While introductions to nearly every field of theological study have proliferated in recent decades, generations of students and teachers of ‘the Early Church’ necessarily have relied on Henry Chadwick’s The Early Church (London 1967 and many reprints), whose staying power is a testimony to its achievement, particularly within a series (the Pelican History of the Church) accessible to a wider, ‘interested’, audience. That in part explains why few since have attempted to repeat the endeavour, but perhaps more inhibiting has been bewilderment as to the feasibility of the whole enterprise after years in which the emphasis has been on diversity, silenced voices, discoveries of new texts or re-readings of familiar ones, all of which undermine confidence in the label ‘the Church’, together with unease about telling a story whose inevitable outcome is ‘the Constantinian Church’. One might speculate why that self-imposed restraint has recently been relaxed without returning to the triumphant ‘Church’: 2023 saw the publication of Hartmut Leppin’s The early Christians: from the beginnings to Constantine (Cambridge), the English translation of his 2019 Die frühen Christen: von den Anfängen bis Konstantin (München), followed in 2024 by Joyce E. Salisbury’s The first Christian communities, 32–380 CE: quiet Christians, visible martyrs, and compelling texts (Abingdon), and now the volume under review. Each adopts different methods and perspectives, although they share an avoidance of a relentless chronological and institutional march, and a preference for a more thematic structure which allows for different voices, interpretations and practices to be laid before the reader. While Leppin very much reflects his background as a historian of the classical and late antique periods, those familiar with Frederiksen’s other work will recognise her initial and formative emphasis on Jewish apocalyptic ideas as framing the responses of the earliest followers of Jesus, and her acknowledged debt to Peter Brown, Elizabeth Clark, Ramsay MacMullen and others, visible in emphases on identity, ‘the other’ and social functions of texts, as well as on the broader intellectual and cultural context. Having started with ‘The idea of Israel’, which stretches from Second Temple Jewish identities through the sorry tale of Christian anti-Judaism to the ambiguous status of the Jews within a Christian empire, she moves to the ‘Dilemmas of diversity’, tracing the increasing intolerance towards divergent theological views and delineation of ‘heresy’, alongside an exploration of the notions of the divine or of gender which underlie these divergencies; here the spokespeople are Valentinus, Marcion and Justin Martyr followed by Mani and Pelagius and their detractors. A chapter on ‘Persecution and martyrdom’ locates the discussion within the context of classical ideas of the relationship between the divine and civic well-being, and steers a careful course between narration of known episodes of persecution and a healthy agnosticism about our ability to rediscover actual events and numbers: more important are the social function and effect of the surviving texts, and the lasting ideological world view which they sustained. Inevitably more focused on ideas and controversies with a forward trajectory towards Christian ideas of heaven and hell is the chapter on ‘The future of the end’; whereas the following ‘Christ and empire’, an exploration of the progression of the description of Jesus as ‘Son of God’ towards the fourth-century debates over divine unity and over the nature of the person of Jesus, is most interested in the course of imperial interventions during the latter part of the period. A chapter on the ‘Redemption of the flesh’ is largely focused on attitudes and practices relating to asceticism and especially sexual renunciation, although it also encompasses some of the debates associated with Origen and others about the nature of the soul and the status of flesh. Throughout most of these chapters Fredriksen is primarily interested in conveying what can be learned from the sources, and in locating the major contributors to the various debates. The actual experience and practices of ‘ordinary Christians’, which constitute a major concern for Leppin, who makes use of material as well as literary sources, and to a less systematic degree Salisbury, only really surface in the final substantial chapter on ‘Pagan and Christian’; this explores the pillars of popular religiosity, especially surrounding ‘magic’, daimones and rituals, and the evidences of the persistence of these within Christian communities despite the best efforts of authorities and councils; this serves as a preface to the ways in which contemporary ideas and celebrations were creatively absorbed into Christian practice, and to concluding reflections on the fluid boundaries in identity and practice between the constructed oppositional categories of the chapter’s heading. A final summative conclusion leads from the plurality of the title to ‘imperial Christianity … as the defining religion of the empire’ – a somewhat more decisive teleological climax than Leppin’s more open-ended account.

Ancient Christianities is evidently intended for the serious lay person and for undergraduate and masters’ students – whether personally religious or not – with an open and accessible style, and the absence of obfuscatory technical terms. This is reinforced at the end by the inclusion of a time-line and a glossary of potentially unfamiliar people, events, texts and positions; there are no footnotes, although primary sources are quoted on occasion, but there is an extensive list of ‘supplementary reading’ (pp. 223–43), organised by chapter, citing with occasional comment the major contributions (Anglophone) which evidently underlie Fredriksen’s confident narrative, and which those wishing to know more would need to consult, along perhaps with Leppin’s magisterial volume. Each chapter starts with a paragraph introducing the main theme, with contested questions of the time or with the tensions already in the earliest sources. Readers accustomed to the more traditional accounts might regret the lack of interest in baptismal, eucharistic or catechetical practices, or in mission or the development of structures of ministry or of canon; the book is not intended to address these concerns or to supply a ‘history of doctrine’. More notable is the fairly narrow geographical focus; although Africa, Egypt and Syria are mentioned in passing, the distinctive styles of practice and worldview associated with each, and their expressions, are not explored. None the less, Ancient Christianities is to be welcomed for its ability to make those initial centuries accessible, without negating the irreducible variety within the story, but rather affirming the interplay of context and conviction, and of human agency.