M. Mitchell – The Cambridge History of Christianity (9 Volume set)

Автор: M. Mitchell
Название книги: The Cambridge History of Christianity (9 Volume set)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Философия
Страницы: 780х9
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This series offers a comprehensive chronological account of the development of Christianity in all its aspects ­ theological, intellectual, social, political, regional, global ­ from its beginnings to the present day. Each volume makes a substantial contribution in its own right to the scholarship of its period and the complete History constitutes a major work of academic reference. Far from being merely a history of Western European Christianity and its offshoots, the History aims to provide a global perspective. Eastern and Coptic Christianity are given full consideration from the early period onwards, and later, African, Far Eastern, New World, South Asian and other non-European developments in Christianity receive proper coverage. The volumes cover popular piety and non-formal expressions of Christian faith and treat the sociology of Christian formation, worship and devotion in a broad cultural context. The question of relations between Christianity and other major faiths is also kept in sight throughout

Once upon a time, historians of the early church wrote a simple story of a
pristine faith received from Jesus Christ and communicated to his disciples.
With an agreed gospel summed up in the Apostles’ Creed, they dispersed to
spread the word in all directions. In time, however, this unified message was
frustrated by distortions called heresies, which produced their own offspring,
multiplying and diversifying, by contrast with the one truth entrusted to the
apostles. Despite heresy and persecution, however, Christianity triumphed
with the conversion of Constantine.
Doubtless that is an over-simplification of an over-simplification, yet it is
towards the goal of emancipation from such a schematised view of earliest
Christianity (a perspective inherited from the ancient sources themselves)
that much modern critical scholarship has been directed. The recognition of
diversity within Christianity from the very beginning has transformed study
of its origins. Simple models of development, or single theory explanations,
whether they be applied to organisational, liturgical, doctrinal or other aspects
of early church history, are recognisably inadequate. We have endeavoured
to capture the complexity of early Christianity and its socio-cultural setting,
whilst also indicating some of the elements that make it possible to trace a
certain coherence, a recognisable identity, maintained over time and defended
resolutely despite cultural pressure that could have produced something other.
It is thanks to interdisciplinary scholarship, together with the variety of new
evidence provided by archaeological activities and by chance finds such as the
Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, that this project is possible.
Inevitably, the essays assembled here are brief overviews ofwhat have become
vast areas of research, but we hope that their virtue is the fact that, both
severally and together, they provide balance and perspective, coherence and
diversity, aswell as the means to explore further the complex topics withwhich
they engage. Perhaps the greatest conundrum for the historian of Christian origins is
how to deal with the figure of Jesus. Most movements are generated by a
founder whose biography would seem to be the natural starting-point. But in
the case of Jesus, it is not so simple. In a significant sense, Christian faith is
founded upon the person of Jesus Christ himself. The Prelude to the volume,
‘Jesus Christ, foundation of Christianity’, engages the consequent problems:
is it possible to write the kind of historical biography of Jesus that we expect
in the case of other significant figures, and, even if it were, would it do justice
to what he has actually represented for Christian believers?
In part i, ‘The political, social and religious setting’, we present three essays
which sketch the three major formative contexts within which early Christianity
developed. The first outlines the local setting of the life of Jesus and
his earliest Jewish followers in Galilee and Judea. The second moves onto
a wider stage, as it considers the presence of Jews outside that immediate
locality, in the ‘diaspora’, and their response to the broader context of Graeco-
Roman culture. It was both within and alongside the Greek-speaking Jewish
communities outside Palestine that Christianity first spread, and it owed a
considerable debt to Jewish precursors in developing an apologetic stance
towards ‘pagan’ society. The third sketches the political and social realities of
the Roman empire which both facilitated and thwarted the growth of Christian
communities, as subsequent chapters demonstrate. The story of the first
three centuries of Christianity may be depicted, broadly speaking, as a process
whereby a counter-cultural movement is increasingly enculturated, and the
task of writing that story may be undertaken through an analysis of the ways
in which the movement both fitted within and challenged the various cultural
environments in which it found itself.
