The book of Micah is both a complicated work and literarily cluttered. While the book is set in Judah during the mid-to-late eighth century BCE, much of it was composed in the exilic and postexilic periods. Any eighth-century components have been heavily redacted. For present purposes, however, the turbulent period in which Micah’s authors set their work is more important than time(s) of actual authorship. The book’s eighth-century Judean setting gives clues as to its authors’ intents as well as signaling the book’s relevance to a variety of audiences. Eighth-century Judah’s contexts of suffering conquest and subjugation – with the political, economic, and religious changes that follow – resonate with marginalized peoples across time. Furthermore, Micah’s laments, accusations, legal sentencings, and promises of hope reflect a biblical-economic ethos that recurs throughout the First Testament: the ethos of the community responsibility for the well-being of individuals. Despite its unpolished form, therefore, Micah is rich in ethical landscapes through which to explore poverty and other social justice issues, both ancient and modern.

According to a number of recent interpreters, Deuteronomy represents a humanistic vision, establishing the protection of the economically and socially marginalized as a center of Israel’s covenant. The people of Israel have a responsibility to care for the poor, widows and orphans, slaves, and foreigners who are resident in Israelite communities because of both Israel’s own story (they were foreign slaves in the land of Egypt) and the character of God (who enacts justice for widows and orphans and loves foreigners). In sharp contrast to this vision, one group does not receive protection: those who worship the gods of the nations. These people are killed without mercy – even if they are Israelite. In perhaps the most horrifying example, if a person’s sibling, child, spouse, or dear friend invites the person to worship the gods of the nations, the response must be immediate and absolute. Without pausing for an investigation or public trial, the person must initiate the execution of the offender by stoning: “your own hand shall be first against them to execute them” (13:6–11).

Few Americans are aware that someone convicted of a crime in the United States emerges from the courtroom condemned to a lifetime of discrimination. Individuals with a criminal record are required to declare their conviction to prospective employers, who are overwhelmingly averse to hiring them, and to prospective landlords, who are averse to housing them. They are prohibited from practicing a wide range of professions, many of which bear no relation whatsoever to the crime they may have committed. They are barred from public housing and limited in their recourse to food stamps and other forms of government assistance, if not outright prohibited from it. These and other forms of systemic, legalized discrimination against individuals with criminal records means that the end of a prison sentence marks not the end of punishment, but only a transition to its next stage.

On any reading of 2 Samuel 9–20, Joab’s ruse with the Tekoite woman in 14:2–21 is a pivotal scene. It portrays the moral reasoning which David adopted in order to allow Absalom to return to Jerusalem from exile in Geshur and a new development in the ethics of David’s administration. The formal character of the king’s decision as an official royal pronouncement sets it apart and makes it especially significant. Within the narrative, the account marks a turning point from which ethical thinking in David’s court never seems to recover. The characters construct a theological ethic that places a premium on the communal “togetherness” of God’s people, and the crown accepts it as justification for overlooking the bloodguilt of one of its most marginalized members. The half-life of this ethic in the ensuing narrative wreaks havoc on the kingdom, through two of its most maniacally vulnerable agents. Once bloodguilt can be overlooked for the sake of togetherness, little remains to prevent members of the community from sanctioning the bloodshed of any member perceived to threaten that togetherness. The troubles that follow after Absalom’s return are not simply due to the mere fact that a maniacal member of God’s estate was returned to run amok. Rather, they arise from the problematic ethic employed to justify his restoration. The king’s response further exacerbates the situation. Contextualization within outworking of divine judgment on the king for his own acts of oppression adds another element to the narrative’s portrayal of causality, part of 2 Sam 8:15–20:26’s critical dramatization of David’s efforts to establish “justice and righteousness for all of his people.”

Moral discussions of the so-called psalms of imprecation tend to focus on the author as the mind behind their most violent imagery, with the retributions they invoke assumed to be a product of imaginative fantasy. Debates pivot on whether this fantasy is born from justified or unjustified anger. The following discussion breaks from these assumptions altogether, arguing not only that moral reasoning underlies the so-called psalms of imprecation, but that this reasoning is deeply informed by specific patterns of act and consequence attested across ancient Near Eastern legal cultures. These patterns include talion, shame, and seat of the act. The psalter’s presentation of acts and their consequences draws on the features and logic of these patterns as they seek to compel YHWH to fulfil the retributive norms that the authors observe and therefore expect as a response to particular kinds of crime.

