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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
A ground-breaking introductory textbook for the study of the New Testament and the first Christians, written for the next generation of students Comparing Christianities: An Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians maps the historical rise of Christianity out of a network of early Christian movements. This major new textbook systematically explores the struggles to define the faith by presenting Christianity as the result of a lengthy process of religious consolidation which emerged from a landscape of persistent Christian diversity. The book delves into the history of the first five generations of Christians, from Paul to Origen. The first chapter considers the challenges of constructing Christian histories and offers a new model of Christian families to organize and explain the emergence and competition of different varieties of Christianity. Each successive chapter focuses on key issues that Christian leaders engaged over the centuries, demonstrating how the questions they posed and the answers they provided gave Christianity its distinct shape. As the movements competed for social advantage, Christians began identifying certain Christian movements as enemies and consolidated against them. The final chapter schematizes the Christians studied in the book into three families of Christian movements based on the particular God they worshipped and other shared patterns of thought and practice. This chapter also explains where the varieties of Christianities came from and how the process of consolidation undertaken by some churches shaped Christian identity within a forge of intolerance that still affects us today. Comparing Christianities explores the answers to questions: * Who were the early Christians and what did they write? * What did Christians think about sex, women, immortality, Judaism, suffering and death? * What rituals did the first Christians practice, and what did their religious experiences mean to them? * How did Christians live in a Roman-dominated world? * How did the first Christians explain the origins of their movement? Comparing Christianities: An Introduction to the New Testament and the First Christians serves as an excellent primary textbook in undergraduate classrooms for Introduction to Christianity, Introduction to Religion, New Testament Studies, Christian Origins, World Religions, and Western World Religions, and a thought-provoking resource for anyone wishing to know more about Christianity.
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Comparing Christianities
An Introduction to Early Christianity
APRIL D. DECONICK
Rice UniversityTexas, USA
This edition first published 2024
© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: De Conick, April D., author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.
Title: Comparing Christianities : An Introduction to Early Christianity / April D. DeConick.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley-Blackwell, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023021437 (print) | LCCN 2023021438 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119086031 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119086062 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119086055 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Church history--Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. | Christianity and culture--History--Early church, ca. 30-600.
Classification: LCC BR162.3 .D429 2023 (print) | LCC BR162.3 (ebook) | DDC 270.1--dc23/eng/20230601
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021437
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021438
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Courtesy of April D. DeConick
Set in 9.5/12pt STIXTwoText by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
This book is dedicated to all yet-to-come students, wherever this textbook is read.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Sectarian Jews
2 A New Religion
3 Early Gnostic Churches
4 The Church of the Martyrs
5 Early Christian Philosophical Movements
6 The Universal Church
7 Holiness Movements in Asia and Syria
8 The Expansion of Gnostic Churches
9 The Construction of Orthodoxy
10 Church Reform
11 The Mystical Church
12 A Family History
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
CHAPTER 12
TABLE 12.1 Christian Families Organized...
TABLE 12.2 First-Known Locations of Major...
TABLE 12.3 Regional Locations of First...
List of Illustrations
CHAPTER 01
FIGURE 1.1 Examples of second- and third-century...
FIGURE 1.2 Books of the New Testament first...
FIGURE 1.3 Timeline mapping first two...
FIGURE 1.4 Map of the world that Paul...
FIGURE 1.5 Classifications “Apostolic...
FIGURE 1.6 Nicene Creed (325 CE).
FIGURE 1.7 Contents of Christian books found...
FIGURE 1.8 The difference between multivocality...
FIGURE 1.9 Table laying out possible...
FIGURE 1.10 Example of GAME grouping based...
FIGURE 1.11 Diagram illustrating how new...
FIGURE 1.12 Early Christian theological...
FIGURE 1.13 Patterns of Demiurgy.
FIGURE 1.14 Patterns of Theodicy: Who is...
FIGURE 1.15 Patterns of Soteriology: Who...
FIGURE 1.16 Early Christology patterns.
FIGURE 1.17 Migration of Judean Christian...
CHAPTER 02
FIGURE 2.1 Marcion’s sea journey...
FIGURE 2.2 Timeline mapping first three...
FIGURE 2.3 Marcion’s theology and...
FIGURE 2.4 Marcion’s understanding...
FIGURE 2.5 Timeline for Marcion.
FIGURE 2.6 Summary of Marcion’s patterns.
CHAPTER 03
FIGURE 3.12 Summary of Valentinus’ and the...
CHAPTER 04
FIGURE 4.1 Illustration showing how...
FIGURE 4.2 Hermas coordinated his program of...
FIGURE 4.3 Locations of the Asian and Hellenic...
FIGURE 4.4 Timeline for Hermas, Ignatius, and...
FIGURE 4.5 Summary of Hermas’...
CHAPTER 05
FIGURE 5.1 Basilides and Isidore were...
FIGURE 5.2 Comparable table of the primal...
FIGURE 5.3 Basilides’ world structure...
FIGURE 5.4 Separation and ascension of the four...
FIGURE 5.5 Illustration of the aspects...
FIGURE 5.6 How Basilides believed the revelation...
FIGURE 5.7 Illustration showing how Platonists...
FIGURE 5.8 Timeline for Basilides/Isidore...
FIGURE 5.9 Summary of patterns...
CHAPTER 06
FIGURE 6.1 The revelation of Elchasai...
FIGURE 6.2 Illustration mapping...
FIGURE 6.3 Illustration of the Simonian...
FIGURE 6.4 Timeline for Justin Martyr and Tatian.
FIGURE 6.5 Summary of patterns of Justin...
CHAPTER 07
FIGURE 7.1 Map showing the locations...
FIGURE 7.2 Montanists understood...
FIGURE 7.3 Illustration of Pentecostal...
FIGURE 7.4 Illustration of the brain...
FIGURE 7.5 Timeline for the first Montanists.
