The immediate parents of this further contribution to the vexed questions of earliest Christianity from the energetic Markus Vinzent are the more neutrally-labelled Offener Frage: die Enstehung des Christentums in 2. Jahrhundert (Herder, 2019, identified as the copyright holders) – although by the author's own account translation has entailed re-expression, revision and expansion – and Writing the history of early Christianity: from reception to restrospection, Cambridge 2019 (rev. this Journal lxxi [2020], 382–4). That latter volume had challenged the scholarly preoccupation with supposedly accessible forms of texts and individuals considered pivotal for the description of second-century Christianity: Abercius traditions, Hippolytus of Rome, the Ignatian corpus and Aristides's Apology. These case studies themselves, in particular the 200-page-long examination of the different forms of the Ignatian correspondence, drew on and developed Vinzent's previous studies and preoccupations with unsettling the fragility of supposed ‘scholarly consensus’. In particular, he challenged the regular dismissal of ‘later’ forms of these texts, even though these are often those most accessible to us, whose textual, literary and theological context is both known and historically most determinative, and the assumptions that one could and should write their history starting from, and often also remaining with, the ‘authentic beginning’. The present volume takes further the rejection of such forward-driven trajectories, ‘reception’, in favour of a reverse exercise, retrospection – starting from a formative point in the telling of the Christian past, examining the choices made, the sources valued, the concerns and agenda addressed, in order both to ask what had happened in the earlier journey of the telling but also to reinforce the familiar but often-ignored truism that our own setting and priorities shape our perception and redescription of the past.
The approach here is more systematic – the themes addressed from this perspective are those that form the classic triangulation points in conventional accounts of ‘the history of the early church’. The first substantial chapter examines how the origins of Christianity are located on the broader historical stage, in particular in relation to the foundation of the Roman Empire and in consequence to the ‘present’ of the authors concerned, starting with Gregory of Tours and then moving to Orosius, and, surprisingly but not untypically, to the Letters of Paul and Seneca. The second chapter takes us back to Eusebius, focussing on his Chronicle and, in much greater detail, the Ecclesiastical history. Vinzent's goals here are multiform: he shows how the Eusebian model both in outline and in conception, such as the concern with Jewish and Roman history contemporary with Jesus and the first disciples, has offered a template that is still adopted by many even twenty-first-century, perhaps more conservative, accounts. He also shows, in accordance with much recent Eusebian scholarship, just how pervasive and controlling are Eusebius’ own interests and desire to legitimise the shape and the authority structures of the contemporary Church in its relationship initially with the Jews and throughout with ‘paganism’; Eusebius’ appeal to and citation of sources, particularly well-illustrated by his reliance on Josephus (almost to the exclusion of the Gospels) for the period of Jesus’ ministry, work to inspire confidence and to mask other feats of imagination and creative fiction. At the start Vinzent had explained that in an effort at accessibility he was refraining from scholarly debate, but in these two chapters, and at times in those that follow, his narrative makes liberal use of quotations from other specialists in the fields as well as from the primary sources, at times producing a sense of overload of description at the expense of controlled and structured analysis.
Behind Eusebius lies Julius Africanus, whose fragmentarily preserved Chronographiae set the pattern of a synchronised history from creation in which Christianity was to take its place. Vinzent also emphasises the contribution of Origen, particularly in the Against Celsus and the On principles, who used the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to provide a narrative and persuasive framework in which the Church could understand itself and its history; again, the ambiguities in Origen's position and goals, or perhaps the sheer extent of genres, lead to a somewhat bitsy juxtaposition of his emphasis on the spiritual beyond the historical significance, his importance in centring the place of Scripture in any future historically-concerned belief, and on the imbalance in those aspects of church history and life to which Origen might or might not pay attention. In contrast with Origen stands Tertullian, although here Vinzent has only bare bones to trace, and the reader may begin to suspect that his choice of pivotal figures is after all no less determined by conventional histories ‘from the beginning’. Hence it is no surprise that Vinzent then moves to Irenaeus and in particular to the emergence of the canonical New Testament, allowing him to retread ground he has excavated before about the origins of the Gospels and of the Four-Gospel canon, with approval of the work of Trobisch, a reiteration of the priority of Marcion's ‘New Testament’, and emphasis on Irenaeus’ seminal creative and decisive role in establishing an alternative entity, to be read not in its constituent elements but as a whole, as authoritative for any Christian identity.
The following two chapters appear, then, to be where we have been heading from the start, with Vinzent's own voice and ‘new theory’ becoming much more insistent. In terms of the agenda set by eventual forms of the textual tradition the question is whether the ‘Praxapostolos’ (i.e. Acts and the so-called Catholic Epistles) or the Pauline Epistles (Marcion's Apostolikon) have priority (after the Gospels). These provoke, or permit, the reconstructive questions in what ways the former, and in particular Acts, provides a lens for reading the latter, already in Irenaeus; indeed, contrary to Marcion's interpretation of Galatians as the immediate successor of the Gospel, was Acts already designed to provide a narrative setting for reading Paul's letters in continuation with the Gospel(s), and hence a narrative of the early Jesus movement? As if to balance this preoccupation with the canonical texts, which might seem to undermine some of Vinzent's initial premisses, he then reviews more briefly the Epistle of the Apostles and the Apocryphal Acts as alternative attempts to retell the beginnings of the movement. A similar move opens the final and longest chapter (76pp.), which returns to Paul, starting with a brief account of the Acts of Paul. A further brief review of the Ignatian letters, counterintuitively ending with the ‘long’ twelve- or thirteen-letter recension, here leads into a lengthy discussion of how the Pauline collection itself may have developed, and in the variations in the picture of Paul and of his place in the early Christian movement, according to the sequence of the letters, which varies in the textual tradition, in patristic reports, and in Marcion's edition, as well as whether the Pastorals (or the Deuteropauline Eph., Coloss., 2 Thess.) are included. That the outcome is tentative, not strikingly innovative in noting the primary theological themes addressed, and that it lacks overall direction may raise questions as to the viability of the exercise or suggest that there is more work to be done. This is reinforced by the concluding ‘Outlook: how were things actually?’, which, despite a concern with Marcion (whose picture Vinzent admits to be ‘a rather gloomy one’), does not seem very different from the thumbnail sketch that many of Vinzent's more teleological colleagues would provide: there is no ‘dogmatically closed beginning’ but only a ‘black box into which we can project further ideas about ourselves’ which hopefully should ‘serve a world less centred on division’ (p. 333).
Throughout his wealth of recent publications on early Christianity, Vinzent has done much to urge his colleagues to ‘think outside the box’. He combines an impressive range, often introducing unexpected sources and insights, with a commitment to close reading of the texts. At times the speed of the journey, and perhaps of his research and writing, result in over-statements or prejudged but not yet persuasive suggestions, and even occasional carelessness in presentation. His initial hope for accessibility may not prove to be fulfilled, and no doubt readers may focus on the chapters that particularly capture their attention or play in to current debates. Yet the idea that has inspired the book is an intriguing one; the encouragement for us to question the origins of our pre-set models and frameworks, and the call to explore how our predecessors have told the story are well-made and invite the engagement and debate that will surely follow.
