Bible in Christian North Africa [Paperback]

Maureen A. Tilley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Fortress Press (November 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800628802
• ISBN-13: 978-0800628802
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent work, October 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Bible in Christian North Africa (Paperback)

First, some disclosure - Tilley was the professor to introduce me to St. Augustine's work in a seminar at the University of Dayton, for which I am eternally grateful. So, naturally, I shall be a bit biased in her favor.

Having said that, this work is excellent on many levels. First, Tilley shows a exceptional knowledge of the Donatist heresy, both in terms of facts and also for the "feel" of Donatist piety. She presents very well the style of thinking and types of discourse that the Donatists used, and why it makes sense for them to have done so. Second, Tilley approaches the Donatists in an intellectually fair manner. On the one hand, she is not joining in the (oft-times polemical) attacks in the style of the orthodox writers, and on the other hand does not present the Donatist heresy as a group that can do no wrong (and thereby avoids the adulation given by some scholars to any movement with the word "heresy" attached to it). Third, by presenting the context (in history and culture) within which the Donatists existed, one comes away with a very helpful understanding of how Donatism fit into its time and place.

All in all, an excellent work. Anyone interested in St. Augustine, patristic-era church history, or heresy should have this book on his/her shelf.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Christian North Africa, Bible and Schism, August 15, 2010

By 

matt (the reading room) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bible in Christian North Africa (Paperback)

Not long ago I picked this book up super cheap at a remainder sale, intrigued by the title on the spine. When I got home, I was happily surprised that this was really a study on the Donatist controversy and how the respective North African parties used the Scriptures to buttress their positions and solidify their communities' worldviews. As an Eastern Orthodox, I have often looked at the Donatist schism as a prototype of the split between the Russian Patriarchal Church, which remained alive in Russia supposedly in part owing to its partial acquiescence to the Communist system (I say this in a very qualified sense), and the Russian Church in Exile (ROCOR), which saw the patriarchate as a sell out and thus not the true Church. Clearly, while it is not an exact parallel, there are Donatist echoes in that situation, which was recently resolved in a rapprochement.

The actual book is an excellent overview of the whole Christian North African situation from the time just before the persecutions up to the time of the Vandal invasions, showing the effects on sacramental theology, ecclesiology and, fundamentally, Scriptural interpretation in the respective parties (Catholic/ Donatist). Tilley's work is more nuanced than that of Frend, Eno or Monceaux in that she is more critical of Augustine's and Optatus' portrayals and more interactive with the actual exegesis (Scriptural interpretation) of the Donatists and Catholics. This approach shows that the actual situation was not simply one of the pure church (Donatist) vs the corrupt church based only upon the legacy of the martyrs and traitors.

While I am not wholly convinced that this distinction between pure and impure is not still fundamentally the main issue, Tilley does demonstrate that the motivations for remaining separate are rooted in two views of what the Church is, based upon an evolving Donatist exegesis. This evolution is as follows: Seeing themselves as finding hope in the future, then seeing past saints (Moses/Paul) as models for coping in times of persecution because they would not assimilate to the greater culture, seeing themselves as Israel (collecta) following the strict Law of God, and finally seeing the following of the Law regarding remaining separate to be the essence of what it means to be Church.

This shows that while purity was the main issue, it was a purity based upon shifting exegesis. The only sins that really cannot be swept under the rug of the Donatist Church are ecclesiological sins, the very sins they accuse the Catholic Church of being guilty of (112). That is the value I draw from her work.

Although she doesn't go into detail about this, one reason why Islam was able to sweep through North Africa was owing to the weakened Church and Imperial allegiance as a result of this controversy. Shame.

Lastly, I appreciate the she doesn't have to claim that everything the (proto?)Catholics did was manipulative and that the so-called heretics were only that in name, and that they were the persecuted underdogs who were just misunderstood because they lacked imperial backing. That theme is way over played (Jesus Seminar, Ehrman and company).

Other works of interest may include: The End of Ancient Christianity, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford Scholarly Classics)Saint Augustine and the Donatist Controversy, part two of The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus (Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts), Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine and The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600).

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Careful recovery of a lost early Christianity, December 24, 2000

By 

"annblessing" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bible in Christian North Africa (Paperback)

I was impressed by Tilley's careful recovery of the tenets of Donatism from the polemics of its adversaries (including great Augustine). Donatism was a fourth century church which developed in Roman North Africa around Carthage in the aftermath of the Diocletian persecutions, watered by the blood of confessors of the faith, embarrassingly simultaneous with Constantine's legitimizing the more accommodating Latin church developing in the eastern Imperium. Carefully, by analyzing the polemics which contain the remnants of Donatist thought, Tilley reveals a strong Church which had not taken the establishment turn of the "Latin" church, and indeed stood against it even through the Vandal invasions, until it disappeared with the coming of Islam.