FIGURE 7.6 Summary of the Trio’s patterns.
CHAPTER 08
FIGURE 8.1 Illustration of the path...
FIGURE 8.2 Illustration of the path...
FIGURE 8.3 Timeline for the expansion...
FIGURE 8.4 Summary of the patterns...
CHAPTER 09
FIGURE 9.1 Map situating Gallic Christianity...
FIGURE 9.2 Timeline for early Apostolic Catholics.
FIGURE 9.3 Summary of the Moderate...
CHAPTER 10
FIGURE 10.1 Left: Theodotus’ Christological...
FIGURE 10.2 Cerinthus’ Christological solution.
FIGURE 10.3 Paul of Samosata’s Christological...
FIGURE 10.4 Modalist Christological solution.
FIGURE 10.5 Tertullian’s Trinity.
FIGURE 10.6 Tertullian’s Christological solution.
FIGURE 10.7 Sabellius’ solution to the Trinity.
FIGURE 10.8 Timeline for fifth-generation...
FIGURE 10.9 Summary of the western Apostolic...
CHAPTER 11
FIGURE 11.1 Illustration of how Clement envisioned the...
FIGURE 11.2 Illustration of how Origen explained...
FIGURE 11.3 Comparison of Valentinian and...
FIGURE 11.4 Illustration of the union of the...
FIGURE 11.5 Comparison of theology in Plato, Platonized...
FIGURE 11.6 Timeline for Clement, Origen, and...
FIGURE 11.7 Summary of Clement and Origen’s...
CHAPTER 12
FIGURE 12.1 Map showing the location...
FIGURE 12.2 Illustration of how the Marcionite...
FIGURE 12.3 Illustration of the relationship...
FIGURE 12.4 Illustration of the network of...
FIGURE 12.5 Illustration of the consolidation...
FIGURE 12.6 Illustration of the Family Network...
FIGURE 12.7 Composite timeline of the major...
FIGURE 12.8 Composite chart illustrating...
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Begin Reading
Glossary of Terms
Index
End User License Agreement
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Preface
Can a textbook be the culmination and pinnacle of a life’s work? We often think of textbooks as summaries of a field of study, rehearsals of old material that expose students to the history of research, not as reconfigurations that challenge the way we have been doing things. But that is what this textbook is. It comes out of my own thirty-year career of teaching, studying, and writing as a woman concerned with the way that narratives about our past – religious or otherwise – are often constructed to keep certain people in power, to authenticate and legitimize their dominance, and to justify the marginalization of people who differ from them.
When I first started to teach Biblical Studies, I was young and did not understand this yet. If someone had told me this when I was in my twenties, I probably would have resisted this idea. I had not yet experienced being a woman professor peering through the glass ceiling. I had not yet experienced working in a field almost completely dominated by male voices, colleagues, and publications. Hence, when I started on my career path, I ran fairly typical courses in the New Testament, Jesus and the Gospels, and the History and Literature of Early Christianity from Paul to Augustine. I used the standard textbooks written by my male peers and supplemented with other readings to fill in the gaps.
But as the years passed and I became more exposed to the expansive literature that the early Christians left behind, I began to question why the field of Biblical Studies organizes itself into Old and New Testaments (or the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament) and quarantines this “authentic” and “historical” literature from the rest of the writings produced by early Christians. I became less and less certain about the way that scholars argued and maintained this quarantine by dating the composition of the New Testament literature to the first century and all other literature (with the exception of perhaps the Didache) to the second century.
It was not long before I began to realize that, for much of the New Testament, this early dating is a fantasy and a fallacy. As I studied various scholarly treatments of individual texts, I came to terms with the fact that the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), the Catholic letters (James, 1 and 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude), Hebrews, and even Luke-Acts are most certainly second-century texts (ca. 130–150 CE). Then there is the matter of Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, all Christians active in the same decades (130–150 CE), sometimes in the same locations (Rome, Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Antioch). Suddenly my picture of the New Testament was not so simple. I saw entanglement, not quarantine.
As I continued to teach the New Testament, I kept asking myself, “Whose literature was this?” And as I studied and reflected, it became clear to me that the New Testament was not just assembled, but the texts themselves were either written or rewritten by early Catholics to authorize themselves as the real Christians and their memories of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity as the true story.
As I read and reflected on the scholarship that was produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I began to wonder about the way that the New Testament and early Christianity had been carved up and leveraged to “recover” a story about a “pure” form of Christianity taught by (the historical) Jesus. How much of this standard “historical” script had actually emerged out of German theological schools to authorize their own Protestant theology and traditions? Was I effectively teaching as “history” early Catholic history and interpretation as German theologians had reconfigured it? We can certainly do better than that, I thought.
The result of my years of teaching, study, and reflection is this textbook, which is a fresh history of early Christians, the pluralistic movements that they developed, and the entangled literature they produced. This textbook is not dedicated to “lost” or “found” Christianities, as if these forms of Christianities were somehow separate from the development of early Catholicism. This textbook does not separate New Testament literature from other early Christian literature, nor does it privilege the early Catholics over other Christians. Instead, this textbook is organized into chapters devoted to regional Christian movements as they emerged and interacted during the first five generations of Christians. I have identified these generations as 40-year periods. The beauty of this organization is that it allows for comparative work to happen as we identify the major issues that challenged each generation of Christians and come to understand their solutions.
First generation: 30–70 CE
Second generation: 70–110 CE
Third generation: 110–150 CE
Fourth generation: 150–190 CE
Fifth generation: 190–230 CE
On the first page of each chapter, I have identified the Christians and the literature that is covered in the chapter under the headings KEY PLAYERS and KEY TEXTS, respectively. Each chapter is further divided into sections which identify specific COMPANION READINGS that go along with the narrative in each section. These companion readings are easily accessible online at websites that specialize in biblical texts, patristic literature, and Nag Hammadi sources. Each chapter includes a timeline for the Christians covered in that chapter, as well as a table identifying their patterns of thought, practices, and ecclesiology. Included as well are the main TAKEAWAYS and QUESTIONS that can launch student discussions and be used as study guides. All illustrations are my own unless otherwise indicated. I designed the textbook to be delivered in a typical university semester and run it myself over the course of 14 instructional weeks.
