The Birth of Christianity: the first twenty years after Jesus.

• Author: Bond, Helen K.

The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years after Jesus, vol. 1. By PAUL BARNETT. Grand Rapids, Michigan: WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO., 2005. Pp. x + 230. $15 (paper).

The thesis of this short and accessible book is straightforward: the miracle-working, messianic Jesus of the gospels is historical, and the "high Christology" proclaimed by Paul was consonant with Christian preaching from the earliest period. The "first twenty years" of Christianity were not a blank space in which traditions could be "corrupted" by association with Gentiles or altered due to post-Easter reflection, but a time of careful handing down of traditions, many of which assumed written form during Jesus' lifetime.

Barnett employs a number of arguments to sustain his thesis. He puts the death of Jesus at 33 C.E. and argues that the first Pauline letter was Galatians, which he dates to approximately 48, thus immediately reducing the gap between Jesus and written texts to a mere fifteen years. Paul received his theology (including the concept of righteousness by faith), we are told, from the apostles in Damascus shortly after his conversion in 34. There is no great theological development in Paul's letters, though Barnett will allow a certain amount of "contextual adjustment" (p. 8) and variation due to different co-authors. As evidence, he cites Acts, in which Peter, Stephen, and Paul all speak with the same Christological outlook (p. 77).

The historicity of Acts is therefore crucial to the book's reconstruction, though detailed discussion of this matter is reserved for an appendix. Barnett accepts that Luke-Acts is "highly selective," though his main criticism is that the author devotes nine chapters to what he believes to be the extremely brief period between Jesus and Paul. The author of Acts, he maintains, was a companion of Paul who finished his work shortly after Paul's arrival in Rome (c. 60 C.E.); he is therefore to be regarded as a primary source equal to the apostle. (And sometimes his perspective may even be "superior to Paul's own," p. 16.) Speeches of the apostles are seen as virtually verbatim accounts, and little allowance is made for Luke's own situation or particular concerns (which, even if his work is as early as Barnett maintains, would still have been considerable). There is little attempt to engage with some of the serious historiographical problems raised by Luke-Acts; the census of Luke 2; the "trial" of Stephen; the "great persecution"...