After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements Hardcover – November 2, 2021

Superb research; cutting edge scholarship, scholarly yet accessible, this work moves forward the conversation around the After Jesus Communities - what for centuries we have erroneously called "The Early Church." The authors point out that the "master narrative" commonly accepted as reflecting the history of what becomes the Christian Church is wrong. There was not one community but many, and these were extremely diverse.This work builds on more than 35 years of work begun by the Jesus Seminar in 1985.My one criticism is the choice by the authors of the phrase "gender bending" when referring to one of the markers of these communities. What they mean, they explain, is that these After Jesus Communities did not adhere to the first century stereotypes of gender roles. My problem is that in our over-sexualized age, the phrase "gender bending" can be misunderstood to refer to sexual roles, which is clearly not what the authors mean.

This is an excellent book written by scholars. I disagree with those who claim that the research is inadequate. The portrait of the first two centuries after Jesus is one of many, many communities and associations dedicated to the “Anointed One”. There was great diversity among these groups as to the meaning of Jesus. But they were united in the belief that their friendships and communities could help them survive the barbaric violence and cruelty of Roman occupation. Most also shared two practices, eating and bathing together. Communal eating helped build community and communal bathing (as I understand it, separated by gender) in addition to washing off the dust and grime of the day, was also a way to “wash off” the cruelty of Rome. As very few people were literate they did not rely primarily on texts for information about Jesus. Texts, such as letters from Paul, were read to the group by one of those who was literate. My most important take away from this book was that the diversity of opinion among the earliest Jesus groups leaves us at a bit of a loss to determining who Jesus was. If those in closest proximity to him had varied opinions how are we to sift through the layers of historical debris that has piled up through the millennia? The West Star Institute and other scholars have labored heroically on this question, and there is some agreement on basic moral teachings of Jesus, but even those are tentative.

The book does offer some interesting insights and perspectives. The reason I write is to give the potential purchaser an informed perspective, particularly if I find the description to not be fully representative of its contents. To me, the book doesn't quite reach up to its billing.Anyone who has paid attention to Jesus scholarship in any way is well aware that 'There were multiple Jesus movements, not a singular one, before the fourth century'. If that's new to the reader be aware that this book doesn't take one through that scholarship.It does describe particular elements of its argument in a cogent fashion. The first few chapters - concerning the term Christianity itself, the term gospel, the violence that was part of the Roman world - are well argued and informative.However, the seeds of what I feel are the less productive parts of the book are already in these chapters. For example, the book describes early meetings as "topics of conversation were rarely formally philosophical and not explicitly about heaven or politics. Rather the topics were about work, nature, relationships, sickness and possessions." How does one know that? It's only recently that discourse analysis can be performed with any accuracy.Other writers have placed the reader in the sandals of a first or second century person through storytelling, but key is that they then go on to state the arguments why their story is plausible. In this case the writer's don't - and likely can't. They can't either because there's no record (and written records would probably not reflect this aspect of oral culture) or it's plausible because that's how people talk in general which doesn't distinguish anything specifically unique and therefore particularly noteworthy about the early Jesus movements. (Similarly other times the writers say that these Jesus movement groups had a lot of humor. It's hard to know across centuries and cultures what a group would find funny. Aristophanes, Plautus, Lucian and the like were a particular brand of performed comedy, which is different. And again what would early Jesus groups have found funny different than anyone else?)The above may seem nitpicking. The reason it is not is twofold: first, because the writers here don't bracket that section of the writing (e.g. by saying "we assume these 'Churchgoers' are like churchgoers of today, but it's likely they were not. Here's why putting that assumption aside is important"). Second, because this kind of argument by implication is throughout the book. Two examples:"They resisted the Roman empire". Resistance is one of those words that is hard to pin down. It covers a broad spectrum of human actions and attitudes (attitudes that, in some uses, may not result in any action at all). What do we know about it from history? A few things: we know that one person's resistance is another person's lifestyle. We know that resistance with a capital 'R' is hard to keep up over the centuries we're talking about.Did the early Jesus groups think of themselves as setting up a resistance (a non-military one) or did activities undertaken for a different purpose serve to create, among other outcomes, what could be seen as resistance? If the latter, then is the statement 'they resisted the Roman empire' correct? Once we take out the word 'resistance' here the logic becomes 'they were a reaction to the Roman empire' - true and argued elsewhere. This book adds some informed detail but because they don't tackle the questions above (i.e. they don't place it in an argument) as a reader I'm left wanting."They practiced gender bending". This way of phrasing wants to imply things from modern gender fluidity movements. The authors also use the term 'queering' while explaining that this "was not a term that these movements would have used of themselves" but is rather a term borrowed from Queer theory. The authors mean something like: women taking leadership roles, serving as role models for courage, mutuality in marriage, and disruption of the man as head of the household. Because of the approach these sections read like a postmodernist critique. For example: "the female body ... as a violation and violator of boundaries ... dangerous, therefore, in its potential to transgress, to go beyond or violate boundaries" and (speaking of characters in the Maccabean revolt) "they do not become men in any conventional kind of way, they do not become penetrators, and they do not dominate."There's nothing inherently wrong in that approach - we can glean understandings from a variety of perspectives. However there are some considerable criticisms which remain unaddressed. By definition the people of the first century were not postmodern - as the writers say these are not terms (I would add ideas) that the people who belonged to these movements would have understood as applying to themselves. So if the purpose of history is to explicate how people of the past likely thought (in order to understand how they socially organized, how they acted, what they chose to write down, etc.) then in isolation it doesn't work as history.Early Jesus movements offered an alternative to Roman domination, serf/slave status, social status, etc. Is that the same kind of alternative that a feminist or queer advocate has actively taken up in our society within the last few generations? I would say no, but in any case, it is incumbent upon the writer to provide an argument one way or the other. Along the same lines, it is also incumbent to compare that perspective (which I'm calling postmodern) with competing perspectives: which model explains things more comprehensively, more directly, or fills holes in other perspectives? The perspective in this book might, but the theories are never held up to that level of scrutiny.To sum up the two examples: they are interesting, but because they are presented as implying a lot of things that are not explicated, the reader is left wanting.Finally, history understood forwards rather than backwards (that this book purports to do) has its problems. The biggest is that the reader picking up this book likely comes to it with knowledge of the canonical Gospels and Pauline letters. As a reader I find myself saying 'but what about this'. Leaving those parts to the end then leaves a lot unaddressed when reading. It has the effect of sullying scholarship a bit: the canonical Gospels and Pauline letters are only mentioned in passing in the beginning parts of the book, so when they are later addressed the argument that they were less important is made to seem natural. History should be argued through evidence and the canonical Gospels and Pauline letters are the 'front and center' evidence (that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be held up to criticism, but that criticism shouldn't be left until the end).All in all I found the book informative, enjoyable and well written. To its credit it gave further readings for each chapter. I don't think it's a thorough history of early Christianity or that it does justice to other perspectives and counter-arguments.

So informative. History between the time of Jesus and the establishment of Christian as an institution.

This book was good, but not great. It lacks a certain amount of objectivity and scholarly gravitas. I was looking for a more academic read, but I appreciate not everyone will want that either. I would recommend Dominion by Tom Holland way before I would this book

A new understanding of the first two centuries CE within the Roman Empire. If you are Catholic or Primative Baptist or any faith in the middle.....this book brings into focus the actual beginnings of what would become known as Christianity.