Christian Identity - The First Hundred Years
The aim of this project is to advance scholarly interpretation and understanding of the earliest Christianity, both in regard to method and results. We will construct and put to use a new, complex but more adequate model for how Christian identity was formed during the first hundred years of church history. This model of identity formation in a widespread movement over several generations correlates basic motifs, i.e. central tenets, rites and ethical behaviour patterns common to the early Christian groups, with varying concrete manifestations of these basic motifs among people who live in different cultural milieus.
The different subprojects form a cooperation and create research synergy between three postdoc researchers, two doctoral students and one project leader. As we focus the historical material from the church's first 100 years, we extend the analysis past a mere history-of-ideas perspective to a more profound understanding of the interchange between ideas and social structures. The importance of this project lies in the fact that it aims at a re-interpretation of a historical field of central importance to biblical studies and church history. Thereby it deepens the understanding of our own culture and increases insight into the relation between cultural plurality and religious identity.
Bengt Holmberg, Lund University
THE AIM OF THE PROJECT
The aim of the project was to attain a more adequate understanding of early Christianity's development from intra-Jewish renewal movement to a new religion in about a century. We aimed at working out a better way of thinking about the identity of the early Christ-movement, seeing it as a system of basic motifs, or in other words fundamental beliefs, which do not just exist in a world of ideas, but embodied and developing over time in concrete communities, in their cult and rituals, their normatively determined behavior patterns and group structure. This should be investigated in textual material from different places and periods.
The task was too grandiose for such a small research group, where some of the members could only participate part of the time. Therefore, a de facto limitation has been effected during the project period, focusing mainly on the identity formation of the movement itself.
THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS OF THE PROJECT
Competence development. The participants will soon have published 2 post doc monographs, 2 printed doctoral dissertations, 1 anthology of research articles, and a good number of scholarly articles. Within the project frame Ivarsson and Roitto will have got their Ph.D.s, Mitternacht and Tellbe have become docents, and one, Byrskog, has been selected among international candidates to become Professor of New Testament exegesis at Lund University. The lively NT research in Lund has developed further, but the project has also, as planned, extended and deepened this competence to academic institutions in Göteborg, Linköping, and Örebro.
Research milieu. During its five years the project has exerted notable influence on biblical studies in the Nordic countries, putting identity research on the exegetical map. See below.
In the area of scholarly progress the following results should be mentioned:
A breakthrough (in Sweden) for using theories from social psychology about social identity, self-categorization, and the mechanisms of social cognition on the earliest Christian history. These analytical perspectives have given a clearer and more complex view of how identity is built than earlier research with a one-sided focus on ideas and symbolic universes.
The role of social memory and oral history in forming a Christian identity has been explored and explained in a new way.
Important relations of co-operation and resistance with surrounding culture have been clarified, especially in the areas of gender and moral thinking.
NEW QUESTIONS GENERATED BY THE PROJECT
How will and must the new insights in the mechanisms and functions of social memory and oral history change the image of how the gospels emerged and got their present form?
How were and are scholarly models of the earliest Christ-movement created? - an ideological critique combined with a sociology-of-research investigation.
The interplay between earthy everyday life and theological thinking in the feedback-shaped process of the evolving Christ-movement - the forming of its identity -needs to be analyzed in several places and text groups.
PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Professor Bengt Holmberg, project leader. Time for research: 50 % of 2006.
Dr. theol. Bo Brander, employed 25 % from July 2003 as systematic-theological consultant to the project in order to deepen the project's own thinking and presuppositions concerning identity.
Professor Samuel Byrskog, Gothenburg. From the fall of 2003 employed 25 %.
Docent Dieter Mitternacht. With Runesson and Holmberg, he conceived the project's basic ideas and the project application. Participated unsalaried in the project work up to the spring of 2006. Became docent in NT exegesis at Lund University in 2007.
Professor Anders Runesson. With Mitternacht and Holmberg, he conceived the project's basic ideas and the project application. From July 2003 Ass. Professor at McMaster University, Canada.
