Historiography of early Christianity

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Historiography of early Christianity is the study of historical writings about early Christianity, which is the period before the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Historians have used a variety of sources and methods in exploring and describing Christianity during this time.

The

Since the

.

In the

catholic

unanimity. The historical and contextual time of the early church.

Sources

In its first few centuries, Christians made up a small minority of the population of the Roman Empire. The religion attracted little attention from writers with other religious beliefs, and few artifacts have been found to document Christianity in its earliest days. Most of the surviving documentation was written by Christians.^[4]

Historical Jesus

All the sources for the life of Jesus are documents, there is no physical or archeological evidence. Except for a few proponents^[

Besides his baptism and execution, the synoptic Gospels describe Jesus' birth, ministry, miracles and resurrection.

Oral tradition and the Q source

Early Christianity relied on the

When those who had heard Jesus's actual words began to die, Christians started recording the sayings in writing. The hypothetical

Q document

, a collection of Jesus' sayings, is perhaps the first such record (c 50). Historians use the extant gospels to surmise the nature and content of the oral tradition and the Q source.

New Testament

The Gospel of Mark was written during c. 65–70, possibly motivated by the

In the one-hundred-year period extending roughly from AD 50 to 150 a number of documents began to circulate among the churches. Also included were epistles, gospels, acts, apocalypses, homilies, and collections of teachings. While some of these documents were

apostolic in origin

, others drew upon the tradition the apostles and ministers of the word had utilized in their individual missions. Still others represented a summation of the teaching entrusted to a particular church center. Several of these writings sought to extend, interpret, and apply apostolic teaching to meet the needs of Christians in a given locality.

Among the writings considered central to the development of Christianity are the

atoning death

of the Son of God, Jesus' crucifixion.

, was later included in the New Testament.

Defining scripture

Main article:

Development of the Christian Biblical canon

Debates about scripture were underway in the mid-2nd century, concurrent with a drastic increase of new scriptures, both Jewish and Christian. Debates regarding practice and belief gradually became reliant on the use of scripture. Similarly, in the 3rd century a shift away from

Regardless, throughout the

The acceptance of the Septuagint was generally uncontested (even the

.

Historicity of the canonical Gospels

Main article:

Canonical gospels

The

recount the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis, attempting to differentiate authentic, reliable information from what they judge to be inventions, exaggerations, and alterations.

Many prominent mainstream historians consider the synoptic gospels to contain much reliable historical information about the historical existence of Jesus as a Galilean teacher ^[19][20] and of the religious movement he founded, but not everything contained in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable.

The

, includes a number of historically reliable details, but it differs greatly from the first three gospels, and historians largely discount it. The canonical gospels, overall, are considered to have more historically authentic content than the various non-canonical gospels.

While some Christian scholars maintain that the gospels are inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus,^[27] other scholars have concluded that they provide no historical information about his life.^[28]

The teachings of Jesus in the Gospel of John are very different from those found in the synoptic gospels.^[29] Thus, since the 19th century scholars have generally believed that only one of the two traditions could be authentic.^[29] Today, prominent, mainstream historians largely tend to discount the historical value of John. Few scholars regard John to be at all comparable to the Synoptics in terms of historical value.^[30][31] E. P. Sanders and other critical scholars conclude that the Gospel of John contains an "advanced theological development, in which meditations of the person and work of Jesus are presented in the first person as if Jesus said them."^[32] The scholars of the Jesus Seminar assert that there is little historical value in John and consider nearly every Johannine saying of Jesus to be nonhistorical.^[33] Geza Vermes discounts all the teaching in John when reconstructing "the authentic gospel of Jesus."^{[34][page needed]}

The Gospel of John also differs from the synoptic gospels in respect of its narrative of Jesus' life and ministry; but here there is a lower degree of consensus that the synoptic tradition is to be preferred. In particular John A.T. Robinson has argued that, where the Gospel narrative accounts can be checked for consistency with surviving material evidence, the account in the Gospel of John is commonly the more plausible;^[35] and that it is generally easier to reconcile the various synoptic accounts within John's narrative framework, than it is to explain John's narrative within the framework of any of the synoptics.^[36] In particular he argues that, where in the Gospel of John, Jesus and his disciples are described as travelling around identifiable locations, then the trips in question can always be plausibly followed on the ground^[37] which he claims is not the case for the narrative accounts of any other of the four Gospels.

Some scholars today believe that parts of John represent an independent historical tradition from the synoptics, while other parts represent later traditions.^[38] The Gospel was probably shaped in part by increasing tensions between synagogue and church, or between those who believed Jesus was the Messiah and those who did not.^[39]

