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Churches in Ancient Christianity (Biblical Studies)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The English term, “church,” derives from the Greek, kuriakon (κυριακόν) (“that which belongs to the lord”), and is the traditional English translation for a variety of Greek and Latin terms that were used to designate gatherings of Christ-believers in antiquity, including the eventually-dominant ekklēsia /ecclesia (1 Cor 1:2), as well as synōdos (NewDocs 6.26.19), thiasōtai (Eusebius, E.C. 1.3.12), synagōgē (Jas. 2.2), koinōnia (Origen, Cels. 1.1), hetaeria (Pliny, Ep. 10.96), and corpus (Tertullian, Apol. 39). The reality that these designations also denoted Greco-Roman associations (including Judean synagogues)––and that titles for church offices were already employed by private associations––prompted earlier research to explore terminological convergences between ancient churches and private associations, and to investigate the extent to which ancient churches were modeled after Greco-Roman associations (e.g., Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches) and synagogues (e.g., Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church). Some recent scholarship on ancient churches has abandoned the quest to determine their identity (e.g., as associations, synagogues, philosophical schools), and now consults analogous data for the heuristic purpose of raising new questions about church structure and practices from ancient associations about whose practices we know much more (e.g., Kloppenborg, “Membership Practices in Pauline Christ Groups”). Other researchers continue to speak about the identity of churches as associations (e.g., Alikin, Earliest History of the Christian Gathering) or as unique from associations (e.g., Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum). This bibliography covers ancient churches from the earliest period up to 313 CE––the so-called ante pacem era. In these centuries there was diversity from church to church but some commonalities existed at the foundation of diverse ancient church practices: the earliest churches were gatherings of Christ-believers (and invitees of various kinds) for liturgical activities such as prayer, reading, preaching, teaching, hymns (1 Cor 14:26; Didache 8–10; Justin, Apology 66–67) and social purposes such as eating, drinking, and vying for honor (1 Cor 11:17–34; 2 Peter 2:13; Ignatius, Smyrneans 8:2–4; Pliny, Epistles 10.97; Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 25; Tertullian, Apology 39). It has been suggested that liturgical practices were rather uniform in churches (Salzmann, Lehren und Ermahnen) but this theory has not persuaded most scholars (Rouwhorst, “The Roots of the Early Christian Eucharist”). Likewise, meal practices in early churches, while perhaps deriving from a common Greco-Roman banquet tradition, nonetheless might have been structured differently from church to church (McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists). In terms of architecture, it is traditionally thought that pre-313 CE churches met almost exclusively in un-renovated houses and, later, renovated houses (Filson, “The Significance of the Early House Churches”) but Adams, in his 2013 monograph, Earliest Christian Meeting Places, highlights the usage of rented space and other un-renovated meeting venues––and therefore identifies spatial diversity––in this period.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
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  7. General overviews of ancient churches often narrow themselves to specific aspects of church life rather than providing comprehensive surveys of church practices and churches’ social situation based on archaeological, literary, and analogical data. For an overview of institutionalization, the position of Harnack 1910 provides basic tenets of the traditional perspective. Hatch 1881 offers an alternative to Harnack 1910 and, more recently, Eisen 2000 has demonstrated women often held leadership positions and offices throughout the early centuries into the medieval era. Dix 1945 offers the classical position on the origins of liturgical and meal practices in churches, while Alikin 2010 provides a recent challenge. The conclusions of White 1990–1997 have become normative in modern understandings of early church architecture but have now been challenged in Adams 2013.
  8.  
  9. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
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  11. Churches assembled outside of domestic architecture more than has been realized. Provides evidence of Christ-believers assembling in rented and open space, as well as descriptions of the role of these spaces in everyday city and village life.
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  13. Alikin, Valeriy A. Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  14. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004183094.i-342Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. Overviews liturgy and meal practices in church gatherings from the 50s to 258 CE with particular focus on situating church activities in the context of practices in ancient association meetings.
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  17. Dix, Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. Westminster, UK: Dacre, 1945.
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  19. This is a key work in terms of history of scholarship but does not overview current majority perspectives. Situates early Christian liturgical practices in a nearly-exclusive Jewish context.
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  21. Eisen, Ute. Women Office Holders in Early Christianity. Epigraphical and Literary Studies. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.
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  23. English translation of the original German (Amtsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum, 1996). Shows that women achieved status positions outside of “deaconesses” and “widows.” Analyzes inscriptions that mention women and a variety of church office titles, including “bishop.” Offers an alternative to the formerly dominant position that women could not become officers and leaders in proto-Orthodox communities.
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  25. Harnack, Adolf. The Constitution & Law of the Church in the First Two Centuries. Translated by F. Pogson. Crown Theological Library 31. London: Williams & Norgate, 1910.
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  27. English translation of Entstehung und Entwickelung der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten (1910). Local churches gradually became structurally organized over time. Describes three organizational layers to the earliest Christ-groups, based on his reading of the Didache, including: itinerant spiritual leaders, elders in charge of education and order, and local administrative magistrates. This is a key work in terms of history of scholarship but does not overview current majority perspectives.
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  29. Hatch, Edwin. The Organization of the Early Christian Churches; Eight Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford, in the Year 1880. London: Rivingtons, 1881.
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  31. Discussion of church structure to the 4th century. Analyzes similarities and differences between early church organization on the one hand, and the organization of cities, Greco-Roman associations, and Judean groups on the other hand. Some conclusions drawn from the association data cannot be maintained today but Hatch provides a groundwork for exploring the development of church organization from the earliest period into later centuries within the context of analogous cults. This is a key work in terms of history of scholarship.
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  33. White, L. Michael. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. 2 vols. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1990–1997.
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  35. Volume 1 posits four gradual stages of architectural development of the physical space of church meetings. Shows that Mithraic and Judean groups developed worship space according to similar patterns. Volume 2 provides a compilation of literary and material sources attesting to the meeting spaces of Christ-believers, Judeans, and members of Mithraic groups.
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  37. Reference Works
  38.  
  39. Schmidt 1965, Cross and Livingstone 2005, and Schnelle 2012 provide concise overviews of language and practice among the earliest churches. The discussion in Ferguson 1990 of bishops in early churches includes information about organizational structure more generally, while Blasi, et al. 2002 includes helpful chapters that review literature on theories concerning church leadership in the earliest centuries. White 1990 briefly summarizes the available data concerning church architecture in the pre-Constantinian period and Halton 1990 overviews ancient theological perspectives on the church. Markschies 2012 covers the development of churches to the 5th century.
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  41. Blasi, Anthony J., Jean Duhaime, and Paul-André Turcotte, ed. Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2002.
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  43. Features several chapters that introduce and overview key areas of ancient church research, including: “Sociological Insights into the Development of Christian Leadership Roles and Community Formation” by Howard Clark Kee (pp.337–361) and “Early Christianity as an Unorganized Ecumenical Religious Movement” by Frederick Bird (pp.225–246).
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  45. Cross, Frank L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds. “Church.” In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3d ed. Edited by Frank L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, 343–346. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  46. DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  47. Discusses self-designations and practices. Engages with Catholic and Protestant perspectives on the church in modern societies. Includes extensive bibliographies on New Testament ecclesiology, patristic ecclesiology, and the church in the Middle Ages.
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  49. Ferguson, Everett. “Bishop.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Edited by Everett Ferguson, 150–154. New York and London: Garland, 1990.
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  51. Reviews the origins and development of the role of bishop in ancient churches to the 5th century. Discusses analogous functionaries and officers in Judean communities. Detailed analysis of bishops’ evolving set of activities within churches. Bibliography includes primary material and secondary literature in English, French, and German.
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  53. Halton, Thomas. “Church.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Edited by Everett Ferguson, 207–210. New York and London: Garland, 1990.
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  55. Focuses on 2nd- to 5th-century idealizations about the church. Covers the work of early theologians within the Jesus movement. Bibliography includes primary and secondary literature.
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  57. Markschies, C. “Early Church.” In Religion Past and Present. 4th ed. Edited by H. D. Betz, D. S. Browning, and B. Janowski. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
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  59. A detailed overview of the evolution of Christianity, and the development of churches, up to the 5th century. Online resource available as part of BrillOnline Reference Works.
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  61. Schmidt, K. L. “Ekklēsia.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. 3. Edited by Gerhard Kittel, 501–536. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965.
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  63. Overviews the etymology, semantic range, and usage of the word. Covers the New Testament, the Greek world, and in the Old Testament and Judaism.
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  65. Schnelle, Udo. “Church.” In Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception Online. 2d ed. Vol. 5. Edited by Hans-Josef Klauck, et al. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012.
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  67. A lengthy entry that covers leadership, practices, and beliefs in selected local churches (Galilee, Antioch, cities of Pauline churches, etc.). Covers New Testament data not only from epistolary texts but also from gospel literature. Bibliography includes mostly German works.
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  69. White, L. Michael. “House Church.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Edited by Everett Ferguson, 439–440. New York and London: Garland, 1990.
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  71. A succinct overview of the earliest evidence concerning the location of church meetings. Includes discussion of literary and archaeological data. Helpful bibliography on secondary literature about church architecture included.
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  73. Sourcebooks
  74.  
  75. The collections assembled in Johnson 2009 and White 1997 contain material illustrating liturgical practices and architecture respectively. Stevenson 1987 collects literary evidence concerning early church practices. Horsley, et al. 1981–2012 documents papyri and epigraphy that often illuminate early churches and sometimes were even produced by ancient churches. Recent collections of papyrological, epigraphic, and literary sources illustrating synagogue practices (Runesson, et al. 2008) and association activities (Ascough, et al. 2012; Kloppenborg, et al. 2011–) are now essential datasets for students and scholars of pre-Constantinian churches. The online resource Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Companion to the Sourcebook is a very useful digital supplement to the print volumes Kloppenborg, et al. 2011–.
  76.  
  77. Ascough, Richard S., Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg. Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012.
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  79. Includes English translations of 337 epigraphic and papyrology sources, 54 ancient literary texts that mention associations, and descriptions of 28 meeting places. Provides a detailed annotated bibliography that covers works written in all major research languages, and concordance and indices. Sources come from throughout the ancient Mediterranean and are organized geographically.
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  81. Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Companion to the Sourcebook.
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  83. A searchable associations database that includes papyri and inscriptions from and beyond the sourcebooks produced by John Kloppenborg, Richard Ascough, and Philip Harland. Updated regularly.
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  85. Horsley, G. H. R., S. R. Llewelyn, E. A. Judge, J. Harrison, and M. Theophilos, eds. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. 10 vols. North Ryde, Australia: Macquarie University, 1981–2012.
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  87. Many volumes contain a section called “ecclesiastica” (Vols. 1–4, 6, 8, 9). Texts are presented in original language and English. Entries include description, analysis, and bibliography.
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  89. Johnson, Lawrence J. Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources. 4 vols. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009.
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  91. Volume 1 covers the earliest period to the 4th century. Includes material related to both Jewish liturgical practices as well as those of Christ-believers.
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  93. Kloppenborg, John S., Richard S. Ascough, and Philip A. Harland. Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. BZNW 181, 204. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2011–
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  95. Inscriptions and papyri in their original language as well as in English translation. Entries include lengthy notes, commentary, and bibliography. Volume 1 (Kloppenborg and Ascough) includes ninety-one inscriptions from Achaia, Central Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace. Volume 2 features sixty-one inscriptions from the northern Black Sea region and Asia Minor; Volumes 3 and 4 are forthcoming.
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  97. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 72. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008.
  98. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004161160.i-332Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. Provides a helpful introduction to synagogue research, followed by synagogue sources in their original language and English translation organized geographically. Equipped with indices listing sources by author (e.g., Josephus) and genre (e.g., Inscriptions, Papyri), as well as topics such as synagogue designations.
