This volume collects selected papers from the seventh annual conference of the Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society (APECSS), held in Seoul, Korea on 5–7th July 2012, on the theme "Preaching and Ministry in Early Christianity".

Ferdinand Christian Baur’s thought about religion focuses on the idea of Gnosis in close connection with the notion of history, but rather than favor a traditional approach, he prefers a different path: a “new” understanding of religion which draws quite heavily on Hegel’s philosophy, promoting the idea that history is the realm where God and man exist and work together.

The Bible revolves around people and their passions. Passionate love, passionate jealousy, faith, beauty, and betrayal. The characters portrayed there are as full of contemporary emotion and confusion, and equally as pertinent as any figure in Western tradition – historical, fictional, or mythic.

An analysis of the religious experiences of the Greco-Roman sophist, Aelius Aristides. As a member of the cult of Asclepius, Aristides recorded his nocturnal dreams, waking visions and spiritual healings in a diary entitled the Sacred Tales. A study of this diary sheds light on the spiritual environment of the Roman world in the first and second century CE.

The Bible is often used rhetorically as a polemical weapon to defend community consciousness and self-identity. Specialists from several different disciplines explore such rhetorical use of biblical narratives from the time of Second Temple Judaism through late antiquity, to sharpen or dull the crisis and conflict erupting between Christian and Jew, Greek, and other Christians.