Chapter 3The search for early
Christianity: sources and
their interpretation
This chapter will explore the astonishingly diverse range of ancient
source materials available to those studying early Christianity. I
should say at the outset that this will not be in the form of a cata-
logue: further guidance on accessing the sources will be provided
in chapter 7. Rather, my aim here is to point out the character of
the available evidence, to highlight problems of interpretation that
it presents, and to indicate the sorts of questions that can be most
usefully asked of the different sorts of sources. This will provide
background to the topics investigated in chapters 4–6. It makes
sense to begin with what Christians themselves wrote about
the origins and development of their movement. Next I will
consider what information can be gleaned from sources written by
contemporary pagan and Jewish observers. Then I will turn to
various categories of artefacts, ranging from archaeological
remains to papyrus texts, that also shed light on the early history
of Christianity. At the end of the chapter, I will reflect briefly on
some questions of methodology.64