This textbook has not been written before. It is the first attempt to write a comprehensive history of the first Christians as a pluralistic movement. Writing this textbook has been a journey of reflection and discovery for me. It has opened up new vistas that I am excited to share with students everywhere with the hope that, as we come to understand Christian pluralism and the consequences of the construction of orthodoxy in the past, we can challenge ourselves to examine not only Christian pluralism today, but religious pluralism more broadly; that when faced with claims of religious exclusivism and intolerance, we can learn to ask, “Who benefits from this?” and “Whose story is it anyway?”
April D. DeConickFeast Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle
July 3, 2022
Acknowledgments
While I want to thank many people who have been instrumental in the creation of this textbook, I want to start with the acknowledgment we usually save for last. That is my husband, Wade Greiner. This book could not have been written without your constant support and encouragement – but, even more importantly, it is better because of our endless conversations about the topics. Not only did you allow me to talk on and on about these subjects, but you asked me all the right questions, questions that many times sent me back to the drawing board, to rethink or reconceive. When I was young, before we met, I did not even dream that I would be lucky enough to marry someone who would be so sincerely interested and proud of my work, let alone someone who would challenge me to take it further. Thank you.
This textbook is about students. I wrote it for you, and I wrote it because of you. Over 30 years, I have had hundreds of students, and I am unable to name all of you. You were all important to me, pushing me to be a better teacher and to tell an honest story. And I am proud of you all. To my undergraduates from Illinois Wesleyan University (when there was still a Religion Department there), but especially: Christine Luckritz Marquis, Jaeda Calaway, Sharon Stowe Cook, Kwang Oh, Katie Stump Holt, Jenny LaBrenz, Nicole Jo Wiedman, John Betz, Joshua Evans, Laura Arnold, and Mark Lamie. To my undergraduate students at Rice University, but especially: Jake Schornick, Julia Nations, Katelyn Willis, Brett Snider, Courtney Applewhite, Kai Cowen, Suzanne Harms, Van Heitmann, Domonique Richardson, Alexa Scott, Artie Throop, Lila Frenkel, Caleb Fikes, Eli Gennis, Malcolm Lovejoy, Joshua Murphree, and Emily Quinn. To my graduate students from Rice University, but especially: Grant Adamson, Franklin Trammell, Matthew Dillon, Andriana Umana, Michael Domeracki, C.J. Schmidt, Minji Lee, Rebecca Harris, Erin Prophet, Cindy Dawson, Naamleela Free Jones, Oihane Iglesias Telleria, Zachary Schwartz, Angela Stieber, Jacob Melancon, Rochelle Willingham, Abby Crowe-Tipton, and J.D. Reiner. Thank you.
Thank you to those who read parts of my manuscript and gave me honest feedback, but especially: David Terrell, Vernon Robbins, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Dylan Burns, Jeffrey Kripal, and Susanne Scholtz.
Thank you to the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance at Rice University and the Humanities Research Center at Rice University for providing me with grants to support the writing of this textbook.
Thank you to all of you who published scholarship that challenged me to reconsider my positions and discover new vistas, especially: Jason DeBuhn, Matthias Klinghardt, Douglas Campbell, Peter Lampe, Joseph Tyson, Markus Vinzent, Timothy Barnes, Denise Kimber Buell, Susanne Scholtz, Terence Donaldson, Dylan Burns, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Vernon Robbins, Christine Trevett, William Tabbernee, Richard Pervo, Benjamin White, Michael Winkelman, Andrew Newberg, Mark Turner, and David Eagleman.
Thank you to my literary agent, Anne Borchardt, as well as to Rebecca Harkin, the acquisitions editor at Wiley-Blackwell who originally helped me conceive this project and supported me when the project took a different shape in the first few years of writing. Also my thanks to the editorial team who took great care in the final production. This book took me several years longer to complete than we had originally planned. I am most grateful for your kindness and patience as I worked and reworked the book. It took years of writing before I figured out that I could not begin to tell the Christian story from the beginning, but had to start telling the story from the middle.
CHAPTER 1 Sectarian Jews
Paul conversing with Thecla, ivory panel from casket, Rome, late fourth century, British Museum. Artist Matteo di Giovanni. Source: Heritage Images / Getty Images.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1.1 Orientation to the Past
1.2 The Christian Standard Versions
1.3 Trajectories Through Early Christianity
1.4 Family Networks of Christian Movements
1.5 Rethinking How We Talk About Religious Movements
1.6 All that Jazz
“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcision on the eighth day, a member of the People of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the Law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”
Paul of Tarsus wrote this in his letter to the church in Philippi
KEY PLAYERS
Paul of Tarsus
KEY TEXTS
Letters of Paul
So you want to learn about the first Christians? Get back to the roots? Discover what really went on back in the time of Jesus and his first followers? Or perhaps you have questions about how early Christianity formed. Where did it start? Who was in charge? Why did the Catholics emerge as champions at the first church Council of Nicaea (325 CE)? Is their story the whole story? Or maybe you have heard that there are other gospels than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John found in the Bible. You wonder about who wrote these gospels and what they have to say about Jesus and the early Christians. Why isn’t the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary found in the New Testament? Or possibly you have heard that early Christianity was controversial and contentious, with some Christians and their churches identified as heresies or illegitimate forms of Christianity, while others with orthodoxy or legitimate Christianity. Who made this call? And why was it made? How did this controversy between orthodoxy and heresy relate to the rise of religious intolerance and the formation of Christianity? What does all this mean for Christianity as we know it today and its future?
