Martin Hengel - Earliest Christianity

In reading Hengel's useful book (a compilation of Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity and Property and Riches in the Early Church) I made several notes of key quotes and remarks:

‘For all his tendentious distortions, Luke’s contribution to the historical understanding of Paul is essentially greater than many scholars want to suppose today. Paul’s origins in Tarsus, his link with Jerusalem, the significance of Antioch and of Barnabas for the early Paul, the sequence of Paul’s letters, the length of his stay in his missionary centres and the chronology of his activity – all these and much else would be completely or largely unknown to us without Acts’.
Martin Hengel, Earliest Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1986), 38-39.

'Luke is no less trustworthy than other historian of antiquity. People have done him a great injustice in comparing him too closely with the edifying, largely fictitious, romance-like writings in the style of the later acts of the apostles, which freely invent facts as they like and when they need them.’
Martin Hengel, Earliest Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1986), 60.

‘His account remains within the limits of what was considered reliable by the standards of antiquity. That means that the author’s assurance in Luke 1.3 is more than mere convention; it contains a real theological and historical programme, though this cannot be measured by the standards of a modern critical historian.’
Martin Hengel, Earliest Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1986), 61.

‘By depicting the Jewish Christians, including Paul, as essentially faithful to the law, Luke – against the historical situation of his time – is trying to say that the Christians are the true Israel and that the break with Judaism (i.e. with the community organized in the synagogue congregations of the Diaspora) was not caused by Christians, but by Jews (Acts 28.26ff.). The Christians had not left the synagogues of their own accord but had been driven out of them by force.’
Martin Hengel, Earliest Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1986), 63-64.

‘The favourite slogan and label “early Catholicism” is less helpful for understanding Luke; it cannot really make any contribution to a historical and theological understanding of earliest Christianity. On the contrary, it fits all too well with today’s widespread desire for handy clichés. As far as Luke is concerned, both his enthusiastic conception of the spirit and his understanding of the ministry of the church, which at least outside of Jerusalem still did not have any hierarchical structure, fail to match the label … The auctor ad Theophilum is oriented more on the past period of Christian origins than on the arrival of the second century.'
Martin Hengel, Earliest Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1986), 65.