Social World of the Early Christians

The followers of Jesus created a movement that spread quickly from rural Galilee to the largest cities of the Roman Empire, ultimately to become the largest religion in the world. Increasingly, scholars write a history of the early movement by learning more about its historical context, the Jewish, Greek, and Roman worlds. The fascinating texts of the followers of Jesus will be studied in comparison to equally fascinating non-Christian texts, with a focus on social categories: patterns of new religious movements, with reference to race, class, gender, ability, and other categories.