Nevertheless, John is not entirely without historical value. Critical scholarship in the 19th century distinguished between the 'biographical' approach of the three Synoptic Gospels and the 'theological' approach of John, and accordingly tended to disregard John as a historical source. This distinction is no longer regarded as sustainable in more recent scholarship, which emphasizes that all four gospels are both biographical and theological. According to Barnabas Lindars, "All four Gospels should be regarded primarily as biographies of Jesus, but all four have a definite theological aim."^[40] Sanders points out that the author would regard the gospel as theologically true as revealed spiritually even if its content is not historically accurate.^[41] The gospel does contain some independent, historically plausible elements.^[42] Henry Wansbrough says: "Gone are the days when it was scholarly orthodoxy to maintain that John was the least reliable of the gospels historically." It has become generally accepted that certain sayings in John are as old or older than their synoptic counterparts, that John's knowledge of things around Jerusalem is often superior to the synoptics, and that his presentation of Jesus' agony in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are possibly more historically accurate than their synoptic parallels.^[43] And Marianne Meye Thompson writes: "There are items only in John that are likely to be historical and ought to be given due weight. Jesus' first disciples may once have been followers of the Baptist (cf. Jn. 1:35–42). There is no a priori reason to reject the report of Jesus and his disciples' conducting a ministry of baptism for a time.^[44] That Jesus regularly visited Jerusalem, rather than merely at the time of his death, is often accepted as more realistic for a pious, 1st-century Jewish male (and is hinted at in the other Gospels as well: Mark 11:2; Luke 13:34; 22:8–13,53) ... Even John's placement of the Last Supper before Passover has struck some as likely."^[45] Sanders, however, cautions that even historically plausible elements in John can hardly be taken as historical evidence, as they may well represent the author's intuition rather than historical recollection.^[41]

Fathers of the church

From an early date the title "Father" was applied to bishops as witnesses to the Christian tradition. Only later, from the end of the 4th century, was it used in a more restricted sense of a more or less clearly defined group of ecclesiastical authors of the past whose authority on doctrinal matters carried special weight. According to the commonly accepted teaching, the fathers of the church are those ancient writers, whether bishops or not, who were characterized by orthodoxy of doctrine, holiness of life and the approval of the church. Sometimes Tertullian, Origen and a few others of not unimpeachable orthodoxy are now classified as Fathers of the Church.^[46]

The earliest Christian writings (other than those collected in the New Testament) are a group of letters credited to the

(died 98 to 117) advocated the authority of the apostolic episcopacy (bishops).

Post-apostolic, or

of bishops in preserving apostolic teaching.

Dead Sea Scrolls

The

.

The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late

The Dead Sea Scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups: "Biblical" manuscripts (copies of texts from the

New Testament apocrypha

The

).

Gnostic Gospels

The

.

Nag Hammadi library

The

books in his Festal Letter of 367 AD.

The contents of the codices were written in Coptic language, though the works were probably all translations from Greek.^[55] The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. After the discovery it was recognized that fragments of these sayings attributed to Jesus appeared in manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1898, and matching quotations were recognized in other early Christian sources. Subsequently, a 1st or 2nd century date of composition c. 80 for the lost Greek originals of the Gospel of Thomas has been proposed, though this is disputed by many if not the majority of biblical matter researchers. The once buried manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries.

The Nag Hammadi codices are housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt. To read about their significance to modern scholarship into early Christianity, see the Gnosticism article.

Josephus

The works of Josephus provide crucial information about the First Jewish-Roman War and are also important literary source material for understanding the context of the

.

Tacitus

The Annals is among the first-known secular-historic records to mention Jesus which Tacitus does in connection with Nero's persecution of the Christians. The passage contains an early non-Christian reference to the origin of Christianity, the execution of Christ described in the Bible's New Testament gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in 1st-century Rome. While a majority of scholars consider the passage authentic, some dispute it.^[56] Those supporting authenticity argue it is too critical of Christians to have been added by later Christian scribes. ^{[citation needed]}

Some who argue against authenticity assert:^[57][58]

• No early Christian writers refer to Tacitus even when discussing the subject of Nero and Christian persecution. Tertullian, Lactantius, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius and Augustine of Hippo make no reference to Tacitus when discussing Christian persecution by Nero. (This is wrong, as Tertullian does refer to Tacitus' annals in his Apology ^[59]) ^[60] If authentic, the passage would constitute one of the earliest, if not the earliest (see: Josephus on Jesus) non-Christian references to Jesus. Those critical of the passage's authenticity argue that early Christian writers likely would have sought to establish the historicity of Jesus via secular or non-Christian documents, and that their silence with regard to the Annals in this manner may suggest that the passage did not exist in early manuscripts. Furthermore, because the text derives from a single surviving 11th century monastic copy,^[61] skeptics of the passage's authenticity argue that it may be the result of later Christian editing. Supporters of the passage's authenticity, however, counter on the basis of the criterion of embarrassment that the passage's critical remarks on Christianity as a "mischievous superstition" argue against its having been made by later Christian editors who, it is argued, would have cast Christians in a positive and not negative light. Critics counter that the criterion of embarrassment wrongly assumes that a scribal interpolator would not intentionally write details critical of his or her religious group,^[62] and that a scribe may have found it advantageous and convincing to supply a less embarrassing fact (e.g., that Christians were regarded by the Romans as subscribing to a "mischievous superstition") in the place of a more embarrassing one (e.g., no early, non-Christian references to a historical Jesus).
• Pontius Pilate's rank was prefect when he was in Judea.^{[Note 2]} The Tacitus passage mistakenly calls Pilate a procurator, an error also made in translations of a passage by Josephus.^[63] (However, Josephus wrote in Greek and never used the Latin term.) After Herod Agrippa's death in AD 44, when Judea reverted to direct Roman rule, Claudius gave procurators control over Judea.^[64] This was made possible when he augmented the role of procurators so that they had magisterial power.^[65] Tacitus, who rose through the magisterial ranks^{[Note 3][66]} to become consul and then proconsul had a precise knowledge of significance of the terms involved and knew when Judea began to be administered by procurators. It is therefore problematical that he would use "procurator" instead of "prefect" to describe the governor of Judea prior to the changes that he tells us Claudius brought in.
• The passage implies that the Christians may have been guilty of setting fire to Rome, another argument against veracity, for Tacitus was attempting to lay the blame of the fire on Nero by aspersion.^[67]
• Another ancient writer, Suetonius, mentions Christians being harmed during this period by Nero, but there is no connection made with the fire.^[68]

