Talk:Historiography of early Christianity

Rationale for this article
Over at Talk:Catholic Church, we have discussed on a couple of occasions the need to discuss the historiography of early Christianity, possibly in a separate article. On numerous occasions, I (and others) have stressed the need to keep that article a summary-level article, relegating the details to subsidiary articles. IMO, this approach is absolutely valid but it suffers from the fact that the historiography of early Christianity is currently dispersed across a number of articles and "the history of the history" is thus almost impossible to piece together from the existing articles. For example, if a reader didn't already know who Walter Bauer and Bart Ehrman were, it would take an intrepid and astute reader to figure out that they were important figures in the development of the modern historical perspective of early Christianity. Even if you disagree with their theories, it is important to know who they are (were) and what their theories are.

For this reason, I have decided to start working on an article that will eventually be titled Historiography of early Christianity. To this end, I have collected bits of text from a number of articles such as Early Christianity, History of early Christianity, Saint Peter, Paul of Tarsus and Primacy of Simon Peter and compiled them into this draft article. Since this initial draft represents only an hour or so of work, it is really still in the very early conceptual stages. The draft is a poorly-structured mish-mash of information and is in desperate need of an organizing framework. I invite all who are interested to review my draft and provide comments. I would particularly appreciate feedback concerning the organization of the article and any key topics that I have missed.

--Richard S (talk) 09:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Walter Bauer and Bart Ehrman? Our best source on them is almost certainly their articles. An overview, putting together all the major scholars on early Christianity, would certainly be useful, however. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You may not have noticed but Bauer and Ehrman have their own subsections in the section at the end of my draft titled |Modern perspectives. I suspect that F.C. Baur needs to be added in but I need some help summarizing his work.
 * I have several questions...
 * 1) Is the structure of the draft article appropriate? I'm not so interested in presenting history (that should be covered in History of early Christianity) as historiography (how the historical understanding of that era has changed over time).
 * 2) Walter Bauer and Bart Ehrman are the leading proponents of the heterodoxy over orthodoxy perspective. What other "major scholars" need to be presented here?  Is "heterodoxy vs. orthodoxy" the only major debate that should be presented here or are there others?
 * --Richard S (talk) 16:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Richard, I think this is a useful article as an overview. One comment though: because I've been reading about the Reformation, I've realized the controversy over the traditional narrative and the historical began during the Reformation when it was heresy to question the traditional narrative. Protestant churches don't necessarily agree with the traditional narrative, and I think, because the article is about Christianity and not only the Catholic Church, this is a distinction that is necessary to include. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input. I agree.  Can you point me towards information on this topic? --Richard S (talk) 15:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Currently I'm reading Brian Moynahan's God's Bestseller about William Tyndale's translation of the Bible to English. Moynahan explains on a number of pages (for example p. 72) that Tyndale's translation of the word church (from the Greek which I can't recreate here) to "congregation" in English was the ultimate heresy. Because he did not use the word church, he denied the traditional narrative and according to Moynahan, Tyndale stripped "the Church hierarchy of its pretension to be Christ's terrestial representative, and awarded this honor to the individual worshippers who made up each congregation." For this Tyndale was burned, but it became fundamental to Protestantism. I'm currently tied up in the real world and haven't had the time to finish the book (am about 2/3 finished) and to type up notes, but I expect to get that done next week. In the meantime, I hope this is a beginning and helpful. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Please see merge proposal below. Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Historiography of early Christianity
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Historiography of early Christianity's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "ODCC self": From Metropolitan bishop: "metropolitan." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005 From Quest for the historical Jesus: "Historical Jesus, Quest of the." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005 From Pope Clement I: "Clement of Rome, St." Cross, F. L. (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). From Jesus: "Matthew, Gospel acc. to St." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005 From John the Baptist: "John the Baptist, St." In: Cross, F. L. (ed.) (2005) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press From Christianity in the 2nd century: "Clement of Alexandria." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005 From Bishop: "bishop." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005 From Christianity in the 1st century: "Sermon on the Mount." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005</li> <li>From Apostle (Christian): "Apostle." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005.</li> <li>From Paul of Tarsus: "Paul, St" Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005</li> <li>From Gospel of John: "John, Gospel of." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005</li> <li>From Gospel: "Gospel." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005</li> <li>From Historical Jesus: "Historical Jesus, Quest of the." Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.</li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:34, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing
In general, the referencing for this article is abysmal, probably because the articles it summarizes have referencing of the same quality or worse. I'm in the midst of reformatting the references so we can at least figure out which are books vs other, mostly unreliable, sources. I've noticed that in a few places authors are being referenced, but there is no information about what book. In a few places a named ref is being used without a definition (causing red in the references area). I don't know where the information came from, so I can't figure out what the appropriate ref is. Can someone else try to fix those please? Thanks! Karanacs (talk) 19:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll see what I can do to help. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:19, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

