155 - The Early Christians: Their World Mission and Self-Discovery

The Early Christians: Their World Mission and Self-Discovery

By Ben F. Meyer

Wilmington, Michael Glazier, 1986. 245 Pp. $12.95.

Meyer studies how the Gentile mission emerged from and helped stimulate a self-definition of Christianity not merely as the restored Israel but as a new humanity. He uses the conceptual framework of intentional analysis. His opening and closing chapters summarize and challenge other explanatory schemes for early Christian diversity and unity. Meyer distinguishes between identity (stable and unifying even from the start) and selfdefinition (transposing that identity to new circumstances). In the first instance, the Hellenists provided the active and ideological transition to this most fundamental "transposition." Paul's mission and the soteriology he developed in accompaniment, completed the process. Meyer shares Hengel's great confidence about Acts 1-11 as a historical source but is surprisingly reluctant to use the narrative of Acts 11-15, which is explicitly devoted to this first act of self-definition. The book is uneven but prevailingly literate, with many fine individual statements.

Luke T. Johnson, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.