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This article examines the historical transformation of Asmodeus across Iranian, Jewish, Christian, and early modern European religious literature. Beginning with the possible relationship between the Zoroastrian figure Aēšma and the demon Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit, it traces the development of the…
The Gospel of Thomas is frequently described in popular culture as a suppressed secret gospel that preserves an alternative Christianity based on hidden knowledge. This article argues that such descriptions flatten a far more complicated text and scholarly debate. Thomas is a collection…
Exorcism was one of the practices through which early Christians publicly distinguished their religious claims from surrounding ritual cultures. This article surveys Christian exorcistic discourse before Constantine, concentrating on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. It argues that exorcism functioned simultaneously as pastoral…
Melchizedek appears only briefly in Genesis, yet later Jewish and Christian texts turned this enigmatic priest-king into a major theological figure. This article traces the movement from Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 to the Qumran text 11QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews.…
This article examines the Enochic Watchers tradition as one of the most influential ancient explanations of the origin of demons and the spread of corruption before the flood. Beginning with Genesis 6:1-4 and the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36, it…
This article asks when Christian theology can properly be said to have begun. Rather than locating its origins primarily in the second-century Apologists, the major patristic theologians, or the conciliar period, it argues that theological reasoning was already present within the earliest Christian…
This article re-examines Abrasax (later commonly Abraxas) by separating four historical layers frequently collapsed in modern accounts: Basilidean traditions reported by early Christian heresiologists; late antique magical gems and amulets; appearances of Abrasax in Nag Hammadi literature; and Carl Gustav Jung's twentieth-century reappropriation…
Valentinian Christianity remains one of the most sophisticated and contested forms of second-century Christian thought. Its cosmological language - Pleroma, aeons, Sophia, Demiurge, spiritual seed, and bridal chamber - has often been compressed into a simple story of a fallen Wisdom and an…
This article examines the submerged early Christian basilica in Lake İznik (ancient Nicaea) and the newly reported archaeological evidence for an earlier church phase beneath the later structure. It evaluates the possibility that this earlier sacred building was connected with the First Council…
When Georgian-speaking Christians began translating Scripture, liturgy, and patristic writing, they inherited no single Greek word that could simply be carried across as “holiness.” Greek Christian texts drew upon a crowded semantic field: hagios named what belonged to God and, substantivally, the saints;…
This article examines a problem that sits between neuroscience and Christian resurrection theology: what happens to personal identity when memory is damaged, fragmented, or lost? Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, severe amnesia, and traumatic memory make the question difficult because autobiographical memory is closely tied…
Traditional systematic theology has often treated animals as secondary to humanity, mentioning them within creation and providence while rarely developing their theological and eschatological significance. This article addresses that gap through Romans 8:19–22 and related biblical texts. The article argues that non-human creation…