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  101. Stevenson, J. A New Eusebius. Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337. With W. H. C. Frend. Rev. ed. London: SPCK, 1987.
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  103. Some of these sources illuminate local church practices, such as Pliny’s description of church meeting in 2nd-century Asia Minor, Justin’s description of church rituals in the 2nd century, and criticisms of Christian beliefs and practices by Lucian, Celsus, and others (up to 200 CE) that offer insights into church activities. Other texts illustrate theological idealizations concerning the “Church” (that is, the Jesus movement more broadly).
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  105. White, L. Michael. Texts and Monuments for the domus ecclesiae in its Environment. Vol. 2. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1997.
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  107. Provides fifty-seven literary and material sources about or from early churches. Contains sources from Mithraic and Jewish groups for comparison. Literary and epigraphic sources appear in original language and English translation. Archaeological material is illustrated and described.
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  109. Introductory Works
  110.  
  111. Introductory discussions of ancient churches are often located in broader studies of early Christianity. Brown 2010, Chadwick 2001, Humphries 2006, and Lynch 2010 fall into this category and are suitable textbooks in introductory courses on relevant periods of early Christian history. Brown 2010 would be appropriate for theological settings. Ascough 1998 is appropriate for orienting undergraduate and graduate students to models of ancient social formations that are analogous to ancient churches, while Torjesen 2008 is an option for graduate courses on late antique churches.
  112.  
  113. Ascough, Richard S. What Are They Saying about the Formation of Pauline Churches? New York: Paulist, 1998.
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  115. A succinct and thorough review of scholarship that compares churches with associations, synagogues, and mystery cults up to 1998. Argues that no one model explains everything and that different models might be more suitable for different Pauline groups.
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  117. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
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  119. Originally published in 1997. Introduces local churches as evidenced from the New Testament (NT), including the Pauline letters and the Gospels. The sections covering 1st-century churches would serve well in theological classrooms as short introductions to the main NT passages that illuminate church practices.
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  121. Chadwick, Henry. The Church in Ancient Society. From Galilee to Gregory the Great. Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  122. DOI: 10.1093/0199246955.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. Discusses some local churches and church documents as they relate to broader developments in Christianity through the first six centuries. Some relevant topics include the Jerusalem church (pp. 47–52), the Corinthian church after Paul (pp. 59–64), and the Didache (pp. 84–89). Differences between “Christian society” and Greco-Roman society, now recognized as apologetic (see Kloppenborg 1993 cited under Models for Understanding First-Century Churches), are highly emphasized.
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  125. Humphries, Mark. Early Christianity. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
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  127. Pages 142–167 provide an introduction to scholarly debates on the evolution of hierarchical structures and rituals in ancient churches. Humphries frames these debates as aspects of the broader academic discussion about unity and diversity in early Christianity.
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  129. Lynch, Joseph. H. Early Christianity. A Brief History. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  131. An excellent introduction to the social setting of churches up to late antiquity. An entire chapter is devoted to church governance to 600 CE (pp. 144–159). Chapter 3 (pp.24–36) discusses private and public cultic groups as well as philosophies. Chapter 9 (pp. 105–120) focuses on various church activities (e.g., catechumens, church architecture, ordination of leaders).
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  133. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
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  135. Originally published in 1985. A short and helpful overview of our extant non-literary data (e.g., graffito, epigraphy, architecture, papyri) about the earliest churches. Includes texts in their original language and in English translation, as well as illustrations of important archaeological sites.
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  137. Torjesen, Karen Jo. “Clergy and Laity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. Edited by Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, 389–405. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  138. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199271566.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. Introduction to major positions in scholarship on church leadership and membership from the 1st to 6th century. Includes discussion of economic, archaeological, and gender issues related to the topic.
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  141. First-Century Churches
  142.  
  143. A great deal of research on ancient churches focuses on the very earliest groups. Some scholars draw general conclusions about first-century churches, while other studies inquire into church practices as represented through specific texts that emerged within or shortly after the 1st century, namely the Pauline epistles and the Didache.
  144.  
  145. Models for Understanding First-Century Churches
  146.  
  147. Investigations of first-century churches work primarily with New Testament (NT) texts and comparative material that might illuminate the sometimes sparse data provided by NT literature. Stegemann and Stegemann 1999 offers a detailed social description of this data. Barton and Horsley 1981, McLean 1993, Ascough 1997, and Theissen 2007 illuminate aspects of early church practices by means of comparisons with associations. Klauck 1981 also employs a comparative methodology but focuses on the ancient household and groups that met there for cultic activity. Judge 1960 places first-century churches within civic, household, and association contexts and also explores the social status of church members.
  148.  
  149. Ascough, Richard S. “Translocal Relationships among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 223–241.
  150. DOI: 10.1353/earl.1997.0054Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. Challenges two commonly asserted positions: (1) that early churches regularly established social connections with other churches in distant locations; (2) that Greco-Roman associations were exclusively localized social formations. The social networks of early churches were not uniquely broad in terms of geography but, rather, fit within the spectrum of social connections established by contemporary associations.
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  153. Barton, Stephen, and G. H. R. Horsley. “A Hellenistic Cult Group and the New Testament Churches.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 24 (1981): 7–41.
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  155. Describes and analyzes the household group behind SIG3 985 = AGRW 121 (Philadelphia, Lydia; late II-early I BCE). Compares this association with 1st-century churches with respect to membership access, gods, and frequency of gatherings.
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  157. Judge, Edwin A. The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century. London: Tyndale, 1960.
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  159. Overviews social activity in civic, household, and association environments. Highlights ways in which each of these three levels of society shaped the form of early churches. Early churches were not distinctive from associations in terms of their legal situation and practices, but their beliefs––namely, their monotheistic and eschatological convictions––threatened to put them at odds with broader society. Also argues that Christian groups were led “by a socially pretentious section of the population” (p. 60).
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  161. Klauck, Hans-Josef. Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum. Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 103. Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981.
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  163. Explores the way that the household shaped early Christian beliefs and practices. Draws data from Pauline letters, Acts, Gospels, non-Pauline NT letters, and literary and archaeological evidence from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Includes brief descriptions of other cultic groups that assembled in domestic space: associations, synagogues, and the domestic cult.
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  165. Kloppenborg, John S. “Edwin Hatch, Churches and Collegia.” In Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honour of John C. Hurd. Edited by Bradley H. McLean, 212–238. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements 86. Sheffield, UK: JSOT, 1993.
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  167. A pivotal essay that exposes a modern apologetic effort to describe the earliest churches as superior to and unique from ancient analogies. Addresses the major objections to comparative research on early churches and private associations. This is the methodological starting point in contemporary scholarship on the social situation of ancient churches.
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  169. McLean, Bradley H. “The Agrippinilla Inscription: Religious Associations and Early Church Formation.” In Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honour of John C. Hurd. Edited by Bradley H. McLean, 239–270. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement 86. Sheffield, UK: JSOT, 1993.
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  171. A description and analysis of the household association that produced IGUR 160 = AGRW 330 (Torre Nova [Sicily, Italy], 160–170 CE). Discusses the group’s organizational structure including a consideration of gender, the ethnic status of its members, recruitment as based on social networks rather than psychological factors. Argues that the centrality of family, differentiation of leadership title, and other aspects of early churches do not fall outside of the spectrum of practices attested by associations.
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  173. Stegemann, E., and W. Stegemann. The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999.
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  175. An extensive overview of ancient analogies to early churches, the social status of church members, and the role of women in churches. Focuses primarily on 1st-century data but also addresses some 2nd-century material including the Pliny-Trajan correspondence. See, especially, pp. 249–316, 389–407.
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  177. Theissen, Gerd. “Urchristliche Gemeinden und antike Vereine. Sozialdynamik im Urchristentum durch Widersprüche zwischen Selbstverständnis und Sozialstruktur.” In In Other Words. Essays on Social Science Methods and the New Testament in Honor of Jerome H. Neyrey. Edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn, Zeba A. Crook, and Eric Stewart, 221–247. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007.
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  179. The earliest churches did not identify as associations but the “social reality” is that non-Christ-believers identified ancient churches as types of private associations. Theissen provides some data that helps to address this discrepancy.
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  181. Pauline Epistles
  182.  
  183. The Pauline letters are a particularly illuminating source of information on some 1st-century churches. Barclay 2011 is a collection of previously published essays on Pauline groups. De Vos 1999 cautions against the notion that all Pauline churches lived in the same social situation. Horrell 2008 argues that Pauline churches were more unified with other early churches than Paul might like to admit. MacDonald 1988 undertakes a sociological analysis of organizational structure in Pauline churches, while Meeks 1983 offers a sociological study of these churches’ beliefs, practices, and place in society. Kloppenborg 2013 proposes a new methodology for using comparative data in the study of Pauline churches that differs substantially from the model in Meeks 1983. Meggitt 1998 provides a new description of the social status of these church members––one that departs substantially from Meeks 1983––which is nuanced but otherwise upheld by Longenecker (in Still and Horrell 2009).
  184.  
  185. Barclay, John M. G. Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. WUNT I/275. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
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  187. A collection of articles written by the author between 1992 and 2011. Includes analyses of the usage of money in Pauline groups and communal analogies, the differences in the ways that Paul’s churches in Thessalonica and Corinth interacted with their neighbors, and age hierarchies.
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  189. de Vos, Craig S. Church and Community Conflict: The Relationships of the Thessalonian, Corinthian, and Philippian Churches with Their Wider Civic Communities. SBLDiss 168. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999.
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  191. Provides descriptions of the overall social situation of 1st-century Thessalonica, Corinth, and Philippi and then reconstructs how Paul’s churches in these cities, given what we know about them, would have interacted with their surrounding culture. The Macedonian churches came into conflict with their neighbors due to differences in cultic devotion whereas the Corinthians managed to avoid serious conflicts thanks partially to Corinthian culture and partially to the behavior of the church’s members.
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  193. Horrell, David G. “Pauline Churches or Early Christian Churches? Unity, Disagreement, and the Eucharist.” In Einheit der Kirche in Neuen Testament: Dritte europäische orthodox-westliche Exegetenkonferenz in Sankt Petersburg, 24.-31. August 2005. Edited by Anatoly A. Alexeev, Christos Karakolis, and Ulrich Luz, 195–203. Wissenschaftlich Uuntersuchungen zum Neuen Testament I/218. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.
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  195. There is actually greater unity among early churches than Paul wants to believe. Horrell does not characterize early churches as unified rather than diversified but does urge for Pauline groups to be understood as 1st-century churches rather than groups that differ substantially from non-Pauline groups.
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  197. Kloppenborg, John S. “Membership Practices in Pauline Christ Groups.” Early Christianity 4 (2013): 183–215.
  198. DOI: 10.1628/186870313X13667164610110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. Association data raises new questions about membership size, attendance, and membership lists in Pauline groups. Shows that a practical mechanism for keeping track of group membership was to write down the names of members on a group document, and cites evidence suggesting that such a practice would not have been unfamiliar to Pauline groups.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. MacDonald, Margaret M. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 60. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  202. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511470455Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. Pauline groups gradually became increasingly institutionalized. MacDonald’s exegesis of the Pauline and deutero-Pauline letters demonstrates this shift.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. 2d ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.
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  207. A sociological analysis of the Pauline groups’ identity, practices, beliefs, social status, and place in broader society. Continues to shape the discussion of Pauline Christians.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Meggitt, Justin J. Paul, Poverty and Survival. Studies of the New Testament and its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.
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  211. Meggitt’s findings concerning the economic conditions of early churches has shaped the modern discussion of early churches and economics.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Still, Todd D., and David G. Horrell, eds. After the First Urban Christians. The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later. London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2009.
