results can be rather disconcerting. Investigations into early Chris-
tianity might seem to promise a vista onto a purer vision of
Christian life, uncontaminated by centuries of theological wran-
gling, ecclesiastical politics, and the pursuit of worldly wealth and
power. Such is the frustrated assumption confessed by Elaine
Pagels, a scholar who has devoted her career to examining the
various brands of early Christian belief and practice that were
later condemned as heresy (see chapter 5), when she reflects on
why she took up the study of early Christianity:
[W]hen I was a graduate student at Harvard and dissatis-
fied with the representatives of Christianity I saw around
me, I wanted to find the ‘real Christianity’ – and I assumed
that I could find it by going back to the earliest Christians.
Later I saw that my search was hardly unique: no doubt
most people who have sought out the origins of Christianity
have really been looking for the ‘real Christianity’, assum-
ing that when the Christian movement was new, it was also
simpler and purer... What I found out was the opposite of
what I’d expected... What I did notfind in the process
of this research was what I had started out to find – a ‘golden
age’ or purer and simpler early Christianity.
(Pagels 1988: 151–2)However much the results might confound the expectations, many
modern Christians, whatever their confessional allegiances, will
agree nevertheless that the study of early Christianity is an essen-
tial element in their quest to define who they are (e.g. Lyman
1999: 1–15).
A similarly disconcerting experience might be felt also by
those who, although they were brought up in a Christian envi-
ronment, have abandoned their religious attachments. There are
some respects in which many western countries might be defined
as ‘post-Christian’, in that they have gone through a period in
their history when institutional Christianity occupied a central
place in their culture, but subsequently has been marginalized by
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