The surviving copies of Tacitus' major works derive from two principal manuscripts, known as the Medicean manuscripts, which are held in the Laurentian Library. The second of them (Plut. 68.2), as the only one containing books xi–xvi of the Annales, is the oldest witness to the passage describing Christians. In this codex, the first 'i' of the Christianos is quite distinct in appearance from the second, looking somewhat smudged, and lacking the long tail of the second 'i'; additionally, there is a large gap between the first 'i' and the subsequent long s. Georg Andresen was one of the first to comment on the appearance of the first 'i' and subsequent gap, suggesting in 1902 that the text had been altered, and an 'e' had originally been in the text, rather than this 'i'.^[69]

In 1950, at Harald Fuchs request, Dr. Teresa Lodi, the director of the Laurentian Library, examined the features of this item of the manuscript; she concluded that there are still signs of an 'e' being erased, by removal of the upper and lower horizontal portions, and distortion of the remainder into an 'i'.^[70] In 2008, Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao, the new head of the Laurentian Library's manuscript office, repeated Lodi's study, and concluded that it is likely that the 'i' is a correction of some earlier character (like an e), the change being made an extremely subtle one. Later the same year, it was discovered that under ultraviolet light, an 'e' is clearly visible in the space, meaning that the passage must originally have referred to chrestianos, a Latin word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful'.^{[citation needed]} "I believe that in our passage of Tacitus the original reading Chrestianos is the true one" says Professor Robert Renehan, stating that it was "natural for a Roman to interpret the words [Christus and Christianus] as the similarly-sounding χρηστός".^[71] The word Christian/s is in Codex Sinaiticus (in which Christ is abbreviated – see nomina sacra) spelled Chrestian/s in the three places the word is used. Also in Minuscule 81 this spelling is used in Acts of the Apostles 11:26.^[72]

Jesus

Christ in the House of his Parents by John Everett Millais, 1850. A number of paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

reflected the interest in the 19th century in the historical reality of the life of Jesus

The historicity of Jesus concerns the

. While scholars often draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and while scholars further debate what can specifically be known concerning Jesus' character and ministry, essentially all scholars in the relevant fields agree that the mere historical existence of Jesus can be established using documentary and other evidence.

The lines of evidence used to establish Jesus' historical existence include the New Testament documents, theoretical source documents that may lie behind the New Testament, statements from the early Church Fathers, brief references in histories produced decades or centuries later by pagan and Jewish sources, gnostic documents, and early Christian creeds.

Historical Jesus

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The

in which he lived.

Since the 18th century,

The historical Jesus was a Galilean Jew living in a time of

List of events in early Christianity

).

The quest for the historical Jesus began with the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus in the 18th century.^[85] Two books, both called The Life of Jesus were written by David Strauss, published in German in 1835–36, and Ernest Renan, published in French in 1863. The Historical Jesus is conceptually different than the Christ of Faith. The former is physical, while the latter metaphysical. The Historical Jesus is based on historical evidence. Every time a new scroll is unearthed or new Gospel fragment is found, the Historical Jesus is modified. And because so much has been lost, we can never know him completely.^[86][87]

In The Historical Figure of Jesus,

Thus, Sanders considers the quest for the Historical Jesus to be much closer to a search for historical details on Alexander than to those historical figures with adequate documentation.

Consequently, scholars like Sanders,

argue that, although many readers are accustomed to thinking of Jesus solely as a theological figure whose existence is a matter only of religious debate, the four canonical Gospel accounts are based on source documents written within decades after Jesus' lifetime, and therefore provide a basis for the study of the "historical" Jesus. These historians also draw on other historical sources and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the life of Jesus in his historical and cultural context.

