Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years

Teaching the history of early Christianity to undergraduates is at once a thrill and a hard row to hoe. Students invariably arrive interested in the subject and some of them quite invested, but taking on five or six centuries in a single course can be a challenge. That is true for any topic, but especially so for this one: the most expedient way through this mass of material might be to offer show more a single story, an account of progress toward a goal, but that would not reflect the fullness of the current scholarly conversation about early Christianity. Students new to the field have first to understand the concept of historical contingency—at every point in antiquity, things could have gone otherwise—and its corollary, namely, that the importance of a given writer or event to the later tradition does not reliably indicate its importance to antiquity. Cognizant of these challenges, Paula Fredriksen has provided teachers with an outstanding tool for classroom use. At once an introduction of the basic events, ideas, and prosopography necessary for survey courses, Ancient Christianities renders for newcomers a field that grows broader and unrulier with each passing decade. At the same time, it offers an elegant, accessible demonstration of the field’s current historical methods. show less