On “Christianity in the Second Century” edited by James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu ***

I had high hopes for this book, but I was quite disappointed. My reasons for avoiding it for as long as I did had to do with this being an edited collection. I don’t generally care for reading edited collections of essays on a subject. This volume is an example of why. Individual essays in such volumes, of course, can be useful, but the essays as a whole rarely add up to the sum of their parts. There’s no throughline. Rather, it’s like reading a journal--a bunch of randomly tossed-together articles on a broad subject. I had hoped to learn more about second-century Christianity; instead, I learned a few interesting things, but much of the collection was taken up with arguing esoteric points that in the end don’t really make a big difference to reality.

Case in point: Several articles were about the concept of the “third race” in Christianity in the second century. The takeaway seemed to be that people in the second century didn’t think about race and ethnicity the way that we do in our contemporary world. Well, yeah, obviously. Christianity, as a third race, is really just a way of saying there were pagans, Jews, and Christians--that is, a third group of people. I never thought that such writers actually thought of such peoples ethnically; it seemed a really long exercise to review so much literature to state the obvious. I guess some scholars might care about this, but these were esoteric points that didn’t really reveal anything terribly new or intriguing.

There were lots of arguments about gnosticism and how it is really a meaningless term, which I’ve read about in more detail elsewhere.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t some interesting points here and there. There were several essays that touched on Lucian’s Peregrinus and his portrayal of Christians in it, which showed that I really need to spend more time with this work. Tim Whitmarsh made the intriguing, though not wholly convincing, argument that the only people making the accusation that Christians were atheists were Christians themselves, setting up strawmen arguments about their persecution as such. Certainly, outside Lucian’s satire, Christians were the only ones to preserve this accusation in their defenses against it, but I think to convince me, Whitmarsh would have had to look also at the same accusations against Epicureans. I tend to believe the accusations were real. That said, I agree with Whitmore’s main point--that Christians used such accusations eventually to redefine what constituted an atheist: namely, someone who did not accept the one true god. But Whitmore’s essay points to the general esotericness of the collection, the need to try to say interesting things that in the end don’t amount to much.

On “In the Shadow of the Temple” by Oskar Skarsaune *****

Oskar Skarsaune has made a career of studying the intersection of Judaism with early Christianity. Having read his very good edited collection on the subject, I came to this work with some mixed expectations. I didn't figure Skarsaune could match that book's specificity and caution, but on the other hand, this was after all the guy who put together that other work. I wasn't really disappointed. Granted, this work is definitely more of an introduction to the subject and more basic, but there was still plenty I learned.

The first part of the book serves as a familiar rehearsal of the Jewish culture of the time—the geography of Jerusalem, Hellinistic influences, the major sects. The second part introduces the Christian element and how it interacted, as a Jewish sect, with other Jewish people.

In the third part, Skarsaune provides both some of the most interesting and least interesting material. It focused largely on Christian dogma and its relation to the Jewish elements from which it derived. There is a discussion of the process of Jewish canonization, with strong arguments for why it happened long before the academy of Jamnia. But the section also discusses how some of the Christian church ended up accepting the Apocrypha, while some did not. He then explores Christology, the holy spirit (lowercase, as per pre-Trinity understanding), and baptism, which are generally less interesting sections. That said, perhaps I'd have found the baptism section more interesting if I hadn't read earlier so much on the subject of how Christian baptism came to be and how it was different from the Jewish concept. The sections on liturgical practice come next, with special care taken with regard to the Christian calendar. One chapter in this regard was maddening, the next enlightening. Skarsaune notes that the Jewish fall festivals had no meaning for Christians and thus dropped out of use, while the spring festivals were reinterpreted for the Messianic life. In the next chapter, he admits that some Christians continued to observe the fall festivals and posits a reason—namely, that most Christian believers had been Godfearers (that is, Jewish sympathizers) if not Jewish themselves. Strangely, the clergy, however, ended up on the other side of this debate and really pushed to make people stop “Judaizing.” Also of interest: The need for Christ-centered holidays to round out the year (since all the holidays were in the spring) eventually led to the adoption of Christmas, in Skarsaun's view, finishing also the observance of the life of Christ (i.e., his birth, in addition to his resurrection).

Much of the book is given over to the typology of the temple in Christian practice. It feels as if Skarsaune set out to write a book on that subject and then was asked to do something more introductory, so most of the temple discussion falls in boxes at the end of each chapter. I could have seen a book on just that subject, but it likely would have had a smaller audience. Extensive suggested further reading also comes at the end of each chapter, which could prove useful for folks wanting to know more about a particular subject Skarsaune covers.

On “Libraries in the Ancient World” by Lionel Casson ****

This work is a short exploration of the development of the earliest libraries. I'd read the first chapter on the tablets that were found of ancient libraries in Mesopotamia some time ago, and I was familiar with much of the material on Roman libraries from another book that focused solely on those and that was much more thorough. But Casson's book is a good introduction to the subject.

As he notes, our knowledge of the Mesopotamian libraries comes from the fact that the societies used clay tablets and the burning of said libraries helped to make such tablets permanent, like clay jars. Most such works are merely archival records of sundry government and market materials, but some literary works also have come down to us this way. The libraries were largely for the government, the king, and the priests—the educated elite who needed the information to run the nation. Our knowledge of Egyptian libraries is less thorough, because the Egyptians wrote on papyrus, which doesn't last so long (despite the dry Egyptian climate, which has helped to preserve some such works—just not much from before the first century).