In contrast, Charles Guignebert, Professor of the History of Christianity, at the Sorbonne, maintained that the "conclusions which are justified by the documentary evidence may be summed up as follows: Jesus was born somewhere in Galilee in the time of the Emperor Augustus, of a humble family, which included half a dozen or more children besides himself."[89] (Emphasis added). He adds elsewhere "there is no reason to suppose he was not executed".^[90]

Recent research has focused upon the "Jewishness" of the historical Jesus. The re-evaluation of Jesus' family, particularly the role played after his death by his brother James,

Jesus as myth

Further information:

Jesus Christ and comparative mythology

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The existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure has been questioned by few biblical scholars and historians, some of the earliest being

The views of scholars who entirely rejected Jesus' historicity were summarized in Will Durant's Caesar and Christ, published in 1944. Their rejections were based on a suggested lack of eyewitnesses, a lack of direct archaeological evidence, the failure of ancient works to mention Jesus, and similarities early Christianity shares with then-contemporary religion and mythology.^[97]

More recently, arguments for non-historicity have been discussed by

He suggests that these are best explained if Christianity began as a mythic savior cult, with no specific historical figure in mind.

Nevertheless, the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians.[19]^[99][100] The New Testament scholar James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.^{[101][102][103]}

Founding of the Christian Church

According to Christian tradition, the Christian Church was founded by Jesus. In the

, insist that the Petrine primacy is possessed by every bishop throughout the world who stands in legitimate apostolic succession, whether in communion with Rome or not. Even those scholars who accept that a unique Petrine primacy attached to the See of Rome are divided on exactly how and why that primacy became attached to Rome, by what means or succession it was passed down within the See of Rome, whether Rome itself remained true to that primacy, and exactly what authority the primacy legitimately exercises in the world today.

Catholic Church

River Tiber. The iconic dome dominates the skyline of Rome

.

The Catholic Church believes itself to be the continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus in his consecration of

.

The See of Rome is traditionally said to be founded by Peter and Paul. While the New Testament says nothing directly about Peter's connection with Rome, indirectly Romans 15:20–22 may indicate that when Paul wrote it, another Apostle was already in Rome, and it is highly probable that the

The traditional narrative starts with Peter being consecrated by Jesus, followed by Peter traveling to Rome sometime after Pentecost, founding a church there, serving as its first bishop and consecrating Linus as bishop, thus starting the line of Popes of whom Francis I is the current successor. This narrative is often related in histories of the Catholic Church.^[108]

Elements of this traditional narrative agree with the surviving historical evidence, which includes the writings of several early

) and some archaeological evidence. While some historians of Christianity assert that the Catholic Church can be traced to Jesus's consecration of Peter, others argue that Jesus did not found a church in his lifetime but provided a framework of beliefs. Other historians disagree with the traditional view that the papacy originated with Peter, instead asserting that the papal office developed at an unspecified date before the mid 150s and could possibly have been superimposed by the traditional narrative upon the primitive church.

The only part of this narrative that is supported directly by the Scriptures is the consecration of Peter; however, elements of the rest of the narrative are attested to in the writings of Church Fathers such as Ignatius, Irenaeus and Dionysius of Corinth. Largely as a result of a challenge to this narrative initiated by Alfred Loisy, some theologians have challenged the historicity of the traditional narrative, resulting in a less literal interpretation of the Church's "founding" by Jesus and less specific claims about the historical foundations and transmission of the Petrine primacy in the Church's early years.^[109][110] Some historians have also challenged the traditional narrative of Peter's role in the early Roman Church.^{[111][112][113][114][115]}

The New Testament offers no proof that Jesus established the

While most scholars agree that Peter died in Rome, it is generally accepted that there was a Christian community in Rome before either Peter or Paul arrived there.[120] The Catholic Church draws an analogy between Peter's seeming primacy among the Twelve in New Testament texts such as Matthew 16:17–19, Luke 22:32, and John 21:15–17 and the position of the Pope among the Church's bishops.^[121]

Two

Apostolic Age

Main article:

Apostolic Age

The apostolic period between the years 30 and 100 produced writings attributed to the direct followers of Jesus Christ. The period is traditionally associated with the apostles, apostolic times and apostolic writings. The New Testament books were connected by the early church to the apostles, though modern scholarship has cast doubt on the authorship of most New Testament books. In the traditional history of the Christian church, the Apostolic Age was the foundation upon which the entire church's history is founded.^[123]

The Apostolic Age is particularly significant to

which claims that it represents a purer form of Christianity that should be restored to the church as it exists today.

The unique character of the New Testament writings, and their period of origin, is highlighted by the paucity of the literary form in later writing. Once the canon of the New Testament began to take shape, the style ceased to be used on a regular basis. Noncanonical writings persisted, but died out within a historically short period of time. Early patristic literature is dominated by apologetics and makes use of other literary forms borrowed from non-Christian sources.^[124]

Peter and Paul

According to 19th-century German theologian

Simon Peter

River Tiber. The iconic dome dominates the skyline of Rome

.

The See of Rome is traditionally said to be founded by Peter and Paul, see also

Most Catholic and Protestant scholars, and many scholars in general, conclude that Peter was indeed martyred in Rome under Nero.[120] A 2009 critical study by Otto Zwierlein has concluded that "there is not a single piece of reliable literary evidence (and no archaeological evidence either) that Peter ever was in Rome."^[128]

Later in the

.

