Political History of Early Christianity

Professor Allen Brent, formerly Professor in History, James Cook University of North Queensland, Australia, now member of the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Senior Member of St. Edmund's College. His books include Cultural Episcopacy and Ecumenism (Brill 1992), Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century (Brill 1995), The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order (Brill 1999).

• Preface Abbreviations for Journals Standard Works of Reference Abbreviations for Ancient Authors Chapter 1. The Jesus of History and his Movement, and the Politics of his Day. Chapter 2. The First Confrontation with Paganism under Nero and the Markan Community. Chapter 3. The Political Theology of the Augustan Revolution: Cosmic Reconstruction. Chapter 4. John the Seer's Apocalyptic Response: an attack on Augustan Cosmic Reconstruction. Chapter 5. Early Christain Cosmic Re-ordering: ST. Luke, Clement and Ignatius. Chapter 6. The Apologists and the Politics of the Trinity: Logos and Cosmology. Chapter 7. Cyprian against Decius: Opposing Eschatologies and the Creation of a State within the State. Chapter 8. Constatntine, the Divine Order of the Christian Emprie and its European Legacy.

Allen Brent's Political History of Early Christianity is breath-taking and ground-breaking. He argues that the Jesus Movement, from its earliest days until it blossomed into the officially sanctioned Christianity of the Roman Empire under Constantine at the start of the fourth century, was inextricably linked to and in tension with the political concerns of wider culture. However, Brent demonstrates that this does not reduce Jesus and the movement that evolved in his name to a group of mere social revolutionaries. Rather, the value-inverting and world-negating philosophy they espoused stemmed from deep-seated apocalyptic beliefs. Brent is master of four centuries of Christian history and deploys this knowledge to build a case that is convincing and compelling. A first-rate book from a first rate-scholar.