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  215. Includes seven articles that examine Meeks’s most important conclusions in light of important developments since 1983. Meeks provides a response to recent developments and offers some concessions as well as reaffirms some of his earlier arguments. Longenecker’s contribution “Socio-economic Profiling of the First Urban Christians” builds on insights in Meggitt 1998 by maintaining that there is more evidence for the destitute in Pauline groups than Meeks 1983 had allowed (though he does take issue with Meggitt’s binary model).
  216. Find this resource:
  217. The Didache
  218.  
  219. The Didache, discovered in 1883, has become an important source on church organization and practice in the 1st-century and early 2nd-century. The text contains explicit references to gatherings of Christ-believers (e.g., 4:14, 9:4, 14:1–3, 16:2), and other regulations concerning activities that happened in church settings: meals (6:3, 9:1–5, 11:9), baptism (7:1–4), prayer (10:1–7), dealings with money and possessions (13:3–7), and appointments of church officials (15:1–3). While it is not universally identified as a 1st-century document, it is rarely pushed later than the first half of the 2nd century. Niederwimmer 1998 suggests that the document emerged from a specific congregation and geographical region while Milavec 2003 imagines a broader social and historical setting. Draper 1996 conveniently collects some of the most groundbreaking studies on the text from the 20th century. O’Loughlin 2010 is a helpful introduction especially in theological settings. Sandt 2011 raises a new question about the Didachist’s Eucharistic ritual, while Wolmarans 1999 introduces a new methodological approach to the study of the text.
  220.  
  221. Draper, Jonathan A. The Didache in Modern Research. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 37. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1996.
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  223. A collection of seventeen seminal articles previously published in English, German, French, Italian, and Hebrew––all of which are now in English. Includes several chapters related to early churches as illuminated by the Didache, such as the usage of church orders (Schöllgen) and hierarchical relationships within churches (Draper).
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Koester, Helmut. History and Literature of Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982.
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  227. A brief introduction to the text, its sources, function, and provenance. Argues that the document was used by a small number of churches in Syria that did not place great importance on traditions about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Milavec, A. The Didache: Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50–70 C.E. New York; Mahway, NJ: Newman, 2003.
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  231. The Didache was a training manual designed for Gentiles who were becoming full members of house churches. Several chapters discuss features of early churches as illustrated by the Didache, such as organizational structure, social setting of the document’s composition, and the place of the Torah in church life.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Niederwimmer, Kurt. The Didache: A Commentary. Edited by Harold W. Attridge. Translated by Linda M. Maloney. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.
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  235. English translation of Niederwimmer’s Die Didache (1989). The introduction discusses source material used by the Didachist, and the social setting in which it emerged: written by a bishop from a Jewish-Christian community of unknown provenance, possibly within Syria. The text functioned as a church rule that clarified proper behavior.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. O’Loughlin, Thomas. The Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010.
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  239. A clearly-written introduction to the text. It is suitable in undergraduate settings but its brevity and lack of footnotes/endnotes limits its value in graduate settings. It is argued that the text was an instructional document memorized by some 1st-century churches. The author is concerned throughout the book to highlight the importance of the text to contemporary Christians.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Sandt, Huub van de. “Why Does the Didache Conceive of the Eucharist as a Holy Meal?” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 1–20.
  242. DOI: 10.1163/157007210X503144Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. In the Didache’s version of the Eucharistic celebration, the ritual is not related to Jesus’ last supper. The author suggests that the Didachist imagined the ritual in relation to temple rituals and that this is why the author can conceive of the meal as holy despite being unconnected to traditions of Jesus’ last supper.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Sandt, Huub van de, and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, eds. Matthew, James, and Didache. Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.
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  247. Seventeen papers that, on the whole, argue that the three texts in the title represent a milieu of the Jesus movement that was separate from Pauline and Johannine trajectories. Zangenberg argues that Didache emerged from a social formation that identified as deeply Jewish and within the same milieu as Matthew but stresses that the text’s provenance cannot be reconstructed.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Wolmarans, J. L. P. “Organisational Behavior in the Didache.” Acta Patristica et Byzantina 10 (1999): 199–209.
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  251. A sociological study of early church organization, rituals, membership requirements, and function as represented in the Didache.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Second-Century Churches
  254.  
  255. The study of 2nd-century Christianity is increasingly turning to material culture for insights (Lampe 2003; MacMullen 2009; Nasrallah 2010). Literary texts, often apologetic in disposition (see Halton 1990 cited under Reference Works), also continue to be useful in investigations of church hierarchy (Staats 1986), activities (McGowan 1999), and continuities with 1st-century churches (Trebilco 2006).
  256.  
  257. Bowes, K. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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  259. The author’s primary concern is to show that private worship (e.g., private household churches) survived into the 4th and 5th centuries despite the rise of public churches and professional clergy. Chapter 2 focuses on evidence specifically from the first three centuries but the whole book is essential reading for understanding the development of private churches from the earliest period into the medieval era.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus. Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
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  263. Investigates literary, epigraphic, and material evidence in order to illuminate the place in society occupied by 2nd-century Christians living in Rome.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. MacMullen, Ramsay. The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400. Atlanta: SBL, 2009.
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  267. Analyzing archaeological and some literary evidence, MacMullen proposes that Christ-believers from higher social rankings (about 5 percent of all Christ-believers) established churches of very different hierarchical and cultic character than those with which socially inferior Christ-believers joined. The majority of Christ-believers (95 percent) did not concern themselves much with theological questions and did not define themselves by their affiliation to the Jesus movement.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. McGowan, A. B. “Is There a Liturgical Text in This Gospel?”: The Institution Narratives and Their Early Interpretive Communities.” Journal of Biblical Literature 118 (1999): 73–87.
  270. DOI: 10.2307/3268225Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. Explores evidences for liturgical readings in early Christian communities from the first two centuries. Argues that Eucharistic liturgies are evidenced not before the 3rd century.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Nasrallah, Laura S. Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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  275. Situates 2nd-century apologetic literature––particularly these authors’ reflections on architecture, the body, and space––within the context of broader criticisms of dominant cultural traditions by authors such as Lucian, Aelius Aristides, and Cassius Dio. Provides descriptions and analyses of important civic structures in major cities such as Rome, Aphrodisias, and Athens, thereby illuminating spaces within the environments of local churches that shaped aspects of 2nd-century Christianity as represented by the apologists.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Staats, R. “Die katholische Kirche des Ignatius von Antiochien und das Problem ihrer Normativität im zweiten Jahrhundert.” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 77 (1986): 126–145.
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  279. Analyses Ignatius’s description of three church offices (bishop, elder, and deacon). Provides a description of each officer’s role in Ignatius’s thought and compares this with contemporary descriptions.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Trebilco, Paul. “Christian Communities in Western Asia Minor into the Early Second Century: Ignatius and Others as Witnesses against Bauer.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49 (2006): 17–44.
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  283. Offers an alternative to Walter Bauer’s description of early Christianity in Asia Minor in his Orthodoxy and Heresy (1971). Bauer’s suggestion that “heretical” churches might have been earlier than “proto-Orthodox” ones, and in the majority, is challenged. Trebilco provides counter-arguments to four of Bauer’s observations, focusing on data from deutero-Pauline letters, Revelation, and Ignatius.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Regional Studies of First- and Second-Century Churches
  286.  
  287. Although some scholars have argued for relatively unity among early churches (Horrell 2008, cited under Pauline Epistles), most researchers agree that the practices and social situations of churches varied, and that one factor in shaping a local church was its place in its city. In light of this recognition of church diversity, expansive bodies of literature have studied ancient churches in specific cities or provinces.
  288.  
  289. Jerusalem
  290.  
  291. The traditional interpretation of Acts 6:1–8:3 is that the Jerusalem church really existed (Koester 1982) and consisted of two opposing parties: Hellenists (Greek speakers) and Hebrews (Aramaic speakers) (Moule 1978) who were from the Galilee (Koester 1982). Several aspects of this reconstruction have been challenged. On the one hand, Hill 1992 argues for greater theological unity in the community while Mimouni 2011 forges a more direct connection between Jesus and the Jerusalem church than is traditionally done. On the other hand, Miller 1995, Smith 2000, and Mack 2004 dismiss as unreliable much of the evidence used from Acts to support the traditional reconstruction. Sim 2005 analyzes the impact of Paul’s gospel in Jerusalem.
  292.  
  293. Hill, Craig C. Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992.
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. Offers an alternative perspective on the theological positions of Hebrew and Hellenistic factions in Jerusalem. Hill proposes that there is little evidence that these parties held distinct beliefs concerning Torah.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Koester, Helmut. History and Literature of Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982.
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  299. Presents what has become a traditional interpretation of the social history of the early Jerusalem church. Reconstructs the membership in the church, including the relationship between Hellenists and Hebrews in the Jerusalem community; and the place of the central place of the church within Jerusalem society and within the Jesus movement’s missionary activity.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Mack, Burton L. “A Jewish Jesus School in Jerusalem?” In Redescribing Christian Origins. Edited by Ronald Dean Cameron and Merrill Miller, 253–262. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004.
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  303. The traditional reconstruction of the Jerusalem church is based on the account in Acts, a “highly imaginative” narrative. Briefly sketches a new reconstruction of the group, emphasizing its interest in social issues rather than topics such as eschatology, messianism, and resurrection. The group need not have consisted exclusively of Christ-believers.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Miller, Merrill P. “‘Beginning From Jerusalem. . .’: Re-examining Canon and Consensus.” Journal of Higher Criticism 2 (1995): 3–30.
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  307. Helped to establish an alternative to the traditional reconstruction of the Jerusalem church as the location of a unity origin of Christian traditions and communities. Argues that Luke’s account of the Jerusalem church’s place in the early Jesus movement (i.e., the 30s CE) is based on disputes and activities that occurred in the 40s and 50s. Available online.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Mimouni, Simon Claude. “La communauté nazoréenne/chrétienne de Jérusalem aux Ier-IIe siècles: Quelques éléments de réflexion sur une recherché.” Annali di storia dell’ esegesi 28 (2011): 17–35.
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  311. The Jerusalem church has its origins in a community founded by Jesus in a household on Mount Zion. Jesus’ brother, James, assumed leadership after Jesus’ execution.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Moule, Charles Francis Digby. “Once More, Who Were the Hellenists?” Expository Times 90 (1978): 100–102.
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  315. Helped to establish the traditional perspective concerning the identity of the Hellenists as Greek-speakers and Hebrews as Aramaic speakers.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Sim, David C. “How Many Jews Became Christians in the First Century? The Failure of the Christian Mission to the Jews.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 61 (2005): 417–440.
  318. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v61i1/2.430Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. Neither a law-observant nor a Pauline gospel would have been attractive to Jews in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem church would have managed to recruit a maximum of five hundred members.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Smith, Dennis E. “Was There a Jerusalem Church? Christian Origins according to Acts and Paul.” Forum 3 (2000): 57–74.
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  323. Luke’s narrative of Christianity originating in Jerusalem, where the first church was formed, and expanding from there, is a fiction created by Luke for theological purposes.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Antioch
  326.  
  327. Scholars have researched four chapters in the 1st- and 2nd-century history of the Antiochean church. First, the origins of the church from the expulsion of the Hellenists from Jerusalem in the mid-30s CE (Koester 1982). Second, participation in the Apostolic Council by some members of the Antiochean community in 48 CE (Koester 1982). Third, the conflict in Antioch soon after (Slee 2003, Koester 1982). Finally, the practices and convictions of the Antiochean community as represented by Ignatius in the early second century (Corwin 1960, Brent 2006). Brown and Meier 1983 reconstruct the trajectory of the 1st-century Antiochean church through these periods of its early history.
  328.  
  329. Brent, Allen. Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 36. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2006.
