In its Scriptures Christianity's founder appeared as one who surrendered privilege and power. His followers tend still to assume that reciprocity, broad-scale benevolence and a revised paradigm where patronage and the bestowal of honour were concerned were among those things which characterised their early forbears. Alan Wheatley's study examines the nature of the early Christian challenge to Roman understanding of patron-client relations and then illustrates the continued significance of patronage in the religion, the shifts in thinking about honour, the challenges of elitism (of social and intellectual kinds) and the honorifics of Christian office and of martyrdom. Some Christian writers more than others reflected the revised Christian paradigm where benevolence and honour were concerned. In Syria, for example, Wheatley sees Ignatius of Antioch's legitimation of episcopal authority as one couched ‘in terms which move decisively outside the honor patterns of the revised paradigm; they …  predate Christian usage’ (p. 103) while later in the second century Theophilus of Antioch's understanding of Christianity ‘included much that we have identified as the revised patronage paradigm’ (p. 107). Then, in the 260s, the case of the ostentatious and high-profile Paul of Samosata and the Christian leaders involved in dealing with it is a good illustration of degrees of backward shift towards thinking in Roman, rather than Christian, terms. ‘He was a bit ahead of his time’ Wheatley observes of Paul of Samosata (p. 185), ‘but not as far as might be thought’. Taking account of previous studies around the topic the author has created a thought-provoking study of an important subject, using New Testament material, writings from the Apostolic Fathers and Apologists and including Rome (Clement, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Hippolytus and Callistus), Syria, Alexandria and North Africa.