These, in fact, are the very questions that are foundational to this textbook. They are questions that have compelled me, first as a student and then as a professor and scholar of early Christianity. The questions started when I was nineteen, when my mother came across a book that captured her eye in our local bookstore. After she read it, she passed it on to me. The book was a small, edited volume of early Christian gospels containing the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Peter, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Before I opened that book, I never knew that the early Christians wrote more literature than what we find in the New Testament. As I read those early Christian writings, I was riveted. I could not put the old gospels down and wanted to know more about them. But in 1982, there was very little published on these texts that was available to the public. It became clear to me that if I wanted to figure out why these texts were not in the New Testament, I was on my own.
At the end of my first semester in college, I left nursing school to explore the Humanities. As a Junior, I decided to major in Biblical Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. I enrolled in classical Greek, and then Coptic, the ancient Egyptian language that some of these gospels survive in. I studied the New Testament alongside the Christian Apocrypha (Figure 1.1), writings that did not become part of the New Testament. I learned how Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 296–373 CE) was the first known person to identify as a collection the 27 Christian books that became part of the Catholic New Testament (Figure 1.2) in an Easter letter he wrote to the bishops in Egypt (367 CE). In defining the Christian Bible as he does, Athanasius excludes many early Christian writings that were popular among Christians, disabusing them of their authority by calling them “apocrypha” or false writings. I went on to write my doctoral thesis and several books on the Gospel of Thomas. My fascination with the early Christian gospels and the Christianities that competed with Catholicism has resulted in the publication of several other books, including my book on the infamous second-century Gospel of Judas and another book on the Gnostics of antiquity.
FIGURE 1.1 Examples of second- and third-century Christian Apocryphal writings.
FIGURE 1.2 Books of the New Testament first listed by Athanasius in 367 CE.
Comparing Christianities is meant to fully engage early Christian literature inside and outside the New Testament. It is the textbook that I wished for when I was a college student back in 1982 with all those questions about earliest Christianity. As Christianity was kickstarted with the tragic death of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and was reengineered after the First Roman–Jewish War (66–73 CE) so that it was able to compete successfully as a new religious movement in Rome, numerous Christian identities and groups developed. The emergence and interaction of these multiple Christianities take center stage in this textbook and, with them, several questions. Why are there so many Christian movements in the first and second centuries? What makes them Christian? Why are their memories of Jesus and the historical Christian past different from each other? Where do all these documents and movements come from? How were they related to each other and to Judaism? Why did some of these movements survive while others failed to have a future? Did any of these movements actually have a monopoly on the truth?
1.1 Orientation to the Past
COMPANION READINGS
Philippians
Before embarking on this journey into the ancient Christian past, we need to get oriented to that past. Most helpful in this orientation is a collection of letters that Paul of Tarsus wrote to a number of early Christian churches he had established in Asia Minor and Greece, roughly between the years 40–55 CE (Figure 1.3). They are the earliest Christian writings to survive, composed within twenty years of the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul tells us that he joined Jesus’ movement after he received an ecstatic revelation of Jesus. What did Jesus reveal to him? He says he came to know the “gospel” that Jesus is the Messiah and that Jesus’ life and death are part of God’s plan to redeem the People of Israel at the eschaton or end of time.
FIGURE 1.3 Timeline mapping first two generations of Christians.
What is the meaning of the word “gospel” or “evangelion” (Greek)? This is a well-known word in antiquity. It is used by emperors, for instance, to communicate abroad something exciting or noteworthy that they had done. An evangelion is simply a newsflash or big announcement. Paul uses the word “evangelion” to refer to what he considered fantastic breaking news: that God had intervened in history by sending his son to save believers from death (Gal. 1:11–12, 16; Phil. 3:8; 1 Cor. 15:1–7; 1 Thess. 1:10; Rom. 1:6). There is no sense at all that gospel refers to a text that tells Jesus’ biography. As we see later in this textbook, this usage develops much later in Christian history.
Paul never provides us with a name for the movement beyond telling us that he is aware of a distinct church community in Jerusalem that is run by James (Jesus’ brother), Peter, and John. According to Paul, the Jerusalem church had been established before his conversion. Missionaries from this church had been concentrating on converting fellow Jews not only in and around Palestine, but also urban areas outside Palestine in the Jewish Diaspora. The community of converts in Jerusalem called themselves the Poor and they required Paul to collect donations from his own churches to support their community.
It is clear that Paul considered the movement to be a Jewish sectarian movement, not a distinct Christian religion. However, in this textbook, we use the Christian label to identify the sect that Paul joins even though the name “Christian” only begins to show up in literature that was written in the second century when the movement began to distinguish itself as a religious movement that superseded Judaism. If anything, Paul mentions that some converts in Corinth were identifying themselves with the name of the person who converted them (“we are Petrine” or “we are Apollarian”), a practice Paul dislikes. Because Paul leaves us without a name for the Jewish sectarian movement he had joined, we must keep in mind that our use of the word Christian to describe the earliest movement does not signal a non-Jewish identity. Everyone who joined the Christian movement during Paul’s life were converting to a Jewish sect. They were joining the People of Israel. When exactly Christianity developed an identity as a religion distinct from Judaism is hotly contested in scholarship. As we see in this textbook, this parting of the ways happened at different times in different ways for different Christians. For Paul, however, to join this movement means that you are joining a Jewish messianic movement that identifies Jesus with the Messiah.
The title Messiah or Anointed One (Hebrew: mashiach; Greek: christos) derives from the verb “to anoint” (Hebrew: mashach; Greek: chrio) and refers to the anointing ritual that the Jews used to install priests, prophets, and kings into office. In the first century, the Jews were living under the oppressive rule of imperial Rome. Many Jews felt that their colonization was linked to behaviors like idolatry that had strained their relationship with their God, a God who had promised to protect their nation from foreign invasion as long as they kept God’s commandments and were exclusively devoted to him.