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  331. Ignatius’s perspective on church order, and the reception of his perspective in Antioch and elsewhere, is scrutinized in order to clarify the state of church hierarchy in 2nd-century churches, including the local Antiochian church. Brent characterizes Ignatius’s position on a single bishop in each locality as an idealization rather than a social reality realized throughout the Mediterranean.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Brown, Raymond E., and John P. Meier. Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity. New York: Paulist, 1983.
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  335. Meier authors the section on Antioch, in which he produces a social history of the 1st-century local church on the basis of Galatians, Acts, Matthew, and Ignatius. In Meier’s reconstruction, a central element of dispute in the church throughout the century was the extent to which it should require members to participate in Jewish practices.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Corwin, Virginia. St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960.
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  339. Identifies divisions in the local church at Antioch as factions of Docetists and Judaizers. Ignatius’s beliefs best fit within a proto-Orthodox milieu rather than a gnostic setting.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Koester, Helmut. History and Literature of Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982.
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  343. The Antioch community originated from the Jerusalem Hellenist faction, which was expelled from Jerusalem after one of its members, Stephen, spoke controversially about freedom from Torah and was martyred as a result. It became the center of the Gentile mission. Its leaders were apostles, prophets, and teachers. The two churches shared a positive relationship for decades. Antioch’s traditions were Hellenized variations of earlier Jerusalem material. Suitable in introductory settings.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Slee, Michelle. The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE: Communion and Conflict. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 244. London and New York: Sheffield Academic, 2003.
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  347. A study of the Christ-group at Antioch between 50 and 100 CE. Focuses on the inclusion of Gentiles within the church, drawing upon data from the Pauline epistles, Matthew, Acts, and the Didache.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Corinth
  350.  
  351. The standard perspective on membership composition, social status, and activities of Paul’s Corinthian church owes much to Theissen 1982 (and to Meeks 1983 cited under Pauline Epistles). The work of Ebel 2004 offers new methodological avenues that ultimately confirm Theissen’s main convictions concerning social status and conflict in the church. Three recent edited volumes (Friesen, et al. 2014; Friesen, et al. 2010; Schowalter and Friesen 2005) explore Christian origins in the city from the perspective of the material evidence of Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Corinth. Recently, alternatives to Theissen’s interpretations (Last 2013, Cameron and Merrill 2011) have been presented, as well as new issues that take scholars beyond the topics Theissen covered (Johnson Hodge 2010). The three edited volumes present new arguments about Corinthian religion and society from the perspective of local Corinthian material culture.
  352.  
  353. Cameron, Ron, and Merrill P. Miller. Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians. Early Christianity and its Literature 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.
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  355. Moves well beyond Theissen 1982 in offering new perspectives on Paul’s relationships with the Corinthian church, and new analogies––both ancient and cross-cultural––that help to clarify Corinthian beliefs and practices.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Ebel, Eva. Die Attraktivität früher christlicher Gemeinden: die Gemeinde von Korinth im Spiegel griechische-römischer Vereine. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. Analyzes issues surrounding recruitment to Paul’s Corinthian churches. Greco-Roman associations are explored for comparative data. Ebel concludes that it was the church’s differences from associations that enabled it to attract members.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Friesen, Steven J., Sarah A. James, and Daniel N. Schowalter, eds. Corinth in Contrast. Studies in Inequality. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 155. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.
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  363. Methodologically, this book (as well as Friesen, et al. 2010 and Schowalter and Friesen 2005) demonstrates how investigation of material artifacts might generate new insights about society in Corinth. For scholars of Pauline epistles: Johnson Hodge and Nasrallah provides new ways to think about marriage and slavery among members in Paul’s Corinthian group respectively; and Pettigrew and Millis challenge longstanding positions about the Roman Corinthian economy and civic order respectively.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Friesen, Steven J., Daniel N. Schowalter, and James C. Walters. Corinth in Context. Comparative Studies on Religion and Society. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 134. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  366. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004182110.i-518Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. A collection of essays that discuss cultic groups and individuals in Roman Corinth. Four chapters focus on Christianity, and span from Paul to the Byzantine era.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Johnson Hodge, Caroline. “Married to an Unbeliever: Households, Hierarchies, and Holiness in 1 Corinthians 7:12–16.” Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010): 1–25.
  370. DOI: 10.1017/S0017816009990289Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Explores how the social situation of Corinthian women who were married to non-member men impacted their cultic practices. It is likely that these members worshipped household deities in addition to their cultic practices in the Corinthian church.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Last, Richard. “The Election of Officers in the Corinthian Christ-Group.” New Testament Studies 59 (2013): 365–382.
  374. DOI: 10.1017/S0028688513000052Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. A new translation of 1 Cor 11:19 is necessary in light of difficulties with the standard rendering. Last’s new interpretation of the verse indicates that the Corinthians elected officers into temporary leadership positions. This new translation provides an alternative to traditional notions of organizational structure in 1st-century churches, and suggests that conflict in this church was primarily between current leadership and current regular members, rather than the perpetually socially strong and perpetually socially weak.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Schowalter, Daniel N., and Steven J. Friesen, eds. Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Harvard Theological Studies 53. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Theological Studies, 2005.
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  379. A collection of seventeen articles that analyze Corinth’s material culture, as well as literary evidence pertaining to Corinthian Christ-believers up to late antiquity, in order to illuminate cult practices in the city. Contributions by Friesen and Horsley challenge Meeks 1983 (cited under Pauline Epistles) on questions related to the Pauline Christians’ wealth and Paul’s understanding of the church’s identity.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Theissen, Gerd. The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982.
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  383. A collection of Theissen’s seminal essays from the 1970s on Paul’s Corinthian church. Theissen’s notion that conflicts between members were due to differences in social status rather than in theological perspectives continues to shape research on this church. Exegesis of important passages concerning the church’s common meal and the social status of its members remain influential.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Macedonia
  386.  
  387. Recent research on Christianity in Thessalonica and Philippi have striven to understand these churches within their local contexts rather than within the context of a trans-local Christ movement or as mirror images of the Corinthian church. Breytenbach and Behrmann 2007 and Nasrallah, et al. 2010 engage with Thessalonian epigraphy as well as other material culture. Jewett 1993 and its reconstruction of the Pauline church in Thessalonica breaks it loose from popular depictions of the Corinthians’ banquet. Descriptions of Philippian Christianity in Pilhofer 1995, Marchal 2006, and Verheof 2013 are controlled by what is known about Roman and Byzantine Philippi. The comparisons in Ascough 2003 and Ascough 2014 between Paul’s churches and private associations results in new exegesis of key passages.
  388.  
  389. Ascough, Richard S. Paul’s Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians. WUNT 2/161. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
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  391. Provides a foundation for situating Paul’s Thessalonian and Philippian churches within the spectrums of activities practiced by Greco-Roman associations. Understands the Philippian Christ-group as a cultic association and the Thessalonian group as a professional association.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Ascough, Richard S. “Redescribing the Thessalonians’ ‘Mission’ in Light of Graeco-Roman Associations.” New Testament Studies 60 (2014): 61–82.
  394. DOI: 10.1017/S002868851300012XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Offers a new interpretation of 1 Thess 1:2–10. Rather than evidencing missionary activity on the part of the Thessalonian church, this passage attests to the honorific practice of proclaiming honors for guild founders and benefactors.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Breytenbach, Cilliers, and Ingrid Behrmann, eds. Frühchristliches Thessaloniki. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 44. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2007.
  398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. A collection of seven articles previously published between 1981 and 2000, mostly in Greek, now all in German. The chapters document and analyze archaeological evidence of Christianity in Thessalonica from Paul to the 4th century.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Jewett, Robert. “Tenement Churches and Communal Meals in the Early Church: The Implications of a Form-Critical Analysis of 2 Thessalonians 3:10.” Biblical Research 38 (1993): 23–43.
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  403. The Thessalonian meal was not funded by a selection of patrons. Rather, it was organized as a potluck, with members each making their own contributions. This is to be expected in a group that lacks connections with relatively-affluent locals who would be able to fund group banquets.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Marchal, Joseph A. Hierarchy, Unity, and Imitation: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Power Dynamics in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Social of Biblical Literature Academia Biblica 24. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006.
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  407. Highlights reasons to believe that power was contested in the early Philippian church. Provides new evidence that helps to illuminate Paul’s military and friendship language, and how it might have been understood by Paul’s audience.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Nasrallah, Laura S., Charalambos Bakirtzis, and Steven J. Friesen, eds. From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē: Studies in Religion and Archaeology. Harvard Theological Studies 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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  411. A collection of original essays that analyze Thessalonian Christ-believers in light of material culture, including epigraphy from Greco-Roman associations, iconography, glassware, and civic architecture.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Pilhofer, Peter. Philippi. Band 1: Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 1/87. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1995.
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  415. Offers a thorough description of Roman Philippi’s geography, economy, and cult groups based principally on the author’s database of almost fourteen hundred inscriptions from the city, which are presented in a separate volume that was updated and revised in 2009. Re-situates Paul’s, Luke’s, Polycarp’s and others’ information about Philippian Christ-believers within this framework.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Verheof, E. Philippi: How Christianity Began in Europe. The Epistle to the Philippians and the Excavations at Philippi. London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. This short book (ninety-three pages) analyzes material evidence for the evolution of Christianity in Philippi up to the 7th century. It demonstrates that recruitment to Christianity in Philippi happened gradually. The 1st-century Pauline church was small but Christianity in the city was thriving by the 4th century.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Rome
  422.  
  423. Lampe 2003 is the most comprehensive social history of 1st- and 2nd-century Christ-believers and their churches. Oakes 2009, an innovative interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans, is informed by archaeological data from Pompeii. Donfried and Richardson 1998 builds upon the first edition of Lampe’s study and focuses on the place of churches and Christ-believers in imperial society. La Pina 1927 analyzes analogies to the earliest Roman churches. White 1997 provides a helpful description of the archaeological evidence of churches in the city. Zangenberg and Labahn 2004 addresses all of the above. Campbell 1991 and Donfried 1991 study Pauline thought alongside social issues faced by the churches he addressed.
  424.  
  425. Campbell, William S. Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context: Jew and Gentile in the Letter to the Romans. Frankfurt: Lang, 1991.
  426. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. A selection of Campbell’s previously published articles appearing between 1974 and 1990. Argues that the Roman churches consisted predominantly of Gentiles. The theology of these Christ-believers created hostility between gentile and Torah-observant Jewish Christ-believers in Rome. Situating Paul’s thought within the known parameters of contemporary Jewish thinking, as Campbell does in these early articles, is now standard in scholarship on Pauline thought.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Donfried, Karl P. ed. The Romans Debate. Rev. ed. Peaboxy, MA: Hendrickson, 1991.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. A collection of articles on Paul’s letter to the Romans that contains thirteen more articles than did the first edition (1977). Most relevant for the study of Roman churches is the first section of Part 2 (“Historical and Sociological Factors”). This section includes analyses of the “weak” and “strong” among Roman Christ-believers, and an analysis of the prosopographic data in Rom 16.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Donfried Karl P., and Peter Richardson, ed. Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. An essential collection of ten original essays on social historical issues related to churches and Christ-believers in Rome. Includes chapters on Roman synagogues and churches, as well as the place of Judeans and Christ-believers in Roman society.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Explores the physical location of churches in ancient Rome, the social status of the city’s earliest Christ-believers, and the relationships between Roman churches. Emphasizes that Christianity was “fractionated” in the city. This is the key study of the social history of the earliest Christ-believers, and their churches, in Rome.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. La Pina, George. “Foreign Groups in Rome During the First Centuries of the Empire.” Harvard Theological Review 20 (1927): 183–403.
