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2 results

  • Introduction

  • Hartmut Leppin, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
  • Translated by Kathrin Luddecke
  • Preface by Jan N. Bremmer, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    The Early Christians
    Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023, pp 1-15

  • Summary

    The aim of the book is to show, from a historian’s point of view, how strange the early Christians must have seemed to their contemporaries and what difficulties they faced in living their faith in a non-Christian world. In doing so, it will become clear that Christians chose a huge variety of paths and that there was no linear progression toward later forms of Christianity. Therefore, the seemingly familiar early Christians are strange even to modern observers. In order to make clear their diversity and strangeness, I do not follow chronological order, but treat the subject matter according to different topics, in four main chapters. The first illustrates the difficulties for Christians to position themselves between Jews and pagans, the second the dispute over forms of authority within the Christian group, the third the challenges of everyday life for Christians, the fourth the relationship to the political system up to Constantine the Great, who turned to Christianity. In addition, I discuss the methodological and theoretical issues involved.

The Early Christians
  • From the Beginnings to Constantine
  • Hartmut Leppin
  • Translated by Kathrin Luddecke
  • Preface by Jan N. Bremmer
  • Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023
  • The early Christians were by no means a homogeneous group, let alone a church. This is the fascinating story of the beliefs, practices and experience of individual Christians of antiquity, their relationships to Jewish tradition and the wider Roman world, and the shockwaves they caused among their contemporaries. Ancient Christians are closely connected to today's world through a living memory and a common textual heritage - the Bible - even for those who maintain a distance from Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, much about the early Christians is foreign to us and far removed from what passes for this faith as it currently stands. The distinguished historian Hartmut Leppin explores this paradox, and considers how such a small, diverse band of followers originating on the edge of the Roman Empire was able within less than three centuries to grow and become its dominant force under Emperor Constantine and his successors.