The Jewish national God was so holy and sacred, so set apart from mundane everyday existence that even his name was considered ineffable, that it was written without vowels: YHWH. Although his name was only intoned during the Day of Atonement ceremonies in their Temple in Jerusalem by the high priests, scholars who have studied naming practices among Jews think that it was pronounced, “Yah-weh.” As a national God, YHWH was worshipped in the land of Judea by Judeans, from which comes the designation “Jew.” Once Jews began living outside the land of Judea in the Diaspora, the word Jew came to designate people who worshipped YHWH, the God of the Judeans, wherever they were dispersed geographically. Wherever they were, the Jews distinguished themselves from the non-Jews or Gentiles who did not share in this exclusive relationship with YHWH.
Their commitment to worshipping YHWH exclusively meant that Jews could not also worship the colonial civic Gods and Roman emperors. Nor could they consider YHWH to be Zeus or Baal by another name. He was a standout God, with a history deeply entangled with the Jews. He was a revelatory God, communicating directly to his people through his prophets. Indeed, their scripture showcases a special relationship between YHWH and the Jews. This relationship is premised on a covenant or contract that both parties consented to and is reaffirmed every time a Jewish infant boy is circumcised. YHWH, whom the Jews believed was the God who created the world and ruled it, had chosen to make an official pact with their nation. He promised to protect them as his chosen people and defend them from their enemies as long as they remained obedient servants to him and followed his rules. This covenantal agreement between the Jews and their God provided the Jews with a theological, rather than a political, explanation for their colonization. They believed that their colonization signaled the loss of YHWH’s protection because they had broken their covenant with YHWH by failing to observe his rules.
These rules, which YHWH’s prophet Moses delivered to them, are written in the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible and are known as the Torah. These rules cover almost all aspects of human life, not only cultic or ritual aspects like how to perform certain sacrifices or keep the Sabbath as a day of rest. The rules govern everything from sex, semen, and menstruation to diet, property damage, and disease. The rules govern the operation of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was the cultic center of Jewish worship and which regulated the festival calendar.
Roman authorities tended to tolerate the religions of the people they colonized unless the native religion promoted social unrest. Romans took this stance because it was good publicity and it reduced the impact of the changing of the guards once they had installed themselves as the new rulers of the regions. The local populations could continue their lives as usual, as long as they paid their taxes to their new overlords and obeyed their laws. The Romans, in fact, allowed the Jews to worship YHWH at the Temple in Jerusalem, exempted Jewish men from military service because it forced them to break the Law, and collected the tax for the Temple from Jews living in the Diaspora. The Romans tolerated the worship of the Jews because the Romans were convinced that their devotion to YHWH was their ethnic prerogative and ancestral heritage.
But religious tolerance did not mean that there was no social unrest among the Jews or anti-Jewish sentiment among the Romans. The Romans often installed client kings and governors who ruled in ways that privileged their own imperial aspirations and financially crippled the native populations. It was during Roman occupation that messianic dreams fermented among Jews. They speculated about the emergence of a national hero who would renew their obedience to the Law and, with it, the promises of YHWH’s covenant. The advent of the Messiah was understood by Jews to be part of latter world events that included the defeat of their colonizers, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, the establishment of New Jerusalem, and the restoration of their national independence under YHWH’s sovereignty. There is a wide range of opinions recorded in Jewish literature about the nature of each of these final world events or eschaton, including the description of the Messiah and his role in the inauguration of eschaton.
Messianic speculation among the Jews was caught up in a circle of unrest, resistance, and terror. While eschatological expectations grew in reaction to the horrible conditions of colonial life, providing the Jews with hope that YHWH would eventually make things right, they also spurred violent uprisings and equally violent clampdowns from the colonizers. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (ca. 37–100 CE) records a number of incidents in the first century of messianic contenders, who took up arms against Roman authorities and were defeated decisively (Jos., JW 2.261–3, 427–434; 4.385–90, 505–513; 6.98, 434; 17.271–5, 278–85). He identifies the Zealots as Jewish nationalists and revolutionaries who urged the Jews to rebel against Rome in order to return governance of Palestine to the Jews (Jos., JW 18.1.6). He also tells about the Sicarii or daggermen who sparked terror in crowds by pulling from beneath their cloaks, hidden knives (Jos., JW 20.9.3). They used these knives to assassinate and kidnap high-ranking Jewish authorities whom they believed were cooperating with the Romans. The violent resistance of these parties incited the Romans to take drastic measures, which led to the First Roman–Jewish War (66–73 CE), the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), and the massacre of the Jews in Jerusalem (70 CE) and at Masada (73 CE).
During the time of Jesus’ activities, Pontius Pilate was alarmed by the local eschatological and messianic zeal that he confronted as governor of Judea. He felt that this apocalyptic enthusiasm threatened the fabric of Roman social order. For instance, Pilate reacted brutally to a messianic prophet who emerged among the Samaritans in the village named Tirathana. Pilate sent a detachment of cavalry and heavy-armed infantry, which killed most of the prophet’s followers and took the rest prisoners. Pilate then executed the leaders of this messianic movement (Jos., Ant. 18.85–89). Given this reaction, it is not surprising that Jesus’ activities resulted in his execution as the “King of the Jews.”
From Paul, we learn that the first Christians from Jerusalem frequented synagogues in order to convince other Jews to join their movement. But, while they made some headway, they had a difficult time convincing most Jews that Jesus’ messiahship was prophesized in the Jewish scriptures. The big stumbling block was the fact that Jesus not only died, but was also an executed criminal. This seemed ridiculous to most Jews who thought that their scriptures prophesized the rise of a messianic teacher, king, or priest who would be a hero. He would be victorious in his pursuit to renew the covenant and usher in the new age of Israel’s glory by overthrowing Roman rule. Clearly, the executed Jesus was not this person.