  442. DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000021118Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. La Pina frames his extensive study of “oriental” cults in Rome as a preliminary effort in understanding the social situation of churches prior to 313 CE. Covers private associations, synagogues, official cults, and the location of foreign groups, including Christ-believers and their churches, within the city of Rome.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Oakes, Peter. Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. Oakes explores domestic space, economic status, and patronage relationships in Pompeii from the perspective of archaeological evidence. This evidence of ordinary daily life among the various strata of ancient non-elites allows Oakes to generate new possibilities for how the non-elites in Rome might have understood Paul’s letter differently, and how Paul’s gospel would carry different implications for these Christ-believers depending on where they ranked economically.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. White, L. Michael. Texts and Monuments for the domus ecclesiae in its Environment. Volume 2 of The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1997.
  450. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. A collection of source material on ancient church architecture. Entries 52–55 (pp. 209–240) cover church architecture in Rome, including descriptions of the buildings, history and traditions associated with the churches, as well as illustrations and bibliography.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Zangenberg, Jürgen, and Michael Labahn, eds. Christians as a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City: Modes of Interaction and Identity Formation in Early Imperial Rome. European Studies on Christian Origins/Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 243. London: T&T Clark, 2004.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. A collection of twelve original essays that explore the Roman context of Roman Christianity, such as domestic architecture and topography, and Judean and Egyptian groups in the city, as well as issues related to Christianity in Rome as evidenced by Paul, Luke, Clement, archaeological data, and more.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Asia Minor
  458.  
  459. The communities of Christ-believers in Asia Minor are evidenced in several texts, including 1 Peter, Revelation, the Pastorals, and Ignatius’s letters. Scholarship on churches in this region have fruitfully situated local congregations within broader patterns of behavior centered around the household (Balch 1981, George 2004), imperial culture (Harland 2003; Brent 2006; Kahl 2010), and associations and synagogues (Harland 2003; Trebilco 2004; Tellbe 2009). Koester 1995 reconstructs the diversity of churches within 1st-century Ephesos.
  460.  
  461. Balch, David. L. Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981.
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  463. Explores analogies to 1 Peter’s code of household behavior, especially from philosophical texts. Suggests that adherence to household codes––and therefore to Greek ethics in general––in early churches and households (including households of mixed marriages) was a way for Christians to forge a more positive relationship with civic society.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Brent, Allen. “Ignatius’ Pagan Background in Second Century Asia Minor.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity 102 (2006): 207–232.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. Documents patterns of convergence and difference between Ignatius’s articulation of church organization and Greek political ideology in Asia Minor.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. George, Michele. “Domestic Architecture and Household Relations: Pompeii and Roman Ephesos.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 27 (2004): 7–25.
  470. DOI: 10.1177/0142064X0402700102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. An investigation of terrace houses in Ephesos (Asia Minor) that can help to illuminate the social usage of space in house churches in this city, though George emphasizes diversity of practices. Includes discussion of space for slaves, gender, and meals.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Harland, Philip A. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
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  475. Offers an alternative interpretation of the relationship of Christians to Roman society. Shows that churches in Western Asia participated in imperial practices and that tensions between Christians and Roman rulers have been overemphasized in previous scholarship. Situates Christ-groups within the spectrums of behaviors practiced by Greco-Roman associations and Judean synagogues.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Kahl, Brigitte. Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. Paul’s “justification by faith” argument is not opposed to a legalistic Judaism, as much previous scholarship has contended, but, rather, to legalistic imperial monotheism. Provides new insights about the Romans’ perception of the inhabitants of Galatia, social relationships between Greeks and Judeans in Galatia, and Galatian material culture.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Koester, Helmut. “Ephesos in Early Christian Literature.” Papers presented at a symposium organized by Harvard Divinity School and cosponsored by the Harvard Universtiy Departments of Classics and Fine Arts, March 1994. In Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia. Edited by Helmut Koester, 119–140. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995.
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  483. Analyzes Rom 16, Revelation, Ignatius, the Patorals, patristic evidence, and other texts that illuminate the diversity of Ephesian Christianity in the first two centuries. Luke is found to suppress the diversity of Christianity in Ephesos.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Tellbe, Mikael. Christ-Believers in Ephesus: A Textual Analysis of Early Christian Identity Formation in a Local Perspective. Wissenschaftliche Uuntersuchungen zum Neuen Testament I/242. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.
  486. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. Describes 1st- and 2nd-century Ephesian churches as emerging from a Jewish milieu––and existing firmly within this context until the 2nd century. Christian texts produced in Ephesus (e.g., Revelation, Johannine letters, 1–2 Timothy, Ignatius’s epistle to the Ephesians) suggest a relatively unified Ephesian Christian community in the initial two decades of the Jesus movement.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Trebilco, Paul. The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament I/166. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.
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  491. Provides a fuller description of material culture and social history in Ephesus than offered by Tellbe 2009. Argues that 1st- and 2nd-century churches in Ephesus were more diversified (five groups distinguished in beliefs and practices) than Tellbe 2009 does later.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Egypt
  494.  
  495. Documentary papyri from Egypt offer scholars a unique opportunity to explore church practices and Christ-believers from the perspective of laity and from the perspective of those of inferior status to the writers of literary material. Blumell 2012 and Luijendijk 2008 use documentary papyri to assess the ordinary lives of early Egyptian Christ-believers. Choat 2006 explores cultic practices more generally in Egypt, including churches. Judge and Pickering 1977 and Snyder 2003 list, summarize, and analyze the earliest documentary texts and are both suitable to introduce students to an important segment of the dataset. Schmelz 2002 overviews organizational features of Egyptian churches, including their usage of money and distribution of penalties. Pearson 1986 describes earliest Egyptian Christianity primarily as represented by literary evidence.
  496.  
  497. Blumell, Lincoln. Lettered Christians: Christians, Letters, and Late Antique Oxyrhynchus. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2012.
  498. DOI: 10.1163/9789004180987Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. Blumell’s primary interest is with Christian documentary papyri from 2nd- to 7th- century Oxyrhynchus. This data often provides information about ordinary members of Egyptian churches rather than the elite church officeholders whose perspectives have typically shaped scholarly descriptions of ancient church life.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Choat, Malcolm. Belief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri. Studia Antiqua Australiensia I. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006.
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  503. Explores documentary papyri for evidence of cultic beliefs and practices. Choat documents Egyptian cultic beliefs by investigating names parents give to children, titles for cultic officers, and usages of language from sacred texts in documentary papyri. Christian phenomena is studied alongside and in comparison with other cultic traditions.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Judge, E. A., and S. Pickering. “Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the Mid-Fourth Century.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977): 47–71.
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  507. Lists and describes thirty-nine of the earliest papyri documents attesting to Christ-believers and churches in Egypt. The papyri illuminate aspects of early Egyptian churches such as officers and office titles, financial practices of church officers, locations of church buildings, and legal disputes between Christ-believers and their neighbors.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Luijendijk, AnneMarie. Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Harvard Theological Studies 60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
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  511. Analyzes the place of Christ-believers in Oxyrhynchite society to 324 CE. Topics include the social networks of church officers, church property, and church structures in Oxyrhynchus.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Pearson, Birger A. “Earliest Christianity in Egypt: Some Observations.” In The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring, 132–157. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.
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  515. Overviews literary evidence (e.g., Acts, Pseudo-Clementine texts), legend (e.g., Mark’s presence in Egypt), and archaeology that attests to the presence of Christ-believers in Egypt. Emphasizes the Jewish milieu of the earliest Egyptian Christ-believers and churches.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Schmelz, G. Kirchliche Amsträger im spätantiken Ägypten nach den Aussagen der griechischen und koptischen Papyri und Ostraka. Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002.
  518. DOI: 10.1515/9783110960235Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. Explores church data as early as the 3rd century. Chapters devoted to church disciplines and rules, the economic life of churches, and the professions of church members.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. Originally published in 1985. Lists all papyri the author holds to be Christian and dated before 313 CE. Some texts are equipped with translation and analysis. Suitable for a quick introduction to some of the earliest documentary evidence of churches in Egypt.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Church Architecture
  526.  
  527. The studies here consider church building and church terminology specific to certain geographical regions. Variations of the dominant position on the development of church architecture are offered in Krautheimer 1986, Milburn 1988, White 1990, and Snyder 2003. Milburn 1988 and Snyder 2003 are brief and written in relatively untechnical language. Deichmann 1983 provides a classic apologetic interpretation of the history of church space (see Kloppenborg 1993 cited under Models for Understanding First-Century Churches). Adams 2013 and Sessa 2009 challenge traditional perspectives on early church architecture, while Humphries 2008 overviews the study of early Christian archaeology more generally, including catacombs and tombs, and critiques the prevalence of theological biases in earlier scholarship.
  528.  
  529. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
  530. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. While most studies of ante pacem church architecture emphasize the usage of un-renovated and modified domestic buildings, Adams posits that the earliest Christ-believers assembled in various non-domestic spaces. He provides an overview of the evidence as well as descriptions of the spaces.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Deichmann, Friedrich W. Einführung in die christliche Archäologe. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983.
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  535. The earliest Christ-believers held church meetings in secular structures (e.g., houses), not sacred space (e.g., temples). In designating their communities, not their meeting spaces, as sacred, they borrowed from the practice of synagogues. In later centuries, the move toward basilica structures was a corruption of the pristine origins of Christian spatial practices, and a turn toward pagan notions of sacred space.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Humphries, Mark. “Material Evidence (1): Archaeology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. Edited by Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, 87–103. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  538. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199271566.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. Situates scholarship on early church buildings within the context of research on early Christian archaeology more general (e.g., catacombs). Raises methodological concerns with the presence of apologetics within some of this research, as well as with the art-historical approach which privileges the creations of elites within early Christianity and hinders an understanding of the Jesus movement more broadly through the study of archaeology.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.
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  543. The first edition was published by Penguin in 1965. It shaped the subsequent study of early Christian architecture by positing a three-stage period of architectural beginnings: (1) church assemblies wherever possible––un-renovated domestic and non-domestic spaces used but mostly houses (50–150 CE); (2) church gatherings in interior-renovated houses (domus ecclesiae) (150–250 CE); (3) mostly domus ecclesiae but some Christian buildings acquired specifically for church gatherings (250–313 CE).
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Milburn, Robert. Early Christian Art and Architecture. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.
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  547. A textbook full of illustrations and descriptions of church buildings organized geographically (e.g., Asia, Egypt, North Africa, etc.). It does not offer any new arguments about social or historical developments in church architecture, but provides a succinct description of the (then) dominant positions on church art-history. Now out of print, but available online.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Sessa, Kristina. “Domus Ecclesiae: Rethinking a Category of Ante-Pacem Christian Space.” Journal of Theological Studies 60 (2009): 90–108.
  550. DOI: 10.1093/jts/fln173Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Scholars assume that the term domus ecclesiae was used by Christians in the ante pacem period to designate adapted house-churches. Sessa challenges both assumptions, showing that the term appears first in Eusebius, who employed it to designate a building that may not have been renovated. Most examples of renovated church architecture date after 313 CE, with Dura Europos building as the exception.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
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  555. A fairly comprehensive, but brief, overview of early Christian symbols, art, architecture, epigraphy and graffiti, and papyri before 313 CE. Provides bibliography at the beginning of each section. Suitable for introducing undergraduate and graduate students to the most important data on early Christian archaeology.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. White, L. Michael. Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation Among Pagans, Jews and Christians. Vol. 1. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1990.
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  559. Develops Krautheimer’s argument concerning early Christians’ usage of domestic space and gradual adaptation of it for church meetings, positing four stages of development. Shows that Mithraic and Judean groups developed worship space according to similar patterns.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. White, L. Michael. Texts and Monuments for the domus ecclesiae in its Environment. Vol. 2. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1997.
  562. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  563. This collection of primary material represents the database of source material White analyzed in the first volume.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Archaeological Evidence of Individual Churches
  566.  