Tertullian also writes: "But if you are near Italy, you have Rome, where authority is at hand for us too. What a happy church that is, on which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine with their blood; where Peter had a passion like that of the Lord, where Paul was crowned with the death of John (the Baptist, by being beheaded)." Dionysius of Corinth also serves as a late 2nd -century witness to the tradition.^[106] He wrote: "You (Pope Soter) have also, by your very admonition, brought together the planting that was made by Peter and Paul at Rome and at Corinth; for both of them alike planted in our Corinth and taught us; and both alike, teaching similarly in Italy, suffered martyrdom at the same time". Later tradition, first found in Saint Jerome, attributes to Peter a 25-year episcopate (or apostolate) in Rome.^[106]

Paul's Epistle to the Romans 16 (c. 58) attests to a large Christian community already there,^[129] although he does not mention Peter.

Paul of Tarsus

martyrdom

)

Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton and an authority on Gnosticism, argues that Paul was a Gnostic ^[130] and that the anti-Gnostic Pastoral Epistles were "pseudo-Pauline" forgeries written to rebut this.

British Jewish scholar

, although Paul mentions him several times in the Book of Acts.

Others have objected that the language of the speeches is too Lukan in style to reflect anyone else's words. Moreover, some have argued that the speeches of Peter and Paul are too much alike, and that especially Paul's are too distinct from his letters to reflect a true Pauline source.^[131] Despite these suspicions, historian-attorney Christopher Price concludes that Luke's style in Acts is representative of those ancient historians known for accurately recording speeches in their works. Examination of several of the major speeches in Acts reveals that while the author smoothed out the Greek in some cases, he clearly relied on preexisting material to reconstruct his speeches. He did not believe himself at liberty to invent material, but attempted to accurately record the reality of the speeches in Acts.^[131]

stressing his dependence on Judaism.

Maccoby theorizes that Paul synthesized Judaism, Gnosticism, and mysticism to create Christianity as a cosmic savior religion. According to Maccoby, Paul's

Separation from Judaism

Main article:

Split of early Christianity and Judaism

The split between

Christianity and Judaism

.

Post-apostolic period

Main article:

Ante-Nicene Period

Ante-Nicene Fathers

.

Christianity throughout the

There is a relative lack of material for this period, compared with the later Church Father period. For example, a widely used collection (

According to Siker the developments of this time are "multidirectional and not easily mapped". While the preceding and following periods were diverse, they possessed unifying characteristics lacking in this period. 1st-century Christianity possessed a basic cohesion based on the Pauline church movement, Jewish character, and self-identification as a messianic movement. The 2nd and 3rd centuries saw a sharp divorce from its early roots. There was an explicit rejection of then-modern Judaism and Jewish culture by the end of the 2nd century, with a growing body of adversus Judaeos literature. Christianity in the 4th and 5th centuries experienced imperial pressure and developed strong episcopal and unifying structure. The ante-Nicene period was without such authority and immensely diverse. Many variations in this time defy neat categorizations, as various forms of Christianity interacted in a complex fashion to form the dynamic character of Christianity in this era.[135]

By the early 2nd century, Christians had agreed on a basic list of writings that would serve as their canon,^[136] see Development of the New Testament canon, but interpretations of these works differed, often wildly.^[137] In part to ensure a greater consistency in their teachings, by the end of the 1st century many Christian communities evolved a more structured hierarchy, with a central bishop, whose opinion held more weight in that city.^[138] By 160, most communities had a bishop, who based his authority on the chain of succession from the apostles to himself.^[139]

Bishops still had a freedom of interpretation. The competing versions of Christianity led many bishops who subscribed to what is now the

Roman Asia in about 160. Some bishops began to take on a more authoritative role for a region; in many cases, the bishop of the church located in the capital city of a province became the central authority for all churches in that province. These more centralized authorities were known as metropolitan churches headed by a Metropolitan bishop. The churches in Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome exerted authority over groups of these metropolitan churches.^[141]

Church Fathers

Main article: Church Fathers

The church fathers are generally divided into the

Gregory the Great and Augustine of Hippo

.

Apostolic Fathers

Main article: Apostolic Fathers

The earliest Church Fathers (within two generations of the

Shepherd of Hermas

are usually placed among the writings of the Apostolic Fathers although their authors are unknown.

Eusebius of Caesarea

Main article: Church History (Eusebius)

The

Cyrrhus, Syria, wrote continuations of Eusebius' church history, establishing the convention of continuators that would determine to a great extent the way history was written for the next thousand years. Eusebius' Chronicle, that attempted to lay out a comparative timeline of pagan and Old Testament history, set the model for the other historiographical genre, the medieval chronicle or universal history

.

Eusebius made use of many ecclesiastical monuments and documents, acts of the martyrs, letters, extracts from earlier Christian writings, lists of bishops, and similar sources, often quoting the originals at great length so that his work contains materials not elsewhere preserved. For example, he wrote that

Jewish gospel. It is therefore of historical value, though it pretends neither to completeness nor to the observance of due proportion in the treatment of the subject-matter. Nor does it present in a connected and systematic way the history of the early Christian Church. It is to no small extent a vindication of the Christian religion, though the author did not primarily intend it as such. Eusebius has been often accused of intentional falsification of the truth; in judging persons or facts he is not entirely unbiased.^[145]

Reformation

Some of the new words and phrases introduced by William Tyndale in his translation of the Bible did not sit well with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, using words like 'Overseer' rather than 'Bishop' and 'Elder' rather than 'Priest', and (very controversially), 'congregation' rather than 'Church' and 'love' rather than 'charity'. Tyndale contended (citing Erasmus) that the Greek New Testament did not support the traditional Roman Catholic readings.

