In this Book
Augsburg Fortress Publishers
- The Cross before Constantine: The Early Life of a Christian Symbol
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
summary
This book brings together, for the first time, the relevant material evidence demonstrating Christian use of the cross prior to Constantine. Bruce W. Longenecker upends a longstanding consensus that the cross was not a Christian symbol until Constantine appropriated it to consolidate his power in the fourth century. Longenecker presents a wide variety of artifacts from across the Mediterranean basin that testify to the use of the cross as a visual symbol by some pre-Constantinian Christians. Those artifacts interlock with literary witnesses from the same period to provide a consistent and robust portrait of the cross as a pre-Constantinian symbol of Christian devotion. The material record of the pre-Constantinian period illustrates that Constantine did not invent the cross as a symbol of Christian faith; for an impressive number of Christians before Constantine’s reign, the cross served as a visual symbol of commitment to a living deity in a dangerous world.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Preliminaries
- pp. ix-xi
- 1. The Cross in Its Place
- pp. 1-20
- 3. The Cross in a Jewish Cradle
- pp. 49-60
- 4. The Cross in Textual Images
- pp. 61-72
- 5. The Cross in the Material Record
- pp. 73-120
- 6. The Cross in a Pompeii Bakery
- pp. 121-148
- 7. The Cross in the Literary Record
- pp. 149-162
- 8. The Cross and Its Advocates
- pp. 163-184
- 9. A Very Short Conclusion
- pp. 185-188
- Bibliography
- pp. 189-206
- Index of Subjects
- pp. 207-214
- Index of Modern Authors
- pp. 215-220
- Index of Ancient Sources
- pp. 221-230
- Index of Locations
- pp. 231-233
Additional Information
ISBN
9781506400365
MARC Record
OCLC
914433161
Pages
144
Launched on MUSE
2015-08-17
Language
English
Open Access
No