In Search of the Early Christians: Selected Essays

A central figure in the reconception of early Christian history over the last three decades, Wayne A. Meeks offers here a selection of his most influential writings on the New Testament and early Christianity. His essays illustrate recent changes in our thinking about the early Christian movement and pose provocative questions regarding the history of this period.

Meeks explores a fascinating range of topics, from the figure of the androgyne in antiquity to the timeless matter of God’s reliability, from Paul’s ethical rhetoric to New Testament pictures of Christianity’s separation from Jewish communities. Meeks’ introduction offers a retrospective on New Testament studies of the past thirty years and explains the intersection of these studies with a variety of exploratory and revisionist movements in the humanities, embracing social theory, history, anthropology, and literature. In an epilogue the author reflects on future directions for New Testament scholarship.