Conceived of as an addendum to the monumental work of Ulrich Huttner's Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley (trans. David Green [Brill, 2013]), this edited volume contains essays that are loosely connected to the world of Christianity in the cities of Laodicea, Colossae, and Hieropolis. The volume is arranged into three sections detailing, first, an overview of Christianity in the Lycus valley, second, a collection of responses to Huttner's work, and third, a series of essays that more broadly address the socio-political environment of the eastern Mediterranean world. For the uninitiated reader, the first and third sections are the most useful, as they offer a broad view of cultural development and background on the Lycus valley. Without an intimate knowledge of Huttner's methodological and theoretical concerns, the second section of this volume takes a great deal of effort to fully comprehend.
A few gems stand out as exceptional here, particularly the essays of Harry Maier, “Salience, Multiple Affiliation, and Christ Belief in the Lycus Valley”; Michael Theophilos, “Employing Numismatic Evidence in Discussions of Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley”; and Michael Trainor, “Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley.” Maier's work takes a macroscopic view of cultural interaction and exchange, offering strong evidence for the existence of multivalent identities within the social strata of the Lycus valley. Theophilos shows the importance of numismatics to the philologically imbued field of early Christian studies, and Trainor's essay works in concert with that of Maier's to provide a useful introduction to economic activity as a social force.
The glaring issue with this edited volume lies not in its content but in its production. The work is rife with grammatical, orthographic, and stylistic errors, diminishing the overall quality of the essays. If one can ignore the seeming lack of consistent copyediting and proofing, this volume will serve as a useful introduction to the current methodological and theoretical debates within the field of early Christian studies.