what to add?
I'd love to add to this article, especially the lead. My understanding is that this article describes how the history of the early church has been described and by whom. How was it described first? By whom? Then what happened? And so on. Tracking issues over time, that sort of thing. If I'm off-base, tell me. Leadwind (talk) 22:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're on the right track. My interest was primarily on the changes between the Catholic "traditional narrative" and Protestant revisions of that narrative.  I'm also interested in the contrast between the "traditional narrative" and the current thinking of modern, secular historians.  I think it would be useful to explain to the reader how the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library changed the view of historians. --Richard S (talk) 04:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead paragraph
My specialty is leads. I added material to the lead about the 19th century Germans and the 20th century Americans. Leadwind (talk) 17:56, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. First of all, let me comment that writing good lead sections is definitely my Achilles heel.  I hate writing them and writing a good one is like pulling teeth for me.  So, I appreciate any help that I can get.  In that spirit, what follows should not be read as an attack but rather a plea for assistance for which I would be grateful.


 * Here are some thoughts about the current lead. This is not an area that I know a lot about so other editors may wish to weigh in with their opinions if I miss something or go off the rails... --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Early Christianity is commonly known as the Christianity of roughly three centuries (1st, 2nd, 3rd, early 4th) between the Crucifixion of Jesus (c.26–36) and the First Council of Nicaea in 325.


 * The growth of Christianity and its enhanced status in the Roman Empire after Constantine I led to the development of a distinct Christian historiography, influenced by both Christian theology and the nature of the Bible, encompassing new areas of study and views of history. Christian theology considered time as linear, progressing according to divine plan.  As God's plan encompassed everyone, Christian histories in this period had a universal approach. For example, Christian writers often included summaries of important historical events prior to the period covered by the work.


 * The central role of the Bible in Christianity is reflected in the preference of Christian historians for written sources, compared to the classical historians' preference for oral sources and is also reflected in the inclusion of politically unimportant people. Christian historians also focused on development of religion and society. This can be seen in the extensive inclusion of written sources in the Ecclesiastical History written by Eusebius of Caesarea around 324 and in the subjects it covers. Historiography


 * The assertions in the above text are not made in the article and thus this portion of the lead is not summarizing what the article says. We should either create sections in the article that expand on these points or move this text into the article as a separate section. --~


 * Paul Barnett pointed out that "scholars of ancient history have always recognized the 'subjectivity' factor in their available sources" and "have so few sources available compared to their modern counterparts that they will gladly seize whatever scraps of information that are at hand." He noted that modern history and ancient history are two separate disciplines, with differing methods of analysis and interpretation.


