What was life like among the first Christians? For the last thirty
years, scholars have explored the historical and social contexts of
the New Testament in order to sharpen their understanding of the
text itself. This interest has led scholars to focus more and more
on the social features of early Christian communities and less on
their theologies or doctrines.
Scholars are keen to understand what these communities were
like, but the ritual life of early Christians remains largely
unexplored. Studies of baptism and eucharist do exist, but they are
very traditional, showing little awareness of the ritual world, let
alone the broader social environment, in which Christians found
themselves. Such studies make little or no use of the social
sciences, Roman social history, or the archaeological record.
This book argues that ritual was central to, and definitive for,
early Christian life (as it is for all social orders), and explores
the New Testament through a ritual lens. By grounding the
exploration in ritual theory, Greco-Roman ritual life, and the
material record of the ancient Mediterranean, it offers new and
insightful perspectives on early Christian communities and their
cultural environment. In doing justice to a central but slighted
aspect of community life, it outlines an alternative approach to
the New Testament, one that reveals what the lives of the first
Christians were actually like.
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