Another chapter focuses on the Alexandrian library, which started largely because a particular ruler had a desire to prove his intellectual acumen and to make the farily new city a capital for intellectualism. It was a library largely aimed at societal thinkers. The library burned a couple of times; alas, it appears that war was the largest culprit to the destruction of the library.

Another chapter focuses on the Greeks, whose libraries usually featured an open-air collonade that was used for reading. This was different than the later Roman libraries, which were usually all indoors and which generally included both a Greek section and a Roman section.

Some attention is also given to book technology. Papyrus, which was common in Egypt, gave way to more durable parchment, which came to be used elsewhere. And then, in turn, scrolls, around the first century CE, began to give way to codexes (our modern book format). Christians, as has been written elsewhere, played a role in this, as codexes were their preferred format: culturally, not Jewish and not pagan, but also much easier to use and transport. Christian books, as the author brings out, could be purchased much like other books were.

Indeed, attaining books at this time may have involved purchase but also could involve copying. An author who wanted publication generally made the work available by making a number of copies to share. Authorship obviously wasn't about money; it was about reputation and getting one's ideas out there. Only those who actually made the copies (to sell) were likely to make anything off a book.

On "Jewish New Testament" edited by David H. Stern ****

I purchased David Stern's Jewish commentary on the New Testament years ago, curious about it after my dad himself had purchased a copy. He bought the complete set, with the New Testament also, in hardcover, so when he died, it was one of the items I inherited. I don't think otherwise that I'd have bothered with the Bible--it's a Jewish translation, really, a paraphrase, of the New Testament. The commentary at times is very handy; the New Testament, I figured, well, I have plenty of other translations.

But this was a good read, insofar as Stern's choice of using Jewish words for various concepts in the New Testament, makes the New Testament unfamiliar in some ways, which made me pay a bit more attention, especially to common scriptures that I know so well by heart that I otherwise would pass over at this point without really rethinking. In this sense, the Jewish New Testament was a great aid in in meditation, which in turn makes me think about how I probably should venture out from the few translations I tend to favor more often.

On “Image and Reality” by Judith Lieu ***

This work explores the images of Jewish people in second-century Christian literature, especially that focused around Asia Minor. Literature includes the writings of Ignatius, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, various apologists, and Melito. The writing is very much scholarly, and the work isn't, in the end, terribly approachable. Lieu, of course, makes some excellent points and drew to my attention a number of issues and contexts of which I'd been unaware, but the work is difficult to outline or summarize, given a certain degree of unapproachability.

The gist of the argument seems to be that we should be cautious about how we view Jews in Christian literature of the time. Jews were often used to define Christianity, as so many scholars point out. This “image” isn't necessarily accurate when compared to the “reality” of the situation. Even so, Lieu cautions, we have to be careful even about this common trope—namely, that Christians used Jews to define their own faith. Often, Jews don't show up at all, and the way in which they are portrayed depends heavily on who is writing, why they are writing, and the genre that they are using. We can be just as careless, in other words, in presenting an “image” of Christianity rather than the “reality,” as we can be about the Jewish people and faith, when writing about the period. Indeed, anytime we write about literature or history, we are dealing in generalities that may not actually apply to a specific situation and that may color how a given work is read. That seems a valid warning, but I'm not sure how useful it is; rather, it seems an obvious truism that anyone who studies in any field should be aware of.

On “Early Egyptian Christianity” by C. Wilfred Griggs ****

This book covers the history of Christianity in Egypt until 451 CE. Griggs lays out the basics in his introduction and again in his conclusion. In between, he provides a useful summary of what probably occurred.

Of course, how exactly Christianity got to Egypt is something of a mystery. We know little of the history until the second century. Griggs posits that before the end of the second century, many versions of Christianity existed. At that point, the bishop of Alexandria positioned himself as superior to other churches and aligned himself with the church in Rome. Most important, he took over the school that had been forged in Alexandria but that wasn't actually run by church authorities. This attempt to assert authority isn't to say other churches in Egypt fell in line; they continued in many ways on their own path. One of those paths was monasticism, which wasn't much in line with the Catholics.

Athanasius in the early fourth century reconciled with the monks and brought them into the regular Catholic church. However, controversies (over Arianism) and fights over leadership continued. Further, Constantinople took on an increasingly important role in the Catholic faith, displacing Alexandria in importance, to the chagrin of Alexandrian bishops. This set up the slow split of Egyptian Christianity into Coptic Christianity and away from the Catholic church, most especially following the Council of Chalcedon.

On "Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Cities" edited by John R. Bartlett ***

Generally, if there is more than one book on a subject and one is written by one person and the other is an edited collection, I will choose to read the former before I bother with the latter. The advantage with an edited collection is that one gets different perspectives on a topic. But there's also something nice about a single sustained argument. Occasionally, an edited collection will manage to be tightly enough woven together to do something almost akin to that.

Too often, however, edited collections feel like smorgasboards--whatever the editor was able to cobble together on a given subject. So, say, you're doing an edited collection on American presidents, and there's a chapter on Washington, and then the next chapter is on John Quincy Adams. There's no throughline. It's just random highlights.

This collection, alas, reminded me of exactly why I don't particularly care for such collections. I mean, I could be reading a set of journal articles, which is what such feels like. The individual contributions can be good, but they are still haphazard, and often half of them don't seem to cohere with material that is of interest. In this book, some chapters were focused on really esoteric topics and others were things that I really had wanted to know more about and would still like to know more about. What I was hoping for, I suppose, was a pretty sustained exploration of Jews in Roman cities--but something that seemed more than the sum of its parts.

