Yale University Press
Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions
Key Metrics
- Candida R Moss
- Yale University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780300154658
- 9.49 X 6.45 X 1.14 inches
- 1.2 pounds
- Religion > Christianity - History
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The importance of martyrdom for the spread of Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era is a question of enduring interest. In this innovative new study, Candida Moss offers a radically new history of martyrdom in the first and second centuries that challenges traditional understandings of the spread of Christianity and rethinks the nature of Christian martyrdom itself. Martyrdom, Moss shows, was not a single idea, theology, or practice: there were diverse perspectives and understandings of what it meant to die for Christ.
Beginning with an overview of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish ideas about death, Moss demonstrates that there were many cultural contexts within which early Christian views of martyrdom were very much at home. She then shows how distinctive and diverging theologies of martyrdom emerged in different ancient congregations. In the process she reexamines the authenticity of early Christian stories about martyrs and calls into question the dominant scholarly narrative about the spread of martyrdom in the ancient world.
Author Bio
My work primarily focuses on ideas about martyrdom, death, suffering, and afterlife in the New Testament and literature of Early Christianity. I have additional interests in disability theory and theology, religion and public life, the Bible and education, and cultural heritage.
I read theology as an undergraduate at Oxford, before moving to the United States to pursue post-graduate work in Biblical Studies at, first Yale Divinity School and, later, Yale Graduate School. In 2008, I moved to the University of Notre Dame to teach classes in the departments of Theology, Classics, and History before coming to Birmingham in 2017.
While my academic work is primarily historical, I work in the public sphere as s Papal news commentator for CBS news, a cultural commentator and columnist for The Daily Beast, and a religion news commentator and writer for CNN, BBC, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discovery Channel, History Channel, and others. A great deal of my recent work has focused on the intersection of religion and politics and the influence of certain religious ideas on international relations, policy making, and education.
Research Interests
I am currently completing a book, based on the 2017 Cadbury Lectures, on Resurrection on the New Testament, Ancient Medicine, Disability, and Constructions of the Bodies.
Other ongoing projects include the Hermeneia Commentary on Second Century Martyrdom Accounts and a Bestiary of the Bible
Source: University of Birmingham
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