Early Christian Reader [Hardcover]

Steve Mason (Author), Tom Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

The ideal basic textbook for introductory courses in early Christianity . . .

For studying early Christianity in its historical context, standard editions of the New Testament are less than ideal. They present the earliest Christian writings out of chronological order and omit writings similar in age and historical importance to the books of the New Testament.

In Early Christian Reader, these texts are arranged in a more historically meaningful order. The books of the New Testament are presented in the NRSV, the most widely accepted version in university classrooms today. Also included are translations of the letters of Ignatius, 1 Clement, the Didache, and the Gospel of Thomas.

Introductions to each work discuss date and place of composition, authorship, basic themes, and the Jewish and Hellenistic contexts. Generous notes illumine specific historical, lexical, and interpretive issues. Thus Early Christian Reader thus offers an objective, informed entrée into the complex world of the earliest Christian literature. Useful appendixes, maps, and charts make this an ideal text for the university or college classroom.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Mason is Associate Professor of Humanities at Vanier College, York University, Ontario. He is the author of Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-critical Study.

Thomas Robinson is coordinator of the Religious Studies Programme and teaches in the History Department of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565630432
• ISBN-13: 978-1565630437
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #810,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is a new book, March 16, 2004

By 

Steve Mason (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Early Christian Reader (Hardcover)

Tom Robinson and I, the co-authors, thought we should clarify what might seem puzzling from the website: there is also a paperback called An Early Christian Reader (1990), with our names as authors. Is it the same thing? No. That paperback is an entirely different product. Here is the background. Tom and I had an idea for useful textbook for our (university) students in Christian origins. It would be a reader that presented the early Christian texts in something like historical order, and included non-New-Testament texts. So we quickly produced a manual for our classes, with a local business run part-time by a professor. It was hurriedly done, laid out on Tom's Macintosh, and its main use was in our classes. Over years of using that resource, and in light of student feedback, we agreed that we should take the time to prepare a much larger and more useful text with an established publisher in the field. And so we did. This Hendrickson hardcover is an altogether new work, going much further than the 'trial run'. It uses the NRSV translation. It has much fuller introductions to each text and each group of texts. It includes a number of texts that are not in the NT. It is nearly 200 pages longer. Supporting material at the back, including colour maps, is fuller and more accessible. The book is professionally edited and, in hardcover, a far more valuable investment for students and instructors as well as the self-taught.