A History of the First Christians (Understanding the Bible and Its World)
Digitale Logos-Edition
Overview
This work provides a survey of the history of the earliest Christian church in the period up to the fall of Jerusalem. It concentrates on: the figure of Paul; judicious and critical use of information in the Book of Acts; Judaizing versions of Christianity; and the Johannine tradition.
The author’s approach steers a middle way between an over-simplified account which fails to warn students where scholarly opinion is divided, and an in-depth academic study which attempts to document and discuss every hypothesis. Wedderburn focuses on aspects of central importance: the changing shape of church life and developing Christianity in relation to the Roman Empire and to Judaism. This volume seeks to draw together and make more readily accessible many new insights gained from an enormous range of recent scholarly studies in German and English, and places them in the context of a more general account.
This resource is also available as part of the Church Origins Collection (10 vols.).
Top Highlights
“Something that should have been part of a cosmic transformation or renewal had taken place without any of those cosmic concomitants which one would normally have expected.” (Page 17)
“Whatever one believes about the resurrection of Jesus,5 it is undeniable that his followers came to believe that he had been raised by God from the dead, that the one who had apparently died an ignominious death, forsaken and even accursed by his God, had subsequently been vindicated by that same God.” (Page 17)
“The earliest phase is a somewhat obscure one, since most of what we know about it is to be gleaned, with considerable care, from the first chapters of the Book of Acts as well as perhaps from certain hints in Paul’s letters.” (Page 2)
“As Paul is finally imprisoned and then presumably eventually executed, a new phase begins.” (Page 2)
“or the followers of Jesus regarded themselves as part of Judaism,” (Page 4)
Alexander J. M. Wedderburn is Professor of New Testament in the Evangelisch-Theologische Facultat, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.