This volume derives from a conference, “The Christian Second Century,” held in March 2013 at the University of Cambridge. The focus of the conference and this book reflects a renewed interest in the second Christian century. This period is no longer considered as a sequel of ambiguous relationship to the first century or as a mere preliminary stage of subsequent theological and ecclesiastical developments often judged more interesting, but as a time of great importance in its own right. Indeed, there is also a recent student-oriented volume intended specifically to promote the study of the second century in courses (Michael J. Kruger, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church [SPCK, 2017]).
The introduction (by Carleton Paget and Lieu) helpfully highlights some key issues that come in for detailed consideration in the ensuing essays. They rightly note that one's view of the second century is to some degree shaped by whether one looks forward in time from the first century or backward from later times and developments. The “emerging consensus” that this was a time of Christian diversity has helped scholars to treat the second century as having an importance of its own. They then identify some “formative debates” reflected in the following essays.
These include the “methods of study” to be followed, given the widespread “rejection of allegiance to the controlling narrative of the supposed victors” (5). So, one sees an interpretative suspicion expressed in some of the essays, although Carleton Paget and Lieu grant that it would be wrong to suggest that the bulk of scholars have entirely given up on tracing “some kind of narrative of the period” (9). Indeed, the contributors reflect disagreement over this matter.
Part 1 comprises essays on the “contexts”: the wider religious environment (Greg Woolf), the Jewish diaspora (Tessa Rajak), rabbinic developments (Philip Alexander), and Jewish/Christian relations (William Horbury). Part 2 has essays on “Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christianity” by Carleton Paget (viewing the period from the preceding century), Lewis Ayres (urging a measure of continuity and coherence in Christian diversity), Karen King and Mark Edwards (each on gnostic ideas), and William Löhr (early Christian theology as philosophia). Part 3 contains essays on “Galen and the Christians” (Rebecca Fleming), the emergence of “authoritative texts” (Joseph Verheyden), the place of beliefs in pagan religion (Teresa Morgan), and on beliefs about “fate/destiny” and the use of lots (Laura Salah Nasrallah). Part 4 is given to essays on the use of “ethnic” language in early Christianity (Erich Gruen and Oskar Skarsaune), pagan attitudes toward Christians (John North and Tim Whitmarsh), and a concluding essay by Lieu considering treating second-century Christianity as “the age of the laboratory” in which various experiments in beliefs and practices appeared.
As the editors note, there are some matters that do not get attention, such as women's involvement, socio-economic or geographical growth of Christianity, (perhaps most surprising) key theological developments, the production of an impressive amount of new Christian texts and the resources devoted to copying and distributing them (as described by Harry Gamble's 1995 volume Books and Readers in the Early Church [Yale University Press]), the fervent efforts at the trans-local “networking” of Christians, or key figures such as Justin, Valentinus, Tatian, Marcion, Irenaeus, and others. But the aim was not to be comprehensive, and this particular collection of essays does highlight some important issues in current scholarly work on this important period.
To select a few for further comment, after granting the demise of “the Gnostic Myth” and the “reordering” of the erroneous notion of a chronological priority of “Gnosticism” in relation to the New Testament, Karen King then segues into underscoring the diversity of Christianity, as reflected in the Nag Hammadi texts. She also rightly notes the error of automatically linking particular texts to specific “communities” (a point made by Frederik Wisse several decades ago). One might add that we probably also should avoid the common assumption that the various “apocryphal” Christian texts were unsuccessful attempts at inclusion in a Christian canon. Instead, they are better taken variously as speculative “experiments,” others as efforts at edification or entertainment, and some of them quite clearly as esoteric texts intended solely for like-minded readers. Their various authors likely had no interest in obtaining a place in a canon of texts such as the New Testament.
Nasrallah's discussion of “fate” and the use of lots to discern one's fortunes (e.g., on a looming trip) seems to me to stretch things a bit by arguing that these phenomena reflect a pagan belief that the gods care about humans. For, as she notes, it was often and widely thought that even the gods are subject to fate. Moreover, it is difficult to see how selecting from a set of pre-written oracle-type sayings can bear the load of theology and sentiment that she places on them.
Whitmarsh's critical appraisal of the notion that pagans referred to Christians as atheists, contending that it was basically a fictional charge formed later by Christians for rhetorical purposes, left me unpersuaded. He bases his view heavily on the recent redating of The Martyrdom of Polycarp to the fourth century, and notes but fails to engage adequately with the statements in other second-century Christian texts complaining about being accused of atheism. Moreover, the issue was not belief in the gods but Christian refusal to offer them sacrifice. In that world, to refuse to sacrifice to the gods was to deny them.