 * The text about Barnett's observation is confusing because of the text that precedes it. In the first text we are contrasting "classical historians" and Christian historians starting with Eusebius.  Barnett contrasts "scholars of ancient history" with "modern counterparts".  First of all, who are these "modern counterparts"?  Are they modern scholars of ancient history or are they scholars of modern history?  Secondly, isn't it the case that scholars of early Christianity "have so few sources available ... that they will gadly seize whatever scraps of information that are at hand"?  Which group would Barnett put scholars of early Christianity in?  As "scholars of ancient history" or as "modern counterparts"?


 * NB: I am not disagreeing with any of the assertions being made. I am simply arguing that the assertions are unclear and need to be stated more clearly for the reader to understand what we are trying to say.  (I myself am confused by the current text.) --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The current lead makes a huge leap from Eusebius to the German scholars of the 19th century, skipping over the Reformation's revision of how early Christianity was envisioned. It is crucial, in my mind, that we explain to the reader that assertions about what early Christianity was like and how it evolved into the Catholic Church are crucial to the ecclesiology and theology of all of the branches of Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Restorationist.  I don't know if we would present this but, in contrast, historiography does not seem to be at the center of theological and ecclesiological divides among Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus.  All Christians offer a view of early Christianity which supports their beliefs (or, to put it the other way, their views are based on a particular view of early Christianity). --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thus, when the Orthodox sought to discredit the Pope's authority, they had to offer a history of early Christianity which differed from the "traditional narrative". It's not clear to me when this "different history" began.  The Orthodox argue that it was "always there" from the beginning and that Rome attempted to usurp authority that it had no right to.  When the Protestants sought a similar separation from the Pope, they made a more radical step which (depending on the denomination) moved anywhere from disputing the universal authority of the Bishop of Rome (e.g. in the case of the Anglicans and the Methodists) to disputing the authority of any higher ecclesiastical authority (e.g. in the case of Congregationalists and Baptists).  Reformed Protestants and Restorationists argue that there was a "Great Apostasy" in which the original, foundational principles of early Christianity were abandoned in favor of the hierarchical church which became the Catholic Church.  Clearly, one's model of what primitive Christianity was like will influence your view of what modern-day Christianity should be like.


 * Since the 19th century, historians have learned much more about the early Christian community. Ferdinand Christian Baur applied Hegelian philosophy to church history and described a second-century Christian community fabricating the gospels. Adolf Harnack was the leading expert in patristics, or the study of the Church Fathers, whose writings defined early Christian practice and doctrine. Harnack identified dramatic changes within the Church as it adapted itself to the pagan culture of the Roman Empire. He also affirmed early dates for the gospels, granting them serious historical value.


 * First of all, I think we should state explicitly that much of the pioneer work in the 19th century was done by German scholars such as Baur and Harnack. Secondly, I think we have to be careful here.  There are two kinds of historical thinking and learning.  There is "learning about early Christianity" from source documents such as the gospels, the patristic writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library.  There is also "thinking about early Christianity" which is based on proposing new models and interpretations of early Christianity.  To simply say "historians have learned much more about the early Christian community" suggests that Baur and Harnack are mostly right in their theories and hypotheses.  However, there seems to be a conflict between the two with Baur advocating second-century "fabrication" of the gospels and Harnack "affirming early dates for the gospels".  I think it would be better to suggest that 19th German scholars effected a sea-change in the way that historians looked at early Christianity.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to adequately describe this sea change.  I just know that the phrase "learned much more about the early Christian community" doesn't adequately describe what happened. --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Early texts such as the Didache (in second-millennium copies) and the Gospel of Thomas (in two manuscripts dated as early as about 200 and 340) have been rediscovered in the last 200 years. The Didache, from the first century, provides insight into the Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem church. The Gospel of Thomas apparently reflects the beliefs of 1st-century, proto-gnostic Christians in Syria.