Lecturer Mikael Tellbe, employed 50 %, in addition to working halftime at the Theological Seminary in Örebro. 2008 he became docent in NT exegesis at Lund University.
Ph.D. Rúnar Thorsteinsson, employed from October 2003, 100 %. His monograph Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism: A Moral Crossing is in its final stage of completion.
Ph.D. student, Lic. Theol. Fredrik Ivarsson, Gothenburg. Supervised by prof. Byrskog, he writes a dissertation on Becoming a Man: Paul's Construction of Masculinity in the Corinthian Correspondence. This will be defended in the end of 2008.
Ph.D. student Rikard Roitto, Linköping. Supervised by Ass. Prof. Håkan Ulfgard, he aims at completing and defending his thesis in 2009.
PUBLICATIONS
The publication of research often comes after the project period. Closest to publication are two works that will appear in well-known scholarly series during 2008:
Mikael Tellbe, The Prototypical Christ-believer: Early Christian Identity Formation in Ephesus, in "Coniectanea Biblica NT Series", by Eerdmans (USA), and
Exploring Early Christian Identity, in "Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (WUNT)", by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, July 2008.
Tellbe's monograph (of some 300 pages) uses a method for textual analysis on social-psychological basis designed by the author. He investigates the Christian groups and traditions on the scene in Ephesus around the year 100 CE, clarifying their conflicts and underlying commonality. Its method breaks new ways, and has also been introduced internationally in smaller papers.
In the second volume mentioned the project researchers present shortly their findings, as regards methods and results. To make informational impact it has been timed to appear on the SNTS Conference in Lund July 2008.
Among scientifically important publications that are not books can be mentioned Byrskog's series of articles on the role of identity formation in the development of the gospels, published as about 100 packed pages in noted international peer-reviewed journals and Festschriften 2006-08. He challenges conventional 20th century ideas about the sociology of oral tradition by new and important insights from ancient historiography, oral history, and social memory.
OTHER TYPES OF DISSEMINATING THE PROJECT RESULTS
The project has developed a web site of its own, in Swedish and English, http://www.teol.lu.se/nt/identitet/index.html with presentation of its research and a list of publications.
At the threshold of the project a symposium was arranged in Lund on December 12th, 2002, where its main ideas were presented and discussed with researchers from the University of Copenhagen.
The annual study day in Uppsala 2004 (24 September) had as its theme "Early Christian identity - and late", showing that our colleagues in the north also were inspired to discuss identity. Dr Tellbe lectured and led a seminar on the subject.
In the fall 2005 our two Ph.D. students studied at Drew University, New Jersey (Ivarsson) and St. Andrews, Scotland (Roitto) as STINT scholars, giving and receiving project-related information.
The project has kept its host institution, the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies in Lund, regularly informed on the project's development, mostly through seminars.
The Nordic New Testament Conference in Lund (18-22 August, 2007) was a clear demonstration of the impact our project has had on Nordic exegetical research. It showed in the conference theme, "Strategies of identification in the Hellenistic World", and in several seminar themes, where "identity", "identity formation," and "identification" figured frequently. The project members Byrskog, Ivarsson, Roitto and Tellbe gave papers. The project leader edits - with Mikael Winninge of Umeå University -the conference volume Identity Formation in the New Testament, which together with our abovementioned project volume will be published in the WUNT series in July 2008 - a double impact of identity research.
Project members have also been active in informing about the project outside the academic context, in groups and meetings of clergy, parishes, diocesan meetings, popular science contexts, and such like.
PROJECT WORK
The project had fourteen double seminars (AM+PM) and seven discussion days (lunch to lunch), three of which were attended by international experts (David Sim, Gerd Theissen, Samuel Rubenson), focusing throughout on cooperative development of the project's main ideas. The project members have attended a number of Swedish and international conferences, often contributing papers. In April 2005 the project participants made a study trip to Rome, to anchor text based historical knowledge in concrete reality. Led by Dr Olle Brandt from the Swedish Institute in Rome the group completed an intensive study program, focused on daily life and religious practice in antiquity, including study of excavations in Rome, Ostia and Pompey.