Books by M. David Litwa

This volume is the definitive study of three early Carpocratian leaders, including the first full-length study and commentary on Epiphanes' fragments. With full profiles of these figures and updated research on the Carpocratian movement, this accessible book is suitable for students and scholars of early Christian theology.

Can Pauline soteriology be categorized as a form of deification? This book attempts to answer this question by keen attention to the Greco-Roman world. It provides the first full-scale history of research on the topic. It is also the first work to fully treat the basic historical questions relating to deification. Namely, what is deity in the Greco-Roman world? What are the types of deification in the Greco-Roman world? Are there Jewish antecedents to deification? Does Paul consider Christ to be a divine being? If so, according to what logic? How is Pauline deification possible in light of ancient Jewish "e;monotheism"e;? How is deification possible with a strong notion of creation? Although a rigorously historical study, no attempt is made to avoid theological issues in their historical context. Deification, it is argued, provides a new historical category of perception with which to deepen our knowledge of the Apostle's religious thought in its own time. This book is intended for an academic audience. The range of topics discussed here should interest a wide-array of scholars in the fields of Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Classics, and Patristics.

About the Contributor(s):M. David Litwa (PhD) is currently an instructor in Greek at the University of Virginia. He is author of We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul''s Soteriology (de Gruyter, 2012) and Iesus Deus: The Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Fortress, forthcoming).

What does it mean for Jesus to be deified in early Christian literature? Early Christians did not simply assert Jesus divinity; in their literature, they depicted Jesus with the specific and widely recognized traits of Mediterranean deities.Relying on the methods of the history of religions and ranging judiciously across Hellenistic literature, M. David Litwa shows that at each stage in their depiction of Jesus life and ministry, early Christian writings from the beginning relied on categories drawn not from Judaism alone, but on a wide, pan-Mediterranean understanding of deity.