While Jews were reticent to convert because of the incongruity of Jesus’ life with traditional interpretations of the prophets, the missionaries found that a number of Gentiles (non-Jews) who frequented the synagogues were more easily convinced. These Gentiles had mostly converted to Judaism, following the Law except that they refused to be circumcised. They were called God-Fearers and were considered to be Jewish proselytes or recruits. This means that there was a diversity of Christians from the get-go. Some were ethnic Jews, while the majority were Jewish proselytes (uncircumcised Gentiles).
Paul tells us that he was not commissioned to convert Jews. Instead, the missionaries from Jerusalem were those responsible for working in the synagogues and bringing into their house churches Jewish converts (which included Jewish proselytes). Paul’s relationship with these missionaries seems to have suffered from his terrible reputation. He admits to violently persecuting Christians before he converted, although he does not relate how or why he did this. We can imagine though that it had something to do with the fact that Paul characterizes himself as a Pharisee, who was particularly zealous about his Jewish faith prior to becoming a Christian (Phil. 3:5). The Pharisees (or Separatists) were a Jewish sect of laymen who thought that every Jew had to be as holy as a priest in order to keep YHWH’s Law correctly (Exod. 19:3–6). During Jesus’ time, in order to maintain their stringent purity rules, the Pharisees formed segregated lay groups consisting of Jews, who ate their meals together and worshipped together. Because the Law could be ambiguous, the Pharisees fashioned a set of rules and regulations that helped them observe the Law consistently. For instance, while the Law commanded that the Jews keep the Sabbath day holy, it did not give many details about how this observation might look. For generations, the Pharisees studied the Torah and filled in these conspicuous gaps with rulings. This body of legal traditions about how to precisely observe the Law is known as the Oral Torah. It was codified and written down in the late second century CE as the Mishnah. Even later, the Mishnah was studied by the rabbis and opinions about its interpretation were recorded. In the fifth century, this larger body of material came to be known as the Talmud.
Paul’s reputation as a zealous Pharisee who persecuted Christians had spread throughout the churches in Judaea and seems to have made it difficult for him to work in this region after his conversion. So he ends up going north into Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece and begins missionizing pagans rather than Jews or Jewish proselytes (Figure 1.4). Paul persuades them to join the movement by teaching them while he sewed leather goods in his portable shop. These pagan Gentiles had no former knowledge of Judaism, were not Jewish proselytes, and were not frequenting synagogues. According to Paul, the Gentile converts met in their homes. Their gathering or ecclesia is translated as assembly or church. Paul claims to have been commissioned to do this by Jesus himself in a revelation. Paul also relates that he traveled to Jerusalem to visit with James, Peter, and John and receive their blessing to expand the mission to the pagan Gentiles. The leaders of the Jerusalem church complied.
FIGURE 1.4 Map of the world that Paul traveled.
So, because of Paul, the Christian movement came to contain three constituencies instead of two: ethnic Jews, Jewish proselytes, and non-law-observant Gentiles. The latter put pressure on the movement because they were unfamiliar with the Jewish Law and did not want to memorize or follow all its prescriptions. They especially disliked the idea of having to follow the Jewish diet and be circumcised, but the rest of the 613 commandments seemed unnecessary to them as well. Since the earliest leaders of the Christian movement had not yet made a ruling about whether converts had to be circumcised or observe the Jewish diet, the Law became hotly contested among the earliest Christians. This becomes aggravated when Paul begins to teach the Gentiles in his churches that the Law is not necessary for them to observe at all because Christ brought an end to the Law which God had intended to only be a temporary custodian anyway. Besides, Paul said, as long as the Gentiles love each other, they have fulfilled the Law inadvertently. Their faith made them righteous, not the Law (Rom. 13:8–10). This teaching polarized the Christians so that Paul finds himself embattled against other missionaries who come into his communities to convince Gentiles to fully convert by being circumcised and by observing the Jewish commandments.
Paul’s decision to bring non-observant Gentiles into the movement caused the movement to fracture along legal fault-lines. There was a range of opinions among Jews about the meaning and application of the Law to real life situations. There were Jews who were Maximalists, believing that fidelity to the Law and its traditional interpretation should be strictly maintained. Minimalists were Jews who felt that there was flexibility when it came to interpreting how the Law should be observed. This flexibility allowed for innovative interpretations that would keep up with the changing times. The moderate Jews fell somewhere in between, thinking that traditional interpretation had its place, while allowing for some adaptability to new social situations.
It is important to recognize that this discussion over how the Jewish Law should be valued and applied to real life situations was integral to questions of Jewish identity. Historically, this kind of difference of opinion over the Law, typically, has resulted in the rise of separate social groups. For instance, consider the modern Jewish landscape: the Jewish community consists of Orthodox Jews (Maximalists), Conservative Jews (Moderates), and Reform Jews (Minimalists). The Christian community too has developed socially along these lines so that modern denominations are organized around their position on the Law and its importance for salvation: Catholic and Orthodox Christians (Moderates), Protestants (Minimalists), and Messianic Jews (Maximalists).
It appears that the same social phenomenon took place among the very first Christians. The trigger appears to have been the conversion of masses of non-observant Gentiles in Paul’s churches–Gentiles who did not want to undergo circumcision or change their diet. This was the social crisis that got all of them thinking. How was the Jewish Law applicable to these new Gentile converts? While the Christians agreed that Gentiles ought to be brought into the covenant at the end of time to worship YHWH (Ps. 22:27; 86:9; Isa. 49:6; 60:3), they disagreed on how this ought to be done. The Maximalists Christians demanded that the Gentile converts be circumcised and fully observe all God’s commandments in his Law. Moderate Christians thought that circumcision was not necessary, but that other parts of the Law need to be intentionally observed, especially the Ten Commandments or some version of the Noahide laws (a reduced set of commandments that God gave Noah). Minimalist Christians expected Gentiles to devote themselves exclusively to the worship of the one God, love one another, and live temperately so as not to sin or bring unwanted attention to themselves. They thought that it was not necessary to burden Gentiles with the Law at the end of time when believers from the nations were being gathered together to worship God. Their faith was enough, they said, to make them righteous. Some of these Minimalists took Paul’s comment about Christ being the “end of the Law” to mean that they were not obligated to any moral code, but free to behave as the Holy Spirit so moved them. This is why Paul finds himself having to crack down on antinomian (lawless) and ecstatic or charismatic behaviors that begin to erode the social order of his churches.
