This survey of ancient Israelite and early Christian writings ends with secondcentury Christian literature. The reason for including later Christian literature is that Christianity only became what it is today in the period leading up to the important councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon (i e between the fourth and fifth centuries CE), when the questions surrounding the collection of canonical writings had been settled, and the main outlines and formulations of Christian doctrines fixed. Having established authoritative tradition, the Christian church created its own identity as Christian religion among Jewish and other Graeco-Roman and oriental cults and philosophies.

This section aims to show how the character of Christianity was created from the multiform traditions and religious kaleidoscope of Graeco-Roman antiquity. It developed in a crucible of dialogue and ideological conflict involving very different viewpoints. The scope of the current study extends to the second century. The third century and onwards was the age of the patristic writers, and this body of literature would also take one too far outside the boundaries of an introduction to biblical literature.

What does emerge from a survey of this kind is that Christianity was ‘woven together’ from different strands of tradition. This is important for one's understanding of the historical (textual) sources serving as the fount from which Christianity as religion was born. All along it has been suggested, and alluded to, that the Christian epic had been created from the Hebrew (or Jewish) and New Testament epics, as well as the Jesus traditions, and GraecoRoman philosophical and religious traditions. By ‘epic’ is meant the way a community ‘imagines a set of stories and symbols with respect to the past and how such a community imagines them to relate to the present’. By selecting stories, figures as examples, texts, symbols and images from the textual tradition as well as oral and cultural tradition, a world or symbolic universe and ethic are created, and an identity and lifestyle formed. All this takes place in dialogue with the historical context and in answer to historical events and circumstances. This became obvious. A similar case was argued with regard to the development of the Jesus traditions that became the New Testament, as is also the case with second-century Christian literature.