an entirely new civilization. In this context, early Christianity has
come to assume a new importance as one of the chief forces in
the metamorphosis that saw the ancient world become the middle
ages (Brakke 2002: 475–80).
The result of this new scholarly activity has been that the
study of early Christianity has become decoupled from the study
of ‘pure’ church history and its quest for the origins of dogma.
Scholars trained as classicists and historians have brought to early
Christianity questions and methodologies fashionable in their own
disciplines: gender, literary discourse, and sociological theory
have all been brought to bear on the early Christian world. None
of this is to say that early Christianity is no longer studied
by theologians, or that such theologians continue to pursue old-
fashioned studies as if sealed off in a bubble from other scholarly
developments. Nor does it mean that contemporary lay or non-
Christian scholars are any less prone to interpret early Christianity
in ways that reflect personal preconceptions or agendas. As was
the case in the days of Eusebius, Cesare Baronio, or Adolf von
Harnack, studies of early Christianity continue to reflect the
concerns of the age in which they were written.
THE HISTORICAL QUEST FOR EARLY CHRISTIANITY1
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