  567. Some buildings used by Christ-believers as meeting places have been dated to the pre-Constantine era. The only one that can for sure be dated before the 4th century is the Christian building in the Roman city of Dura, which was built before 256 CE. The prayer-hall in Megiddo, Israel, may be earlier but some experts date it as late as the 4th century. The titular churches in Rome, especially the Titulus Byzantis, have generated much excitement for what they could possibly tell us about pre-Constantinian churches, while it is sometimes claimed that Peter’s house and meeting-place for early Christians has been located beneath the octagonal church in Capernaum in the Galilee.
  568.  
  569. Dura Europos
  570.  
  571. The terminus ante quem of the Dura Europos domus ecclesiae is 256 CE when the Roman garrison city was defeated and depopulated by the Sassanids––a typical dating for the church is 240–241 CE. For some scholars, this is the only pre-Constantinian domus ecclesiae (e.g., Sessa 2009, cited under Church Architecture). Kraeling 1967 is the final excavation report. Descriptions of the archaeology, and its stages of development in Adams 2013, Snyder 2003, and White 1997, are based primarily on details from Kraeling 1967 but they highlight aspects of the excavation report that fit broader arguments these scholars forward. Peppard 2012, Mell 2010, and Serra 2006 analyze wall paintings on the church structure.
  572.  
  573. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. Accepts the domus ecclesiae as an example of domestic architecture renovated for usage by a Christian church but highlights that it does not provide evidence of a gradual development of Christian architecture since there is no evidence that Christ-believers used the building prior to the renovation. Therefore, Adams finds no obvious connection between the earlier un-renovated household and a local Christian church. See especially pp. 89–95.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Kraeling, Carl H. The Christian Building. The Excavations at Dura Europos. Final Report 8.2. New Haven, CT.: Dura-Europos, 1967.
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  579. The excavation’s final report. Full description of the building’s external and internal features, adaptations of space during renovations, and potential usages of rooms within the structure.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Mell, Ulrich. Christliche Hauskirche und Neues Testament: Die Ikonologie des Baptisteriums von Dura Europos und das Diatessaron Tatians. Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 77. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010.
  582. DOI: 10.13109/9783666533945Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. A study of the Dura Europos church’s baptistery frescoes and how its iconography can illuminate Tatian’s gospel harmony for Syrian churches. Also includes a review of the place of house churches in the early Jesus movement.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Peppard, Michael. “Illuminating the Dura-Europos Baptistery: Comparanda for the Female Figures.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012): 543–574.
  586. DOI: 10.1353/earl.2012.0035Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. Supports the interpretation in Serra 2006 of baptistery paintings of the woman at the well and the procession of veiled women carrying torches and vessels by providing analogical data from eastern iconography.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Serra, Dominic E. “The Baptistery at Dura-Europos: The Wall Paintings in the Context of Syrian Baptismal Theology.” Ephemerides Liturgicae 120 (2006): 67–78.
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  591. A new interpretation of images of women in the baptistery. Serra argues that they represent the bridesmaids in Matt 25:1–13 and Mary the mother of Jesus, not the women at Jesus’ empty tomb and the Samaritan woman. This alternative to Kraeling’s interpretations provides Serra leverage for evaluating this church’s baptismal theology.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
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  595. Regards the church as the most important pre-Constantinian archaeological discovery of early Christianity. The renovations partially reflect an expanding local Christian community. Includes five figures illustrating stages of development and function of rooms. See especially pp. 128–134.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. White, L. Michael. Texts and Monuments for the domus ecclesiae in its Environment. Volume 2 of The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1997.
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599. A brief overview of the site based on preliminary and final excavation reports (pp.123–134). Argues that the modifications took place in one renovation project. Provides translations and interpretations of three graffiti found in the church.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Megiddo
  602.  
  603. A domestic building, employed somehow by the Roman army, that included a 5 x 10 meter room with Christian mosaic inscriptions. Tepper and Di Segni 2006 argues that this domestic building was distinct from the Dura Europos domus ecclesiae in that it was used for both residential purposes and, in the prayer hall, for church meetings––and also because it was owned by the state or army, not the church. Lawler 2007, Adams 2008, and Adams 2013 focus on what the building can tell us about early Christianity more broadly. Tzaferis 2007 dates the building slightly later than does Tepper and Di Segni 2006. Wicker 2009 focuses on epigraphy within this and other early Christian buildings.
  604.  
  605. Adams, Edward. “The Ancient Church at Megiddo: The Discovery and an Assessment of its Significance 1.” Expository Times 120 (2008): 62–69.
  606. DOI: 10.1177/0014524608097822Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607. Adams is critical of the pre-Constantinian dating by Tepper and Di Segni 2006 primarily because the mosaic floor in the Christian prayer hall contains an inscription from a Roman centurion, Gaianus, who advertised his Christian faith. Adams finds it unlikely that Gaianus would do so prior to the ante pacem period.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
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  611. Discusses the Megiddo church in a section of the book where he demonstrates that unambiguous literary and archaeological evidence for the usage of domestic architecture for church meetings before 313 CE is minimal. Demonstrates caution concerning a pre-Constantinian date given the reservations articulated by Joe Zias, in an article appearing in the New York Times.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Lawler, Andrew. “First Churches of the Jesus Cult.” Archaeology 60 (2007): 46–51.
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  615. The evidence for churches in Megiddo, Aqaba, and Capernaum suggests that Christ-believers were more numerous in Judea in the first two centuries than is often assumed.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Tepper, Yotam, and L. Di Segni. A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century CE at Kefar ‘Othnay (Legio): Excavations at the Megiddo Prison 2005. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2006.
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  619. A preliminary excavation report authored by Tepper, the archaeologist who led the dig for the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Di Segni, a specialist in epigraphy. The authors date the twenty-eight coins and inscriptions in the Christian meeting room to the 2nd and 3rd centuries––the latest coin dates from Diocletian’s reign. The authors date the construction of the building, including its space for Christian usage, to approximately 230 CE.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Tzaferis, V. “Inscribed to ‘God Jesus Christ’: Early Christian Prayer Hall Found in Megiddo Prison.” BARev 33.2 (2007): 38–49.
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  623. Dates the building to 250–300 CE. This was a period of relative peace for Christians and it saw increasing numbers of Christians within the Roman army. Unlike the Dura Europos building, which was privately owned, this building was possessed by the state or the army.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Wicker, J. R. “Pre-Constantinian Nomina Sacra in a Mosaic and Church Graffiti.” Southwestern Journal of Theology 52 (2009): 52–72.
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  627. Explores the presence of nomina sacra in the epigraphy and graffiti of the Megiddo church (and other churches from Palestine and Syria).
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Titular Churches in Rome
  630.  
  631. Many of the post-Constantinian Roman basilicas were built on land that tradition holds to have been occupied already by Christians in earlier centuries. These twenty-five sites are now called titular churches and are named after the original owner and patron of the Christian meeting space. Earlier scholarship, such as Kirsch 1918, finds much evidence about ante pacem Christian meeting space in this archaeological data. Lampe 2003 is also confident about the amount of data these churches provide concerning earlier centuries of Roman Christian meeting spaces. Snyder 2003 supposes that the earlier structures on the premises of nine title churches were possibly used as meeting space by earlier Christian communities. Pietri 1976 and Adams 2013 provide more minimalistic analyses. Krautheimer 1937–1977 documents seventy-eight Roman churches into the medieval period.
  632.  
  633. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
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  635. The houses underneath most titular churches were not early Christians’ meeting places. The one possible exception is the archaeological evidence found underneath the Titulus Byzantis. These remains possible evidence of an early Christian church from at least the 3rd century. See pp. 99–103.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Kirsch, J. P. Die römischen Titelkirchen im Altertum. Paderborn, Germany: F. Schöningh, 1918.
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639. Kirch expresses confidence concerning what these structures can tell us about 1st-century Christian churches. Kirsch dates most of the twenty-five tituli to the pre-Constantinian era and argues that the domestic architecture beneath the churches represent 1st- and 2nd-century century house-churches wherein Roman Christians assembled.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Krautheimer, Richard. Corpus basilicarum christianarum Romae. 5 vols. Città del Vaticano: PIAC, 1937–1977.
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  643. A thorough reference resource on seventy-eight churches attested in Rome by the middle of the ninth century. A chronology of archaeological development for all churches based on available evidence.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Lampe, Peter. From Paul to Valentinus. Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
  646. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647. Many of the Roman titular churches are early. Originally, the tituli were names of private householders who hosted churches, not the names of saints. These churches were dispersed throughout Rome and thus illustrate how Christianity was “fractionated” in these later centuries as it was in the 1st century. See pp. 360–366.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Pietri, Charles. Roma Christiana: Recherches sur l’église de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie, de Miltiade à Sixte III (311–440). 2 vols. Bibliothèque des écoles française d`Athènes et de Rome 224. Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1976.
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  651. Argues that most of these churches originated in the post-Constantinian period. These churches were supported financially by private benefactors who were lay members of the churches. As a result, they were relatively independent from the Roman bishopric.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
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  655. Originally published in 1985. Identifies nine tituli that might be associated with Roman Christ-believers in before Constantine. Snyder regards the Titulus Byzantis as a most significant pre-Constantinian Christian building.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Capernaum
  658.  
  659. In literary sources from the 4th and 5th centuries, the site of the Capernaum church is identified as Peter’s house. Corbo 1969 has demonstrated that a domestic building was present on the premises in the 1st century but, as volume 2 in White 1996–1997 and Snyder 2003 observe, there is no evidence that this house was occupied by Christ-believers. The analysis of Christian graffiti at the complex in Testa 1972 consistently reveals post-313 CE dating. Richardson 2004 shows that if the site was used by Christ-believers in the 1st century for their meetings, the assemblies would have happened in a courtyard, not in a room with a roof.
  660.  
  661. Corbo, Virgiliio. The House of St. Peter at Capharnaum. Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. Collectio minor 5. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 1969.
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  663. Argues that the domestic building on the site of the church was originally Peter’s abode. In the 1st century, after Jesus’ death, until the 4th century one room was given over for usage by the local Christ-believers.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Richardson, Peter. “Towards a Typology of Levantine/Palestinian Houses.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 27 (2004): 47–68.
  666. DOI: 10.1177/0142064X0402700104Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  667. The area of the octagonal church that was supposedly employed for Christian meetings in the 1st century was too big to be roofed. Originally, it must have been a courtyard. Richardson suggests that this architectural detail might generate new questions about Christian usage of the space.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Snyder, Graydon F. Ante Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine. Rev. ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003.
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  671. Does not seriously entertain the possibility that the site was occupied by Christ-believers or used by them prior to the 4th century. Argues that even if it is early it does not contribute much to our understanding of early church architecture. See pp. 134–136.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Testa, Emmanuele. I graffiti della casa di S. Pietro. Publicazione dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 19. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 1972.
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  675. Explores graffiti on the site and concludes that presently all date later than 313 CE.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. White, L. Michael. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. 2 vols. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity: 1996–1997.
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  679. Is skeptical of Corbo’s proposal that the building was owned and used by Christians before the 4th century. Argues that the renovation of the site in the 4th century functioned to make it a sanctuary linked somehow with Petrine tradition, not to make room for assemblies. See Vol. 2, pp. 152–159.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Special Topics
  682.  
  683. Several special topics have generated scholarly interest over the past several decades. These include the physical space of church meetings and what this can illuminate about social aspects of Christ-believers’ earliest gatherings, gender roles in churches, the development of institutionalism throughout the first three centuries, and liturgical activities.
  684.  
  685. House Churches
  686.  
