On “The First Urban Christians” by Wayne A. Meeks ****

This book reminds me a bit of watching The Godfather. The two works, of course, have nothing to do with one another. But the comparison is the experience of reading Meeks's book and watching that movie. When I saw The Godfather, this classic of cinema, I was in my thirties, and the film was about the same age as I was. I'd heard for a long time about how important the film was and how great it was. Seeing it, however, I found to be underwhelming. I could see how the film was likely a great film in its time, but watching it thirty-years on, the picture seemed a cliché. All the gangster movie stereotypes were present. However, not having seen the film in the 1970s, when it first came out, I could not say whether in its time the film might have been extremely original. The problem, of course, is that so many (better) films and TV shows since then had used the same plot devices and characters. Arguably, those films were all drawing on The Godfather. So when I went back to watch this older movie, it seemed stale, when in fact as the origin of so much since, it might well be as important as I'd always heard.

Such is the care for Meeks's The First Urban Christians. This book is a classic, one of the first, apparently, to draw sociology so heavily into conversation with the first century of Christianity, and specifically with reading Paul's letters. The subject is covered better in many other works I've read, including by Rodney Stark. But the thing is, as I read, I realized the degree to which these other authors were likely drawing on Meeks. They just wrote better and added to the findings that he made, which made of course the original, coming to it after the more recent works, all that much less intriguing. And so, I'm left in the same position as I am with The Godfather. Was this a great book in its time? Almost certainly, but because I came to it later, after reading other stuff, it doesn't seem as revolutionary as it likely was in its time or as it would have been had I read it before those other works.

By looking closely at Paul's letters and at the social nature of Roman society, Meeks notes that most early Christians were likely from cities. That's because that's where most diaspora Jews were, which is among whom most Christian teaching began. Christians drew from a range of classes (though the idea of low, middle, and upper class is not a terribly effective way at looking at Roman society, which wasn't really based around the same sort of concepts as modern society): a slave might be richer or even have more power, for example, than a free man; a person of noble birth might be looked upon better than free man but not be as well off, and so on. The most prominent members were those with just such social inconsistencies in status: rich women, freed men with special skills, wealthy Jewish people. A particularly interesting chapter focuses on names, as they show up in the letters. Meeks then goes on to examing worship practices and governance in the church, using similar means, though the observations don't seem like anything beyond what I've read elsewhere. Meeks largely accepts the mainstream critical position that only seven of Paul's letters are genuine and that Paul was largely opposed to James and Peter in his views of the new faith, which to a degree colors his observations.

On "Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era" by Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L Wilkes ***

This very short volume provides an introduction and background information about Christianity in Antioch largely as a means to introduce two sets of fourth-century documents written in Antioch: a group of letters by Libanius and a couple of sermons by John Chrysostom. The unifying reason for presenting the two sets of works is the writings are about the Jewish people of Antioch.

Libanius mentions the Jews offhandedly in a kind of historian context; I found myself more drawn to Chrysostom's work, which heavily focuses on them and their interaction with Christians, whom he sees as too easily drawn to the religious practices of. We are presented only with two (the first and last) of his homilies against Jews, but they, especially the first, are incredible in terms of showcasing the degree to which some older Christian--that is, Jewish--traditions persisted, despite the attempts of men like Chrysostom.

On "The Moral World of the First Christians" by Wayne A. Meeks ****

This text is a basic introduction to the ways in which people in the first-century Roman empire discussed and determined what moral action is. Meeks devotes individual chapters to Greco-Roman philosophical thinking, Jewish thinking, and Christian thinking on the subject.

Because these are such large subjects, he chooses to focus on various philosophical schools and within those various philosophical schools individual philosophers. As such, Plutarch's writing stands in for Platonic philosophy; Musonius Rufus for the Stoics. In the end, he looks for what they have in common: the desire to lead a happy life is the choice to live in conformity to nature, which is made possible by reason.

For Jewish moral thinking, Meeks focuses on sages, like Yeshua ben Sira, the sect at Qumran, Philo, and the Mishnah. All, of course, stress the importance of the biblical law, though they differ to a great degree in terms of how much they integrated those ideas into Greek thinking.

Meeks then looks at various types of (or emphases among) Christian sects (Gentile, Jewish, Apocalyptic) and closes with a discussion of where such sects met: synagogue, house, school, and church.

Finally, in the last chapter, Meeks examines what specific New Testament passages tell us about the moral foundation of Christians in the first century, how the writings were related to common literary practice, and how the moral standards developed into standardized forms of expression.