The book has many highlights, though. I much enjoyed the essay by Lester Grabbe, who I'd long wanted to read, about how Greek culture affected Jerusalem itself. He writes in a very approachable way, even if much of the subject wasn't particularly new. Tessa Rajak's piece on synagogues did a good job of showing how such communities were likely more extensive than sometimes what little surviving architecture suggests. McGing focuses on population. My favorite chapter was Stern's about the Jewish calendar in diaspora cities; he makes some good points about how most Jews would have had a way to set the calendar locally well before the Rabbi's did so in the wake of the destruction of the temple.

As the book, went on, however, the book seemed more and more focused on arguments between scholars, as a scholarly book often is. But such made for fewer takeaways for me, wanting not so much to know why argument X is not right and more about the actual topic at hand.

On “Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome” by Clarence Eugene Boyd ***

This short volume covers more-recent material that I've read elsewhere. Even so, there was some information here that I hadn't previously run across.

Boyd starts with Julius Caesar's order to found such “public” libraries, which Boyd really does call “public,” even though other sources make clear that the way we think of public libraries is not the same as Romans thought of them. Nevertheless, it's interesting that Caesar really got the ball rolling on this and that emperors followed suit. There were at least nine such libraries that have been identified.

Other facts I learned: Most such libraries were placed near a palace or temple (though he also notes those that were part of baths). Most faced east, because that direction was best at keeping materials from getting damp and thus being eaten by worms and the like. Most included artwork and served also as places of meeting.

Unlike what I'd read elsewhere, Boyd makes much of people checking materials out of libraries. Indeed, the primary documents support this as a possibility, though such people did seem to be well connected in some way, so I take others' point of view, that materials largely stayed in the library, as being the more usual custom.

Another section discusses bookshops, of which there were a surprisingly number in Rome. Without printing, books were produced by dictation to a number of scribes at one. And as I'd read elsehwere, there were even newspapers of a sort, with information about deaths, marriages, and happenings, updated daily.

All that said, Boyd's book is definitely aimed at early twentieth-century scholars. He quotes frequently from primary documents sans translation. Classicists would know how to read these, and many a schoolboy of the period also probably, but not so much readers of today.

On “Border Lines” by Daniel Boyarin ***

I was a little disappointed by this book. It was actually great in terms of its subject matter and content, but it is very definitely a scholarly work, full of jargon and difficult at times to follow. There are losts of references to theory and theorists, which I've rarely understood the purpose of in texts, since so often such ideas are either not integral to the argument or are basic enough that it seems like no theorist need be named.

The basic point, however, if a strong one. Boyarin makes the claim—one that fits well with contemporary sociological and postmodern theory—that the creation of heresy in its modern sense was largely the result of an attempt by both Christian and Jewish writers to create boundaries around their respective faiths. To explore this point, Boyarin shows how the concept of “heresy” was at one point essentially just another means of thinking about a subject—for example, a sect. It's, in fact, Josephus uses when discussing various sects of the Jewish faith in his time. But roughly a hundred years later, Christians aren't just using the term to show differing sects; they're using it to describe only prohibited sects, nonorthodox sects—that is, heretics, as we think of them today. The Rabbis did something similar, declaring those who did not follow their proscribed ways of thinking as minim, that is, heretics. In this way, the Jewish faith transformed into Judaism, rabbinical Judaism.

Before Christianity, Boyarin notes, the concept of religion was tied into one's ethnicity and culture. There really wasn't much of an idea of one having a religion and then also having a nationality. Christianity created this new category of people. But so too did Judaism. It became a religion—for a while.

Curiously, after the Rabbis had thoroughly established control over what constituted Judaism, the idea of Judaism returned to its former roots as an ethnic thing. Today, at least among Jews, one does not so much talk of Judaism as a religion but of people being Jewish, culturally, ethnically, religiously. Thus, one can be a bad Jew—not following the dictates of the faith/nation—but one can never really renounce one's Jewishness.

Another curiosity: Christianity, in defining what was heresy, established itself through attempts at unity. Arguments in the faith aim for that, for a single correct interpretation. Judasim did the opposite. Once the ground rules were established, separating itself from Christanity, it became about arguing about differences of interpretation, presenting all of those as viable—which is what we find in the Talmud.

The case study is one that Boyarin discusses in other places, in a generally more approachable manner: the idea of God's Logos, or Word, or Memra. Boyarin makes the case, made similarly elsewhere in other people's works (Segal, Shaefer, Heiser, Hurtado), that Two Powers theology, the idea that God has a viceroy or partner or subordinate who is very much like him, was very much part of the Jewish religion until Christian times. That's when it became associated with Christanity and by contrast rejected by Judaism. While adoptionist, modalist, and unitarian ideas were made heretical by Christians in favor of a Logos divinity, Jewish Rabbis came to affirm that biblical passages seeming to point to such a figure were really figurative in meaning and that there was solely one God figure, sometimes expressed in different ways (virtually, one might say, modalism, rejected by the Christians). Hence, each faith defined the other, putting up borders accordingly. Those that fall within those borders, borrowing ideas from both sides of the divide are also made heretics, where once they'd have been accepted by either faith; now, as Jerome and some others would put it, they are neither Jews or Christians.

On "The Churches of Asia" by William Cunningham ***

This history of the church in Asia [Minor] was written by in the 1800s, so it has some of the ticks that such works generally do: that is, a love for flowery language for the sake of being "lyrical." Despite that, the author does manage to get across his points. The focus is squarely on the second century.

