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  1. Church History/
  2. Early Church

From Synagogue to Church

Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities

by James Tunstead Burtchaell

  • Hardback
  • 396 pages
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • 15.3 x 22.9 x 2.6 cm

£76.97

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This important work challenges an entrenched scholarly consensus, that at the beginning it was inspired leaders - not ordained officers - who dominated the church. James Burtchaell illustrates that the traditional argument on behalf of clerical authority had read history backwards, and found the apostles to be the first bishops. In this study, Burtchaell reads history forwards, and demonstrates that first century Jews knew only one form of community organization, that of the synagogue. The three-level structure of offices in the synagogue - president, elders, and assistant - emerges, in the author's estimation, as the most plausible antecedent for the Christian offices which stand forth clearly in the second century. Burtchaell's conclusion is that ordained office is a foundational element in Christianity, but that, while the officers presided from the first, they rarely led. Thus, while Jesus' brother James presided as the ordained chief of the mother church in Jerusalem, it was Peter - Jesus' inspired veteran disciple - whose voice carried most authority.This revisionist historical account of Christian origins creatively subverts the established positions on church order, and thus opens up the arguments to new and larger conclusions.

  • Author

    James Tunstead Burtchaell

  • Book Format

    Hardback

  • Publisher

    Cambridge University Press

  • Published

    September 1992

  • Weight

    750g

  • Page Count

    396

  • Dimensions

    15.3 x 22.9 x 2.6 cm

  • ISBN

    9780521418928

  • ISBN-10

    0521418925

  • Eden Code

    1151509

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