11th Annual Costan Lecture: Cilliers Breytenbach, “Morality Beyond Kinship"
Join us for the Costan Lecture in Early Christianity as Prof. Breytenbach explores "Morality Beyond Kinship." Reception to follow.
11th Annual Costan Lecture in Early Christianity: Cilliers Breytenbach, “Morality Beyond Kinship: The Emergence of Early Christianity”
Description: In Greco-Roman cities, allegiance and behavior were shaped by citizenship, tribal and family ties, gender, social status, patronage, and custom. For apostle Paul, the founder of many Christian assemblies, these boundaries lost their value (Phil. 3:7–8). In the centuries that followed, the transformation of allegiances within Christian communities increasingly extended familial moral obligations beyond kinship lines and contributed to the spread of Christianity.
Join us for the Costan Lecture in Early Christianity as Prof. Breytenbach explores "Morality Beyond Kinship." Reception to follow.
11th Annual Costan Lecture in Early Christianity: Cilliers Breytenbach, “Morality Beyond Kinship: The Emergence of Early Christianity”
Description: In Greco-Roman cities, allegiance and behavior were shaped by citizenship, tribal and family ties, gender, social status, patronage, and custom. For apostle Paul, the founder of many Christian assemblies, these boundaries lost their value (Phil. 3:7–8). In the centuries that followed, the transformation of allegiances within Christian communities increasingly extended familial moral obligations beyond kinship lines and contributed to the spread of Christianity.
Cilliers Breytenbach: University Professor for the New Testament emeritus, Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany); Director of the Institute of Christianity and Antiquity emeritus, Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany); Professor extraordinary of New Testament and Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
His research centers on regional Christianities in Late Antiquity.
A leading figure in international New Testament scholarship, Professor Breytenbach is President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, Executive Editor of Novum Testamentum, and past president of both the Colloquium Oecumenicum Paulinum and the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniensis. He has supervised nearly twenty doctoral dissertations, with many of his former students now holding professorships in Germany and South Africa.
He founded the epigraphic database Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae and the monograph series Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Early Christianity in Greece. His publications include Grace, Reconciliation, Concord: The Death of Christ in Graeco-Roman Metaphors (2010), Early Christianity in Lycaonia (with C. Zimmermann, 2017), The Gospel of Mark as Episodic Narrative (2021), and Early Christianity in Athens, Attica and Adjacent Areas(with E. Tzavella, 2023).
He is married to Dr. Annekie Joubert, a specialist in African oral literature and ethnographic research.