In their very brief introduction to this massive handbook, its editors, Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, note that where early Christian studies (once exclusively known as ‘patristics’, and here understood as the study of Christianity from the immediately post-New Testament period to 600 ce) had once been considered no more than a subspecialty of ecclesiastical history, it is now to be regarded as a ‘fully interdisciplinary endeavour embracing the fields of Classics, Ancient History, Theology, Religious Studies, Art History and Archaeology, among others’. The appearance of such a handbook is justified, they claim, in part to take account of this recent shift in emphasis, and in part because of increased specialisation within the subject which often means that an expert in one part of it is, of necessity, ignorant of the fault lines of study in another. The essays, they claim, will act as an aid to research, a useful starting-point, both for beginners and for more seasoned scholars.

The volume is divided into eight different parts. Part i, ‘Prolegomena’, includes contributions from Elizabeth Clarke (‘From patristics to early Christian studies’), Mark Vessy (‘Literature, patristics, early Christian writing’) and Karen L. King (‘Which early Christianity’). Part ii, ‘Evidence, material and textual’, includes essays by Mark Humphries (‘Archaeology’), Robin Jensen (‘Visual culture’), William Tabernee (‘Epigraphy’) and Ralph P. Mathisen (‘Palaeography and codicology’). Part iii, ‘Identities’ is made up of pieces by Andrew S. Jacobs (‘Jews and Christians’), Michele R. Salzman (‘Pagans and Christians’), Antti Marianen (‘Gnosticism’), Samuel Lieu (‘Manichaeism’), J. Rebecca Lyman (‘Arius and Arians’) and Matthew Lamberigts, (‘Pelagius and the Pelagians’). Part iv, ‘Regions’, consists of essays by Mark Humphries (‘The west 1: Italy, Gaul, and Spain’), Eric Rebillard (‘The west 2: North Africa’), Raymond Van Damm (‘The east 1: Greece and Asia Minor’), David Brakke (‘The east 2: Egypt and Palestine’) and Lucas Van Rompay (‘The east 3: Syria and Mesopotamia’). Parts v and vi comprise respectively ‘Structures and authorities’ and ‘Expressions of Christian culture’. Contributions here come from the pens of Karen J. Torjesen (‘Clergy and laity’), Michael W. Holmes (‘The biblical canon’), Everett T. Ferguson (‘Creeds, councils, and canons’), Harold A. Drake (‘Church and empire’), Ross Shepard Kraemar (‘Women and gender’), J. William Harmless (‘Monasticism’), Stephen J. Shoemaker (‘Early apocryphal literature’), Mark Edwards (‘Apologetics’), Wendy Mayer (‘Homiletics’), William Adler (‘Early Christian historians and historiography’), Susan Ashbrook Harvey (‘Martyr passions and hagiography’), a series of contributions on hymnography in its different geographical locales from Michael J. Roberts, John A. McGuckin and Sebastian Brock, and a contribution from Hubertus R. Drobner (‘Philosophy’). The last two parts (vii and viii), ‘Ritual, piety, and practice’ and ‘Theological themes’, consist of contributions from Maxwell E. Johnson (‘Christian initiation’), Daniel Sheerin (‘Eucharistic liturgy’), Columba Stewart (‘Prayer’), Rebecca Krawiec (‘Asceticism’), Allan D. Fitzgerald (‘Penance’), Richard M. Price (‘Martyrdom and the cult of the saints’), Georgis Frank (‘Pilgrimage’), Frances M. Young (‘Interpretation of Scripture’), Lewis Ayres and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (‘Doctrine of God’), Brian E. Daley (‘Christ and Christologies’), Paul M. Blowers (‘Doctrine of creation’) and Francine Cardiman (‘Early Christian ethics’). The final essay is a guide to ‘Tools of the trade’ by Joseph F. Kelly and Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent, introducing readers to important reference works, collections of critical editions, encyclopaedias, journals etc. relevant to the volume's subject. Each contribution consists of an account of the status quaestionis of the subject under discussion, some suggestions for future research, a very brief bibliographic essay and a bibliography of varying length.

The volume certainly succeeds in reflecting significant shifts and changes in the study of early church history, characterised by Elizabeth Clarke as a movement from patristics to early Christian studies. Clarke, in her wide-ranging and lucid contribution, accounts for this change by drawing attention to shifts in the way religion has been taught in North America (the creation of avowedly secular departments of religion in a number of universities after the Second World War), and the creation of various associations and book series which ‘provided a venue for scholarship from non-traditional stand-points’, influenced by the social sciences, literary theory, gender studies and aspects of post-modernity more generally. In all of this, the history of early Christianity is no longer construed as the account of an evolving, single narrative, whose telling consists in the description of the thoughts of a series of elite men, and which ends in some presumed triumph, understood in strongly theological (not to say, teleological) terms. Rather the study of early Christianity becomes more an attempt to present the multifarious and complex character of the movement, captured often in terms of meanings and representations rather than religious beliefs and doctrines (in this context it should be noted that the section on theology comes right at the end of the volume, although such a position should not be taken to be a sign of its insignificance), whose heterogeneity reflected particular geographic and social contexts, and whose ever-shifting and multiply-reconstructed identities cannot be accounted for by reference to some essential core, as, for instance Harnack, and by another, more controversial route, Bauer thought it could (both scholars make frequent appearances in the volume), a point made by a number of contributors, but particularly strongly by Karen King. Significant also in such an approach is the strong sense in which Christians should not be seen as always the exception, but rather as integrated inhabitants of late antiquity, often reflecting, in a distinctive way, shifts and changes in the wider Graeco-Roman world (Salzman's essay is a bold statement of this thesis as she seeks to overcome what she takes to be the conflict model of Christian-pagan relations; and Vessey's brilliantly subtle presentation of a not dissimilar thesis). Reflecting this shift, no doubt inadequately described by the reviewer, many of the essays helpfully begin by critiquing what they take to be out-dated mono-narratives of their subject, indicating, both from a theoretical and empirical point of view, why such accounts will not do. Following on from this there is often a clear account of more recent approaches to the subject with informed critique, rounded off with suggestions for future research. As should be the case in such a volume, contributors seek to bring order to the mess and disorder of secondary comment without, normally, seeking to impose a particular view of the subject upon the reader, except often for affirming how it will not sit with a particular answer, an opinion in itself, but not one over-bearingly stated. To those who like their ‘patristics’ embalmed in more traditional substances, it would be quite wrong for a reviewer to imply that the volume is only informative at the more theoretical level. Most of the essays are informative also at the factual level, although some much more so than others (Tabernee on epigraphy, Mathisen on palaeography and codicology, and Adler on historiography are less taken up with theory and more with straight information), and all conclude with helpful bibliographies and general guides to reading.

In many ways the appearance of this volume is timely (unlike many of the handbooks which at present seem to trip off the presses of academic publishing houses). It seems in general to reflect the wide-ranging and many-sided character of its subject (hence its excusable length) and does so with clarity and learning. Any student intent upon engaging in research on an aspect of the field of early Christian studies would do well to start here (and with The Cambridge history of Christianity, vol. i), in the company of distinguished scholars in thoughtful mode.