Peter, Stephen, James, and John: Studies in Early Non-Pauline Christianity

This book is comprised of four independent studies based on four lecture series presented by the author. Each is concerned with a different strand of early non-Pauline Christianity. These traditions are associated with the apostle Peter, Stephen and the Hellenists, the Johannine community, and James, the relative of Jesus. This book first appeared in nineteen eighty late in the distinguished career of Frederick Fyvie Bruce. As with all of this author's scholarship, a keen grasp of the history of the early Church and the Roman world of the time are displayed. Equally apparent is his familiarity with the ancient languages involved and his insightful exegesis of the scriptures considered. While this book is a relatively easy read accessible to any literate adult, a reasonable knowledge of early Church history is a prerequisite to the fullest appreciation of its contents. Also, the prose flow of this book is so smooth that concerted effort and concentration on the reader's part are necessary to avoid missing much of interest. Both in the finer points and global analysis there is much here that is original, and quite a bit of it might well be considered adventurous even today. As with many books stemming from lectures, a bibliography is lacking although footnotes are quite copious throughout. A composite index of subjects and modern authors is provided which is helpful. The author suggests three very early Jewish Christian communities at Jerusalem centered around Peter, Stephen, and James. Bruce's portrait of Peter owes much to the work of James D. G. Dunn which is graciously acknowledged. Peter, the early leader of the apostles, is seen as increasingly estranged from the Jerusalem center for a variety of reasons. With his conversion of Cornelius, an uncircumcised gentile, Peter's acceptance by law observant Jewish Christians is questioned. Thereafter, his imprisonment, escape, and absence from Jerusalem cements the ascendancy of Jacobian influence. It also inaugurates Peter's vaguely attested to evangelism elsewhere in the Roman Empire. The dubious conflation of James and Peter so common in other scholarship on early Church history is subjected to a well supported negation by Bruce's reconstruction of history. Contributing further to Jamesian primacy was the earlier execution of Stephen and the exit of the Hellenistic Jewish Christians from Jerusalem. The author insightfully points out that Stephen's attack on the Temple is unique in the New Testament for its virulence and content. Elsewhere, in the Lukan corpus, the Temple is treated quite differently. On reflection, Bruce contends that this attests to the historicity of the speech. This point is amply reinforced by the later work of Daniel R. Schwartz in his study of Herod Agrippa. And, with the exit of the Hellenists to Antioch and possibly as well to Alexandria, so began the first great expansion of Christianity beyond Roman Palestine. The consideration of the Johannine co