Thus speaks Moses at the culmination of Thomas Mann’s The Tables of the Law, written in 1943. Mann’s use of the Ten Commandments in his “antifascist manifesto” is a token of the Decalogue’s symbolic role in discourses on ethical foundations in cultures that have been influenced by Judaism and Christianity. While the quest for the origin and redactional development of the Decalogue’s two versions in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 has been the focus of much exegetical work, these genetic questions are of limited relevance for understanding the Ten Commandments’ ethical significance. I shall, therefore, concentrate here on some fundamental literary features of this text in its canonical contexts and its vast history of reception. Against this background, I shall consider the Decalogue as an icon of ethical discourse, which poses significant questions for contemporary ethical reflection.

Apart from the very important profession of faith, the Council of Nicaea also promulgated twenty canons, most of which do not receive the same attention in research as the Nicene Creed, although these were already highly esteemed in ancient times. First of all, this chapter provides a brief review of their textual transmission. Besides the original Greek text, which has been handed down in canonical collections and writings of ecclesiastical writers, there are some translations into other ancient languages (Latin, Syriac, Coptic). Then after dividing the twenty canons into various thematic groups (for example, laws pertaining to the clergy, sacraments, ecclesiastical jurisdiction), the second part explains each canon with the aid of previous research literature and interpretations in order to provide a short overview of their purpose and content. The third part deals with the reception of the canons in the early Church by councils, bishops, and ecclesiastical writers, and asks what importance was attributed to the Nicene canons in various canonical sources. Finally, some desiderata for future research are discussed.

Constantine's role in calling the Council of Nicaea has long been recognized. But theological interests have overshadowed the political side of his decision-making. In the nineteenth century scholars coined the word “Caesaropapism” for imperial interference that they saw as a threat to the purity of the Church. But the ancient state operated on a different set of principles, and a political approach fills in important blanks in our understanding of the council. By the time Constantine took control of the eastern empire he had learned that the best way to deal with conflict in the Church was to assemble the largest number of bishops possible and have them settle the problem. This is the thinking behind his decision to ask all the bishops in the empire to settle the Arian question. This is why Nicaea became known as the first ecumenical (“world-wide”) council, though in reality almost all of the bishops present came from the East. Publicly, Constantine treated the bishops at Nicaea with respect and humility, but behind the scenes he worked to bring the opposing parties into agreement. The result was the Nicene Creed, still recited (in slightly different form) by Christians today.

A key figure in the Arian dispute leading up to and following the Council of Nicaea, Eusebius of Caesarea (bishop c. 313-39) was not only implicated as a central player in the broader theological developments of the early fourth century but was also one of the most significant formulators of ancient literary representations of the council itself. His writings contain an eye-witness account of the council; a broader narrative of Constantine’s interactions with Christian bishops; letters of Constantine addressing issues of theological or practical debate; his own letters to his home congregation at Caesarea and to other bishops involved in the controversy; and his theological polemic against Marcellus of Ancyra, the promoter of a more radical anti-Arian position. These texts simultaneously assist and complicate modern attempts to construct the precise nature and dynamics of the controversy, the council, and its aftermath. They also provide a fascinating angle by which to discern important features of Eusebius’s fertile authorial work: he stands as a careful and creative formulator of a powerful historiographic, theological, and political vision that would make a signal impact upon later competing accounts of the Council of Nicaea.

The introduction to this volume begins with a reflection on the impact of Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, especially for its presentation of the Council of Nicaea as a conspiratorial moment in the history of Christianity. It then offers a sweeping examination of how various contemporary Christian traditions and denominations have received the Council of Nicaea and its creed and how they understand historical figures such as Arius and Constantine. As we near the 1,700-year anniversary of the first “ecumenical” council, the chapters in this volume will revisit old debates and discussions, ask new questions, and offer different perspectives on the people, context, and consequences related to the Council of Nicaea.

The bitter division in Alexandria that led to the Council of Nicaea began as a theological dispute between Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, and a significant number of his clergy, including a presbyter Arius, and quickly overflowed into a feud among eastern bishops. “Arianism” was assumed by scholars and theologians to be a coherent set of heretical teachings embraced by a succession of followers. Historians have now identified sets of alliances rather than genealogies as well as the polemical construction of “Arianism” by Athanasius and Marcellus. This separation of Arius from later “Arianism,” together with the continuing lack of consensus with regard to theological or philosophical genealogies as the source of his thought, encourages another look at the particular social and religious context of the initial local controversy. The central issues of monotheism, apophatic theology, incarnation, and changeability in fact map over traditional Christian apologetic theology and the literary and ecclesiastical legacies of the Great Persecution. Arius’s insistence on divine monotheism and transcendence together with his defense of a “living image” may echo the contemporary arguments with Celsus and Porphyry in Eusebius and Athanasius as well as a refutation of polytheism.