ABSTRACT

How did early Christianity appear to pagan observers within its Greco-Roman cultural context? Such a question underscores the difference between “insider” and “outsider” perspectives. As Robert Wilken notes, “The Christians ‘read’ themselves quite differently than their contemporaries ‘read’ them.” On the one hand, “insider” texts “present the life of Jesus and the beginning of the church as the turning point of history.” On the other hand, “outsider” texts view “the Christian communities as small, peculiar, anti-social, irreligious sects, drawing their adherents from the lower strata of society.”1