After knocking out which writings he accepts as genuine and early and thus informing his study, Cunningham begins with a discussion of church government. It was a fortuitous place to start, because I'd been thinking similarly rather recently about the second-century churches in Asia, so it was nice to see someone develop some of the ideas in a like manner. He notes that the church started with synagogues and structure there, but he also notes that it departed from that structure (a claim I would actually disagree with). At first, there was central leadership in Jerusalem (something I could largely agree with), but with that church's demise, congregations took on a Greek city-state model. That is, each church had its own elders and those in turn were informed by the people of the congregation. In turn, the churches were in communication with one another and so no one strayed too far. A second model, however, was also apparent, in the form of a central bishop (more akin to the Jerusalem model). This bishop was more of an administrator than a preaching elder or a servant. (Here, I think of the people who hosted the churches.) In time, though, this central authority took on more power in helping to determine who was and was not part of a given church (in part because some folks left the faith under persecution, and it was questionable whether they should be allowed back after such persecution had ended; and in part because of the very heresies--most especially continuing Judaism--that needed to be quelled).

Next comes a discussion of other views of the church. Cunningam focuses on two: Marcionism and Montanism. He also discusses briefly Ebionism, which he mixes up with the teachings of Cerinthus, who he claims was one of them--a patent absurdity that was adopted by some early historians and that Cunningham falls for. With regard to Marcion, Cunningham sees him as the religion by feeling and subjective spiritual perspective on who and what God is, one that abandons completely the law; he sees Montanism as the opposite: a rigid belief in legal stuff and an insistence that one accept new teachings coming from the Holy Spirit, as some claim. The church, in turn, stood against both of these with its growing structure.

He closes with a discussion of the aforementioned controversy over persecution and with the controversy over the timing of the fast surrounding Easter. I like that Cunningham really emphasized that the issue was the timing of the end of the fast. I haven't given enough attention to this, though that is plainly what the early writers note. As for the rest of the discussion, Cunningham starts with a set of premises that dislodge the rest of his argument. Sunday is the resurrection, Friday is the crucifixion. Hence, for him, the fourteenth of Nissan (Passover) is on Friday, the high sabbath on the Sabbath. The Synoptics, he argues, adopted a crucixion on the high day for its symbolism (since clearly the Jews would not have conducted a trial and crucifixion on the high day, even as John notes). John preserves the actual historical account. But John, of course, being a Jew, maintained the fourteener position regarding when to time the end of the fast, which is better supported by the Synoptics. How could this be, if John was the writer of the Fourth Gospel? Cunningham argues that John wrote his gospel account to ensure that the real understanding of the timing of the events was preserved, even if symbolically he stood with the Jewish believers and their preference for the synoptic timing. Rome and others adopted Sunday morning for the commemoration and breaking of the fast because of difficulties determining when the New Moon was and problems with the Jews. In Asia, some wanted to break the fast earlier so that they could commemorate the Passover as Jesus had with his disciples. This all makes sense, but it fails to account for when the high day actually was, the fact that even in the Jewish community there were arguments over whether the Passover was to be held at the start of the fourteenth or the end of it (i.e., the fifteenth), and other matters.

On “Justin Martyr and the Jews” by David Rokeai ***

This rather short monograph focuses primarily on Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew—Justin's attempt to argue the superiority of Christianity and to perhaps convert Trypho. Rokeai provides a detailed account of the literature related to the topic, and he discusses in full the Talmudic responses to some of the same issues that Justin discussed. His overall point, however, is that Justin is essentially Paul on steroids. He argues that Paul was essentially anti-Jewish as well and that his occasional positive comments about the Jewish religion were simply an attempt to soften his otherwise strong rhetoric against Jewish traditions and law. Justin, in turn, didn't try to whitewash was Paul was really saying.

I think that Rokeai is right to say that Justin took Paul's ideas and used them to create his anti-Jewish rhetoric, but I think he misreads Paul. I don't think he was against the Jewish law or traditions; I think he wore his Jewish heritage with pride and wasn't just putting on a show. Justin misread Paul, and Rokeai falls right in line with Justin's misreading.

Some interesting ideas about why Justin argued as he did. Who was his audience? Surely he wouldn't have found many Jewish fans, but the audience was probably mostly those who might have had a choice between Judaism and Christianity. Another interesting point: Justin had to tread down a narrow path. He was against Marcion, who was also anti-Jewish. But Marcion's conclusion was that the God of the Jews was an entirely different God and thus rejected the Old Testament. Justin didn't argue that, but he still had to find a way to critique the Jewish law, traditions, and writings. To do that he espoused not a different God but a God who had imposed law and traditions on the Jewish people because they were uniquely incapable of being good people. Failing with even that, God had found his true Israel in the Gentiles, who replaced the Jews and whose natural morality, or willingness to accept Jesus and thus obey the larger law of love, meant that they had replaced the Jews in God's heart. In this way, Justin could keep the Old Testament prophecies and symbolism but jettison its laws. This goes far beyond anything Paul espoused. Paul noted the Jewish inability to obey God, for sure, but he didn't ground it in an idea that somehow non-Jewish people could do better, and especially not without the guidance laid out in the Old Testament; rather, he noted that because no one could follow the law, faith only in Christ could save, because all are otherwise due for the penalty of breaking that law: death. But as he notes, that doesn't then mean the law is bad or that it no longer applies; rather, believers were to live accordingly thereafter. Jewish people, not seeing Christ, meant that they were still under the penalty, but Paul noted that one day they would be shown the way accordingly and be welcomed back into God's fold. Non-Jewish people who took on the faith and lived accordingly certainly did become Israel, but they didn't replace the old Israel: they were welcomed into it.

