The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World

Rating:
Summary: Too dense and often one-sided
Review: This book takes a social-scientific perspective to the development of the early Christian religion. It analyzes the various axioms and motifs adopted by the early Christians, and how they distinguished themselves from Jewish practice.

This book, which is a translation from German, is very poorly written, very dense, very circular, and very difficult to follow.

Although Theissen, an ordained minister and teacher of theology, seeks to look at the development of Christianity from an open perspective, there is a distinct Judeo-Christian centricity in the book. He ignores Pagan, social, and political influences in the religion.

I do not suggest this book.