1, ISBN: 9781619821156

Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian (284305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distingu… Más…

Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian (284305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria (El Kef, Tunisia), a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream. Arnobius writes dismissively of dreams in his surviving book, so perhaps Jerome was projecting his own respect for the content of dreams. According to Jer Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian (284305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria (El Kef, Tunisia), a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream. Arnobius writes dismissively of dreams in his surviving book, so perhaps Jerome was projecting his own respect for the content of dreams. According to Jerome, to overcome the doubts of the local bishop as to the earnestness of his Christian belief he wrote (ca 303, from evidence in IV:36) an apologetic work in seven books that St. Jerome calls Adversus Gentes but which is entitled Adversus Nationes in the only (9th-century) manuscript that has survived. Jerome's reference, his remark that Lactantius was a pupil of Arnobius and the surviving treatise are all that we know about Arnobius. Adversus Nationes survived in a single ninth-century manuscript in Paris (and a bad copy of it in Brussels). The book we have shows little sign of having been revised by a Christian bishop and is all the better for giving an unvarnished view of the opinions of an enthusiastic recent convert. Arnobius, "a practitioner of the coarse and turgid style that is called African", is a vigorous apologist for the Christian faith, more earnest in his defence of Christianity than perfectly orthodox in his tenets. His book has been occasioned by complaints that the Christians had brought the wrath of the gods on Ancient Rome. Thus, he holds the heathen gods to be real beings, but subordinate to the supreme Christian God; in a streak of Gnosticism, he affirms that the human soul (Book II, 14 - 62) is not the work of God, but of an intermediate being, and is not immortal by nature, but capable of putting on immortality as a grace. Never specifically identifying his pagan adversaries, some of whom may be straw men, set up to be demolished, Arnobius defends and Church History, Church, Adversus Nationes~~ Arnobius~~Church History~~Church~~9781619821156, EN, Adversus Nationes, Arnobius, 9781619821156, Charles River Editors, 01/17/2012, , , , Charles River Editors, 01/17/2012<

2001, ISBN: 9781619821156

Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian (284305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distingu… Más…

Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian (284305). According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria (El Kef, Tunisia), Church History, Church, Adversus Nationes~~ Arnobius~~Church History~~Church~~9781619821156, EN, Adversus Nationes, Arnobius, 9781619821156, Charles River Editors, 01/17/2012, , , , Charles River Editors, 01/17/2012<