Christianity in the Second Century: Themes and Developments ed. by James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu (review)

This volume of collected essays takes up the neat but arbitrary topic of the century spanning 100–200 c.e. With characteristic reserve, the Introduction (jointly written by the editors) carefully circumscribes the scope of its results: “As will have become obvious, it has not been the task either of this introduction or of the volume as a whole to provide a new and settled account of the second Christian century” (21). Nevertheless, the essays cover a broad range of topics crucial to an understanding of areas of research and current debates frequently traced to this epoch. In what follows, I attempt to give a general sense of each essay.

Part One focuses on “Context.” (1) Greg Woolf, “Empires, Diasporas and the Emergence of Religions,” seeks to understand why some religious innovations traced to the second century flourished, while others did not. The approach is evolutionary insofar as it explains a broad range of religious changes as “adaptive response[s] to the selective pressures exerted on religious innovation by its broader environment” (32). Woolf’s conclusion is that “the broad family resemblance of these emergent groups exemplifies the principle of convergent evolution … the process by which quite distinctly related species come to acquire similar characteristics when subjected to similar selective pressures” (37). Woolf’s conclusion is itself a religious innovation, for his idea that religions emerged from a number of different starting points to become more similar contrasts with the widespread assumption that Judaism and Christianity are descendants of a common Abrahamic model (37).

(2) Tessa Rajak has dedicated most of her career to careful exploration of Judaism in Greece and Rome, with close attention to the destruction of Jerusalem. The interest of the present essay, “The Mediterranean Jewish Diaspora in the Second Century,” does not stray far from her oeuvre, addressing the culture of the primary diasporic areas of Jewish life in the Roman imperial domain (i.e., predominantly Greek-speaking and Greek-writing). Chronologically, her period begins with 70 c.e. (40), pressing slightly on the volume’s apparent parameters. While little can be said to distinguish one part of the “diaspora” from others at this time, Rajak finds Syria to be a special case based primarily on Antioch’s vulnerability to influences from Jerusalem.

(3) Philip Alexander’s “The Rabbis and Their Rivals in the Second Century CE” opens with a warning about the error of prioritizing rabbinic Judaism in examinations of the various expressions of Abrahamic faith in the second century (57). Alexander warns that histories of the Jews and Judaism in late antiquity are too frequently written from the standpoint of the rabbinic movement. In this essay he emphasizes that “there were other groups who did not accept the authority of the Rabbis, nor subscribe to their distinctive worldview, but whose Judaism had as much legitimacy in its day as had theirs” (57). Rival groups include the priests, the ‘Ammei ha-aretz (64), and the Minim (“heretics”). The essay is a synthesis of more detailed work published elsewhere.

(4) William Horbury’s essay, “Church and Synagogue vis-à-vis Roman Rule in the Second Century,” traces two themes, martyrology and apologetic, examining various period-appropriate manifestations of these phenomena. Acknowledging that some writers distinguished the church and synagogue, others, according to Horbury, did not: “Roman awareness of the Jewish connections of Christianity is indicated from Tacitus to Celsus and Galen, and has justifiably encouraged a synoptic view of Jews and Christians under second-century Roman rule” (86). Horbury commences his investigation with terms of self-definition, after which he discusses distinctive aims of each group’s apologetics: synagogues sought full protection by Rome; churches requested restraint on accusations. In terms of martyrdom, Jewish examples are the exception, primarily responding to Jewish disturbances (i.e., relative security), whereas Christian examples are more common and express a greater degree of insecurity (87).

Part Two focuses on...