After Jesus Before Christianity
A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements
by Erin Vearncombe; Brandon Scott; Hal Taussig; Westar Institute, The
Pub Date 02 Nov 2021 | Archive Date 28 Dec 2021
HarperOne
Christian | History | Nonfiction (Adult)



I am reviewing a copy of After Jesus Before Christianity through HarperOne and Netgalley:



For over two millennia Christianity has endured and today it is practiced by billions worldwide today. Yet that longevity has created difficulties for scholars tracing the religion’s roots, distorting much of the historical investigation into the first two centuries of the Jesus movement. But this book asks the questions what if Christianity died in the fourth or fifth centuries after it began? How would that change how historians see and understand its first two hundred years?





Through considering these questions three Bible scholars from the Westar Institute summarize the work of the Christianity Seminar and its efforts to offer a new way of thinking about Christianity and its roots. Synthesizing the institute’s most recent scholarship—bringing together the many archaeological and textual discoveries over the last twenty years—they have found:




Before the fourth century there were several Jesus movements not a singular one, and there was nothing called Christianity until the third century. There was much more flexibility and diversity within Jesus’s movement before it became centralized in Rome, not only regarding the Bible and religious doctrine, but also understandings of gender, sexuality and morality.
Exciting and revolutionary, After Jesus Before Christianity provides fresh insights into the real history behind how the Jesus movement became Christianity.



I give After Jesus Before Christianity Four out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

I can't claim any background in theology, but since my undergraduate years (I don't want to say how many decades ago that was), I've had a layperson's interest in the early history of what because the Christian church. In particular I've enjoyed explorations of noncanonical texts: books like Paegel's [book:The Gnostic Gospels|110763] and Bart Ehrman's [book:Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew|107273] and [book:Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why|51364]. After Jesus, Before Christianity is another such title and makes a useful addition to the accessible literature on this topic.

After Jesus, Before Christianity emerged from an ongoing, multi-year study group that sought to identify, discuss, and research what we might call "pre-Christian Jesus texts." They open by observing that too many histories of the Christian church are retrospective, how-we-got-here tales ending in the Christianity(ies) of our time—rather like those charts of early homonids that make "modern man" seem foreordained in the fossil record. But in theology as in evolution, contingency is everything. There are any number of possible evolutionary "trees" (Darwin advocated for the image of a bush, growing in multiple directions, not a tree moving steadily upward). There are also any number of possible Christianities, including "Christianities" that remained "Judaism" and Christianities that are nothing like the various forms of the faith that exist today.

So the group behind After Jesus, Before Christianity began with the earliest texts it could find, moving forward through history, examining both commonalities and differences. (Surprise! There are many more differences than commonalities.) Using the body of noncanonical texts and the better known canonical ones, they've identified six recurring themes in the religious communities that sprung up in the two centuries after Jesus. None of these is shared by all groups, but they emerge often enough to give some sense of the various Jesus faiths that existed in the immediate aftermath of Jesus' life. These are—
• resistance to the Roman Empire
• challenging of gender norms
• the creation of families of choice, rather than biological families
• identification with Israel
• diverse organizational structures
• persisting oral traditions

This makes for fascinating, genuinely thought-provoking reading. I can't attest to the scholarly accuracy of each of the book's claims, but most of them seem reasonable enough and grounded in specific textual examples. On the other hand, one discussion moves from the Gospel of John to John's Revelation without noting that these are almost certainly not the same "John." So, read and enjoy, but, as Sue Monk Kidd suggests in the introduction, treat this material as interesting questions, not a definitive history.

I received a free electronic ARC of this title for review purposes; the opinions are my own.

Outlining the research of scholars participating in the Christianity Seminar, this book works its way backwards into the first and second centuries CE to discover what the first Jesus movements looked like. I appreciate the work that has been done, and their explanations are aimed at laypeople who may have interest in these scholars pursuits.

An examination of the early years of what would eventually be Christianity, that wavers between too esoteric and too basic. The authors have tried to make their references and analysis accessible to laypeople who are not immersed in Biblical scholarship, but it doesn't always work - for instance, they pull a lot of detail from the various apocryphal gospels or other materials found in places like Nag Hammadi (like the gospels of Truth, Thomas, or Mary) with a little bit of background information on these, but it would have been useful to discuss in more detail what differentiates these from the canonical gospels - surely that must have some bearing on their reliability as sources, and what did or did not become canon (and why) must be an interesting counterpoint to whatever the authors claim as the practices of Jesus's followers in the years following his death. But this is either assumed to be common knowledge for the reader, or simply ignored; either way, a missed opportunity.

