Redescribing Christian Origins.

• Author: Ellens, J. Harold
• Position: Book review

Redescribing Christian Origins. Edited by RON CAMERON and MERRILL P. MILLER. SBL Symposium Series, vol. 28. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2004. Pp. xvi + 539. $49.95 (paper).

Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller have edited a provocative and illuminating volume of essays on ancient myths and modern theories of Christian origins. The articles included here challenge traditional assumptions, models, and paradigms by trying innovative new images in terms of which to screen the rise of the Jesus Movement and the Christian faith. They suggest that Christian origins can be accounted for best by seeing the movement in social anthropological terms as reflexive social experiment(s). This cuts across the established notions that the historical Jesus or dramatic personal efforts to come to terms with him, the human quest for God or grappling with perceptions of transcendence, or exotic religio-spiritual or para-psychological experience lie at the root of Christian beginnings. So we have here a genuinely new universe of discourse opened for us, and it launches a critical assessment of the history and research on early Christianities.

Besides the contributions of the editors, the book includes work by the following notable scholars, among others: Burton L. Mack, Jonathan Z. Smith, William E. Arnal, Christopher R. Matthews, and Luther H. Martin. The book consists of four parts, with thirty-two substantial chapters by twelve authors. Part one describes "Alternate Beginnings: The Sayings of Gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas." It addresses such issues as the schooling of a Galilean Jesus, why Q failed, ancient interpretations of the Gospel of Thomas, Chreia, and Mimesis. Part two is entitled "A Jesus School in Jerusalem" and discusses the early Jerusalem church, diaspora myths of Christian origins, a Jewish Jesus school in Jerusalem, and the historiography of Christian origins in the Jerusalem community. Part three offers an assessment of pre-Pauline notions on Christos, leading to the use of its substitute Kyrios. That is, it deals with issues relating to the myth of messianism associated with Jesus, as Christ. The final part provides meta-reflections on historiography or exegesis, myth-making and social theory, and summary.

This volume is a report on a working dialogue among the association of scholars who meet at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) annual convention to study "Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins" (AAMTCO)...