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| Preface | |
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| Introduction: how to use this book | |
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| What is early Christianity and why does it deserve study? | |
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| The shape of early Christianity | |
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| Approaching early Christianity in the twenty-first century | |
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| Tradition and revelation: the historical quest for early Christianity | |
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| Discovering early Christianity in the age of Constantine | |
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| Early Christianity from late antiquity to the middle ages | |
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| Renewal, reform, and the origins of critical scholarship | |
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| The rise of modern scholarship | |
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| Towards modernity: early Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries | |
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| The search for early Christianity: sources and their interpretation | |
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| Christian literature | |
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| Jewish and pagan literature | |
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| Documentary sources and material remains | |
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| Using the sources | |
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| Messiahs and missions: contexts for the origins and spread of Christianity | |
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| Christian origins and the problem of Judaism | |
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| Mission and conversion: the expansion of early Christianity | |
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| Case study: inscriptions and the missionary journeys of Paul | |
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| Doctrine and power: orthodoxy and organization in early Christianity | |
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| How many bishops attended the council of Nicaea? | |
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| The ideal of unity in early Christianity | |
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| Organization and personnel | |
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| Ritual | |
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| Orthodoxy and heresy | |
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| Truth, tradition, text | |
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| Case study: the Nag Hammadi discoveries and early Christianity | |
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| Confronting Babylon: early Christianity and the Roman empire | |
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| An age of persecutions? | |
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| Christian alienation from Roman society | |
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| Christian attitudes to the Roman empire | |
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| Towards Christendom: an uneven progress | |
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| Case study: Pliny the Younger and the Christians | |
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| Discovering early Christianity | |
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| Points of departure | |
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| Source materials | |
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| Specialist journals | |
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| Bibliographical guides to chapters 3-6 | |
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| Notes | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |