. Bardaisan insists that human behaviour is not determined by the stars, an argument which serves his broader commitment to divine goodness in theodicy. The second half is a catalogue, a pseudo-ethnography of peoples to the east of Edessa. The crux of the catalogue comes with a report of King Abgar VIII who ‘believed’, meaning, potentially, converted to Christianity. Regardless of confession, Abgar’s ‘belief’ serves as the culmination of both halves of this work and the ultimate proof against astral determinism. The unique and experimental work shows a foundational Syriac author wrestling with perennial questions and modes of expression at the beginning of late antiquity.

Early Christian theologians regarded the sense of sight, along with the other bodily senses, as an essential aid for comprehending invisible and transcendent realities. Although Christ’s incarnation was regarded as divine condescension to the human need for eyewitnesses, a profound and complex theory, partly influenced by ancient and contemporary philosophical sources, judged visual perception of the external, material world as playing a key role in judging, retaining, and transmitting knowledge about the immaterial realm. The essential connections between physical sight and spiritual cognition were seen as pathways that engendered appreciation both for the divine presence and for the human potential for enlightenment, in this life and in the age to come. Such cognition thus depended not only on words read or heard, insofar as the action of seeing became an equally dynamic and effective means for attaining knowledge of the nature and purposes of God.