The essays in part ii, ‘The Jesus movements’, explore the forms of Christianity
that can be traced behind the New Testament documents, the final
essay considering the nature of early Christian communities as social entities
in the world of the late first century. It is clear that Jesus was a Jew,
and his immediate followers were likewise Jews. The continuing existence
of Jewish Christianity has become a subject of significant historical research,
though bedevilled by questions of definition. It is also clear that our earliest
Christian documents, namely the Pauline epistles, bear witness to the
rapid incorporation of non-Jews into the community of believers in Jesus
Christ, as well as to controversy about the terms on which that incorporation
should take place. The first two essays therefore seek to trace the
lineaments of Jewish and Gentile Christianity respectively. Their ultimate separation
obscures the difficulties of differentiation in some New Testament texts, not least the gospel of John, where hostility to ‘the Jews’ may betray
disputes within a Jewish community about where true Jewishness is to be
found, rather than the more obvious possibility of a community defining itself
over against Judaism. Be that as it may, the Johannine literature merits special
attention, seeming as it does to represent Christian communities with a
distinctive interpretation of the Jesus tradition, despite its ultimate acceptance
within the common canon of New Testament writings. Yet these differing
Christian groups have a family likeness, and their characteristic community
ethos, organisational patterns and ritual forms are considered as a climax to the
section.
The following section, part iii, ‘Community traditions and self-definition’,
considers variousways inwhich Christian identitywas formed in the next generation
or two. The first essay examines the emergence of the written record,
and the way in which the Christian movement early on developed a literary
culture that was crucial to its sense of self and its propagation. The second
is devoted to the complex figure of Marcion, whose legacy for the history
of the Christian canon as well as its theological foundations is inestimable.
What Marcion and his opponents had in common was the same process of
identity formation through differentiation from others. In each such case,
both among those who called themselves Christians, and between Christians
and ‘others’ ( Jews and ‘pagans’), this was a complex interactive process as the
significant others were themselves undergoing identity transformations even
as they were being configured as the opponent in Christian consciousness
or apologetic. Attempts to capture such a process may take several forms:
one might paint on a broad canvas, endeavouring to collect the broadest possible
base of information and produce a carefully nuanced position; or one
might present a more detailed analysis of a particular dialectical interchange.
The essay on ‘Self-definition vis-`a-vis the Jewish matrix’ appropriately adopts
the first approach, given the intense debates about the parting of the ways
between Judaism and Christianity which have characterised scholarship in the
late twentieth century. The other tactic is evident in the following essay on
‘Self-definition vis-`a-vis the Graeco-Roman world’, which offers insight into
the complexity of defining exactly what distinguished the Christian discourse
from that of others through a case study of Justin Martyr and Celsus, the opponent
of Christianity. When over-arching models have essential similarities, the
question of differentiation becomes the more urgent: Jews, philosophers and
Christians had subtly different versions of a hierarchically ordered universe
with a single divine Being at its apex but argued profoundly over what or who
should be worshipped and how A defining discourse was necessitated also by groups (often uncritically
lumped together as ‘Gnostic’) experienced by Christians as too close for
comfort and, therefore, doubly threatening. Their teachings were eventually
rejected by the ‘great church’ because they were perceived to subvert sharply
the core legacy from Judaism, characterised as insistence on the one true God
who created the universe, declared it good, and through the prophets revealed
the divine providential plan to be realised at the climax of history. Both sides of
that dialogue are presented and considered in this section. By the end of the second
century, a sense ofwhat constituted the true tradition of Christian teaching
was being articulated and claimed as universal, notably in thework of Irenaeus,
whomay be regarded as the first great systematiser of Christian theology. The
final essay moves the issues of Christian self-definition into a broader social
framework, turning from questions of doctrine, discourse and world-view to
matters of family life and social practice, highlighting the ambivalent status of
Christians in Graeco-Roman society. This reflects a notable shift in scholarship
at the turn of the twenty-first century towards social history, in response to
what some have perceived as an over-emphasis on intellectual history. Broadly
speaking, section iii brings us to the end of the second century.
Part iv, ‘Regional varieties of Christianity in the first three centuries’, focuses
on the spread of Christianity ‘from Jerusalem . . . to the ends of the earth’
(as Luke terms it, in Acts 1:8) within the first three centuries. An essay on
‘the geographical spread of Christianity’ first engages the evidentiary and
methodological issues involved in making demographic estimates of ‘Christianisation’
in the empire. Subsequent chapters are devoted to each of the
major regions where Christian populations were found in the period up until
Constantine: Asia Minor (and Achaea), Egypt, Syria and Mesopotomia, Gaul,
North Africa and Rome. The chapters in this section reflect a notable historiographic
shift in the study of earliest Christianity. Since the work of Walter
Bauer,1 which suggested that in some regions the earliest formof Christianity
was heretical rather than orthodox, there has been radical reappraisal of the
history of the early period: maybe diversity rather than uniformity characterised
Christianity from the beginning; maybe what was heretical was only
discerned by hindsight; maybe uniformity was imposed by the dominance of
an emerging authority such as the Roman church. The last was Bauer’s thesis,
a view that has been demolished in subsequent discussion. Nevertheless
much else has directed scholars to regional variations, not least because different
parts of the Roman empire had different roots and differing responses to Romanitas, especially the ruler cult, so that the religio-political context of
Christian communities was not uniform, and this produced some variety
in cultural and confessional ethos. In addition, research has turned up local
varieties of liturgical practice and organisational structure in the churches.
