Peter, Stephen, James, and John: Studies in Non-Pauline Diversity in the Early Church
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
It is plain from Paul’s writings that presentations of the Christian message other than his own were current during his apostolic career. This concise and scholarly study describes four of the non-Pauline movements in the early church, each of which can be identified with a particular leader: Peter, acknowledged leader of the apostles; Stephen and the Hellenists (Jews who spoke Greek culturally and linguistically); James and the Church of Jerusalem; and John and his circle, including his influence at Ephesus. It is easy to view the early church through the eyes of Paul because so much of the New Testament contains his letters. This book, however, gives a sense of the diversity in the early church. F. F. Bruce gives New Testament readers a better historical understanding of the non-Pauline traditions. If you want to properly understand Paul, you need to understand historical context. This text does the job. Bruce comes to terms with pluralism in the early church’s understanding of the person and work of Christ. The chapters reflect a great deal of compression and merit concentrated study.
Top Highlights
“In some strands of the Synoptic record these twelve men are called ‘apostles’.2 This term, from the Greek apostoloi, ‘messengers’, probably indicates that (like its supposed Hebrew counterpart šelîhîm, ‘agents’)3 the people so designated were invested with their sender’s authority for the discharge of their commission, that this authority was derived from him and was not intended to be inherent in themselves, and that it could not be transferred by them to others.” (Page 15)
“Presumably they did in some degree fulfil their commission, but, so far as historical evidence goes, their fulfilment of it remains almost entirely unrecorded.” (Page 19)
“The writings of Paul are our earliest datable Christian documents.” (Page 14)
“Strictly, Peter was no more founder of the Roman church than Paul was, but in Rome, as elsewhere, an apostle who was associated with a church in its early days was inevitably claimed as its founder.” (Pages 46–47)
“Paul certainly indicates that he regarded James as an apostle. If we were compelled to understand his words otherwise, they could be construed differently—as though he meant, ‘I saw none of the other apostles, but I did see James the Lord’s brother’—but this is a less natural construction to put on them.151 Unlike Luke, Paul does not confine the designation ‘apostles’ to the twelve. He claims to be an apostle himself, exercising an apostleship as valid as that of those who were apostles before him (cf. Galatians 1:17).” (Page 89)