The book's central thesis seems to be to break the impulse to treat Christianity as a fait accompli and work backward with the historical information available to find Christianity in embryo, but instead to ignore that and work forward, building a picture of proto-Christian movements from scratch. Much of the information presented is fairly interesting, with a lot of emphasis on "Jesus movements" as resistance to or reaction to Roman occupation (especially after the destruction of the Jewish Temple). Some sections work better than others - for instance, the chapter examining the role of Paul in the early church (less prominent than generally believed, according to the book) was quite interesting, while a different one on the role of women in the early movements was a little shakier (as an example, one letter attributed to but likely not written by Paul declaring that women should not speak in meetings is used as evidence that women were preaching, since why would the writer have to say so if they weren't? ...which wasn't entirely convincing to me).

All in all, an interesting book, but probably one intended for readers already a little deeper into Biblical scholarship than I am. In which case, it may be less engaging, since those readers will be correspondingly more familiar with the arguments presented already. But, I'm sure there is an audience that this will hit a sweet spot for.

After Jesus Before Christianity reads like a multi-authored textbook, but that’s okay if early Christianity is interesting to you. It provides a decent survey of relevant topics from this time period through the lens of what the authors consider to be the most modern info. They did a great job immersing the reader into the time period, but some topics garnered more attention than needed and at times seemed to be linking these topics to current events.

Thanks to HarperOne and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"After Jesus Before Christianity" is an incredible resource that looks at the origins of the Christian faith through fresh eyes. I highly recommend this book to any person who is interested in history from the margins.

This is a highly technical book overlaid with political correctness and poor writing. The controversial interpretations lack sufficient evidence. I was excited when I read the book’s summary, but disappointed in the telling

This is an ambitious book produced by the Westar Institute which also sponsored the Jesus Seminar. The goal of this project was to meticulously examine all evidence about followers of Jesus in the two hundred years after his death, making extensive use of archaeological and other historical findings. This book deals initially with life under Roman rule, and the experiences of Jesus communities trying to survive under those conditions; then the widespread locations and cultures of early Christians, and resulting different interpretations of the Jesus Story. The authors point out that early followers of Jesus were not a cohesive group and there is even doubt as to whether they referred to themselves as “Christians”. How Christian orthodoxy came to be and unified/pruned the variegated beliefs of Jesus followers is one of the interesting parts of the book. The reader will notice some disparities that come from differences of opinion among participants. Those who want more source material and references can find it on the Westar Institute website. I felt the book suffered from the gaps between authors that kept it from flowing smoothly. Ideas were introduced, such as early Christians surviving Roman rule in various ways...one of which was "comedy". The examples given didn't seem at all humorous to me, but maybe first century comedy is beyond our "getting". Also, I was bothered by examples of this "comedy" being cited from the four Gospels as if the Evangelists "quoted" a lesson from Jesus that was actually actually added for later Christians for humor. Convoluted. I'm afraid this assertion was too poorly supported for me to accept as were others. The book felt to me more like a collage that didn't hang together than a cohesive book written by authors who collaborated or at least coordinated for the sake of clarity.

The premise here is, succinctly, that there's never been a unique and unbroken line from Jesus till modern Christianity as the latter's claim goes, because there were not one but several groups of followers of Jesus in the two centuries since his death until Rome made Christianity the official religion of the empire and created Christianity as we know it now, so that its existence wasn't the inevitable outcome as historians supposedly claim because it could've been just any group of the several and very diverse ones hitherto existing instead of the one that prevailed and came to be known as the Christian religion.

Put like that, it's an intriguing premise. But this is an incredibly frustrating book for a variety of reasons, the chief ones being methodological, the uneven quality of scholarship between contributors, and the subpar sourcing.

It starts with an opening chapter that's arguably the weakest and worst supported of all, in which the authors engage in essentially pointless semantics in an attempt to "prove" that the original Christians didn't call themselves Christian, a label they deem "problematic" and inaccurate, ascribing it instead to the Romans, who called these people so for bureaucratic reasons, and then argue that the original Christians called themselves a number of names that are, in reality, descriptions and allusions and not names or self-naming. Their "proof" is Pliny calling these people Christiani, which is true, but there's a huge leap from that to the term being an invention of Roman bureaucrats. What's their evidence that these groups didn't call themselves such and that Rome hoisted the term on them instead? That the term is supposedly "rare" because it appears only a handful of times in the New Testament, thus they ignore the evidence that they did call themselves such and go down an useless deconstruction of what "Christian" means literally, and crown the awfully unconvincing argument with inventing a label for these groups: "Jesus peoples." And then refer to them as groups, clubs, communities, to support their premise that they were essentially just the same as your granny's knitting club instead of religious groups.

