The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era

This collection of essays is partly the product of a symposium that took place at Humboldt University, Berlin in July 2010. It was supplemented by other articles which contributed further relevant aspects to the overall topic. The aim of the conference was to explore the longstanding conundrum of the rapid rise and growth of Christianity in the first three centuries CE. This well-studied question finds a special home in the city of Berlin where, at the beginning of the last century, Adolf von Harnack, Professor at Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University) Berlin carried out what was arguably its most famous treatment. According to Harnack, early Christian history began in the missionary activity of contemporary Judaism. The movement spread as the result of a combination of deliberate syncretism with a measure of simplicity in the cultural and political unity of the Roman Empire. Over the past thirty years, scholars such as Ramsey MacMullen and Rodney Stark have questioned some of Harnack's conclusions. Arising from outside of the field of New Testament Studies (Ancient History and Sociology of Religion, respectively), both MacMullen's and Stark's approach remained at some distance from specialist understandings of, for example, complex theological and rhetorical aspects of early Christian texts. Therefore, in the wake of these important studies, a variety of new strategies have emerged taking these and other vital concerns into account. The essays in this volume represent these assorted approaches. Methodological rigor is the only unambiguous theme running throughout this otherwise diverse collection. The essays are collected under two broad sub-headings: Cultural Milieu and Texts. Topics treated include Paul, Jesus and the Gospels, other New Testament texts, the Apocryphal Acts, and the expansion of Christianity in the second and third centuries.Clare K. Rothschild: Introduction I. Cultural MilieuJames Carleton Paget: Hellenistic and Early Roman Period Jewish Missionary Efforts in the Diaspora - William Horbury: Jewish and Christian Origins in Roman Africa II. First Century Developments: From Galilee to Asia MinorJesus and the Gospels Jürgen K. Zangenberg: From the Galilean Jesus to the Galilean Silence: Earliest Christianity in the Galilee until the Fourth Century CE - Thomas Söding: Die Saat des Evangeliums. Vor- und nachösterliche Mission im Markusevangelium - Matthias Konradt: Die Ausrichtung der Mission im Matthäusevangelium und die Entwicklung zur universalen Kirche. Überlegungen zum Standort des Matthäusevangeliums in der Entwicklung des Christentums PaulWayne Meeks: From Jerusalem to Illyricum, Rome to Spain: The World of Paul's Missionary Imagination - James D.G. Dunn: The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries C.E.: Why and How Did Embryonic Christianity Expand Beyond the Jewish People? - Michael Wolter: Jesus bei Paulus Other TrajectoriesJörg Frey: Von Paulus zu Johannes: Die Diversität »christlicher« Gemeindekreise und die »Trennungsprozesse« zwischen der Synagoge und den Gemeinden der Jesusnachfolger in Ephesus im ersten Jahrhundert - Clare K. Rothschild: ἐτυμολογία, dramatis personae, and the Lukan Invention of an Early Christian Prosopography - Jan Dochhorn: Ist die Apokalypse des Johannes ein Text des Christentums der Asia? Einige Überlegungen - Enno Edzard Popkes: Antike christliche Apokryphen als Spiegel frühchristlicher Identitätsbildungsprozesse: Beobachtungen am Beispiel kanonischer und außerkanonischer Haltungen zum Verzehr von »Götzenopferfleisch« - Richard I. Pervo: The Hospitality of Onesiphorus: Missionary Styles and Support in the Acts of Paul - Janet E. Spittler: Christianity at the Edges: Representations of the Ends of the Earth in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles - Trevor Thompson: Claiming Ephesus: Pauline Legacy in the Acts of John III. Christianity between »Orthodoxy,« »Heresy,« and Paganism in the Second and Third CenturiesCandida R. Moss: Polycarphilia: The Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Origins and Spread of Martyrdom - Ismo Dunderberg: Early Christian Critics of Martyrdom - Karen L. King: Theologies and Mission Practices among the so-called »Heretics« - Jörg Ulrich: Die Begegnung von Christen und Heiden im zweiten (und dritten) Jahrhundert Jens Schröter: Epilogue