2018 NAPS Presidential Address: Reading the Second Century

Scholarly consensus can lead to unimaginative repetition of a thesis that has functionally taken on an absolute status. When this happens any contributions derived from competitive interpretations shrink in comparison and scholars may forget that all interpretations, including the one around which a consensus may have been formed, are conceptual models. With this in mind, my paper revisits treatments of unity, diversity, orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and Christian origins set forth by several prominent historians in their models of second-century Christianity, both ancient and modern. It claims that, far from any monolithic analysis arrived at via consensus, the field of second-century scholarship is filled with a diverse selection of readings, each contributing a particular perspective. This state of affairs manifests a complexity within the second century itself and provides a certain leveling of the different interpretations that historians have offered. Each is produced within the parameters of a peculiar hermeneutical, historiographical approach containing its own set of assumptions and interests.