On Jewish War Under Trajan and Hadrian, by William Horbury ***

This is the most complete account of the wars between the Jews and the Roman Empire post 70 CE that I've read, going deeper into the subject than Mary Smallwood's very thorough but also easier to follow book. Horbury's text is very much an academic work, at times difficult to follow and very much bogged down in details that, to be exhaustive, it must be.

After a contextual introduction, in which Horbury claims that all the Jewish wars can be seen as one uprising rather than a set of uprisings, the book provides a long account of the literature that already exists on the subject--a very useful exercise. I'd read several of these works, as it turns out, and it was great not only to read Horbury's summation of works I hadn't gotten to but also to some I had, in part to remind me of their basic points but also because it was interesting to read how Horbury himself interprets the findings of some of these authors.

The text turns then to the various wars and their causes, most particularly to the Kitos War, for which very little information exists. Horbury does an admirable job pulling in the various historical sources and some sources that less certainly refer to it. The war, as he notes, was not just in Egypt but also in Cyprus and modern-day Libya (Cirenaica), the latter two actually seemingly more heavily the source of the conflict, at least as I read it. Egypt, of course, was a constant bed of intrigue between Jewish and Greek residents, but the Messianic hopefuls did their best to spread into the area, spreading the war. The war also coincided with the Roman invasion of Parthia. I expect I'll return to Horbury's text to review more about this war, since I've seen nothing else quite so thorough.

Judea's turn at the war, of course, would come a little over a decade later, in what is known as the Bar Kochba uprising. On this, I was on more solid ground having read more about it. Horbury doesn't just repeat what others have said, of course, but since those others have written more accessibly about the subject, I found myself more easily zoning out in these latter sections.

On “The Twelve” by C. Bernard Ruffin ****

This is the fourth book I've that focuses, in some way, on each of the twelve apostles following the books of the New Testament. It is not as good as Sean McDowell's Fates of the Apostles, which focused chiefly on how they died and is a bit formulaic in chapter setup but which is also more up to date, more readable, and more focused on sources. Nor is it as good as Brian Liftin's After Acts, which also is somewhat formulaic, does not cover all twelve apostles thoroughly, and is often lacking is source citations, but which is very readable. However, it is better than William Steuart McBirnie's The Search for the Twelve Apostles, which while thorough and quotes heavily from sources, is kind of a drag of a read and seems too heavily focused on burial places and relics. Ruffin's book covers each of the twelve and is somewhat thorough; however, like McBirnie's work, the writing at times drags. It also seems a bit too heavily and uncritically dependent on legends and Catholic teaching (though I have no idea whether Ruffin was actually Catholic). Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any book will ever satisfactorily fill one's curiosity about the twelve after the events of the New Testament or even about them in terms of their background and biography, since in some cases, all we know of them in the New Testament is a few scattered quotes and their names.

Although I was familiar with most of this material, there were things I learned—or perhaps was reminded of that I'd forgotten. Ruffin engages in some closer readings of the New Testament text and raised for me some perceptions that I hadn't yet come across. Take, for example, the two callings of Peter, one while fishing and another with his brother Andrew coming to tell him to come meet Jesus. Ruffin puts these together, with the idea that Peter met Jesus once, and then was actually called to discipleship sometime later while fishing. There were also some descriptions of Jesus's extended family that I was only vaguely aware of—for example, the idea that Matthew was conceivably a cousin of Jesus. James Tabor makes much of how virtually all the disciples were related to Jesus and tries to make the case that all three of his brothers were among the twelve (or maybe that's Jeffrey Butz's argument or maybe both—I get these ideas and whose they are confused). But in making such a case, Tabor's claims begin to stretch credulity, and one feels that the writer has an agenda. Ruffin clearly has an agenda also, but that agenda would not be forcing familial relationships on Jesus's disciples, as such would seem more to discount his belief that Jesus was God in the flesh than to serve it, insofar as if so many of his followers were family members, it's easier to make a case that this was a familial conspiracy. In that sense, at least on this account, Ruffin comes across as a bit more believable, when he makes cases for at least five the apostles possibly being cousins. Another interesting claim: That Philip the deacon and apostle were the same. He notes that the twelve may well have wanted an apostle as one of the seven deacons to preserve doctrinal truth, and Philip, who would work heavily among the Samaritans and whose Greek name suggests a connection to the diaspora community, would have fit the agenda well.

Anyway, the book was worth the read, even if it took longer than I would have expected for a book of its size.

On "From Paul to Valentinus" by Peter Lampe ****

More than any other book I've read in recent years (or perhaps ever), this one reminded me of the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, of going from a large point and seeing how all the small points of evidence fit within it versus gathering all the small points of evidence to discover some larger point. Lampe's work seems heavily invested in the latter. In a way, that's great. He can dismiss what others have accepted as givens and start afresh, perhaps coming to the same conclusion and perhaps not. No assumptions. (The degree to which anyone does only inductive or deductive reasoning is questionable. Any argument is a mix of both. We all have our biases. And even if one present an argument inductively, some of that argument has likely been built on deduction.) The focus on the little things is illuminating, but it's also a bit tiresome, as for vast parts of the book, one doesn't necessarily see where Lampe is going. It's just a bunch of seemingly disjointed facts, until of course he finally gets to his conclusions.

