A History of the First Christians

This work provides a survey of the history of the earliest Christian church in the period up to the fall of Jerusalem. It concentrates on: the figure of Paul; judicious and critical use of information in the Book of Acts; Judaizing versions of Christianity; and the Johannine tradition. The approach steers a middle way between an over-simplified account which fails to warn students where scholarly opinion is divided, and an in-depth academic study which attempts to document and discuss every hypothesis. Wedderburn focuses on aspects of central importance: the changing shape of church life and developing Christianity in relation to the Roman Empire and to Judaism. This book seeks to draw together and make more readily accessible many new insights gained from an enormous range of recent scholarly studies in German and English, and places them in the context of a more general account.

• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
  • When to Stop?
  • A Fragmentary Story
  • Sources
    • The Pauline Letters
    • The Book of Acts
• The First Beginnings
  • Appearances of the Risen Jesus
  • Regrouping in Jerusalem?
  • Pentecost
  • A Jewish Group?
• Stephen and His Group
  • 'Hebrews' and 'Hellenists'
  • The Problem and Its Solution
  • Stephen
  • The Outbreak of Persecution
• The Spread of Christianity
  • Samaria
  • Antioch
  • Peter and Cornelius
  • Peter
• Paul - the Hidden Years
  • The Pre-Christian Paul
  • The Conversion of Paul
  • Before the Conference in Jerusalem
• Agreement and Strife
  • Pauline Chronology
    • Acts and Galatians
    • An Absolute Chronology?
  • The Jerusalem Conference
  • The Quarrel at Antioch
• Paul the Missionary
  • The Course of Paul's Missionary Work
  • The Nature of the Pauline Communities
  • Problems of the Pauline Communities
  • The Collection
• Judaizing Christianity
  • James
  • Writings of a Judaizing Christianity
  • The Jerusalem Church
• Pauline Christianity after Paul
  • A Pauline School or Pauline Schools?
  • 'Early Catholicism'?
• Johannine Christianity
• The Church in the Roman Empire
• Postscript
• Notes
• Abbreviations
• Select Bibliography
  • Primary Sources
  • Reference Works
  • General Works on the History of Earliest Christianity
  • Other Secondary Literature
• Index of Primary Sources
  • Old Testament
  • Other Jewish Sources
  • New Testament
  • Other Early Christian Literature and Gnostic Sources
  • Other Graeco-Roman Literature and Sources
• Index of Authors (Secondary Literature)
• Index of Subjects