Texts in Context: Essays on Dating and Contextualising Christian Writings from the Second and Early Third Centuries

The essays collected in this volume contain the proceedings of a

colloquium held in Leuven in December 2018. The overall purpose was to

study Gnostic and other second- and early third-century Christian texts

in search for indications and criteria for determining their place in

the development of early Christian theology. A good deal of attention is

given to dating and identifying these often anonymous writings, but

other aspects are also addressed. The essays illustrate in various ways

that this development was not a uniform process. The many problems

involved in studying these texts from such a perspective have brought

some scholars to question what should be the main focus: the (presumed)

original context or their transmission and use by later generations. The

collection includes essays by P. Foster (Ignatius), C.M. Tuckett (1-2

Clement(), J.S. Kloppenborg (the (Didache( and the

(Apostolic Constitutions(), J. Frey (Jewish-Christian gospels,

especially the (Gospel according to the Hebrews(), H. Lundhaug

(methodology in studying Gnostic texts), C. Jacobi ((Gospel of

Philip(), K. Schwarz (Gospel of Thomas), F. Watson ((Apocryphon

of James(), J.-D. Dubois (criteria for dating Gnostic texts, applied

to the (Apocryphon of John(), D.M. Burns (Nag Hammadi tractates

with philosophical interests), and A. Van den Kerchove ((Gospel of

Judas().