Christianity in the Making, vol. 2: Beginning From Jerusalem

by James D. G. Dunn

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2009

Overview

Beginning from Jerusalem covers the early days of the Christianity from 30 to 70 AD. After outlining the quest for the historical church (parallel to the quest for the historical Jesus) and reviewing the sources, James Dunn follows the course of the movement stemming from Jesus.

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Contents

Top Highlights

“So we should probably also infer that the meals were not for believers only, ‘closed’ to ‘outsiders’, but were open, as had been Jesus’ table-fellowship, with acquaintances and inquirers readily welcome to participate and thus to hear more about Jesus. Such meals may well have been as effective evangelistically as the more formal preaching.” (Pages 199–200)

“First, why baptism at all? If we read Luke-Acts in straight sequence, there has been no forewarning that baptism would be a feature in the sequel which is Acts.” (Page 185)

“One is how to bridge the gap (or gulf) between Jesus and Paul: to explain how it was that Jesus’ message of the kingdom became Paul’s gospel of the crucified Jesus as Lord; how Jesus, the preacher of the good news, became its content; how the gospel of Jesus became the gospel about Jesus. The other puzzle or challenge is to explain how a Jewish sect became a Gentile religion: how a mission so much within the diversity of Second Temple Judaism became a movement which broke through the boundaries marking out that Judaism to emerge as a predominantly Gentile religion; how a kingdom preaching so much directed to the restoration of Israel became a claim by Gentiles to participate in, even to take over, Israel’s name and heritage.” (Page 17)

“The strength of setting Paul and Luke in contrast is that Paul was himself actively involved in several of the key decisions which proved formative of Christianity, both its expansion and its theology. His testimony inevitably stands to the fore.¹⁸⁴ The weakness of such a contrast between Paul and Luke is its forgetfulness that Paul was a controversial figure in that expansion and a passionate exponent of an understanding of the gospel, and of its implications, which other believers in Messiah Jesus found it hard fully to accept. Paul, in other words, cannot be regarded as a dispassionate witness in what he records.¹⁸⁵ Luke of course had his own perspective on the events he records. But so had Paul!” (Page 98)

Product Details

• Title: Beginning from Jerusalem
• Author: James D. G. Dunn
• Series: Christianity in the Making
• Volume: 2
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2009
• Logos Release Date: 2014
• Pages: 1370
• Era: era:Contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Church history › Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Bible. N.T. › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9780802839329, 0802839320
• Resource ID: LLS:BGNNNGJRSLM
• Resource Type: text.monograph.church-history
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:12:39Z

About James D. G. Dunn

James D. G. Dunn (1939–) is emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and is a leading British New Testament scholar. Dunn is a significant proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, and coined the term in a 1982 lecture. He received a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge, and a MA and BD from the University of Glasgow. In 2002 he became only the third British scholar to be made the president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

His recent works include Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence, A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed, the volumes Romans 1–8 and Romans 9–16 of the Word Biblical Commentary, and The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon in The New International Greek Testament Commentary (12 vols.).