Contention from Roman Catholics came not only from real or perceived errors in translation but a fear of the erosion of their social power if Christians could read the bible in their own language "the Pope's dogma is bloody" Tyndale wrote in his The Obedience of a Christian Man.^[146] Tyndale translated "Church" as "congregation" and translated "priest" as "elder."^[147] Moynahan explains Tyndale's reasons for this: "This was a direct threat to the Church's ancient- but so Tyndale here made clear, non-scriptural- claim to be the body of Christ on earth. To change these words was to strip the Church hierarchy of its pretensions to be Christ's terrestrial representative, and to award this honour to individual worshipers who made up each congregation."^[147]

Modern perspectives

Historicity of the Acts of the Apostles

Main article:

Historicity of the Acts of the Apostles

Further information:

Paul of Tarsus and Judaism

The historical reliability of the

biblical scholars and historians of early Christianity. While some biblical scholars and historians view the book of Acts as being extremely accurate and corroborated by archaeology^{[citation needed]}, others view the work as being inaccurate and in conflict with the Pauline epistles. Acts portrays Paul as more inline with Jewish Christianity, while the Pauline epistles record more conflict, such as the Incident at Antioch

.

Orthodoxy and heterodoxy

Traditionally,

heterodox", or heretical. This view was dominant until the publication of Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum ("Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity") in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Roman church struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the Orient at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence."^[148] However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model.^[149] For example, subsequent analysis of Bauer's geographical model have generally fallen against Bauer such as in Egypt.^[150]

Perhaps one of the most important discussions among scholars of early Christianity in the past century is to what extent it is appropriate to speak of "orthodoxy" and "heresy".

Higher criticism drastically altered the previous perception that heresy was a very rare exception to the orthodoxy. Bauer was particularly influential in the reconsideration of the historical model. During the 1970s, increasing focus on the effect of social, political and economic circumstances on the formation of early Christianity occurred as Bauer's work found a wider audience. Some scholars argue against the increasing focus on heresies. A movement away from presuming the correctness or dominance of the orthodoxy is seen as understandable, in light of modern approaches. However, they feel that instead of an even and neutral approach to historical analysis that the heterodox sects are given an assumption of superiority over the orthodox movement. The current debate is vigorous and broad. While it is difficult to summarize all current views, general statements may be made, remembering that such broad strokes will have exceptions in specific cases.^[151]

In his Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen 1934; a second edition, edited by Georg Strecker, Tübingen 1964, was translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity 1971), Walter Bauer developed his thesis that in earliest Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy do not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary, but in many regions heresy is the original manifestation of Christianity. Bauer reassessed as a historian the overwhelmingly dominant view^[152] that for the period of Christian origins, ecclesiastical doctrine already represented what is primary, while heresies, on the other hand somehow are a deviation from the genuine (Bauer, "Introduction").

Through studies of historical records Bauer concluded that what came to be known as orthodoxy was just one of numerous forms of Christianity in the early centuries. It was the form of Christianity practiced in Rome that exercised the uniquely dominant influence over the development of orthodoxy

Constantine I

. Practitioners of what became orthodoxy then rewrote the history of the conflict making it appear that this view had always been the majority one. Writings in support of other views were systematically destroyed.

Bauer's conclusions contradicted nearly 1600 years of writing on church history and thus were met with much skepticism^[154] among Christian academics such as Walther Völker (see below).

The cultural isolation of

Bauer lexicon), which has become standard. Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei was finally translated into English in 1970 and published in 1971.^[155]

Bart Ehrman has written widely on issues of New Testament and early Christianity at both an academic and popular level, with over twenty books including three

New York Times bestsellers (Misquoting Jesus, God's Problem, and Jesus, Interrupted). Much of his work is on textual criticism and the New Testament. His first book was Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels (1987) followed by several books published by the Oxford University Press, including The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, and a new edition and translation of The Apostolic Fathers in the Loeb Classical Library series published by Harvard University Press

. His most recent book Jesus, Interrupted was published in March 2009 and discusses contradictions in the Bible.

In 1999 Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium was released as a study on the historical Jesus. Ehrman argues that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, and that his apocalyptic beliefs are recorded in the earliest Christian documents: the Gospel of Mark and the authentic Pauline epistles. The earliest Christians believed Jesus would soon return, and their beliefs are echoed in the earliest Christian writings.

Much of Ehrman's writing has concentrated on various aspects of Walter Bauer's thesis that Christianity was always diversified or at odds with itself. Ehrman is often considered a pioneer in connecting the history of the early church to textual variants within biblical manuscripts and in coining such terms as "Proto-orthodox Christianity."^[156] Ehrman brought this thesis, and textual criticism in general, through his popular level work Misquoting Jesus.

