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Engaging Discussions about Early Christianity

The New and Improved After the New Testament

Now that I’ve summarized what happens in the second edition of my reader, After the New Testament, I can say a couple of things about what I’ve changed this time around. First, there were several important texts that neither I nor any other thinking person I know can believe that I left out of the first edition. I’ve included them here in the revision. In addition, as I’ve indicated, I have added two new chapters, one dealing with Women in the Early Church and the other with Early Christian Theories and Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Each has a number of selections of primary source texts connected with it. Moreover, I have expanded the coverage of some of the chapters, by adding a few new texts here and there. Altogether I have about 20 additional texts in this new edition. I have also “switched out” some of the translations – changing to more recent translations (a bunch of these are my own translations published since the first edition – for example of the Apostolic Fathers and [...]

2020-04-03T17:34:38-04:00January 15th, 2014|Book Discussions|
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Final Bit of The Introduction to After the New Testament

I have been providing the “Introduction” to my book After the New Testament. Here is the end of it. In this version, I include two additional paragraphs on chapters not found in my first edition (chapter 10 and chapter 14). I’ll explain why I added these chapters (and the reading s in them) along with the other changes that I have made in the book, in a subsequent post. In reading through the new edition of the book – I’m virtually finished and ready to send it in to the publisher – I have been struck by just how significant these early texts that I anthologize are. Second and third century Christianity was a highly intriguing phenomenon, and there was a lot “to it.” As soon as I’m done with all my current writing projects (and the gods know when *that* will be) I am planning on writing a college-level textbook on the period, going from after the period right after the New Testament , around 100 CE, up through the Council of Nicea in [...]

2020-04-03T17:34:45-04:00January 14th, 2014|Book Discussions, Teaching Christianity|
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More on After the New Testament

The following is the continuation of my Introduction (chapter 1) of my book After the New Testament. In it I start to explain each of the chapters of the book, all of which deal with a variety of aspects of Christianity in the second and third centuries. I will give the remainder of the Introduction in my next post, since I don’t want to make these too long to be manageable. After that I will talk about what I’m doing new in the second edition that I’m producing now. ************************************************************************ It might be useful to say a word about the nature of the rubrics under which the chapters of the book are organized, and the logic of their sequencing. This need not entail a lengthy discussion: each chapter begins with a sketch of the important historical aspects of the topic, and each individual text is introduced with brief comments concerning its historical context and significance. One of the first things to consider about early Christianity is how it spread so far and wide in its [...]

2020-04-05T15:41:07-04:00January 13th, 2014|Book Discussions, Spread of Christianity, Teaching Christianity|
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My New Edition of After the New Testament

Several people have asked me what I’m working on these days. Answer: I’m doing a new, second edition of my college-level text-book/reader/anthology of ancient texts, After the New Testament. It is meant to be a topically-arranged collection of primary readings from after the New Testament period up to the time of the Emperor Constantine. Before explaining what I am doing to make the second edition different from the first (I am revising it seriously), I should say something about what the first edition, published in 1999, was all about. To do that I give here the first part of the Introduction to the text. I’ll give the second part anon.   ******************************************************************** Over the past century and a half, archaeological discoveries have played a significant role in our understanding of early Christianity. These include (a) the serendipitous discovery of entire libraries of ancient texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in the wilderness of Judea, and the library of Gnostic writings uncovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt; (b) the equally fortuitous unearthing of individual documents, [...]

2020-04-03T17:35:00-04:00January 13th, 2014|Book Discussions|
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