Death in Second-Century Christian Thought : The Meaning of Death in Earliest Christianity

A carefully researched analysis of how the early church developed a distinctively Christian understanding of death, synthesising pagan and scriptural ideas. Death in Second-Century Christian Thought' explores how the meaning of death was conceptualised in this crucial period of the history of the church. Through an exploration of key metaphors and other figures of speech that the early church used to talk about this fascinating and controversial topic, Jeremiah Mutie argues that the church fathers selected, adapted and exploited existing pagan ideas about the subject of death in order to offer a distinctively Christian view based on Biblical texts. The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus were critical to this development, as was the Christian promise of eternal life. In this erudite book, Mutie shows how Christians engaged with the views of death in late antiquity, coming up with their own characteristic belief in life after death.