The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

Adolf Schlatter in the pre-war period, W. D. Davies and J. Jeremias in the post-war period, and more recently scholars like M. Hengel and C. Rowland, have made out a strong case for seeing early Christianity as a Jewish messianic sect, going out into the world with the news that the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had now revealed himself savingly for all the world in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.11 This movement of thought has dominated a good deal of research in the last forty years. Until the recent American work of Koester, Crossan and others it could have been said that the balance had shifted decisively in its favour, and away from the Hellenistic, Cynic and/or Gnostic theories. Now, however, the field looks more open again, and the time is ripe for a reappraisal. Many scholars are now of the opinion that the main problem in describing the origin of Christianity is to account fully both for the thorough Jewishness of the new movement and for the break with Judaism that had come about at least by the middle of the second century.12