NT @ Oxford

Students are asked to research and compile their own pertinent bibliographies for each topic, but a brief ‘pump-priming’ list is linked to each essay question below.

1. The Parting of the Ways

• Is it possible to say when and why Christianity became separate from Judaism?

2. “Jewish Christianity”

• Was there a movement of “Jewish” Christianity, and what happened to it?

Primary Sources: Patristic texts on the Ebionites (see Skarsaune 2007); Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27-72

3. Law and Ethics

• Did early Christian ethics derive from Jewish or Greek sources?

Primary Sources: New Testament letters of Paul; Aristides; Epistle to Diognetus

4. Orthodoxy and Heresy

• Was heresy before orthodoxy?

Primary Sources: Irenaeus, Against Heresies; Letters of Ignatius and Polycarp

5. Nag Hammadi and Gnostic forms of Christianity

• Were the Gnostics a Christian sect or cult?

Primary Sources: Irenaeus; Apocryphon of John; Testimony of Truth

6. Apostolic Fathers

• Did the Christian community in Rome think of itself as the apostolic mother church?

Discuss with reference to: Shepherd of Hermas; 1 Clement

7. Apologists

• Is there anything distinctly Christian about Justin’s apologetics?

Primary Sources: Justin, First and Second Apology

• OR: ‘The only belief separating Justin from Trypho is that of Jesus as the Messiah.’ Discuss.

Primary Source: Dialogue with Trypho

8. Ecclesiology

• ‘We have virtually no idea what the Early Christians did at church.’ Discuss.

Primary Sources: 1 Corinthians; Acts; The Didache; New Testament and Early Christian ‘Hymns’; Pliny, Letter 96 to Trajan

rev 10/17