The first part of the book looks at where Christians lived within Rome. He does this in part by looking at how the earlier writers describe those communities. But more interesting is when he looks at where Christians tend to be buried, which end up corresponding to the other evidence. In all, he finds Christians most heavily located along the Via Appia and in a neighborhood called Trastevere, which was at the time very densely populated and heavily full of immigrants. In all, early Roman Christians seem to be mostly immigrants and not terribly well off. Part of the reason Christians could be blamed for the burning of Rome under Nero was that their communities were not heavily affected--as such, they would seem to be the natural perpetrators.

The second part of the book provides biographies of known named Christians. Details here were at times interesting, but on the whole this section was less intriguing than the former. Of course, his named Christians do seem to be wealthier and more prominent (for obvious reasons). Even so, he notes how Aquila and Prisca were probably not wealthy people. Their business was one with less social standing than others; they likely lived in the same building in which they worked, and that business was also the "home" in which their church met. Moving so often for them was not a sign of wealth but of seeking work opportunities. Among the named Christians are several slaves and freemen who were affiliated in some way with the emperor's family, though some slaves could be quite well off. Only a very few people were associated with the senatorial elite, and mostly this was wives rather than the actual senators, for whom such Christian affiliation would have been a death sentence. There is a lot of emphasis in early writings on the well-off supplying for the needs of poor, of which there were many more.

To close, Lampe looks at "fractionation" in the Roman church--that is, the division of the church into house churches. What did this mean for church structure, centralization, government, and doctrine? Lampe finds that most Christian groups in Rome were mostly independent, which allowed for disparities in doctrine and for great tolerance for such disparity among the groups. Valentinians, he finds, for example, mixed with other Christians; they weren't a distinct group meeting separately, except perhaps in addition to regular meetings. Those who did separate early, such a Marcion, did so in part because they made themselves pariahs but insisting on the properness of their views to the denigration of others; in other words, they as much separated themselves as the larger church separated from them.

There was no bishop overseeing the Roman congregations until very late. Lampe sees Victor as being the first to really attempt to lay down such power over all the groups, pushing out some who don't belong in his view. Some earlier elders, like Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius, were prominent, but they were more firsts among equals or men charged with dealing with outsiders in communication or gathering various congregational materials for the poor. It was these responsibilities that led to the eventual centralization of Roman church authority. (Jewish synagogues, Lampe finds, were similarly separate in power in Rome, unlike, say, in Alexandria, where there was a central council, into which all synagogues fed.)

These are intriguing ideas, though as Lampe acknowledges, there had to have been some degree of cooperation among elders of the various groups, for people like Clement or Soter to speak for all of them.

What does this suggest to me about those groups that continued to hold on more to Jewish practices? Alexandria's comparative centralization could mean that Jewish Christians were more quickly dismissed from the synagogues in total, leading to an earlier break with such traditions. The removal of Jewish people in general after 115 and the Kitos War would have also created an even cleaner break. In Rome, it would seem that some synagogues may have remained open to Christians, although Nero's reign of terror might have been a motivating factor in Jews separating from Christians earlier as well. Similarly, with a looser set of Christian groups, some groups may have remained more inclined to hold on to said traditions. That is, indeed, the argument of some regarding why Victor made the proclamation he did regarding the Quartodecimans, those who observed Passover rather than Easter. Some from Asia Minor likely held on to those traditions in their meetings in Rome, causing Victor to confront and attempt to remove not just them from fellowship but also all the congregations of Asia Minor. Much to think about.

On “Inside Roman Libraries” by George W. Houston ****

I didn't quite get what I was looking for from this book, but I didn't think I would. (I'm really wanting to know more about how Christian books were spread and what role a libraries may have played. Clearly, many individual churches had such works, as they read from them at a services, and clearly those works reached beyond the church, because other writers refer to them or Christians refer other people to them, as if they could be obtained. But claims that such books were deposited in libraries, as I've read, never seem to be backed up with hard evidence.) Houston does exactly as his title suggests: He explores Roman libraries as they existed between roughly 100 BCE to about 400 CE. The first chapter is excellent, as are the later chapters. That first chapter lays out some basics about such libraries—how they were financed, how they could be quasi-public, how manuscripts were obtained. There weren't really “public” libraries in the way that we think of libraries, but there were libraries that were open to the public, and there were libraries that were open to a small set of users (say, the people who were part of a specific society). Libraries (that is, people who collected books) could obtain books via professional booksellers/scribes, via copying a book out for themselves, via having a slave copy it out for them; the emperor had his own collection, and that might be obtained also through government seizure for crime or as plunder from war. Sometimes these books would also be sold off.

After that, Houston focuses for several chapters on some very specific collections, looking particularly at lists of books that were maintained for particular libraries. Such lists were not, as he notes, catalogs; books likely were organized by subject and author but similarly loosely. Houston focuses on scrolls, not codices, which were not so popular during this period. (I read somewhere, now I don't remember, that even Christian writers used scrolls rather than codices except for for works of Scripture, which is interesting.) He goes into how scrolls were stored and what might damage them and so on. But because the focus is on specific lists—a collection of mostly philosophy, a collection of mostly comedy, and so on—these middle sections are a bit dry.

Finally, he steps back again and looks at the architecture of such libraries. He notes that they usually had windows for ease of reading—and that these windows actually had glass or were very thin marble, allowing for light but keeping out rain and insects. This was news to me. Often, statues were in such facilities—of the sponsor, the emperor, a god, or of authors. There were likely seats but perhaps not so much tables; scribes might play a role in some libraries but not in most.