 * Need to mention the Gospel of Judas, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library. Also need to link the proto-Gnostics of the above text with the "diversity of early Christianity" mentioned in the text below. --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * In the 20th century, historians have come to accept Jesus' Jewish identity and that of the apostolic church. The anti-Jewish Jesus of the gospels is now recognized as a later interpretation, as are the universalist themes in Acts and Luke. H. G. Wells, in his Outline of History, depicted Jesus as a man and Christianity as a religion of no divine distinction. Likewise, modern scholars are more likely to see early Christian faith and practice as evolving out the religious beliefs and practices of Jews and Hellenic pagans, rather than standing out in sharp contrast to them.


 * "In the 20th century, historians have come to accept Jesus' Jewish identity and that of the apostolic church." - What? Historians before the 20th century didn't recognize Jesus and the apostolic church as "Jews"?  I think I understand what is being said especially in the light of the text that follows it.  However, I think this whole paragraph is written too tersely.  We would probably be better off to start the paragraph with this sentence: "Modern scholars are more likely to see early Christian faith and practice as evolving out the religious beliefs and practices of Jews and Hellenic pagans, rather than standing out in sharp contrast to them. "  We can then support that assertion with examples. --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * "Scholars such as Bart Ehrman emphasize the diversity of early Christianity, against the traditional account of catholic unanimity."


 * First of all, Bart Ehrman is simply the living scholar who is known in the popular press in association with Elaine Pagels. Their intellectual forefather is Walter Bauer who should be named.  Also, we need to explain what we mean by "diversity of early Christianity, against the traditional account of catholic unanimity".  We should point out that few Christians would accept the assertions of Ehrman and Pagels because most Christians affirm some sort of orthodox early Christianity.  The point that Bauer, Ehrman and Pagels are making is that there were a multiplicity of Christian beliefs, most of which were suppressed and exterminated by the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church.  The Orthodox, Anglicans and most Protestants largely affirm an orthodox Christianity, it's just that their orthodoxy is different from that of the Catholic Church (and for the Orthodox and the Anglicans, it's not that different except in ecclesiology).  To the extent that Protestants allow for heterodoxy, it is usually within the principle that each Christian must interpret the (canonical) Scriptures for himself/herself.  The Mormons take this one step further and assert the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture.  It is the use of non-canonical Scriptures which marks the "diversity of early Christianity" described by Bauer, Ehrman and Pagels (most notably, the Gnostics).


 * One deficiency in the current article is the failure to discuss adequately the Gnostics and the Arians. At the very least, we need to mention the fact that these heterodox forms of Christianity were anathematized by the Church fathers and suppressed by the Church.  Similarly, non-Christian religions such as Manichaeism were viewed as threats to Christianity by some of the Church fathers.  In many cases, what we know about various heresies was for a long time limited to what the Church fathers wrote against them.  This is what made the discovery and decoding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library so important.  Modern scholars were able to analyze the suppressed heresies using their own sacred writings rather than extrapolating from the attacks made against them by the Church fathers.


 * --Richard S (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * My goodness, but that's a lot to respond to.


 * We should mention the rise of humanism, the return to primary texts, and the resulting new history of the Protestant Reformation.


 * I don't have any insight into Eastern Orthodox history.


 * Clearing up the difference between Baur (influential but discredited) and Harnack (of lasting influence) should be made clear.


 * Add whatever references to the Gospel of Judas, etc., that you like. We can always trim for space considerations second.


 * I moved the "evolving beliefs" line to the front of the paragraph.


 * Even when 19th century scholars rejected the divine Jesus, they still took at face value the anti-Jewish Jesus as someone who had fought against the "hidebound" Jewish religion. Jesus' Jewishness was acknowledged in the 70s. If I'm overstating the case, someone correct me, but that's my read.


 * Walter Bauer is a fine add, and I've added him. If educated, mainline Christians oppose Bauer, we could put that in, but I don't have a source for that.


 * We should sure add Manicheanism and Arianism, etc, to the article.


