Wayne A. Meeks

The First Urban Christians. The Social World of the Apostle Paul

In this classic work, Wayne A. Meeks analyzes the earliest extant documents of Christianity--the letters of Paul--to describe the tensions and the texture of life of the first urban Christians. In a new introduction, he describes the evolution of the field of New Testament scholarship over the past twenty years, including new developments in fields such as archaeology and social history.

The Social Context of Pauline Theology

Biblical theology ought to find relevant to its task the whole story, if it can be learned, of the formation and reformation of the people for whom and by whom the biblical writings were made.

Why Study the New Testament

‘New Testament studies’, as most of us learned the discipline, depends on some fundamental assumptions: that scientific history leads us toward objective, secure knowledge of the past; that careful method can unlock the real meaning of a stable text; that we have an audience who genuinely care what we say. Every one of these assumptions has become problematic. For the future, we must not give up on historical research, but we must think more urgently about what it means to write history well. In our role as teachers of Christian communities, we need to examine ways in which texts are used , rediscovering the formative uses in place of an almost exclusive stress by ‘biblical theology’ on the normative . Finally, acknowledging the demise of Christendom, we must seek to engage an ever larger circle of discussion partners, seeking to overcome our isolation within the academy and within a world that has grown rapidly more diverse even as it has become astonishingly smaller.

Understanding Early Christian Ethics

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And Rose up to Play: Midrash and Paraenesis in 1 Corinthians 10:1-22

The logic of Paul’s counsel to the Corinthian Christians about &dquo;meat offered to idols&dquo; has long troubled interpreters. A particularly difficult problem has been the relation of 1 Corinthians 10:1-22 to the rest of chapters 8-10. In these verses Paul appears to adopt an absolute prohibition of contact with pagan cults, but that accords ill with his more lenient stand in chapter 8 and in 10:23-31. Moreover, the sequence of thought in 10:1-22 has not been completely clear, either. How

Assisting the word by making (up) history Luke's project and ours

The project of the first Christian historian stands as a parable of the successes and failures of all subsequent attempts to provide a reliable basis for faith by constructing a history right down to our own postmodern struggles. Though we lack Lukes confidence, we cannot escape the necessity of making up the best history we can in order to “assist the Logos of God.”

Church, Book, and Bishop: Conflict and Authority in Early Latin Christianity.@@@Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World.

* Introduction * Order over Error * Tertullian * Leadership: Bishops, Councils, and Emperors * Augustine * Authority and Humility * Conclusion

The Moral World of the First Christians

This volume in the Library of Early Christianity examines the ethics and morality of the earliest Christians. The Library of Early Christianity is a series of eight outstanding books exploring the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts in which the New Testament developed.