Religious structures convergent on Judaism and Christianity in the first century

• Grant number: 98/13311-2
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Start date: March 01, 1999
• End date: February 28, 2003
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Theology - History of Theology
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Augusto de Souza Nogueira
• Grantee: Paulo Augusto de Souza Nogueira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Religião. Universidade Metodista de São Paulo (UMESP). Instituto Metodista de Ensino Superior (IMS). São Bernardo do Campo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Historic-exegetical research presupposes that Early Christianity was already separated institutionally from the Jewish synagogue, and became an autonomous group in the last decades of the first century C.E. The question still remains as to whether there are symbolic and religious exchanges and mutual influence between Jews and Christians in the context of apocalyptic literary production Apocalyptic religious literature was chosen as the object of this research due to the thesis that it constitutes a type of basic religious structure that "supplied" the language, symbols and conception of eschatological expectations that allowed for the rise and development of Early Christianity. The project proposes to work with religious structures of the literature of Early Christianity and intertestament Judaism, and more specifically with apocalyptic texts. In terms of structures, semantic, formal and also symbolic outlines (schemes) will be considered. The procedure will be comparative, which means that referral texts will be chosen for each structure, whenever possible, as they relate to different Christian and Jewish literary bodies such as the New Testament, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi Library. Common structures among the Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic will be researched via the following axes: messianic-eschatological structures, mythic-dualistic forms of world view and magical practices. (AU)