Investigating Greco-Roman intellectual culture in the first three centuries of the Common Era, the historian looks in vain for a consolidated or thoroughly well-defined “Christian cosmology,” or a fully agreed-upon doctrine of creation. Indeed, as Christian apologists and theologians of the pre-Nicene age entered in earnest into the fray of long-standing philosophical debates over the nature of the universe, they had no antecedent interpretive synthesis of biblical sources on creation, though some consulted Hellenistic-Jewish writings while others willingly accessed doxographies containing the abbreviated opinions of the philosophical sages, or else read their works directly. More than one alternative, it seems, lay open to early-generation Christian thinkers. They could attempt to start from scratch with the biblical sources (including the gradually emerging New Testament writings) in constructing a Christian understanding of the cosmos that, in fideistic fashion, thoroughly ignored or circumvented traditions of Greco-Roman cosmology. Or, on the other hand, they could surrender to the fact that their sacred scriptures were not preoccupied with problems of theoretical cosmology and turn exclusively to other more immediate concerns of human salvation and the gospel of the eschatological “new creation.” Or, for better or worse, representing a religious faith having no philosophical past or pedigree solely to call its own, these pioneering Christian intellectuals could venture a critical but constructive engagement with the revered classical and Hellenistic authorities, staking out the philosophical plausibility of a distinctly Christian cosmology – all the more importantly since sophisticated pagan speculation about the god–world relation and the nature of the cosmos enjoyed resurgences well into the Byzantine age.

Remembering Jesus is an ongoing activity. It began within Jesus’s own lifetime but continues to the present. The contexts, controls, and creativity of remembering Jesus are, therefore, not exclusive to how Jesus was remembered from the earliest time – they are also relevant to each generation’s present. With this in mind, historians who focus on Jesus must (1) attend to the material, literary, and social history of the Second Temple period, and (2) attend to their own placement, agenda, and historical vantage point. So remembering Jesus is as much about self-awareness as it is about studying ancient history. For these reasons, a robust theory of memory is required, one that helps us navigate the mnemonic frameworks of earliest Christianity as well as how our memory works more generally. We will examine the earliest Christian creed (or hymn) as it is quoted by Paul’s letter to the Romans. That said, the bulk of this essay will address Jesus and memory as topics for historians in the twenty-first century. Our aim is to explain how and why theories of memory have become integral to scholars of the Jesus tradition.

The study of wealth, poverty, and almsgiving in early Christianity has been burgeoning for the last two decades, and it has made significant strides in our knowledge of Christian identity formation in interaction with the Roman imperial society in the first three centuries of the Principate.1 This chapter examines the indispensable role and comprehensive impact of wealth and poverty on the journey of salvation through the lens of patristic authors, seeking to treat the topic’s salient issues and provide brief surveys of the status quaestionis for the noted topic when relevant.

In recent decades, the letter “r” has dominated literature on the doctrine of the Trinity. Numerous articles, edited volumes, and monographs begin with the claim that trinitarian doctrine is undergoing a renaissance, revival, restoration, revolution, ressourcement, reemergence, resuscitation, or rehabilitation.1 Such assertions find their footing in the recognition that trinitarian theology is not a complex theology that few engage, but is the foundation for all theology. The doctrine of the Trinity – God as one ousia or being and three hypostases or persons – is how early Christians, and the church still today, make sense of their experience of God.

The discipline of ancient Christian history is shifting, like tectonic plates with pressure building in some areas while new landscapes are emerging in others. The metaphor of “shifting frontiers” will be a familiar one to scholars in this field. The Society for Late Antiquity was formed in the wake of a 1995 conference entitled “Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity,” and it continues to sponsor biennial gatherings on this theme in various iterations.1 In the published proceedings from the first conference, the organizers credit the metaphor to Peter Brown’s statement from his 1971 book, The World of Late Antiquity. Brown called for renewed focus on “the shifting and redefinition of the boundaries of the classical world after ad 200.”2 Brown’s use of this imagery roughly coincided with a number of studies devoted to the Roman limes, wherein many of the standard categories like Romanitas and “barbarian” were being reconsidered.

A central premise of this chapter is that masculinity, femininity, and sexuality are socially constructed. Across history, cultures have arrived at many different understandings of what it means to be a man or a woman, and many ways to order and direct sexual desire. Instead of assuming that attributes of masculinity or femininity are enduring, then, the historian should articulate how the ancients thought about these topics, even when their approaches differed from our own.

