La péricope matthéenne (2,1-12) sur les Mages et l’étoile de Bethléem a suscité des réactions variées chez les commentateurs chrétiens du iie au ve siècle. Ces réactions reflètent, chez les premiers chrétiens, une diversité d’attitudes envers l’astrologie, qui était un aspect fondamental et omniprésent de la religion et de la culture gréco-romaines. Certains auteurs chrétiens de l’époque répudiaient absolument l’astrologie alors que d’autres cherchaient à l’accommoder jusqu’à un certain point aux croyances et aux pratiques chrétiennes. Les interprétations de la péricope matthéenne permettent de prendre la mesure de ces opinions divergentes. Cet article examine les thèmes des Mages et de l’étoile en Matthieu 2,1-12, ainsi qu’un certain nombre d’exégèses anciennes de la péricope. Celles-ci fournissent autant d’indices de l’ambivalence de l’attitude chrétienne face à l’astrologie.The Matthean pericope (2.1-12) of the Magi and the star of Bethlehem prompted a variety of responses among early Christian commentators of the second to the fifth centuries. These responses reflect a range of attitudes among the early Christians towards astrology, which was a fundamental and pervasive aspect of ancient Greco-Roman religion and culture. Some early Christian writers repudiated astrology absolutely, while others sought to grant it some degree of accommodation to Christian beliefs and practices. Interpretations of the Matthean pericope offer an index to the range of such views. This paper examines the motifs of the Magi and of the star in Matthew 2.1-12 as well as a number of early Christian interpretations of the pericope as evidence of a pattern of ambivalence in early Christian attitudes toward Greco-Roman astrology
A pseudonymous text of the Jewish Jesus movement of the late first century CE, the letter of Barnabas is a polemical treatise attacking Judaism. Yet the author was also clearly fascinated with Judaism and repeatedly refers to the Hebrew Scriptures in the letter, sometimes in ways that scholars (e.g. Windisch, Prigent, Kraft) have suggested may reflect the ancient Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation known as midrash. In this paper the conclusions of such scholars are tabulated and shown to be tentative. Moreover, it is argued that by demonstrating similar motifs between Barnabas and Jewish midrashic literature (especially the Mishnah), it becomes more plausible to identify midrash in the letter of Barnabas.
This article presents a quantitative sociological study of the expansion of the worship of Isis in Greco-Roman antiquity focusing on the role of large urban centres. Receptivity to the cult is measured for a data set of 44 cities based on the presence or absence of archaeological remains. Statistical correlations between the spread of the Isis cult and city size, distance from Alexandria and distance from Rome (a secondary centre of the cult's expansion) support the thesis that distance from cultic centres was a significant factor in the spread of Isiac worship. The paper concludes with a number of suggestions for further research.
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