Tradition & Diversity: Christianity in a World Context to 1500 by Karen Louise Jolly (review)

BOOK REVIEWS519 tion and -works by Chinese, black American, Australian aboriginal, Native American, and other artists. There are reproductions of Marc Chagall's "Yellow Crucifixion," Edvard Munch's "Golgotha," William Johnson's "Mount Calvary," Caravaggio's "Supper at Emmaus," and Horace Peppin's "The Crucifixion." Because of such wide-ranging styles, the illustrations are appealing to people of all ages, social backgrounds, religious persuasions, and educational levels. It is unfortunate that the illustrations are not accompanied by clear identifications; one has to turn to the illustrations credits at the back of the book for that information . Like the original lectures on which the book is based and which were intended for an audience representing both town and gown, The IllustratedJesus beckons an audience of believers and skeptics alike. It shows, in Pelikan's own words, that "Jesus is far too important a figure to be left only to the theologian and the church." The book is dedicated to the Benedictines of Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota,"nihil amori Christi praeponere." R. Kevin Seasoltz, O.S.B. SaintJohn'sAbbey Collegeville, Minnesota Tradition & Diversity: Christianity in a World Context to 1500. By Karen Louise Jolly. [Sources and Studies in World History.] (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. 1997. Pp. xiv, 569. $64.95 cloth; $28.95 paper.) For a number of reasons, this is a welcome new anthology of sources for teaching the history of Christianity to 1500. First of all, some of the best readers in ancient and medieval Christianity published in the past half-century are now out of print. (One thinks, for example, of the first volume of Ray Petry's A History ofChristianity:Readings in the History ofthe Church [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1962; repr. 1981, 1988].) But even if some of the earlier anthologies were still in print, there is reason to salute the arrival ofJolly's. The times change how history is written, how it is presented to students and, clearly, how documents are chosen and taught. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine any American historian making this selection of documents much before 1990. Especially hard to imagine such a selection being made when Petry or Colman Barry (Readings in Church History:From Pentecost to the Protestant Revolt [Westminster, Maryland, I960] , a Benedictine and then professor of history in St.John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota, first made theirs. Both Barry and Jolly begin their readers with selections from the canonical scriptures of Christianity . Here are the titles Barry gives to his first five scriptural readings: "The Promise of the Primacy to Peter,""The Authority of the Apostles,""The Commission of the Apostles," "The Conferring of the Primacy on Peter," and "Peter, the Guide of the Apostles."Jolly, associate professor of history in the University of 520BOOK REVIEWS Hawaii at Manoa, gives this title to the chapter containing the scriptural documents :"Jew and Gentile: Early Origins of Christianity."And these are the titles of six of Jolly's other chapters: "Christian and Roman: Conflict and Assimilation," "Adaptations of Christianity Outside the Roman World,""Christian Acculturation in Western Europe," "Christian Diversity and Accommodation," "Cross-Cultural Exchange: Missions and Dialogue," "Cross-Cultural Contact." Two of the other chapters have the word "Diversity" in their titles, as does the title of the book. In addition to marking quite vividly the intellectual distance traveled in the four decades since Barry's book was published, those titles tell us a lot about the principle of selection at work here. In addition to presenting documents reflecting the "older" but "still valuable" approach to Christian history (Jolly's words, see pp. 3-5)—i.e., the records of councils, papal decisions, wars, spectacular conversions, the writings of influential scholars, and so forth—Jolly has chosen documents that emphasize a number of other, characteristically late twentieth-century themes: the notion that European Christianity was just one, culturally determined brand of Christianity, and that other, geographically diverse forms ought to be represented (they are here); that Christianity often found itself in "cross-cultural interaction"with other religions and societies; that there is a "diversity of voices" (p. 5) within Christianity that in some sense compete with an "official view" and that these should be heard...