Simon Peter is a “key” figure in the truest sense of the word. When he utters his confession, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16), Jesus praises him, promises to build his ἐκκλησία on “this rock” and offers him the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:18–19). There are certainly not many passages of the New Testament that have generated more controversy than Matt. 16:17–19.1 This is not only due to the text’s many difficulties in detail, but also to the fact that different churches based important aspects of their self-definition (and related claims for authority) on these sayings. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, went so far as to deduce important aspects of the pope’s claim to be Christ’s representative on earth and thus his supremacy over all other churches from this passage. Neither the Orthodox Church nor the churches of the Reformation agree with that. A proper understanding of the figure of Peter and (deeply related to that) the role and authority of his successors has thus been a key obstacle to past and present ecumenical movements.2 And even if all churches basically agree on the importance of Peter for the beginnings of the Christian movement, he nonetheless remains a contested figure to this day. In the following essay, I will show that this has always been the case: Peter has always been a controversial figure within the variety of movements comprised of believers in Jesus Christ.

The question contained in this chapter’s title continues to elicit many answers from academics, particularly in publications addressed to a larger audience.1 As has been observed by more than one scholar, however, the answers have not changed much since the time of Edward Gibbon (1737–94).2 Moreover, in my view the answers typically given are not fully convincing, so I take the opportunity here to reconsider the question – in fact, even to question the question. Instead of a critical review of the answers typically offered, I seek to deconstruct the question, using the words that compose the title of the chapter as a guide for uncovering the many assumptions that lay behind it. As a result, I will complicate the picture and illustrate the many ways that things can go wrong if fundamental assumptions embedded within the question are left unexposed, as is usually the case.

“Judaism,” “Christianity,” and “paganism” are terms that historians use to distinguish between antiquity’s different “religions.” These words – all four – have an abstract quality: They suggest unified systems of belief and of doctrine, and clear and stable identities whether for individuals or for groups. Perhaps such formulations fit the modern period. In Roman antiquity, however, different groups of people made various arrangements, both with each other and with the many nonhuman powers that filled the space between the spheres of the heavens and the earth around which they turned. “Paganism” – the larger culture housing all of the empire’s different communities of Jews and of Christians – actually refers to an overwhelmingly diverse assortment of loca sancta, practices, traditions, and convictions.1 Many of the ancient city’s social activities that we would classify as “government” or as “athletics” or as “entertainment” were in fact “religious,” shaped by ritual displays of respect for and loyalty to those gods guarding the city’s well-being. And, whether as observers or as participants, those people whom we house within our other two abstract categories, “Judaism” and “Christianity,” often and freely – even enthusiastically – joined in.

Asking about the emergence of Christian material culture is something like asking when a river becomes a river. Countless drops of water fall on innumerable hillsides and plains, and make their way downhill, following the pull of gravity until they coalesce into rivulets and trickles. Those in turn gather into larger flows – streams, creeks, and washes – which combine and combine again into stronger and fuller courses. All the rivers of the world (the Nile, the Danube, the Congo, the Ganges, and the Yangtze, as well as the smaller and more anonymous ones) begin this way, fed by tributaries and histories of rain. When does the river become a river? We can point confidently to the mouth of the delta where the river empties out into the Gulf of Mexico and call that “the Mississippi,” but we must also recognize that its outflow represents a watershed draining a substantial part of a continent.

Although the Christian movement of the first century was birthed under the shadow of Rome’s empire, it was only in the late twentieth century that New Testament scholars began giving serious consideration to the ways in which that movement engaged and challenged Roman imperial power. This relatively recent avenue of scholarly inquiry, which many refer to as “empire criticism,” is the focus of this essay. In particular, this essay will consider the emergence of this criticism, discuss diverse ways early Christian writings engaged the Roman empire, recognize and respond to scholarly criticism, and offer a concluding note on empire criticism and the Christian movement in the second and third centuries.

Classification systems using terminology or a symbolic system that is not intuitive form the basis of scientific “knowledge.” In this system, particularly unusual phenomena are slotted into established patterns. Then, when features that do not fit present themselves, scholars treat them in different ways: (1) scrubbing the anomalous data as individual peculiarity, or as contaminated by some outside influence; (2) engaging in fine-tuning the classification system by subdividing or changing categories or by refining the mathematical analysis; or (3) declaring the entire approach invalid. As scholars have worked to incorporate a growing corpus of Gnostic texts from third- and fourth-century Coptic codices into patristic accounts of Gnostic sects, older heresiological categories do not fit. Some scholars call for dropping the terms “Gnostic” and “Gnosticism,” but the preferred approach remains fine-tuning or revising categories.1 A common variant of “scrubbing data” in this field organizes divergent material from a text into editorial layers added to an original core.