divine angst

I just finished reading From Jesus to Christianity by Michael White. Obviously, non-fiction, and a very good read for me, since I majored in Religion and focused as much as I could on early Christianity, the texts of early Christianity, and the split between Christianity and Judaism.

In a lot of ways, this book is a nice companion to another I read a few years ago, Constantine’s Sword, which basically covers Christian history as it relates to Judaism from the time of Constantine (ca. 400 or so) to the present.

From Jesus to Christianity covers a fairly narrow historical scope: essentially from 5 or 6 BCE to the end of the second century, CE. And of the first part of that span, from 5 or 6 BCE to about 50 or 60 CE, he really only sketches out the social, political, and religious environment, creating context for the meat of the book—dealing with the various texts that were written in the early Jesus movement that shaped what we know as Christianity today.

The best thing about this book is that the author does not restrict himself to the canonical documents—those in the New Testament as we know it. He spends a lot of time on the other writings that did not make it into the Bible, as well as on how our notion of “scripture” evolved in the three or four generations after the death of Jesus. He also delves into the authorship issues that are rampant in the New Testament, presenting various theories as to dates and locations that I hadn’t read previously.

I really enjoyed this book, though the middle third was a little slow. The book is dense and in many places presupposes a knowledge of the New Testament as well as of modern scholarship on early Christianity. That was OK for me, since I have a solid background in a lot of the theories he was referring to, but it might make this a difficult read for someone without that educational background.

My only regret with this book is that I didn’t buy two autographed copies—I only bought one, and gave that one to my mom for Christmas. I’d like to have my own signed version, but ah well.