Paula Fredriksen - Early Christian Diversity, Persecution & Empire

Paula Fredriksen joins me to discuss her new book "Ancient Christianity: The First 500 Years" - a masterful overview of how diverse early Christian movements evolved into the institutional church.

Professor Fredriksen (Boston University) is one of the world's leading scholars of early Christianity, Paul, and Jewish-Christian relations. Her previous books include "Paul: The Pagans' Apostle" and "When Christians Were Jews."

Get the book - https://amzn.to/4oh5vZd ⁠ (Affiliate Link)

In this conversation, we explore:

How Jewish scriptures in Greek shaped early Christianity
The surprising diversity of second-century Christianities
What we actually know about early Christian persecution
Constantine's complex relationship with the church
Apocalyptic expectations and their evolution
Asceticism, celibacy, and religious authority

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE

YouTube: @cjcornthwaite
Instagram: @cjcornthwaite
Website: cjcornthwaite.com
Email: [email protected]

🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS (MY PODCAST)
Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins.

🔗https://www.footnotefamous.com/

OR Listen on your favorite streaming platform

ᯤ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4lSzQzT052BhIjkwMqday5
Apple Music - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/footnote-famous/id1832009702
Audible - https://www.audible.ca/podcast/Footnote-Famous/B0FLQPW8F1

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous
YouTube Memberships - C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube
Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

0:00 - Introduction
1:39 - "The Idea of Israel": God Speaking Greek
7:33 - The Origins of Christian Anti-Judaism
12:53 - Second-Century Christianities: Valentinus, Marcion, Justin Martyr
21:59 - Pseudepigrapha: Writing in Paul's Name
24:17 - Persecution and Martyrdom Reconsidered
35:01 - Constantine and the Imperial Church
45:32 - Julian and the Pagan Revival
48:37 - Apocalyptic Expectations
54:07 - Asceticism, Celibacy, and Power
1:04:33 - Did Christianity "Triumph"?