Notes

1. Joseph Barber Lightfoot in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians writes: "At this point [Gal 6:11] the Apostle takes the pen from his amanuensis, and the concluding paragraph is written with his own hand. From the time when letters began to be forged in his name (2 Thess 2:2; 3:17
   ) it seems to have been his practice to close with a few words in his own handwriting, as a precaution against such forgeries… In the present case he writes a whole paragraph, summing up the main lessons of the epistle in terse, eager, disjointed sentences. He writes it, too, in large, bold characters (Gr. pelikois grammasin), that his handwriting may reflect the energy and determination of his soul."
2. The Pilate Inscription
   from Caesarea.
3. ^ These ranks were exclusively available for patricians only, while equestrians could become procurators.
4. ^ In his Epistle to the Romans, chapter 4:3, he told them he was not giving them orders like Peter and Paul (οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος διατάσσομαι ὑμῖν). The context of this phrase is, in Lightfoot's translation of 1891:

   4:1 I write to all the churches, and I bid all men know, that of my own free will I die for God, unless ye should hinder me. I exhort you, be ye not an unseasonable kindness to me. Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them I can attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread [of Christ].

   4:2 Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my sepulchre and may leave no part of my body behind, so that I may not, when I am fallen asleep, be burdensome to any one. Then shall I be truly a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not so much as see my body. Supplicate the Lord for me, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God.

   4:3 I do not enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles, I am a convict; they were free, but I am a slave to this very hour. Yet if I shall suffer, then am I a freed-man of Jesus Christ, and I shall rise free in Him. Now I am learning in my bonds to put away every desire.