Then he goes into the personnel. There was a commissioner of the library for the emperor. Local libraries likely had directors. Then there were likely slaves underneath them working. Books were likely not free to be handled by patrons in terms of browsing and they certainly weren't available to be checked out; rather, a reader would ask a worker to get the book for him or her, and then that person would read the work on site. Books, after all, were super expensive, with each being copied out by hand. Most lasted about a century before being worn out. When trying to obtain a book from which to make one's own copy, much effort often was expended. Some copies were poorly transcribed. That was one purpose of the emperor's collection: as a resource to the government but it also served as a resource from which to find decently accurate works. I'm glad books are so much easier to obtain today.

On "Akiva" by Reuven Hammer ***

This is the second biography of Akiva that I read, and it is the more straightforward of the two. That is, it goes a bit more chronologically, though like the other, it too works off a number of themes. It also seemed a bit more hagiographic. I won't rehearse the contractions regarding Akiva's life, since I did that when discussing the other book, though this author tends to be more willing to say something is legend versus something is probably fact than Holtz was. Still, there are many things neither author knows or even guesses at.

Instead, broader picture emerges. Akiva grew up poorly educated but became learned as an adult. He married at least once and was devoted to his wife. He had many followers. He helped (indeed, was instrumental in) create the Mishnah, the collection of topically arranged Jewish teachings were the foundation for the Talmud. He didn't oppose the Bar Kokhba Revolt, although the degree to which he supported it as uncertain. He likely did call Kokhba the Messiah. Akiva died a martyr, for teaching the law when it was illegal, though he likely died in prison, facing trial, before execution.

Hammer writes quite a bit more about Akiva's relationship with Christianity. Part of the motivation for the Mishnah appears to have been Christianity and its competing books. For Akiva, the law (oral and written) was sufficient and good; no sacrifice was needed. Indeed, Akiva didn't really believe in an oral law--it was part of the written law, he would have claimed, in there all along. Still, other passages in the Talmud show how the Sages placed themselves even above God in places in terms of their importance to that law. At the same time, the law came directly from heaven, for Akiva; it wasn't the work of inspired humans, as some sages would claim--it was God's actual words. By fashioning so much importance on these subjects, Akiva could deny the various claims of Christians.

On “The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered” edited by Peter Schafer ***

I'm not generally a fan of edited volumes, as they don't lay out a coherent argument and sometimes seems rather slapdash in terms of contents (as in, these are the subtopics on this topic that were available given the author we had). Schafer's book fits into that category; however, it is one of the few more recent books on the subject of the Bar Kokhba War, so I felt obligated to read it, given the paucity of other sources.

As Schafer lays out in his introduction, our knowledge of the war is scant. There is no exhaustive, though unreliable account, like there is of the First Jewish War. Instead, we have hints in the Talmud and mentions in various Christian sources and an abbreviated account in the Roman historian Cassius Dio. This means that what little we know beyond this comes from archeology, which there are frequently new finds in, though the importance of said finds can differ substantially.

The book starts off with several chapters that rehash points I was largely familiar with and some of the authors come to conclusions that question some previous assumptions, while others contradict other authors in the volume. So at least one gets a sence that many of these ideas are not settled.

Some takeaways: The question of whether Hadrian originally intended Aelia as a punishment of the rebellious Jews or a misunderstoond Hellenized restoration of the city that was reconfigured into a fully Roman city after the revolt remains open. Whether the ban on circumcision preceded the revolt or followed it or whether there ever was a ban is also open, though the argument that a ban preceded the revolt is pretty well dismissed when one scholar notes that had there been one that was empire wide before the revolt, that revolt would not have occurred only in Judea. More likely, whatever “ban” there was, it related to a more general Roman law regarding the making of eunuchs; and such a ban never applied to ethnic Jews and their own children—just to converted Jews. There's a chapter on what the dates for the revolt should be. A couple of other articles detail the scope of the rebellion, which seems to have largely existed only in Judea but may have drawn on resources in other areas and also been accompanied by a revolt in Perea/Nabatea/Arabia.

The most interesting parts of the book come toward the end and draw heavily on archeology, looking at the underground hideouts and the refuge caves. Although we find such hideouts in Galilee, the heaviest concentration is in the area Bar Kokhba came to rule. Some have posited that the hideouts in Galilee may date to other time periods, such as the First Jewish War, but there isn't evidence that they were used for wartime purposes then, nor were they used in the Second Jewish War, however, as Galilee did not rebel. One author concludes that they largely stem from the interwar period but that the Galileans weren't motivated to rebel and those who were migrated south to the conflict. The penultimate article argues that the temple mount was never part of Aelia and that no temple of Jupiter was built on it; instead, Aelia shifted the center of the former city to the northwest, leaving the old center in tatters.

A final article on historical memory, which was little of my concern, actually proved to be one of the most interesting. The author points to how the Bar Kokhba legend was adopted by Zionists near the modern reestablishment of Israel. Bar Kokhba becomes a hero in textbooks, one who defends Israel against the hated Romans and even defeats a lion. His eventual loss and the devastation brought to Judea as a result is glossed over or wholly ignored. A holiday for another figure has been almost wholly refashioned to celebrate Bar Kokhba. As the state has existed longer, a more complex and complete protrayal of Bar Kokhba has emerged in textbooks, noting not just the heroism but the problems his revolt engendered. It reminds me of how in the United States, our Founders are glorified and simplified, but how over time historians, and in turn textbooks, have complicated that vision. As in Israel, so in the United States: Some are not happy about the fuller view being provided in classrooms.