  687. The contemporary study of house churches was set in motion in Filson 1939. Klauck 1981 builds upon Filson’s argument that the domestic setting of church gatherings distinguished churches from other cultic groups in relation to morality, organization, and space––though they acknowledge that synagogues and associations also assembled in domestic architecture. Balch 2008 and Osiek, et al. 2006 situate the households of Christ-believers within the context of domestic life more generally in Greco-Roman cultures. White 1990 studies the evolution of the Jesus movement as illuminated by Christ-believers’ development of domestic space. Adams 2013 shows that while many churches met in houses of members (1 Cor 16:19; Pilem 2; Col 4:15; Acts 20:7–8), others assembled in halls (scholē; Acts 19:9), and some even in “barns” or “warehouses” (horreum; Passion of Paul 1). Bowes 2008 explores the continuation of private churches in later centuries when Christian worship had become public.
  688.  
  689. Adams, Edward. Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
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  691. Argues that evidence traditionally used to support the traditional perspective that the earliest Christ-believers assembled mostly in domestic buildings is not persuasive. Provides a wealth of data showing that Christ-believers met for church meetings and other purposes in a variety of non-domestic spaces.
  692. Find this resource:
  693. Balch, David L. Roman Domestic Art and Early House Churches. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 228. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.
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  695. Includes one new publication and six articles previously published. Argues the houses of Christ-believers may have been decorated with religious interior imagery that originated with their previous pagan owners, and provides suggestions concerning possible interpretations by Christ-believers. Explores archaeological remains of houses that Balch shows to be consistent with details Paul provides about Corinthian house churches.
  696. Find this resource:
  697. Bowes, K. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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  699. The author’s primary concern is to show that private worship (e.g., private household churches) continued into the 4th and 5th centuries despite the rise of public churches and church officers. Chapter 2 focuses on evidence specifically from the first three centuries but the whole book is essential reading for understanding the development of churches from the earliest period into the medieval era.
  700. Find this resource:
  701. Filson, Floyd V. “The Significance of the Early House Churches.” Journal of Biblical Literature 58 (1939): 105–112.
  702. DOI: 10.2307/3259855Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  703. Argues that further study of the domestic physical space of church gatherings could illuminate the function and organization of early churches, as well as the conflicts that emerged therein.
  704. Find this resource:
  705. Horrell, David G. “Domestic Space and Christian Meetings at Corinth: Imagining New Contexts and the Buildings East of the Theatre.” New Testament Studies 50 (2004): 349–369.
  706. DOI: 10.1017/S0028688504000207Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  707. Describes domestic space that fits new theories concerning the modest economic status of 1st-century Christ-believers.
  708. Find this resource:
  709. Klauck, Hans-Josef. Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum. Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelstudien, 1981.
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  711. Analyzes household terminology and various types of cults that assembled in domestic literature. Contends that Jewish practices provide closer analogies to churches than Greco-Roman models of community.
  712. Find this resource:
  713. Osiek, Carolyn, and Margaret MacDonald, with Janet Tulloch. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.
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  715. Explores how gender issues might have played out in the domestic setting of early church meetings. Domestic phenomena, such as marriage, birthing, abortion, infant care, and the presence of domestic slaves are described as part of the environment of early church gatherings.
  716. Find this resource:
  717. White, L. Michael. Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation Among Pagans, Jews and Christians. Volume 1 of The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1990.
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  719. Describes Christ-believers’ need to develop church architecture as the Jesus movement expands. Shows that Mithraic and Judean groups developed worship space according to similar patterns.
  720. Find this resource:
  721. Gender
  722.  
  723. Older approaches to gender in early churches tended to emphasize the house as a natural setting for women leadership and therefore the early house churches as spaces where women were able to achieve important leadership positions (Schüssler Fiorenza 1984, Torjesen 1993). Recent scholarship has shown that women secured leadership roles in early churches apart from the role of women in domestic settings (Osiek, et al. 2006). Eisen 2000 and Osiek and Balch 2003 explore material as well as literary evidence concerning church leadership. Wire 1990 demonstrates how Pauline literature, despite its silences and biases, can be useful for understanding gender in the social history of early Christianity.
  724.  
  725. Eisen, Ute. Women Office Holders in Early Christianity. Collegevill, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.
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  727. English translation of the original German (Amtsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum, 1996). Offers an alternative to the formerly dominant position that women could not become officers and leaders in proto-Orthodox communities.
  728. Find this resource:
  729. Osiek, Carolyn, and David L. Balch, eds. Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.
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  731. A collection of seventeen original essays written by classicists, historians of early Christianity, and historians of early Judaism. Papers treat archaeological and literary evidence. Christian families and household relations are shown to be consistent with, not socially or morally superior to, domestic practices in non-Christian households.
  732. Find this resource:
  733. Osiek, C., and M. Y. MacDonald, with J. H. Tulloch. A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.
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  735. The house church cannot be defined as private space and therefore women leadership in the earliest churches cannot be understood exclusively within the framework of domestic hierarchy. Celibacy has been overemphasized in previous studies of women leadership – the authors show that many leaders did not take part in this type of lifestyle. Chapters also on literary and material evidence concerning women participation in Roman and church meals.
  736. Find this resource:
  737. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1984.
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  739. All early Christian literature exhibits an androcentric worldview and needs to be approached critically. Leadership in the earliest churches was patterned according to leadership practices in domestic settings and relatively egalitarian domestic associations. Eventually, patriarchal systems dominant in broader Greco-Roman society infiltrated the organization of later churches and corrupted the churches’ originally egalitarian organization.
  740. Find this resource:
  741. Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
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  743. Discusses some material and literary evidence that could indicate women holding roles as priests. Argues that women were able to secure roles in church leadership in the earliest decades when churches met in “private” household settings but, later, when churches became public, women were no longer able to serve as leaders. Written for general readership. Would serve especially well in undergraduate settings as a book review.
  744. Find this resource:
  745. Wire, Antoinette Clark. Corinthian Women Prophets. A Reconstruction Through Paul’s Rhetoric. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.
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  747. Reconstructs the social situation of women prophets in Paul’s Corinthian church. Helpful methodological points are made concerning reconstructions of social history that need to use biased and sometimes silent source material.
  748. Find this resource:
  749. Institutionalism
  750.  
  751. The dominant perspective is that churches originally exhibited little organizational structure, far less than the organizational structure with which private associations were equipped. Hatch 1881, Sohm 1909, and Campenhausen 1969 discuss the gradual evolution of church organization over the course of several centuries, though Hatch 1881 allowed for more organization than many of his contemporaries. MacDonald 1988 applies sociological theory to some 1st-century data and demonstrates gradual institutional sophistication within Pauline Christianity. Last 2013 argues that even the earliest churches were equipped with the type of organizational structure exhibited by private associations. Elliott 2008 explores church leadership in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. Öhler 2011 and Schöllgen 1998 illustrate the development of church orders.
  752.  
  753. Campenhausen, Hans. Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969.
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  755. English translation of Kirchliche Amt und geistliche Vollmacht in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1953). The author analyzes early Christian and Jewish literature concerning leadership in early churches and Jewish communities. It is not until the 3rd century that church offices become prominent within church hierarchies. In the earlier centuries, authority was attained through the divine spirit in the form of spiritual ministries, not structured offices.
  756. Find this resource:
  757. Elliott, John H. “Elders as Leaders in 1 Peter and the Early Church.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 64 (2008): 681–695.
  758. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v64i2.44Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  759. Analysis of leadership vocabulary in 1 Peter and Ignatius (e.g., elders, overseers). Argues that 1 Peter represents an early stage in the standardization of leadership vocabulary among Christ-believers.
  760. Find this resource:
  761. Hatch, Edwin. The Organization of the Early Christian Churches; Eight Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford, in the Year 1880. London: Rivingtons, 1881.
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  763. Discussion of church structure to the 4th century. Explores similarities and differences between early church organization on the one hand, and the organization of cities, Greco-Roman associations, and Judean groups on the other hand. Early churches and private associations were equipped with some of the same vocabulary for their officers and meetings, and some of the same practices for leadership and finances.
  764. Find this resource:
  765. Last, Richard. “Money, Meals, and Honour: The Economic and Honorific Organization of the Corinthian Ekklēsia.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2013.
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  767. Demonstrates that administrative organization was a necessity for Paul’s Corinthian church, not a luxury with which the church could dispense––as has been assumed traditionally in social histories that describe this church as egalitarian or lacking organizational structure. Explores church organization in light of data concerning hierarchical patterns and financial practices in Greco-Roman associations.
  768. Find this resource:
  769. MacDonald, Margaret M. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 60. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  770. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511470455Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  771. MacDonald applies Max Weber’s theory of institutionalization to the study of organizational structure in the Pauline groups. Argues that institutionalization gradually became more sophisticated from the authentic Pauline letters, to the deuto-Paulines, to the Pastorals.
  772. Find this resource:
  773. Öhler, Markus, ed. Aposteldekret und antikes Vereinswesen: Gemeinschaft und ihre Ordnung. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 280. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
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  775. Twelve essays in German (nine) and English (three). The latter six chapters explore Greco-Roman associations for insights into what the decree might reveal about church behavior.
  776. Find this resource:
  777. Schöllgen, Georg. Die Anfänge der professionaliserung des Klerus und das Kirchliche Amt in der Syrischen Didaskalie. JAC. Ergänzungsband 26. Munster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1998.
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  779. Discusses the rise of professional church officials. Analyzes levels of economic support earned by church officers over time.
  780. Find this resource:
  781. Sohm, Rudolf. Outlines of Church History. Translated by May Sinclair. London: Macmillan, 1909.
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  783. Translation of the author’s Kirchengeschichte im Grundriss (1890). Until the composition of 1 Clement, there was no legal component to early church hierarchy. Leaders were fully dependent on the divine spirit for their abilities and authority.
  784. Find this resource:
  785. The Spread of Early Churches
  786.  
  787. Outside of modern reference works, it is primarily in older scholarship that one finds histories of church evolution into the Byzantine period. Harnack 1908, while dated, continues to shape some contemporary scholarship which posits that the earliest churches were somehow different from churches in the 2nd century and later––whether it be in terms of organization, morality, and/or practice. Bauer 1971 (originally published in 1934) provides an alternative to Harnack 1908 that was developed further by Robinson and Koester 1971. Schnabel 2004 and Schnabel 2008 accepts the description of Christianity’s rise in Acts and, in this way, is methodologically distinct from Bauer 1971 and Robinson and Koester 1971. Trebilco 2006 challenges the Bauer 1971 model in Ephesos. Stark 1996 recognizes that the ancient data is fragmentary and applies modern sociological theory to bridge the gaps. Verhoef 2013 traces the evolution of churches in Philippi primarily from the perspective of material evidence.
  788.  
  789. Bauer, W. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.
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  791. Challenges the then dominant perspective that Christianity evolved from a single, unified Orthodoxy into a later situation where heretical beliefs and practices emerged and competed with orthodox Christians. Bauer contends that “heretical” groups might have been the earliest Christ-believers, and in the majority, in some cities––and that they might have understood local orthodox groups as “false-believers.” English translation of the 1934 German, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum.
  792. Find this resource:
  793. Harnack, A. Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. 2d ed. New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1908.
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  795. The earliest churches experienced the authentic presence of the spirit which made them more religious and morally superior to contemporary cults. By the 2nd century, charismatic organization faded and institutionalization began. Despite the moral corruption and diversity that ensued, these later orthodox churches continued to be morally superior to Greco-Roman associations. Second English edition of Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902).
  796. Find this resource:
  797. Robinson, J. M., and H. Koester. Trajectories through Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.
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  799. Ancient Christianity was not a unified, cohesive, movement in the earliest period but, rather, grew in the form of diverse and constantly evolving intellectual trajectories. These trajectories did not evolve in front of a static pagan background but, rather, changed along with the direction of history in their geographical regions.