Scholars increasingly recognise the need for in-depth studies of the evidence
for the presence of Christian communities, and an analysis of their particular
character, in different localities.2 Each of the essays in this section gathers the
key pieces of literary, documentary and archaeological evidence and sketches
the outlines of the principal events, controversies and personalities for that
particular region, while also highlighting the essential fact that no area stood
in complete isolation. Indeed, letters and travellers brought influences from
one end of the Roman empire to another, and interaction was a significant
reality.
Part v, ‘The shaping of Christian theology’, mediatesbetween these regional
varieties and the ideologies of institutional unity that made the church appear
to Constantine as a useful vehicle for his programme of uniting the empire.
Here we trace the creation of a Christian world-view which instantiated itself
in institutional structureswhichwere pan-Mediterranean aswell as local. Classic
debates about doctrinewe have set in a broader context than earlier church
histories would have placed them, and we have avoided notions of development
which imply a necessary outcome. Struggles over monotheism and the
doctrine of creation set up the context for arguments about the nature of Jesus
Christ and his relationship with the one God, while particular local controversies
with more universal implications provide material for the discussion
of Christology and ecclesiology. The section concludes by drawing attention
to the fact that the larger context for doctrinal affirmations was the schoollike
character of early Christian discourse and the self-conscious development
of a Christian intellectual culture to rival the paideia of the Graeco-Roman
world. In the late fourth century and beyond, the traditional pagan educational
programme, so far from being replaced, was gradually Christianised,
but this process owed much to the earlier adaptation to study of the Bible of
the curriculum and techniques traditionally taught in Graeco-Roman schools
of rhetoric and philosophy.
Part vi, ‘“Aliens” become citizens: towards imperial patronage’, traces the
wayinwhich Christiansbecameincreasinglyathomein theworld, despite their
initial tendency to adopt the biblical motif of the resident alien or sojourner claiming that their citizenshipwas in heaven. From the time of Paul, individual
Christians may have held Roman citizenship, yet there was an ambivalence
in their civic attitude as the diaspora mentality was, in a way, carried over to
Gentile converts, and loyalty to Christ displaced loyalty to Caesar. Experience
of persecution reinforced this, though it is important to grasp that, as the first
essay shows, persecution was largely local and sporadic, and official empirewide
procedures directed against Christians mostly appear late in our period.
TheRomanperception that in some sense Christians did not belong is reflected
in Christian views of the Roman empire, and the second essay provides a
nuanced view of shifting attitudes to the question that is later phrased as the
relation between ‘church and state’. The chapter on Constantine reflects on
the crucial impact of this first ‘Christian emperor’, while also warning against
oversimplified accounts of the socio-political and religious shifts that came
with his reign. The essay on the Council of Nicaea provides a sense of the
interplay of doctrinal and political factors as the search for unitywas driven by
the one who claimed to be ‘the bishop for those outside’, namely the emperor
Constantine. The climax to the section is provided by a review of art and
architecture spanning the whole story of this counter-cultural movement to
its incorporation into the socio-cultural patterns of the Roman world and
eventual articulation of a distinctive material culture. The section as a whole
traces the changing parameters within which the question about the place of
Christians in theworldwas considered in the pivotal period of the early fourth
century. We conclude with a few remarks about how ancient Christianity is,
in some complex configurations, foundational for the long and varied history
to come.
This conspectus is intended to show that, so far from being a ‘hotch-potch’
of unrelated essays, this collection as a whole has a sequence which hangs
together, despite the various perspectives represented. The volume may be
read as a consecutive history of the period, which the essays address from
a multiplicity of angles. Readers are encouraged to follow up the subjects
and questions raised in each essay by drawing on the chapter bibliographies
each author has provided, and consulting the full details for primary and
secondary literature cited across the essays, which can be found in the general
bibliography.
The editors would like to acknowledge with gratitude the efforts of all
the authors, with thanks for their gracious response to feedback so that the
volume as a whole could come together as effectively as it has. They have
particularly appreciated the invaluable assistance provided by K. Scott Bowie,
who, amongst other things, compiled the unified bibliography from the many provided by the authors, sorted out standard abbreviations, and produced the
final copy in both hard and electronic form. They thank the University of
Chicago Divinity School for generous institutional and financial support of
this project. They would also like to express their gratitude to Cambridge
University Press for the support of this project from inception through production.
Finally they would like to dedicate this volume to Robert M. Grant,
by whom both were taught and inspired