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This text analyses the earliest extant documents of Christianity, the letters of Paul, which illuminate the tensions & the texture of life of the first urban Christians. In a new introduction, the author describes the field of New Testament scholarship over the past two decades.
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Subjects
Christian sociology, History, Soziologie, Urchristentum, Histoire, Urbanität, Milieu, Sociologie religieuse, Early church, Stadt, Vroege kerk, Sozialgeschichte, Christianisme, Brieven van Paulus, Primitive and early church, Religion, Church history, Paul, the apostle, saintPeople
Paul The Apostle, SaintTimes
Early church, ca. 30-600Showing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul
February 8, 2003, Yale University Press
Paperback
in English
- 2 edition
0300098618 9780300098617
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2
The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul
March 11, 1984, Yale University Press
Paperback
in English
0300032447 9780300032444
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3
The first urban Christians: the social world of the Apostle Paul
1983, Yale University Press
in English
0300028768 9780300028768
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Book Details
First Sentence
"In the early decades of the Roman Empire, a new sect of Judaism appeared and spread rapidly, though not in great numbers, through the cities of the East."
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Work Description
The Pauline Epistles as historical-sociological documents: a balanced, meticulous, fabulously learned study suggesting (despite itself) that when all is said and done Paul still belongs to the believers and theologians. Meeks (Religion, Yale) has organized and analyzed a vast amount of scholarly material here, and no advanced student of the New Testament can ignore his work. But the sad fact is that Paul's letters, even when read in the light of contemporary Jewish and pagan sources, really don't tell us much about the first Christian communities, and so the non-specialist reader will likely find Meeks' book, despite its richness, paradoxically thin. Thus, Meeks begins by establishing that Pauline Christianity grew up in a band of cities (ranging in size from the very small Philippi to the very large Ephesus and Corinth) that stretched from central Asia Minor westward to Macedonia and the Peloponnesus, among a population that was linguistically Greek but politically Roman. This raise en scène is marvelously detailed, but reaches no radically new conclusions. Meeks then goes to great length to argue that ""a Pauline congregation generally reflected a fair cross-section of urban society"" (by and large skipping the highest and lowest levels). His case is carefully made, but seems to have no earthshaking import--except for Marxists and others who maintain that Christianity had its roots in the proletariat. Similarly, Meeks surveys the formation of the ekklesia and its governance, early Christian ritual, and finally ""patterns of belief and patterns of life."" Here again he offers a masterful review of current scholarship, but his broad theoretical insights are necessarily little more than guesses. (E.g., judging from some 30 people mentioned in the Epistles, Meeks speculates that they suffered from ""high status inconsistency"" and hence might well lend a willing ear to the apocalyptic-eschatological element in Paul's message.) Still, within the limits imposed by the sketchiness of the evidence, a fine performance.
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August 24, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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