  800. Find this resource:
  801. Schnabel, E. J. Early Christian Mission. 2 vols. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004.
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  803. An account of mission in the 1st century that pull data primarily from New Testament literature. Schnabel accepts much of Acts’ description of Paul’s missionary program. English translation of Urchristliche Mission (2002). Most fit for theological settings.
  804. Find this resource:
  805. Schnabel, E. J. Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies and Methods. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008.
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  807. Traces patterns in Paul’s mission drawn from Acts and the Pauline letters. The former is taken to be highly reliable while the latter are all regarded as authentic. A shorter version of Schnabel’s arguments in the Pauline sections of Schnabel 2004. Most suitable in theological settings.
  808. Find this resource:
  809. Stark, R. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
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  811. An application of rational choice theory to the fragmentary ancient data that documents Christianity’s evolution in antiquity. Draws on insights from sociological studies of modern cult movements as well as population statistics.
  812. Find this resource:
  813. Trebilco, Paul. “Christian Communities in Western Asia Minor into the Early Second Century: Ignatius and Others as Witnesses against Bauer.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49 (2006): 17–44.
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  815. Focusing on data from Deutero-Pauline letters, Revelation, and Ignatius, Trebilco argues that orthodox groups were prior to heretical ones in Western Asia.
  816. Find this resource:
  817. Verhoef, E. Philippi: How Christianity Began in Europe. The Epistle to the Philippians and the Excavations at Philippi. London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013.
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  819. An introduction to the inscriptions and archaeology of Philippi, as well as an account for the growth of Christianity in the city. Suitable for undergraduates, but also very useful in graduate settings as an introduction to the value of material evidence for biblical exegesis.
  820. Find this resource:
  821. Gospel Communities
  822.  
  823. Scholars debate both the existence of “church-like” communities behind Gospels and also the scholarly ability to reconstruct them if they do, in fact, exist. Dibelius 1927 articulates the main assumptions inherent in traditional perspective concerning communal authorship. Wisse 1986, Bauckham 1998, Klink III 2010, and Stowers 2011 are less optimistic about what the Gospels can tell us about churches. Sim 2001, Mitchell 2005, and Last 2012 provide new data suggestive that churches might be behind Gospels though express caution concerning how much can be known about them.
  824.  
  825. Bauckham, Richard, ed. The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.
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  827. Traces the traditional notion of Gospel communities to late 19th-century British scholarship. Questions the assumption that each gospel was written for a single community whose values and beliefs it reflects. Chapters explore trans-local networks among churches, genre as it relates to audience, and travel in antiquity. Argues that Gospels were written in specific settings but with broad intended audiences.
  828. Find this resource:
  829. Dibelius, Martin. “The Structure and Literary Character of the Gospels.” Harvard Theological Review 20 (1927): 151–170.
  830. DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000000420Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  831. Provides an example of form-critical convictions that originally gave rise to reconstructions of Gospel communities. Argues that the development of Gospel texts happened outside “the sphere of literature” and can be categorized more properly as arising out of the preaching of missionaries and story-telling of uneducated community leaders.
  832. Find this resource:
  833. Klink III, Edward W., ed. The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Function of the Gospels in Early Christianity. Library of New Testament Studies 353. London: T&T Clark, 2010.
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  835. Twelve years after the publication of Bauckham 1998, Klink has edited a volume that includes an analysis of the reception of Bauckham 1998 and several original essays that make new contributions to the debate. Most contributions are in favor of the “all Christians” theory but Craig Blomberg provides a middle approach and Adele Reinhartz provides support for the traditional perspective. Bauckham’s contribution is a response to Mitchell 2005.
  836. Find this resource:
  837. Last, Richard. “Communities That Write: Christ-Groups, Associations, and Gospel Communities.” New Testament Studies 58 (2012): 173–198.
  838. DOI: 10.1017/S0028688511000348Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  839. Last explores writing practices in private associations and shows that cultic groups wrote material for self-interested purposes. Association writings, moreover, reflected the context and concerns of the groups’ members. The theory proposed by Bauckham 1998, therefore, attributes to early churches compositional practices that are inconsistent with the way that cult groups wrote.
  840. Find this resource:
  841. Mitchell, Margaret M. “Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that ‘The Gospels Were Written for All Christians’.” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 36–79.
  842. DOI: 10.1017/S0028688505000032Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  843. Mitchell provides extensive patristic evidence showing that “Gospel communities” were not created by academics in contemporary settings, as Bauckham 1998 proposes but, rather, can be traced back at least to the church fathers.
  844. Find this resource:
  845. Sim, David C. “The Gospels for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001): 3–27.
  846. DOI: 10.1177/0142064X0102400201Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  847. Christianity was not the type of worldwide movement that Bauckham 1998 requires. Moreover, churches from distant provenances were less connected than Bauckham 1998 assumes. Sim provides reasons to maintain the traditional perspective.
  848. Find this resource:
  849. Stowers, Stanley K. “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 23 (2011): 238–256.
  850. DOI: 10.1163/157006811X608377Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  851. Argues that reconstructions of Gospel communities are products of 18th-century German Romanticism. Gospels, like other examples of Greco-Roman literature, were written by individuals, not communities. The enterprise of reconstructing authoring communities is special to the field of Christian origins.
  852. Find this resource:
  853. Wisse, Frederik. “The Use of Early Christian Literature As Evidence for Inner Diversity and Conflict.” In Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity. Edited by Charles W. Hedrick and Robert Hodgson, 177–190. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986.
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  855. Argues that gospel texts were produced and consumed by educated individuals and their trans-local networks. There is no need to posit churches behind this literature.
  856. Find this resource:
  857. Meals
  858.  
  859. In older scholarship, church meals––particularly Eucharists––were placed within a specifically Jewish milieu and were understood as part of broader liturgical practice. Recently, skepticism about the liturgical connection has emerged in light of reassessments of Eucharistic origins (Bradshaw 2004). Klinghardt 1996 and Smith 2003 have shown that Jewish meals were types of a single banquet tradition. This typology has convinced many (e.g., Alikin 2010), but some researchers continue to assert more complicated typologies (McGowan 1999). Others are critical of Greco-Roman analogies to church meals and prefer nuanced comparisons with Judaism (Rouwhorst 2007).
  860.  
  861. Alikin, Valeriy A. The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2010.
  862. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004183094.i-342Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  863. Rejects an older scholarly position that meals in early churches derived from specifically Jewish banqueting practices. Since research on Hellenistic and Roman period Judaism situates synagogue practices within the context of broader Greco-Roman practices, it is untenable to propose that church meals were modeled after supposedly distinctive Jewish customs.
  864. Find this resource:
  865. Bradshaw, Paul F. Eucharistic Origins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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  867. Engages with relevant material into the 4th century. The Eucharistic ritual was not originally associated with the story of Jesus’ last supper. It was initially part of the common meals held by churches but it was practiced differently by churches according to their varying social and cultural environments.
  868. Find this resource:
  869. Klinghardt, M. Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft. Soziologie und Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern. Tübingen, Germany, and Basel, Switzerland: Francke, 1996.
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  871. Although Hellenistic meals happened in various settings (e.g., associations, festivals, sacrifices), they are similar in terms of inherent social values. Demonstrates that the common meals attested in 1 Corinthians and the Didache are neither unique nor derived from specifically Jewish customs but, rather, fit within the Hellenistic banquet tradition.
  872. Find this resource:
  873. McGowan, Andrew. Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.
  874. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269724.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  875. Some Eucharistic meals consisted of bread and water but no wine, a custom that differs from and cannot be categorized alongside Greco-Roman meals that included wine. McGowan finds that there were several different models for ancient meals, and that individual Eucharistic meals could have been modeled after different types of Greco-Roman banquets.
  876. Find this resource:
  877. Rouwhorst, Gerard. “The Roots of the Early Christian Eucharist: Jewish Blessings or Hellenistic Symposia?” In Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship. New Insights into Its History and Interaction. Edited by Albert Gerhards and Clemens Leonhard, 295–308. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
  878. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004162013.i-334Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  879. Provides an overview of scholarly approaches to the Eucharist, including traditional methodologies that situate the ritual within an exclusively-Jewish milieu, and scholarship that places high value on the now challenged theory that the Eucharistic meal emerged from traditions concerning Jesus’ last supper. Offers new support for understanding the origins of the Eucharist within a Jewish context, and presents a list of shortcomings in the Klinghardt-Smith model for understanding the ancient banquet.
  880. Find this resource:
  881. Smith, Dennis E. From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
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  883. Argues that there was a common banquet tradition that was used in various settings formerly thought to be different types of meals. Analyzes examples of early Christian meals in Pauline literature, the Gospels.
  884. Find this resource:
  885. Smith, Dennis E., and Hal Taussig, eds. Meals in the Early Christian World. Social Formation, Experimentation, and Conflict at the Table. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
  886. DOI: 10.1057/9781137032485Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  887. A collection of original essays that cover banquet archaeology, attendees, and sexuality. The chapters build upon the Klinghardt-Smith typology of the ancient banquet.
  888. Find this resource:
  889. Liturgical Activity
  890.  
  891. The focus of scholarship on early church liturgy has been on prayer, reading, and preaching. Much scholarship finds that church liturgical practices derived from analogous activities in Jewish synagogues (Dix 1945; Salzmann 1994; Rouwhorst 2002). Alikin 2010 challenges this by placing Jewish liturgical activities within the context of Hellenistic banqueting practices. Johnson 2009 provides a helpful collection of source materials and Doig 2008 explores the relationship between the physical space of church gatherings and the liturgical practices that happened therein. Most recently, Nässelqvist 2014 explores the mechanics of reading literature in church settings.
  892.  
  893. Alikin, Valeriy A. Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  894. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004183094.i-342Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  895. Since church liturgical practices happened within the context of meal activity, which was not a specifically Jewish activity, the origins of church liturgy cannot be understood exclusively as a synagogue phenomenon.
  896. Find this resource:
  897. Dix, Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. London: Dacre, 1945.
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  899. Church liturgies evolved from synagogue liturgical practices as well as the Jewish Passover meal. As described by Justin, sermons were followed by Eucharistic celebrations even in the earliest period.
  900. Find this resource:
  901. Doig, Allan. Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
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  903. Explores what material culture can tell us about the earliest liturgical practices in churches. Focus is primarily devoted to the post-313 CE period.
  904. Find this resource:
  905. Johnson, Lawrence. J. Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources. Vol. 1. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009.
  906. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  907. A four-volume set containing sections from primary material related to liturgical activities in ancient churches. Volume 1 covers the earliest period to the 4th century. It includes material related to both Jewish liturgical practices.
  908. Find this resource:
  909. Nässelqvist, Dan. “Public Reading and Aural Intensity: An Analysis of the Soundscape in John 1–4.” PhD diss., Lund University, 2014.
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  911. When 1st- and 2nd-century churches assembled for meals, lectors read gospel literature according to the mechanisms practiced by public readers.
  912. Find this resource:
  913. Rouwhorst, Gerard. “The Reading of Scripture in Early Christian Liturgy.” In What Athens Has to Do with Jerusalem. Essays on Classical, Jewish, and Early Christian Art and Archaeology in Honour of Gideon Foerster. Edited by Leonard Rutgers, 305–331. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2002.
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  915. It is not until the 200s that any evidence exists for church meetings consisting of liturgical activities (e.g., reading, praying) without a meal. Liturgical practices in churches borrowed from liturgical customs practiced in Judean synagogues.
  916. Find this resource:
  917. Salzmann, Jörg. Lehren und Ermahnen: Zur Geschichte des christlichen Wortgottesdienstes in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1994.
  918. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  919. Salzmann traces the origins of church liturgy, specifically liturgical readings and preachings, to Jewish liturgical practices in synagogues. Argues that liturgical practices were relatively uniform in the earliest centuries.
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