Paul’s correspondences leave us in the mid-first century CE with a picture of a Jewish messianic movement that is fractured into three social parties along these legal fault-lines. In this textbook, we refer to these parties as the Maximalists, Moderates, and Minimalists. The Christian movement is gaining the most ground among the non-observant Gentiles and the least ground among ethnic Jews. The growth of the movement is dependent upon missionaries who are either from the apostolic-run church in Jerusalem like Peter (Aramaic name: Cephas), independent operators like Paul and Apollos (missionary whom Paul meets in Ephesus), or people commissioned by their own local church like Prisca and Aquila (Jewish converts from Rome whom Paul also knows).
There is no indication from Paul’s letters that there is anyone in charge of all of the churches being founded, or that there is any single authority that controlled the missionaries and their message, or that there was some overarching plan and vision for the future of the Christian movement. At best, Paul regards the Jerusalem church as a legitimate authority because it predates Paul and is run by some of Jesus’ disciples. But he felt his own revelatory calling was just as legitimate. He did, however, find it strategic to link into the Jerusalem network because he thought that it would help authorize his own independent mission to the non-observant Gentiles in Asia Minor and Greece. That said, he was highly critical of the apostles when he disagreed with them, especially those who were not Minimalists, and he did not feel in any way obliged to conform to their opinions.
From Paul’s letters we can glean that there are established churches in Jerusalem and Palestine, north into Syria and Asia Minor, and west across Greece to Rome. So not only is the Christian movement split into three parties along legal fault-lines, but the churches also display regional characteristics, so that the churches in northern Asia Minor, for example, develop local traditions and interpretations of scriptures that are distinct from those developed in other locales, and so forth. This means that there was not a time when the Christian movement was homogeneous. It was a pluralistic movement from the start. This diversity only generates more diversity as the movement expands into the late-first and early-second centuries.
What is stable in the churches is the fact that all the churches baptize their converts in Jesus’ name and share a thanksgiving meal that they call the Eucharist, with its ritual blessings memorialized as Jesus’ words (variations of: “This is my body that is for you”; “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” 1 Cor. 11:23–26). The other constant is the fact that all the churches are charismatic, paradigms of religious enthusiasm. The Christians in all the churches thought that they were experiencing the fulfillment of the end-time prophecy found in Joel 2:28: “I will pour out my spirit out on every person; your sons and daughters will prophesy; your elders will dream dreams, and your youth will see visions.” The Christians insisted that the Holy Spirit had descended on them at their baptisms and filled them up, making them prophets, healers, and visionaries.
Because of this charisma – the spirit filled both the sons and the daughters so that “in Christ there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28) – women held positions of power alongside men in the first churches. Paul names women who preached alongside him (i.e. Euodia and Synthyche: Phil. 4:2–3), women who led churches in their homes (i.e. Nympha: Col. 4:15; Chloe: 1 Cor. 1:10–13; Prisca: 1 Cor. 16:3–4, 19; Phoebe: Rom. 16:1–2; Apphia: Philem. 1), women who were apostles and missionaries (i.e. Prisca: 1 Cor. 16:3–4, 19; Junia: Rom. 16:7), women who were co-workers (i.e. Phoebe: Rom. 16:3; Mary: Rom. 16:6; Typhena and Tryphosa: Rom. 16:12; Persis: Rom. 16:12), and women who were deacons (i.e. Phoebe: Rom. 16:1–2). Women converts were doing the same things as male converts, including traveling as apostles, presiding over house-churches, prophesying, and preaching.
1.2 The Christian Standard Versions
When did Christianity start and who started it? Did Christianity start with Jesus in Galilee as has been traditionally assumed by Protestant churches? Or Peter the apostle as Catholic doctrine has it? Or James the brother of Jesus and leader of the first church in Jerusalem as the Orthodox proclaim? Or was it the joint creation of his disciples, who after Jesus’ death found themselves unemployed, in need of work, as the German Enlightenment philosopher Hermann Samuel Reimarus argued in a draft of a work which was so radical that it was kept secret until after his death (1694–1768)? Or was it invented by Saul of Tarsus turned Paul the Apostle, a Jew who, after an ecstatic experience, fashioned a message about Jesus that was wildly attractive to non-Jews, as many biblical scholars today maintain?
While these answers are all different, they are more similar than we might think. All assume that Christianity started around the time of Jesus and involved a cast of characters that were chosen by him to establish the Christian church and its legacy: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. In other words, all these stories, including the academic one, do the work of authorizing our present-day Christian churches, giving them a direct line back to Jesus.
These linear stories construct the origins of Christianity by connecting the Christian church, as we know it today, with Jesus. In this way, late doctrines like the Trinity or the Two Natures of Jesus, sacraments like the Eucharist, the creation of the New Testament scriptural canon, and ecclesiastic structures like the Papacy are authorized by Jesus through a succession that occurred via his apostles and a second-century cast of characters, traditionally, called the Apostolic Fathers (the successors to the apostles), and the Church Fathers (the successors to the Apostolic Fathers) (Figure 1.5). Generally, these narratives are told as a coherent chronological story starting in Galilee or Jerusalem with Jesus and then soldiering through the New Testament documents, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Church Fathers, mining them for positivist historical information.
FIGURE 1.5 Classifications “Apostolic Fathers” and “Church Fathers”.
