A note on the historiography of early Christianity
Before stipulating the relation between Christianity on the one hand, and the philosophy and religion of the Hellenistic-Roman environment on the other, it is important to clarify how I understand the Christian movement of the second and third centuries (the prime focus of the present volume) vis-à-vis its origins in the first century ce. To my mind, it is not fruitful to distinguish too strongly between the first century and the following second and third centuries; rather, one should regard these centuries as equally part of ante-Nicene Christianity. In the course of these three centuries, the partings of the ways between Christianity and Judaism gradually became visible. At the same time, Christianity was largely regarded as an illicit movement until the Edict of Milan in 313, when Christianity was first allowed religious freedom. It makes no sense to regard the Christianity of the first century as still “Palestinian,” in contrast to the Christianity which became embedded throughout the Mediterranean world in the second and third centuries. First of all, together with Judea, Galilee, the homeland of Jesus of Nazareth, was a region of the Roman province of Syria, and, as we know from Josephus, the region itself saw major developments in the first centuries bce and ce, when new cities such as Tiberias and Sepphoris were founded and were also partly inhabited by Greeks.2 Secondly, it is – for that reason – scarcely surprising that “even in Galilee” Justus of Tiberias, the son of a first-century-ce Jewish faction leader, could entertain a lively interest in Socrates and Plato, and could be deemed by Josephus to be very proficient in Greek3 And thirdly, the Gospel of Mark emphasizes Jesus’ activity among Jewish-Galilean settlements in the milieu of the Hellenistic cities and his journeys from Galilee into the Gentile territory of the Greek Decapolis, Phoenician Tyre and Sidon, and Roman Caesarea Philippi.4 All these features suggest that it would be wrong to regard Galilee as an exception to the rule that the ancient world had become thoroughly Hellenized.5 Moreover, already in the 30s and 40s of the first century ce, Christian communities existed outside Galilee and Judea in Syria, notably in Antioch, the third largest city of the Eastern Mediterranean. And in the 50s Christianity spread through other important cities there, with Paul founding communities in cities such as Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus.
This is important to realize, as the myth of a simple first-century Christianity as opposed to the Hellenized Christianity of the subsequent centuries is still prevalent. This seems to be the fruit of ideological historiographies of the nineteenth century, such as that of Adolf von Harnack, according to whom first-century Christianity was a moralized version of a simple-minded Judaism.6 It was only in the second century, according to von Harnack, that Christianity became exposed to the full force of Hellenism. This led to the emergence of Christian Gnosticism, which combined Hellenistic philosophy with the Gnostic conviction that the world was the product not of the highest God, but of an ignorant or malevolent creator god. In attempting to express their convictions, the Christian Gnostics drew on Hellenistic philosophy, thus causing the first radical Hellenization of Christianit. The Hellenization of Christianity then became complete when the church fathers of the second and third centuries, who saw themselves obliged to refute the Gnostic movement within Christianity, also drew on Hellenistic philosophy in their efforts to combat the Gnostics effectively. As a result, the simple, highly moral essence of the original form of Christianity became contaminated with Greek metaphysics. In this way, von Harnack succeeded in distinguishing an original, “biblical” Christianity from the later secular-Greek and early catholic encrustations, which were removed through the reforming endeavours of Augustine and Luther, which went back to the theology of Paul. Although the Protestant interests of this historiography are clearly visible (and though his understanding of Paul is highly questionable), von Harnack’s paradigm has been very influential. Even Keith Hopkins, in his best-selling A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire (1999), reinforces this interpretation: “Gnostics used a transcendental language, which united the thought-worlds of Judaism, Christianity and pagan Neo-Platonism. Gnostics in the second century moved Christianity out of Palestine, and out of the restricted world of Judaeo-Christian myth, on to a cosmic stage.”7 This is far from the historical truth, as first-century Christianity was already firmly embedded in the Mediterranean world Even Judaism, from which Christianity only gradually parted, was not restricted to Palestine but dispersed throughout the ancient world, participating in, and interacting with, its culture.8 Moreover, Palestine, too – as I already briefly suggested with reference to Galilee – was firmly part of the Hellenistic world9 As Christianity only gradually emancipated itself from Judaism during the first two centuries, mainly as a result of its distancing itself from the Jewish revolts against Rome in ce 66–70 and 132–5, it was in fact largely part of the phenomenon which we call Hellenistic Judaism. This started with the advent of Alexander the Great to the Ancient Near East, and constituted a pluriform and yet in many respects coherent movement which, in a variety of ways, had to come to terms with the Hellenistic movement and, at a later stage, Rome, too.10 The exposure of Christianity to Hellenism is not an issue which only emerged in the second and third centuries, in a secondary development of Christianity; rather, Hellenism already preceded Christianity, inasmuch as Judaism, of which Christianity was part, had already been interacting with Hellenism for over three centuries.
Christianity is a profoundly Jewish movement of the Hellenistic-Roman era. The designation “Christianity” is still very rare in the New Testament, and the result of the outsiders’ perspective of the Romans.11 Moreover, it is early Christianity, and not post-ce-70 rabbinical Judaism, which preserved the Septuagint, the writings of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, as well as the so-called Jewish pseudepigrapha.12 And like the Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman period, it was in interaction with its Graeco-Roman environment.
For all these reasons, I shall closely link the Christianity of the second and third centuries with its manifestation in the first century and regard it as a continuum, uninterrupted by a new cultural epoch, rather than viewing it from a Harnackian perspective of progress, degeneration, and (a need for) reformation. First-century Christianity does not enjoy a separate standing as “biblical.” Even the decision about what should be regarded as the authoritative “New Testament writings” was an...
