How were ideas and experiences of transformation expressed in early Christianity and early Judaism? This volume explores the social and philosophical frameworks within which transformative ideas such as resurrection and practices of becoming "a new being" were shaped, and the analogies and parameters by which transformation was being noted and asserted. The focus on transformation helps connect topics that tend to be studied separately, such as cosmology, resurrection, aging, gender, and conversion. The textual material is wide-ranging and there are new readings of core passages
The resurrected body in Luke-Acts : the significance of space / Turid Karlsen Seim -- Ancient notions of transferal and apotheosis in relation to the empty tomb story in Mark / Adela Yarbro Collins -- "In your midst as a child" : "in the form of an old man" : images of aging and immortality in ancient Christianity / Karen L. King -- Genealogies of the self : materiality, personal identity, and the body in Paul's letters to the Corinthians / Jorunn Økland -- "With what kind of body will they come?" : metamorphosis and the concept of change : from Platonic thinking to Paul's notion of the resurrection of the dead / Vigdis Songe-Møller -- Complete and incomplete transformation in Paul : a philosophical reading of Paul on body and spirit / Troels Engberg-Pedersen -- "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" : the transformation of the flesh in the early Christian debates concerning resurrection / Outi Lehtipuu -- Valentinian ideas about salvation as transformation / Einar Thomassen -- "These are the symbols and likenesses of the resurrection" : conceptualizations of death and transformation in the Treatise on the resurrection (NHC I, 4) / Hugo Lundhaug -- Metamorphosis and mind : cognitive explorations of the grotesque in early Christian literature / István Czachesz -- Male women martyrs : the function of gender-transformation language in early Christian martyrdom accounts / Antti Marjanen -- Imagining human transformation in the context of invisible powers : instrumental agency in second-century treatments of conversion / Denise Kimber Buell -- "As already translated to the kingdom while still in the body" : the transformation of the ascetic in early Egyptian monasticism / Samuel Rubenson -- The angelic life / John J. Collins -- Recognizing the righteous remnant? : resurrection, recognition and eschatological reversals in 2 Baruch 47-52 / Liv Ingeborg Lied
