James McGrath posts a diagram on diversity and development in the early church by Darrell Pursiful (modified from Raymond Brown). I think the diagram is okay, but the problem is that Hebraic/Hellenistic can and do overlap (let's not return to Baur, Bultmann et al), Peter is part of the Hebraic tradition, and even the John tradition is also Hebraic. Can anyone come up with a better diagram that visibly displays diversity and development in the early church?
5 comments:
Shouldn't there be overlapping spheres.
Hi Michael,
You're absolutely right about the terminology. Properly speaking, all first-century Christianity is thoroughly "Hebraic," fully immersed in Jewish thought forms and worldviews. At the same time, all Judaism in the first century was also "Hellenistic," as Hengel demonstrates in his Hellenism and Judaism. Overlapping spheres (as per Jimmy) would probably work better, but I'm not that good a designer. :-)
The Unity is Jesus and therefore while we benefit from distinguishing the different shades highlighted in the 4 Gospels, the most fruitful approach will be the overlapping of them over one person. This sort of centered overlapping is the continued goal of the remainder of the prophetic scriptures of the New Testament. I Think this approach would be expected by the authors who maybe on different sides of a round table but are all pointing to the person in the center.
That's a nice way to put it, Jeff.
I do find one trajectory to be lacking:
http://sxcari.blogspot.com/2010/06/diversity-in-nt-era-in-picture-form-and.html
Read JDG Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (vol 3).....
Frederik
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