Frequently in these stories, the Fathers of the Church are in conflict with other Christians whom they identify as fake Christians masquerading as real Christians. In these stories, the fake Christians are called heretics, a label which reflects the position that they have deviated from the straight and narrow path of the truth or orthodoxy preserved by the Church Fathers. The early Catholic Church is viewed as the rightful heir and guardian of the New Testament scriptures, which the heretics have misunderstood, corrupted, and abused.
This orthodox narrative was first forged by the Church Fathers in order to displace and marginalize Christians they disagreed with at a time when what it meant to be Christian was hotly contested. This story has had a long shelf-life because it has served the purposes of Christian churches over the centuries. It has survived for two thousand years, broadcast not only within Christian churches, but also within the academic fields of Biblical Studies and Church History, which were originally located within the religious discipline of theology. There have been two basic academic versions of the story, both reflecting standard theological narratives of Church History.
The standard Catholic version presents the story as a continuous development of church institutions and doctrines that represent the outward expressions of the Holy Spirit working within the community, an idea that gained traction in the academy through the nineteenth-century work of Catholic theologian and Church historian Johann Adam Moehler (1796–1838 CE). This continuity is presented from Jesus to the Council of Nicaea as a natural progression of the maturation of Christian doctrine and practices by learned men who, in this line of apostolic succession, understood the truth of Jesus’ incarnation and worked to communicate this sacred mystery in the language and culture of the times. In other words, it was the natural process of enculturation, when the sacred truth came to be expressed in Greek philosophical jargon. While the doctrines are viewed as human constructions, they are meant to witness to the truth of the incarnation and safeguard it. The Fathers were defenders of the sacred truth against others who would try to pedal a cheap imitation. The Fathers’ well-organized defense of the truth triumphed at Nicaea (325 CE) and has been expressed ever since in official councils and creeds (Figure 1.6).
FIGURE 1.6 Nicene Creed (325 CE).
The standard Protestant version of the story developed out of Catholic–Protestant conflicts in the wake of the Reformation (1517–1648 CE). It presents the development of the orthodox doctrines of the Catholic Church as a corruption of the pure truth taught by Jesus found in the scriptures. This echoes the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, that the New Testament is the self-contained deposit of the revelation of Jesus. This version haunts the academic work of the famous German Lutheran Church historian, Adolph von Harnack (1851–1930 CE), who said that Christianity started with the true principles taught by Jesus. Over time, these true principles were degraded under the weight of intellectual activity and Greek philosophical speculations that focused on understanding Jesus’ person and nature rather than Jesus’ teachings which were the real essence of Christianity. He calls this process the Hellenization of Christianity (when Christianity was made to conform to Greek thought) which, he says, transformed the “living faith” into creeds that had to be believed and ceremonies that had to be followed.
Why did the Hellenization of Christianity occur in the first place? Harnack gives this first-place honor to the heretics who, out of their pagan fascination with Greek culture, hellenized Christianity to the extreme. Harnack says that the Catholic Fathers remedied the acute enculturation program of the heretics, putting its own teachings, worship, and practices into fixed forms and ordinances that tried to keep the worst of pagan culture, like polytheism, at bay, while still speaking the language of the Greek world. When all is said and done, Harnack presents a picture of the origins of Christianity rooted in Jesus’ original message minus all the Catholic accoutrements which, he explains, were analogous to the Hellenization program of the pagan heretics anyway.
In 1934, the German Church historian, Walter Bauer (1877–1960 CE), published the first history of early Christianity which aimed to deconstruct these standard narratives because, Bauer explains, he had recognized that they were more theological stories than historical accounts. By examining regional Christian literature and legends, Bauer investigates whether there was a primary Christian church with an ecclesiastical teaching from which heresies diverged. As a historian, he says that he felt compelled to set aside his theological biases and to let the other side also be heard. By casting aside his preconceived ideas about what ancient Christianity was supposed to look like, he started his project by remaining open to all possibilities.
In his book, Bauer ponders where to start. He realizes that his project cannot start with the New Testament because the majority of texts cannot be arranged confidently either chronologically or geographically. Nor can the precise circumstances of the origins of these texts, including their authors, be sufficiently determined. He instead offers to write a retrohistory, starting at a later time when information about early Christians is better known, then working backward to figure out what is less known. As he works backward through the materials, he demonstrates how orthodox Catholic authors construct legends and forge texts to create, authorize, and distribute their truth across the Mediterranean into regions that were not originally orthodox but non-Catholic to begin with. In the end he determines that there was no original unity of thought or practice among the Christians – orthodoxy was not the original Christianity – but instead, there was a great diversity that, beginning in the second century, was disciplined and restrained by Catholics who cast themselves as the original Christians. Bauer had dropped a bomb: early Christianity was plural and orthodoxy was constructed.
But the bomb did not detonate immediately. It was only decades later, when scholars began in earnest to study newly discovered Christian writings from Nag Hammadi, that Bauer’s thesis finally gained an audience. For these scholars, the vast diversity of non-orthodox thought and practices reflected in the Nag Hammadi collection destabilized the standard story of orthodoxy (Figure 1.7). Bauer’s insistence on Christianity’s original plurality rang true even when some of his specific arguments had become dated and his interpretation was shown to carry on the project of Liberal Protestantism from the nineteenth century. The Liberal Protestant project arose in order to sync Christianity with modern intellectual knowledge. Liberal Protestants took seriously Darwin and the scientific method, so that, for instance, the Bible and church creeds came to be understood by Liberal Protestants as human cultural products. Orthodoxy was also viewed as a human cultural construction, set into motion by the apostles. Orthodoxy was seen as only one way among many diverse ways to frame Christian truth. So, while Bauer made many historical advances in our understanding that early Christianity was plural and orthodoxy constructed, he continued the theological Protestant project of his era by writing a history that left Jesus as the sole authority of the Christian church and truth.
FIGURE 1.7 Contents of Christian books found in the Nag Hammadi Codices.
