they were advancing. The same is true of their modern heirs, even
if today’s scholars are wont to be less polemical than their fore-
bears. Analyses of early Christianity can be shaped, more or less
explicitly, by the doctrinal allegiances of the individual scholar.
For example, when scouring my university library for source
collections to recommend to readers of this book, I happened
upon a volume that assembled extracts of early Christian writers
on the nature of the church according to the chapters and para-
graphs of the constitution of the Roman Catholic church known
asLumen Gentium(‘light of the nations’) issued by the Second
Vatican Council in 1964 (Halton 1985). Non-Roman Catholics
(and some Roman Catholics also) might view such an editorial
rationale with bewilderment. Other personal agendas can also
guide interpretations. A distinguished feminist theologian (and
scholar of Christian origins) has complained recently that the
academic quest for the historical Jesus is driven by what she terms
a ‘malestream’ agenda – one that is directed by people who are
white, male, middle class, and European or North American
(Fiorenza 2000). Even scholars who write with no explicit reli-
gious agenda can find themselves appealing to particular trends
in Christian thought: I was rather surprised that a reviewer of my
previous book thought that some of my analyses could provide a
basis for ecumenical dialogue.
The limitations of modern interpretation are apparent also
where great claims are made for the insights that can be drawn
by applying theoretical models drawn from the human sciences,
particularly sociology and anthropology. Recent decades have
seen the rise, for example, of social-scientific criticism of the New
Testament and more broadly sociological approaches to early
Christianity as a whole (Esler 1995; Stark 1996). Some have crit-
icized these approaches for imposing modern interpretative
frameworks on ancient data; defenders argue, however, that any
modern analysis of the ancient world does this, and that model-
driven approaches at least make the use of such frameworks
explicit (Esler 1995: 4–8). Other criticisms have focused on how
social-scientific or sociological analysis often claims for itself the
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