Early Christianity and Urbanity

How did urban life shape emerging Christianity – and how did Christ groups reshape the cities they lived in? Thirteen studies follow that exchange from Rome and Corinth to Ephesus, Antioch, and Alexandria.

Early Christianity is usually described as a religion that spread through cities. The contributors to this volume reverse the emphasis: urban conditions themselves generated new patterns of communication, association, identity formation, and religious innovation, and the Christ groups that emerged reshaped urban life in turn. Their studies range across the ancient Mediterranean world, with particular attention to the first and second centuries and selected developments into late antiquity. Bringing together historical, archaeological, epigraphic, literary, and social-scientific approaches, they ask how urban environments shaped emerging Christ groups and, conversely, how these groups participated in, appropriated, and transformed urban forms of life. The volume tests the concepts of urban religion and reciprocal formation against fine-grained local-historical analysis. Case studies focus on urban contexts in Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Antioch, and Alexandria, as well as on the cities of Bithynia in the age of Pliny, while broader contributions address the development of urbanity, mobility, mission, and translocal connectivity. The contributors attend closely to social networks, neighbourhoods, civic identities, gender, religious experience, and the negotiation of continuity and difference within local societies. At the same time, the studies resist any uniform model of an “urban Christianity” by emphasizing the diversity of local settings and the continuing embeddedness of Christ groups in their Jewish and Greco-Roman environments.

Jörg Frey: Urbanity and Emerging Christianity: An Introduction - Jörg Rüpke: Urbanität als Nährlösung für Religion und Religionen. Eine historische Annäherung - Jan Rüggemeier: Auf Trauermarsch mit den infelicissimis parentibus. Urbane Begegnungen mit den stadtrömischen Christusgläubigen im Kontext von Bestattung und Totenmemoria - Cédric Brélaz: Frühchristliche Gruppen im römischen kolonialen Kontext. Antiochia in Pisidien, Philippi, Korinth - Niklas Walder: Were They Predominantly Greeks? Reflections on Philippi's First Christ Believers - Andreas-Christian Heidel: Christian Quarrels and Local Traditions in Roman Corinth - Harry O. Maier: Urban Aspiration and Worlding in First and Second Century Roman and Corinthian Christ Communities - Florence Gantenbein: Women's Agency in the Urban Context of Roman Imperial Ephesos and Its Early Christ-Movements (1st-3rd century CE) - Jan N. Bremmer: Historical and Imagined Christianity in Ephesus. From Antoninus Pius to Constantine the Great - Benjamin Schliesser: Die Mission des frühen Christentums. Eine merkwürdige Blüte im Garten urbaner Religiosität - Darja Šterbenc Erker: Plinius' literarische Performanz und die Wahrnehmung der Frühchristen im antiken Rom und in Bithynien - Aileen Becker: Baden nur mit kaiserlicher Erlaubnis. Schließung der Bäder in Antiochia als Strafmaßnahme - Stefan Pfeiffer: Der Apostel Markus als Antilope. Zur Konkurrenz von Serapis und Christus im Spiegel des Markusmartyriums

• Edited by Benjamin Schliesser
• Edited by Jörg Rüpke
• Edited by Jörg Frey