Review of First Urban Christians by Wayne Meeks
I just reread Wayne Meeks’ The First Urban Christians for the third time. It gets better each time and I am always impressed with his breadth of knowledge, theoretical sophistication, and self-awareness. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Christian origins. He starts with a few theoretical considerations and underlines the importance of social theory. In chapter one he offers a concise but thorough sketch of Pauline communities. This is a great resource for anyone studying the letters of Paul. In my opinion a person can do no better than read these fifty pages on early Pauline communities. Chapter two examines the social status/level of Pauline Christians. His basic point is that the early Christians were a good cross-section of the Greco-Roman world and not just from the lower classes. This is an important corrective to popular presentations of early Christianity. In chapter three, he looks at the formation of Pauline house churches and their general ethos. One important point is that they were very mission-minded. He goes as far as to say that the early Christians saw the outsider as a potential insider. Chapter four explores Paul’s conflicts and his source of authority and governance over his communities. Chapter five looks at early Christian rituals, which he sees as having its own grammar and syntax. The final chapter concerns the Christian pattern of life. He argues that there was a certain confidence about Christians in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He ends his book with the following quote:
Those odd little groups in a dozen or so cities of the Roman East were engaged, though they would not have put it quite this way, in constructing a new world. In time, more time that they thought was left, their ideas, their images of God, their ways of organizing life, their rituals, would become part of a massive transformation, in ways they could not have foreseen, of the culture of the Mediterranean basin and of Europe.
As one can already tell by my tone, I loved this book. This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about Christian origins and Pauline communities. It shows that Paul was a completely urban person and how he conducted ministry in some of the chief urban centers of the Greco-Roman world. It also offers a good snapshot of life in these cities. Meeks also shows the importance of missions to the fledgling group. He could have actually made this point stronger by showing that for the most part the idea of converting people did not exist in the ancient world. The only exception is possibly Judaism and Epicureanism. Finally, he shows how these groups of urban dwellers unknowingly transformed the world. What an amazing point.