In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature
  • David Vincent Meconi S.J.
Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth, editors The Cambridge History of Early Christian LiteratureNew York: Cambridge University Press, 2004 Pp. xxvii + 538. $120.

With fifteen contributors and forty chapters, this hefty volume seeks to cover the writings of the nascent Christian church between the end of the first century up through the middle of the fifth. The entries proceed chronologically, each dedicated to a particular figure or theme central to that time period. The essays can be read separately with much benefit. They average about fifteen pages with endnotes kept at a surprising minimum, and sub-headings throughout break up the volume into manageable points of reference. The work is divided into three main sections, and each of these is further divided into one set of essays entitled "literary guide" and then another, "context and interpretation." Frances Young also provides a helpful conclusion to each section. [End Page 406]

Understood throughout is that Christian literature quickly constituted not only a distinct hermeneutical corpus but also came to develop novel genres of writing such as the apology, the act of the martyr, the life of the saint, and the homily as well as the important social and cultural role of the epistula. If one constant theme emerges amongst these essays as a whole, it could be best summarized as Christian paideia, i.e., the notion that those who followed Christ as the living and incarnate truth not only rejuvenated the spoils of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics but, more importantly, sought to transform a classical culture by appropriating and appealing to (and oftentimes challenging) its sense of truth, beauty, and goodness.

The first part of the volume is called "The Beginnings: The New Testament to Irenaeus" (5–111) and follows the genesis of non-canonical Christian literature up to the beginning of the third century. Although mention is made of the formation of some of the canonical writings, most of the attention here is on Clement, Ignatius, The Epistle of Barnabas, and The Didache as well as slightly later Gnostic and apocryphal writings.The first Apologists and the earliest reports of martyrs' acta are also treated. Richard Norris is primarily responsible for this first section although John Behr offers an illuminating piece on the social settings and ecclesial structures which made the beginning of Christian literature not only possible but necessary.

Section 2 (117–245) surveys the whole of the third century with particular focus on the writings stemming from North Africa, but there is also a much welcomed essay (by Oxford's Sebastian Brock) on the all-too-often forgotten distinctiveness of Syriac literature. Ronald Heine accounts for five of the ten essays here. He provides chapters on the early Alexandrians, on Novatian, Cyprian, and Hippolytus, and he also does a fine job tracing the various Christological and Trinitarian heresies which occupied much of the church's energies during the third century. Karen Jo Torjesen shows how Christianity critiqued the culture in which it found itself by using much of the Romanitas it discovered—rhetoric, synodal power, panegyric, and ascetical practices—to its own purposes and advantages. In his excellent essay on Christian teaching, John David Dawson argues that Christian theologians adapted the Homeric and Platonic understandings of deity to their own need in order to maintain a strict monotheism while simultaneously showing how an immanent, historically operative God neither contradicted nor offended this fundamental belief.

The third and most sweeping part (251–494), "Foundation of a New Culture: From Diocletian to Cyril," relies mostly on Andrew Louth's always invaluable articles. Fourth- and fifth-century authors are treated. Oliver Nicholson takes up Arnobius and Lactantius, then Louth covers Eusebius, Athanasius, Didymus, the Cappadocians, Cyril and Epiphanius. David Hunter deals with Hilary, Victorinus, and Ambrosiaster, while Mark Vessey looks at the lives of Jerome and Rufinus. Chadwick's article on Augustine is a reliable albeit all-too-brief survey. Centering most of her comments around the first Christian centoist, Faltonia Betitia Proba, Susan Ashbrook Harvey enlarges our understanding of the role of women in the world of Christian letters. Finally, Robert Markus and Lewis...

pdf

Share