 * Lots of work ahead of us. Leadwind (talk) 02:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Structure of the article
Honestly I'm concerned that the lead is chronological (first this, then that), while the body is topical (one non-chronological topic after another). I'm not sure how to square the two. Leadwind (talk) 20:48, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough.. that's one of the drawbacks of having multiple editors with different visions. I threw this article together by copying stuff from different Wikipedia articles and then Karanacs and Truthkeeper88 worked it over, fixing references and otherwise cleaning it up.


 * My original conception was that the article would be sort of chronological but since the various articles that I drew from were naturally topical, the resulting article wound up being more topical than chronological. We may need to rearrange things to be more chronological.


 * I think a key distinction for all of us to bear in mind is that this is not the article about the History of early Christianity. This article is about historiography... just as you said earlier, who believed what and when.  We do need to discuss the source documents (gospels, patristic writings, Josephus, Tacitus, etc.) but then we need to discuss how views of Christianity changed from the Apostolic Age to the Post-Apostolic Age and then into the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation.  Then, we should end up with the 19th century Germans and modern scholarship.


 * I'd like to hear what other editors think about the best way to structure this article.


 * --Richard S (talk) 21:33, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've only made two edits to replace broken refs, but I'll chime in anyway. I do believe this is a useful article, and wouldn't worry too much about the lead until the organization of the article is established. The lead can be rewritten. Perhaps some more copy/pasting is necessary to bring it into chronological order? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think chronological order makes the most sense, but when I started thinking about how to do that my brain shut down. The article is in many places overly heavy on the recitation of what happened with a lot missing on how it's interpreted today.  This is definitely due to the quality of the other articles.   I'm not even sure how to go about finding the appropriate books for the article. Karanacs (talk) 18:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've chewed on this for a few days, and here's my proposal. First, we cover the sources of early Christian historiography. That's basically what we have now in the article. It's really valuable to have a sum-up page like this. Then we cover the history of historiography, from Acts (the first history of early Christians) to the modern day. That way we first have easy links to all the various articles on individual sources and then also have a good "history of historification," with the concluding section making the modern viewpoint clear. Leadwind (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Here's my latest thinking. The article naturally falls into two parts: first, sources from the early Christian era (epistles, gospels, other writing, etc.); and second, histories of the early Christian era, from Eusebius to today, ending with an overview of historical-critical conclusions. That way we cover all the stuff that armchair historians should know about (the sources), plus an account of how the historical understanding of the early Christian Church has arrived at its present state.

There's a lot of material here that should go or at least be trimmed. There's a long section on historical Jesus, who wasn't even alive during the early Christian period. There are two sections on church fathers. Etc. Leadwind (talk) 04:24, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I started working on this article. It's a monster. Now I think we need three sections: 1, history of early Christianity in brief; 2, sources from early Christian era; 3, histories, starting with Acts (understood as a history rather than as a source). This revision will be a lot of work, and it will involve turning most sections into subsections of one of the three large sections. Stop me now if you have a good reason I shouldn't undertake this task. Leadwind (talk) 20:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Inline-Sources
The article lacks inline sources in many places; some subheadings have no references footnotes at all, some have large passages that are not attributed, while a few sections are fully attributed. For an article that attempts to summarize the reconstruction of controversial history, it is critical that each piece of information be attributed to its original source. A summary style, using the author's name and page number could be used, as this article already has an extensively bibliography at the bottom. --Zfish118 (talk) 17:53, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

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Merge with Early Christianity
Might as well merge for simplicity, to keep what's relevant together in one single article. Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - "Early Christianity" and "Historiography of early Christianity" are entirely different subjects - Historiography is an academic discipline dealing with the methods of historians - completely different from outlining the history of early Christianity itself - "Historiography of early Christianity" needs a separate article because of the large number of early texts from various sources that need to be verified - cheers - Epinoia (talk) 18:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - two different subjects; and this one is already considerably long by itself. Mannanan51 (talk) 01:19, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Closed - only opposes. Johnbod (talk) 18:35, 17 January 2019 (UTC)