cultures’ religions – as of their social structures or attitudes to
gender – must necessarily form an important part of anthropol-
ogy’s contribution. Yet understanding a culture requires more
than examining what it is like right here and now; it also demands
that we comprehend how that culture sees and interacts with
its traditions, religious as well as historical, as part of its self-
definition. For example, comprehending how Shi’a Muslims dif-
fer from Sunnis will require some understanding of their view of
their Islamic heritage. Likewise, our understanding of Christian
societies, or even of post-Christian ones, demands an effort to
comprehend their Christian heritage and how they interact with it.
Where, however, does the study of early Christianity fit
into this scheme? At one level, of course, early Christianity is an
important element in modern Christianity’s heritage. We have
already seen, for example, how the Jehovah’s Witnesses marshal
early Christian testimonies as part of their defence against blood
transfusion. In other parts of the world too the early Christian past
is used to articulate notions of identity. Every Easter, for example,
Filipino Catholics re-enact the Way of the Cross (Jesus’ carrying
of the cross to the site of his crucifixion), where those partici-
pants dressed as the Roman soldiers harassing Jesus may, in a
delicious paradox, represent the Spanish conquerors who brought
Christianity to the Philippines in the first place (Ballhatchet and
Ballhatchet 1990: 501). Yet there is another level at which early
Christianity may be of anthropological interest, and that is within
the confines of the study of the ancient world itself.
Although modern anthropology is largely concerned with
the study of contemporary cultures, it has provided methodolo-
gies that have proved useful to those studying past societies. In
particular, the explicit problems that anthropology realizes exist
in attempting to describe an alien culture have proved useful to
modern historians seeking to understand ancient society, which
might equally be described as an alien culture. One of the pitfalls
in studying Graeco-Roman antiquity comes from the assumption
that ancient culture and society was not much different from our
own. At an innocuous level, this can lead to amusing answers
WHAT IS EARLY CHRISTIANITY?1
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