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15. ^ Harris, p. ??.
16. ^ ^{a b} White (2004). Pp 446–447.
17. ^ Davies, p. 50. "With many other scholars, I conclude that the fixing of a canonical list was almost certainly the achievement of the Hasmonean dynasty."
18. ^ Swete's Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, page 112
19. ^ ^{a b} Van Voorst, p. 16.
20. ^ Weaver, p. 71.
21. ^ Crossan and Watts, p. 108.
22. ^ Dunn, Jesus Remembered, pp. 779–781.
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30. ^ Sanders, p. 57.
31. ^ Dunn, Jesus Remembered, p. 165.
32. ^ Sanders, p. 71.
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34. ^ Vermes, p. ??.
35. ^ Robinson, Redating the New Testament, p. 201.
36. ^ Robinson, Redating the New Testament, p. 125.
37. ^ Robinson, Redating the New Testament, p. 53.
38. ^ Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 362–364.
39. ^ Thompson, The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, p. 185.
40. ^ Lindars, p. 26.
41. ^ ^{a b} Sanders, p. ??.
42. ^ ^{a b} Theissen and Merz, p. ???
43. ^ Wansbrough, pp. 1012–1013.
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46. ^ Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005, article Fathers of the Church
47. ^ Richardson (1953). Pp 16–17.
48. ^ From papyrus to cyberspace The Guardian August 27, 2008.
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51. ^ Abegg, Jr., Martin, Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English, San Francisco: Harper, 2002
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53. ^ The Nag Hammadi Library: The Minor History Behind a Major Discovery Archived 2009-09-04 at the Wayback Machine
54. ^ Meyer and Robinson,. pp 2–3.
55. ^ Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p.2
56. ^ Van Voorst, pp. 42–43 uses the words "the vast majority of scholars". Quoted at earlychristianwritings.com.
57. ^ Darrell J. Doughty, "Persecution and martyrdom in early Christianity," class lectures (Drew).
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60. ^ Van Voorst, p. 43.
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63. ^ See Louis Feldman (translator), Josephus, Loeb Library, Volume 12, Jewish Antiquities 18.55 (p.43), which mentions Pilate as procurator in translation (as does Whiston's translation), but as ηγεμων, i.e. governor, in Greek.
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65. ^ Brunt, p. 167.
66. ^ Syme pp.63–72.
67. ^ Inez Scott Ryberg, "Tacitus' Art of Innuendo", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 73 (1942), p.399.
68. ^ France, p. 40.
69. ^ Georg Andresen in Wochenschrift fur klassische Philologie 19, 1902, p. 780f
70. ^ Harald Fuchs, Tacitus on the Christians, published in Christian Vigil (1950) volume 4, number 2, p. 70, note 6
71. ^ Robert Renehan, "Christus or Chrestus in Tacitus?", La Parola del Passato 122 (1968), pp. 368–370
72. ^ Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 26. neu bearbeitete Auflage, 1979
73. ^ Dunn, pp. 125–127.
74. ^ Arnal, p. ??
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78. ^ Brabazon, pp. 110–138.
79. ^ Habermas, pp. 121 – 143
80. ^ Habermas, p. 219,
81. ^ Marshall, p. 214.
82. ^ Historical Jesus, Quest of the." Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.
83. ^ Crossan, p. ???.
84. ^ Sanders, p. 280
85. ^ McKnight, p. 53.
86. ^ Van Roo, pp. 343–347.
87. ^ Murphy, pp. 55–60.
88. ^ Sanders, p. 3.
89. ^ Guignebert, p. 132.
90. ^ Guignebert, p. 473.
91. ^ Eisenman, p. ??.
92. ^ Kung, p. ??.
93. ^ Van Voorst, p. 8
94. ^ Volney, p. ??.
95. ^ Dupuis, p. ???.
96. ^ Durant, p. ??
97. ^ Durant, pp. 553–557.
98. ^ Doherty, Earl, "The Jesus Puzzle" website at http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/partone.htm Archived 2014-08-09 at the Wayback Machine
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100. ^ Weaver, p.71.
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104. ^ Paragraph number 881 (1994). "Catechism of the Catholic Church". Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Retrieved 8 February 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
105. ^ Barry, p. 46.
106. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} "Peter, St" Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
107. ^ "Irenaeus Against Heresies 3.3.2". ...[the] Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. ...The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.
108. ^ Orlandis, p. 11.
109. ^ Houlden, p. 212. "Partly as a result of the debate that Loisy generated, Catholic theology – Anglican as well as Roman --has undergone a development that has moderated traditional Catholic claims that Jesus explicitly instituted the Church as a visible, structured society with officers who were first the apostles and subsequently those ordained by them in personal succession."
110. ^ Houlden, p. 214. "The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) abandoned the standard Roman Catholic claim that Jesus instituted a church ruled by the apostles and their successors the bishops and presided over by Peter and his successors the popes. The ARCIC acknowledged that this claim could not be supported by the New Testament or the very early Church. In its place, ARCIC proposed an appeal to God's providential government of the Church, which had seen fit to allow the office of the bishop of Rome to develop into that of universal pastor."
111. ^ ^{a b} Brown and Meier, p. 98.
112. ^ ^{a b} Cullman, p. 234.
113. ^ ^{a b} Chadwick, Henry, p. 18.
114. ^ ^{a b} Kelly, p. 6.
115. ^ ^{a b} Building Unity, Ecumenical Documents IV (Paulist Press, 1989), p. 130. "There is increasing agreement that Peter went to Rome and was martyred there, but we have no trustworthy evidence that Peter ever served as the supervisor or bishop of the local church in Rome."
116. ^ O'Grady, p. 143.
117. ^ :Catechism of the Catholic Church, 85
118. ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 877–892, 936
119. ^ Duffy, chapter 1
120. ^ ^{a b} Duffy, p. 8.
121. ^ Lumen gentium, 18–22 Archived 2014-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
122. ^ Mannion et al., p. 211.
123. ^ Brown (1993). Pg 10.
124. ^ Brown (1993). Pp 10–11.
125. ^ Keck (1988).
126. ^ Pelikan (1975). Pg. 113.
127. ^ Dunn (2006). Pg 385.
128. ^ ^{a b c} Pieter W. van der Horst, review of Otto Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom: die literarischen Zeugnisse. Mit einer kritischen Edition der Martyrien des Petrus und Paulus auf neuer handschriftlicher Grundlage, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.03.25.
129. ^ Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005, article Rome (early Christian)
130. ^ Pagels, p. 62.
131. ^ ^{a b} Price, Christopher. "The Speeches in Acts." Christian Colligation of Apologetics Debate Research & Evangelism, 2003. Web: The Speeches in Acts
132. ^ Maccoby, Ch. 1
133. ^ Siker (2000). Pg 231.
134. ^ Siker (2000). Pp 231–32.
135. ^ Siker (2000). Pp 232–34.
136. ^ Bokenkotter, pp. 34–35.
137. ^ Bokenkotter, p. 32.
138. ^ Duffy, pp. 9–10.
139. ^ Bokenkotter, p. 33.
140. ^ Duffy, p. 13.
141. ^ Bokenkotter, p. 35.
142. ^ Durant, pp. ??
143. ^ Eusebius of Caesarea: the Manuscripts of the "Church History"
144. ^ Chesnut, "Introduction" summarizes Eusebius' influence on historiography.
145. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Ecclesiastical History"
146. ^ Moynahan, p. 152.
147. ^ ^{a b} Moynahan, p. 72
148. ^ Ehrman, p. 173.
149. ^ Hunt (2003). Pp 10–11.
150. ^ Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt pp.51–52
151. ^ Esler (2004). Pp 893–894.
152. ^ Bauer (1964:3f) instanced Origen, Commentarius II in Cant., and Sel. in Proverb. and Tertullian, De praescript. haer. 36 as espousing the traditional theory of the relation of heresy.
153. ^ See Bauer's concise epitome of Rechtgläubigkeit in Bauer, Aufsätze und Kleine Schriften, Georg Strecker, ed. Tübingen, 1967, pp 229–33.
154. ^ Reviews and responses to Bauer are cited in Georg Strecker, "Die Aufnahme des Buches" in Rechtgläubigkeit, 1964, pp 288–306; a "completely revised and expanded version of Strecker's essay by Robert A. Kraft appears in the English translation, 1971, pp 286–316; see also Daniel J. Harrington, "The Reception of Walter Bauer's "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity" during the Last Decade", The Harvard Theological Review 73.1/2 (January – April 1980), pp. 289–298.
155. ^ Helmut Koester, "Häretiker im Urchristentum" RGG, 3rd ed. III pp 17–21, gives a bibliography of works influenced by Bauer.
156. ^ "The Book of Bart". The Washington Post. March 5, 2006. Retrieved 2009-04-06.

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