Such a bad start isn't improved by the next chapters, twenty in total and divided in six parts that group the topics ranging from their naming to the nature of their communities, beliefs and practices, relations with Rome, relations between themselves, the apostles, the other gospels besides the traditional four, etc. Whilst some of these chapters are very interesting and thought-provoking, the ones on the Gnostics and Paul come to mind as the best in my personal opinion, the quality is unfortunately quite mixed. Some authors are balanced, thoughtful, and argue convincingly, taking care to not take huge leaps of logic, but most of them do not, and as a result, there's even contradictions from one chapter written by one author and the next written by another. As a whole, a book rife with contradictions and inaccuracies might be fine as a sounding board and to start debate, but can't be taken as a whole as a good source for the study of history.

The writing is very minimalist, and a negative byproduct of this is that the sources go unnamed in a number of instances. Might be that, since this is aimed at scholars it's taken as a given that they'd know more than a lay reader, but its lack of proper sourcing is still troubling. More so because, as one reads, one finds claims that will give the reader pause and make them want to know where it came from. I, for one, would like to know sources for the book's claims on Rome and its history, culture, mores, as there were eyebrow-raising lines that aren't credited. I also got the strong and distinct impression of authorial bias where Rome is concerned, for the authors make no secret of their favour towards Greece, which they call "democratic" whereas Rome is merely "somewhat democratic" (!), as well as the notion that sexual violence is at Rome's foundational core, and continuously remarking on their undeniably violent history as if it's somehow uniquely Roman and not a terrible part of civilisations before, during, and after them. I have deep reservations about the authors' statements because of astoundingly unsourced and out-of-context claims like this.

And my reservations aren't helped by, as I perceive it, political bias inserted into what should be a theological and historical work of serious scholarship. Given that the heart of this book is the premise that academics who study Christianity "look backwards" from nowadays back to Jesus instead of "looking forward" from after Jesus up to around Constantine, one would expect it to be the driving force behind careful research going into a book aiming to find evidence that this is, indeed, the right and proper method that renders the best results. But, once again, it doesn't meet the target. Several of the authors, because not all of them are of the same mindset, do "look backwards" and apply modern outlooks to peoples and events from two thousand years ago... whilst decrying other academics supposedly engaging in this same error. Cases in point: the author or authors using concepts such as gender fluidity and other concepts that belong more in identity politics ideology, and more surprisingly still, the author who couldn't resist aiming an uncalled-for and easy shot at Republicans. It shows when this book was written, because in many other books from the 2016-2020 period, I've found the same inability on the part of American authors to keep a cool head and their voting preferences out, and it makes them look so very unserious and biased from the outside, to foreign readers like me.

As I said, "After Jesus, Before Christianity" has value to spark debate and exchange ideas, but as the book on the history of early Christianity for readers that might be looking for and expecting to find, it's disappointingly all over the place and incomplete. In a nutshell, every single random fellow from the first two centuries after Jesus who as much as wrote one word about him is here, included amongst the "Jesus peoples," not excluding peoples that wouldn't be caught dead amongst his followers, and for whom Jesus wasn't the pillar of their group's teachings and activities, who contradict one another, and so on. That's not new information, even those that claim direct descent from Jesus and the label of "true Christian" for themselves are aware that these groups existed, that Christianity wasn't one monolithic body. In that specific regard, the book doesn't provide us with much, either.

This book is from the same ones that gave us the Jesus Seminar (Westar Christianity Seminar). In the same manner of that book this book goes along with that same process with the contributors/ authors saying that at the very beginning of this book that “One of the core contributions of this book is its rejection of the master narrative.” So, with that said, sit tight, there is some controversy that awaits when you read this book. But all in all, I feel that this book does bring important understanding about how we got here and I do highly recommend reading it with an open mind. But, you should be ready to be challenged along the way, while keeping in mind that this is just one way to think about this subject within a broad field of other scholarly writings on it.

Interesting, but altogether falls short. While the book attempts to tackle the dominant narrative it ultimately feels more like removed speculation without considering the corpus of evidence.

