The World of the Early Christians (review)

At last—at long last—someone has written a book that introduces the general reader to early Christians and their world. It has been a long time coming for two reasons. First, Professor Kelly’s book completes an invaluable series of patristic texts in translation: The Message of the Fathers of the Church, edited by Thomas Halton and originally published by Michael Glazier. It is the first volume of twenty-two, and, like all good introductions, it should be written last. Second, the task demands both a master teacher and a master of the diverse and fascinating patristic studies published over the past three decades, studies which retrieve the life-in-the-streets world of early Christians. Kelly shows himself a master of both classroom and research carrel, and one thing more: He writes in graceful, crystal clear, and lively prose, unburdened with even the slightest hint of jargon. It is an introduction from which general reader and specialist will learn much about approaching and revivifying a lost world.

Kelly’s book is not about Christianity, but about the men and women who shaped it in the first five centuries. Who they are, where they lived, what we know about their daily lives, and even how they relaxed is the subject of his first chapter. In the second, he considers how we know what we know about. He discusses the problem of the data and its kinds (written, physical, and iconographical), as well as how to use and understand the data (he even discusses the technological aids available).

Thus oriented, the author turns the reader’s attention to aspects of the physical world early Christians inhabited: the cosmos, the earth, the other worlds (including Origen’s), and time (Chapter 3). He brings into sharp focus how they understood their world and shows how they interpreted a world already ancient, one which they shared with Jews and Pagans.

In the next chapter (4), Kelly lays bare the lineaments of Greco-Roman Judaism and Paganism. The chapter contains a concise but nuanced account of the Judaism from which the early Christians both sprang and parted. Here, I think, Jewish Christians and the Judaism of Syriac Christianity are slighted, but his pedagogical camera cannot focus everywhere. He seeks to capture and present early Mediterranean Christians. He follows Judaism up with a particularly effective discussion of Greco-Roman Pagan religions, not a subject one often finds in works for the general reader on early Christianity. His discussion of the positive contributions, especially of the votive religions, is particularly helpful in understanding the receptivity that awaited Christians as they spread across the Mediterranean world.

On reflection, I should have read the sixth chapter, “Living in the World,” next. It treats slavery, women, church and state, war and peace, all vital personal issues in the world that early Christians shared with Jews and Pagans. But the present fifth chapter, “Intellectual and Cultural Life,” is first-rate, wherever one might place it. The author begins with book production and the “Book,” including versions, and follows with a discussion about the canon and biblical interpretation. This permits him to put theology and its development in an important early Christian perspective, namely, as an increasingly systematic inquiry into, and reflection on, the Bible. A pleasant surprise is the section on music and the visual arts.

The previous six chapters more than prepare the way for the early Christian story. The last chapter (7) is that story. Told in forty pages, it covers Christian history from the first century through the end of the sixth. Far too brief, if one invokes the shelves of books available on early Christianity, but not when the stage is set and peopled by the chapters that have gone before. Kelly’s goal is clear: to recover the lost world of early Christians. He does not just describe it, but explains it in terms that people that live in that world centuries...