Educating Early Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell: 'weeping and Gnashing of Teeth' as Paideia in Matthew and the Early Church (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe)

In this book, Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell. Building upon classical rhetorical techniques and the descriptions of Hades in Greek and Roman literature, she contends that the ancient Christian concept of hell was developed as a part of a distinctively Christian paideia. She traces the history of this interpretive process, illustrating the ways in which early Christians drew upon the Greek and Roman system of ethical and cultural education, to create and maintain their own culture. By doing this the author demonstrates that Matthew's gospel is the nexus in which early Christian ideas about eternal punishment begin to crystallize, and becomes the focal point for later apocalyptic and patristic authors who interpret and reshape Matthew's weeping and gnashing of teeth in a variety of pedagogical contexts. The history of hellish rhetoric Death, judgment, and the abode of the dead as malleable rhetorical tools in the Hebrew Bible Learning from the dead : Hades as an expression of paideia in Greek and Latin literature Periēgēsis? : the journey through the places of the dead in Jewish apocalyptic literature A choice between two ways : the rhetoric of eternal punishment in the New Testament The pedagogical role of eschatological judgment, eternal punishment, and the afterlife in Matthew The pedagogical function of hell in the early Christian apocalypses and the early church Conclusion : the landscape of hell and the cultivation of early Christianity. Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors. (from the back cover)