The author of The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Christian Church (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1988) and The Early Church: An Annotated Bibliography of Literature in English (Methuen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1993) contests here a series of views that are presented as recent consensuses. In particular, Robinson wants to demonstrate 1) that the notion that Ignatius was embroiled in dissension in the Antiochene church is off base and 2) that Ignatius represents a mainstream position when he radically distinguishes Christianity from Judaism. “The primary concern here is to show where treatments of Ignatius need to be disregarded or refined, and thereby to add to our understanding of the development of the early church” (6). The tone of the entire book is, accordingly, contentious; documentation from the secondary literature is extensive; argumentation is heavily hedged.
A first chapter reviews the history of Antioch and enters the fray of the debate on the exact status of Jews in Greek cities and in this particular city. Robinson argues that scholars have gone astray in the presumption that Diaspora Jews were mostly urban, whereas they were perhaps mostly rural. Scholars have also failed to address the tensions that would have existed among the Antiochene Jews owing to various historical waves of immigration (38).
Chapter 2 is titled “Christian Conversion in Antioch” and argues that conversion of proselytes and God-fearers was significant only at “the first point of contact between the new Christian option and the established Jewish community” (57). The idea that there was a Christian synagogue in Antioch (or elsewhere) is reviewed and declared untenable. Similarly, the notion that there were several separate Christian assemblies in Antioch is judged baseless; the customary assumption of house-churches is examined and considered eclipsed by the “translocal sense of early Christian communities” (86).
Chapter 3, on “Ignatius in Antioch,” opens with a detailed review and refutation of Magnus Zetterholm's theory that the Christian synagogue in Antioch split along Jewish–Gentile lines with the stricter enforcement of the fiscus judaicus. Instead, Ignatius should be seen as the heir of the one Matthean church. Next, studies of Ignatius's “opponents” are reviewed and found wanting in their failure to recognize Ignatius's simple dualism: either one is in the bishop's church or outside it. Attempts to identify various heresies behind Ignatius's remarks are misguided and reflect the incorrect assumption that there was wide diversity among the early Christians.
Chapter 4 treats “Religious and Ethnic Tensions in Antioch” and argues that the emergence of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism (consciously distinguishing itself from Judaism) is reflected in Ignatius's writings in a way that completely mirrors the mainstream of the movement. Contra Bowersock, Christian martyrdom should be understood as an element that Christians took over from this heritage.
Chapter 5, “The ‘Peace’ in Antioch,” seeks to refute the view that the problem in Antioch had been an internal church dispute. It reviews in detail and undercuts the studies of Harrison and Swartley: “For all the reasons presented here, Swartley's thesis must be set aside” (177). Though Robinson fails to present a positive explanation of the situation, he declares that this outcome is “better than a wrong answer” (202).
Chapter 6, “Boundaries, Identity, and Labels,” reviews and refutes the various ways that scholars have attempted to blur the clear boundary between early Christianity and ancient Judaism. A bibliography and indexes of modern authors, names and subjects, and ancient sources follow.
Having completed the book, the reader has the sense of having just endured a three hundred–page tirade against all manner of current opinions on Ignatius as well as on early Christianity in general. This book is not a study that brims with brilliant insights but rather a disgruntled review and detailed dismantling of other scholars' work (described as consensuses, trends, or “contemporary extremism” [206]). The “result” is that the reader is brought back to ground zero or else to a place where somewhat traditional views can reassert themselves in unexamined ways. Often one feels that the undercurrents in the book are actually the dominant ones, and that Ignatius's writings were chosen as something of a proof-text (devoid of special circumstances) for the validity of the undercurrents. One such undercurrent or unexamined overarching notion that seems to hold the assumptions of this book together is the concept of the “Great Church” (introduced with virtually no explanation on pages 77–78; cf. page 78: “Nor is the argument persuasive that there were multiple forms of Christianity at the beginning of the second century that by the middle of the century had congealed into the Great Church”). This denial of diversity in early Christianity is coupled with a tamped down understanding of the house-church. Why not state how one should imagine the meetings of the “church of Antioch”? How about some explanation of the origin and development of the office of bishop? What of the office of “teacher,” which has been the subject of a branch of recent study? Could the trials of Christians have led to such a pronounced understanding of “Christianity” over against “Judaism”? Is it true that for “the Centuries after Ignatius” (108–11) only John Chrysostomus comes up for consideration?
The critique that Robinson brings toward the work of others may be justified (some cases are stronger than others) and may well help advance the field; this type of work seems to be a forte of Robinson that was developed in his 1988 book on Bauer's thesis. Perhaps proponents of “diversity” in early Christianity will be forced to reflect further on how such diversity arose, existed, and looked at ground level within the inner workings of congregations. Nevertheless, one wonders if Robinson's procedure is the most appropriate way of pursuing scholarship, particularly when the positive presentation to fill the created void is so thin. Or if the author is planning such a presentation?
