"After Jesus Before Christianity" - Rome developed its own imperial religion in ways that supported its violence and power. Beginning with Augustus Caesar, most emperors were divinized to one degree or another, and votive offerings were made in temples and public venues, at meals, and in private villas. Most emperors were proclaimed gods after their death, and stars were named for them as the emperors were considered to be the stars, in and from which they continued to rule. Early Jesus groups responded to Roman violence with imagination, resistance, and humor. Jesus groups coped with Roman violence with varied strategies: some focused on resistance, others on creativity, and some employed both. In sly yet tangible ways, they worked to stop Rome from damaging their lives and to help people heal from torture and loss.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - Paul is credited as the author of as many as fourteen letters and is the hero of the second half of Acts. Many who believe that the New Testament records the beginning of Christianity assume Paul’s missionary work is the beginning of Christianity. But this isn’t the case. Paul’s own letters show that he struggled to find an audience and had trouble holding on to supporters. A former persecutor of Anointed followers, he proved to be a quarrelsome thorn in their side when he joined their ranks. Although he had never known Jesus ‘in the flesh,’ he claimed a superior intimacy with the Anointed through his personal call. At the time of his death, Paul might have had good reason to feel alone and abandoned, with many Jesus followers having turned their backs on him.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - How did the Jesus movement, which was open to the varied elements of the Roman world and all different peoples, move to exclude that diversity in favor of orthodoxy—that is, so-called proper belief that excluded many? Orthodoxy told this story as the exclusion of heresy that corrupted the purity of original teachings. The English word ‘heresy’ is a transliteration of the Greek hairesis, whose basic meaning is ‘choice,’ particularly intellectual choice. This sense of hairesis as intellectual choice or school remained dominant through most of the second century. The strong negative sense of ‘heresy’ becomes evident only in the late second century in the writing of the north African teacher Tertullian, who wrote: ‘The Heretic is no longer considered a member of the party of Christus.’

"After Jesus Before Christianity" - When we survey the first two centuries of the Common Era, we find a great variety of people who are loyal to Jesus in different ways and to different degrees, addressing Jesus with a variety of titles. These people organized themselves into communities, clubs, groups of followers, and schools. Meals were their primary social engagement. They called themselves a variety of names: the Enslaved of God, the body of the Anointed, brothers and sisters, the Way—the list is extensive. They strongly identified with the traditions of Israel and often thought of themselves as part of Israel. The word christianos [the Greek word translated into English as Christian] never appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Nor does it appear in the letters of Paul.

"After Jesus Before Christianity" - Some communities influenced by the story of Jesus found their identify in the “noble deaths” tradition that was well known in the Mediterranean world. Socrates was the most famous person to die for a cause. The death of the Greek philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE became the archetype of all such noble deaths. The heroic ideal of a “noble death” was readily applied to Jesus as his story was told through the Roman Empire. Also, in the history of the nation of Israel, there were many other examples. One widely repeated in the first two centuries CE concerned the Maccabee family of Judea who were tortured and killed by king Antiochus Epiphanes of the Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE. The noble death model, was probably the earliest way by which followers of Jesus began to come to terms with his crucifixion.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - According to a story dated 202-203 CE, entitled Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, “a mass execution of women and men who asserted their belonging to the party of Christus took place in the Roman city of Carthage, on the northern coast of Africa. Roman officials killed Perpetua and Felicitas alongside a group of other heroes from their community. ‘Ah, most valiant and blessed martyrs!’ the story concludes. ‘Truly you are called and chosen for the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord! And anyone who exalts, honors, and worships his glory should read . . . these new deeds of heroism!’ (Perpetua 21) Everything ends as it should. The audience is left with role models for future life, and for future death. Everyone lives and dies happily ever after.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - The ‘hidden transcript’ was a major strategy for resisting Roman aggression. This concept refers to telling alternative stories that are hidden within the more obvious meaning of stories, but discernible for those who know how to interpret what is hidden. More than a decade’s worth of research shows how many oppressed peoples and groups around the world create ‘a secret’ language that makes fun of those dominating them and helps them process some of their loss and trauma. Although many of the early stories and writings about the many Jesus clubs, groups, schools, and movements of the first two centuries portrayed in the previous chapters are read today as ‘holy’ and ‘solemn’ literature, it seems likely that ancient readers saw some of them as comical, irreverent, and resistant hidden transcripts—potentially carnival-like in their disdain for authority.

"After Jesus Before Christianity" - In chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians, Paul offers Chloe’s people some advice about marrying or remaining single: he would prefer it if everyone in the community could remain single, but if singleness is not possible, it is reasonable for community members to marry. When married, husbands and wives should grant one another their ‘conjugal rights.’ Paul then states, ‘the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does’ (v.4) That representation of authority, husband over wife, is not surprising for ancient Greece and Rome, Next, however, Paul affirms, ‘likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.’ The statement that a woman has authority over the body of the husband, the head of the household, is not only much more surprising, but really radical.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - In the Gospel of Thomas, Salome says to Jesus, ‘Who are you mister? You have climbed onto my couch and eaten from my table?” (61:2) For modern readers, these words of Salome, one of Jesus’s woman companions, may say more about the first two centuries of Jesus peoples than almost any other writing. Her words present a graphic picture of the long and boisterous meals these people shared together. And, shocking for most of us, they lay down together as they ate, drank, talked, and feasted. The Gospel of John’s description of this Mediterranean practice is vivid: ‘While at dinner, the student Jesus loved leaned back on Jesus’s breast’ (John 21:20). These meals were the heart of all the gatherings of groups associated with Jesus Anointed. They were lush, entertaining, full of conversation, expressive, long, and embodied.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - According to a story dated 202-203 CE, entitled Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, “a mass execution of women and men who asserted their belonging to the party of Christus took place in the Roman city of Carthage, on the northern coast of Africa. Roman officials killed Perpetua and Felicitas alongside a group of other heroes from their community. ‘Ah, most valiant and blessed martyrs!’ the story concludes. ‘Truly you are called and chosen for the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord! And anyone who exalts, honors, and worships his glory should read . . . these new deeds of heroism!’ (Perpetua 21) Everything ends as it should. The audience is left with role models for future life, and for future death. Everyone lives and dies happily ever after.

“After Jesus Before Christianity” - In the first two centuries, saying that you belonged to Israel or identifying as Judean were the clearest ways to say who you were. These statements of belonging were also the main ways one identified oneself even when one did not live in geographical Israel, as was the case for the majority of Judeans. The word for ‘Judean,’ typically translated in our twenty-first-century language as ‘Jewish,’ was the first-century way people of southern Israel identified and also the way for some people who identified religiously or politically with southern Israel. The identification is primarily of people, rather than geography. In the mid-to-late second century, more people of Israel were switching to calling themselves ‘Jews’ or ‘Jewish,’ as the reality of a nation of Israel faded because of Rome defeating it twice.

"A New New Testament" opens the door to reciting the sermon on the mount alongside the newly discovered Gospel of Mary, in which Mary Magdalene courageously comforts all the disciples and teaches them things Jesus had taught only her. In addition to the traditional Revelation to John, it offers a very different Secret Revelation of John in which Christ also rescues the world from a vicious empire, not by end-of-the-world battles and curses that set the earth on fire, but by straightforward teaching about God’s light and compassion. It offers an opportunity to form new opinions about the earliest traditions of the Christ movements without the demands of later Christian doctrine or church organizations working to overwhelm with dogma or formal interpretations. To learn more, the Preface is available here as a document file.