On "The Origins of the Bible" by John W. Miller ***

I have read quite a few works recently on the canonization of the New Testament, but I haven't put much time into reading so many works about the Old Testament. That was this book's focus. Miller falls in line with some of the common scholarly thinking that posits various editors or authors for the Old Testament aligned with various political/religious interests. In Miller's case, the Bible is in large part the result of a competition between the Aaronic priesthood and the Levitical priesthood. Each wrote various sections of the Bible espousing their particular points of view.

At the end of the process, around the time that Judah returned to the Promised Land to rebuild the temple, the two groups finally put an end to their significant fighting (though there were lingering issues, Miller brings out using certain Nehemiah verses and incidents). Both groups' writings were essentially canonized. So although the Levitical Deuteronomy was written first, the Aaronic Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers were integrated with the collection and placed earlier, and so on. Some prophets were Levite sympathizers, some Aaron sympathizers, and so on.

I don't buy much of this argument, but even so, there was much I learned here. Miller is of a mind that the Jewish Bible was completed by (or at) the time of the Macabees. The late writing posited for Daniel and Esther is pretty well accepted in academic discourse, though it was interesting to see how Miller worked these two works into Macabean times (Esther, for example, while telling us about Purim actually tells us about the defeat of Nicanor, which happened on the eve of Purim, thus setting up the importance of that day). This means that the Old Testament canon was complete by about 200 BCE, not something that was completed in the second century CE in response to Christianity, as another book I read recently claimed.

Miller appears to be a post-millennialist. He ends his book by claiming that the real point of the New Testament comes in its Pentateuch, where its true ending resides, at the end of the book of Acts. That book ends with a kind of openness, showing how Christianity is open to all, even as the last few books of the Jewish Bible were essentially trying to claim; all the world eventually will come to see God's way and then the Messiah will return. God is patient; he will wait.

On "Rabbi Akiva" by Barry W. Holtz ***

I'm reading two biographies of Rabbi Akiva at the same time and managed to complete this one first,  but as such, I find myself getting somewhat confused between the two, since they share accounts of similar events and statements. The big difference between the two is that this one seems the more topical, the less biographical. That's because of the author's method in writing the work.

You see, the problem with Akiva is that our information about him comes largely from the Talmud. In fact, he's referenced more than one thousand times in the Babylonian Talmud and more than four hundred times in the shorter Jerusalem Talmud (at least as I remember the count both books gave). But those references are contradictory. They don't present any sort of biographical portrait as we would think of it. As such, knowing just who and what Akiva did is difficult--perhaps even impossible--although he was clearly important to rabbinic Judaism's formation.

While the other biography takes a chance on trying to sort truth from error, Holtz doesn't bother. He's more interested, as he says, in what the various portraits of Akiva say about the writers than what they say about Akiva. As such, all the contradictions are presented, but they are less often weighed. More often, Holtz discusses what they mean to the particular audience they are aimed at.
So some of the contractions (again, I may be mixing up books at this point, as both cover similar ground): 

Akiva was born poor but he ended up rich. He was anti-intellectual but ended up the most intellectual of all rabbis. His wife would only marry him if he went to a Jewish academy, or he went to a Jewish academy and abandoned his wife. He grew rich when his father-in-law, who disapproved of him early on, accepted him as a great rabbi and then gave him lots of money. Or he was poor until he remarried--the ex-wife of a Roman governor of Judea, the same one who would put him to death.

I mostly turned to Akiva because I wanted to know a bit more about the Bar Kochba revolt, which he supposedly supported. But Holtz only quotes one passage in that regard, and he's less certain--in fact, he seems rather tepid toward the idea--that Akiva actually contributed to the Jewish rebel cause. Maybe he leaned toward Bar Kochba because of his early experiences, but it doesn't seem like he actually encouraged uprising. When he is put to death, it is unclear whether that is after or before the war or during the war. He is put to death for not giving up the law, for preaching publically, which seems more likely after the war, but there are not any sources outside the Talmud that confirm that this was ever against the law. Was Akiva even put to death? Such are the many mysteries of this man both authors think one of the greatest Jewish thinkers/sages ever.

On "Christianity at the Crossroads" by Michael Kruger ****

This is a basic introduction to Christianity in the second century. As such, it's a good summary of the various issues that the second century presents for scholars to explore, written for lay people. I found the early parts a bit basic, retreading much that I've read elsewhere, covering the second-century society and culture, the basic practices and possible government forms, the manner of worship and meeting, and so on.

In chapter 4--about halfway through the book--is where Kruger really starts to get down to an argument that he explores more fully in another book: namely, he discusses how diverse the second century was in terms of belief and practice (as per much modern scholarship, based around Walter Bauer's thesis that there wasn't really any such thing as a unitary Christianity early on). Kruger doesn't believe that, so after exploring the differing non-mainstream Christian groups, he proceeds in chapter 5 to show how there actually was an orthodox Christian faith all the way back in the second century, one that stemmed from the first century. He argues this primarily by discussing "the rule of faith"--that is, the basic tenets that made Christians, in fact, Christians, into which the non-mainstream did not fit: the idea that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, died, and rose the third day; that he was God in the flesh; and so on.

Chapters 6 and 7 are where this book really shine, which is not surprising, given that the chapters cover topics that Kruger specializes in and has written several other works on: namely, the canonization of the scripture and the literary culture of the early church. Kruger goes into more detail on these subjects elsewhere, but these two chapters seem a very good and detailed summary of the issues and are what make this book worth the time spent reading it, even beyond just the basic introduction.