I found this to be an incredibly difficult read. The authors make an interesting hypothesis and try to show how Christianity as we know it did not coalesce until a few centuries after the death of Jesus. Unfortunately I found their evidence meandering and sometimes only marginally relevant to their original proposal.

The writing style itself was far too academic and dense for a book targeted toward a lay audience, and this didn’t help with the feeling of garrulousness the book sometimes invoked. I can tell the authors did their research, and the book will sell based on the title alone, but the contents may put a lot of people off.

This book comes out of the same organization that gives us the Jesus Seminar (Westar Christianity Seminar) where scholars attempted to identify the Real Jesus within the Gospels with mixed reviews (frequently drawing criticism from the more fundamental wing of Christianity). This book follows that process with the authors/contributors stating at the very beginning that “One of the core contributions of this book is its rejection of the master narrative.” So buckle up … controversy awaits us.

What we find over twenty chapters is how [these] scholars put together current research and understanding of the first two centuries after the crucification to build a narrative that an incredibly diverse movement that challenges orthodoxy in 6 areas:

1. They resisted the Roman Empire by invoking the compassion and mercy of God, while contrasting God’s perfect kingdom with the cruelty and domination of Rome despite having relatively little power themselves (Not sure how this challenges the prevailing theories, but there you have it)
2. They were extremely egalitarian with gender roles with women taking a more active leadership role in many of the groups (some even cutting their hair and dressing like men).
3. They lived in “spiritual” families or communities centered around their beliefs and practices, often disregarding blood family ties.
4. They were aligned with Israel in nearly everything that they did, regardless of where they were; frequently picking out the traditions of the local jewish communities and adding to them
5. They had a variety of organization structures, with little to no central control … which translates to a very diverse set of beliefs, many of which would become heretical and lose out to the coming orthodoxy (This is the best part)
6. Their tradition were mostly transmitted orally; however, they slowing developed what became canon along side the same process where the Jewish canon was created. (Again … not sure how surprising this really is).

To support these “discovers”, the book opens with a discussion on where we get the word ‘Christian’ and what it actually means. While this was interesting, I am not sure it deserved all of the ink it received. After that, it talked about the power and violence of the Roman Empire … again … I don’t see many folks arguing against this, so the big reveal here seems to be that the relatively powerless underclass that made up the bulk of the communities was very passive-aggressive in their resistance to Roman power. You will find some controversy in the proposed development of the communal meals that would become the Christian communion as it is then also contrasted with common Roman practice with respect to libations for the Emperor.

It was not until Part II that I found more interesting and potentially surprising information as the book lays out the various characteristics of the Christian Communities (aka Clubs). There are some terms used that you need to pay very close attention to as they are using them for a specific meaning that is not at all common today, so the potential for misunderstanding is high. Here we see the Jesus communities experiment with gender roles, national allegiance and family organizations, with the later including a brief exploration of the traditional family/households and how radically different these new "communities" were. Part III moves into early heresies and how they were ultimately suppressed ... starting with [The Myth of] Gnosticism and its incorrect use to categorize and dismiss a significant number of early Christian writings [such as nearly the entire corpus of the Nag Hammadi documents) ... there by giving a false impression of early uniformity [or orthodox] that did not actually exist. Next we re-examine Paul ... who was not so influence during his life time as he would become during the establishment of orthodox belief.

Over all I think this brings important scholarship into the understanding of how we got here and I would recommend reading it with an open mind. Be prepared to be challenged; however, it is important to remember that this is just one view within a wide field and it may not be the end all to how we understand our story … even if you don’t buy into what is being presented here, it should make you think …

<spoiler>Table of Contents

1. The Experiment
2. If Not Christian; What?

Part I: Living with the Empire
3. Engine of Empire: Violence
4. Gospel of Empire, Gospel of Jesus
5. Violence in Stone
6. The Deaths of Heroes

Part II: Belonging and Community
7. Testing Gender, Testing Boundaries
8. Forming New Identities through Gender
9. Belonging to Israel
10. Experimental Families
11. Join the Club
12. Feasting and Bathing

Part III: Real Variety, Fictional Unity
13. Inventing Orthodoxy through Heresy
14. Demolishing Gnosticism
15. Paul Obscured
16. Jesus by Many Other Names

Part IV: Falling into Writing
17. Hiding in Plain Sight
18. Romancing the Martyrs
19. Better Than a New Testament
20. Conclusion
</spoiler>

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#AfterJesusBeforeChristianity #NetGalley.