The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy

by Paul F. Bradshaw

Book Overview

Traditional liturgical scholarship has generally been marked by an attempt to fit together the various pieces of evidence for the practice of early Christian worship in such a way as to suggest that a single, coherent line of evolution can be traced from the apostolic age to the fourth century. Paul Bradshaw examines this methodology in the light of recent developments in Jewish liturgical scholarship, of current trends in New Testament studies, and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195080513
• ISBN13: 9780195080513
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Origins of Christian worship

I have found this book very useful in putting into perspective a number of liturgical practices and issues. I can commend this to anyone with an interest in the patterns of liturgical worship.

Liturgical Studies: Bradshaw and Everything Before & After

In his The Early Church: An Annotated Bibliography of Literature in English, Thomas A. Robinson acknowledges the important contribution of this work by Paul Bradshaw. Even Robinson's high praise of the work's significance seems understated in light of its subsequent reception, however. Originally published in 1992, the second edition has been thoroughly expanded and updated and is now widely recognized as heralding a new age in the study of early Christian liturgy (Be sure to buy the current edition if you by used). In the preface, Bradshaw borrows the nomenclature of comparative linguistics which distinguishes between "lumpers" (those who group diverse languages into a few familes) and "splitters" (those who inspect the resulting lumps and find fault lines). This work represents something like the latter approach as applied to the history of primitive Christian worship. Bradshaw summarizes this perspective in four guiding assumptions: 1) We know far less about the first three centuries of Christian liturgical practice than has been previously thought. 2) What we do know points to considerable diversity rather than a previously assumed uniformity. 3) The "classical shape of the liturgy " is more the result of the fourth century assimilation of different traditions than the perseverance of an original apostolic pattern. 4) The post-Nicene era reflects frequent liturgical compromise and mutation rather than the triumph of one way of doing things (though discrete examples of this are not unknown). To cite one example, in his chapter, "Christian Initiation: A Study in Diversity," Bradshaw brings this methodology to bear on the catechumenate itself. After surveying the evidences from Syria, North Africa, Rome, Gaul and Spain, and Egypt, he concludes that one cannot legitimately speak of a standard or normative pattern of early initiation practice in ante-Nicene Christianity. He also concludes that the traditional distinctions between "Eastern" and "Western" practices is likewise illegitimate. While Bradshaw does admit of evidence for some common features that transcend the diversity of local practice (preparatory prebaptismal instruction, a formal act of renunciation and faith, anointing, immersion, and the imposition of hands), he also argues that these features do not always share a common form or meaning. His conclusion is that "there are just too many variations in structure and theology to allow us to construct a single picture in anything but the very broadest terms" (170). Bradshaw readily acknowledges his debt to the prior work of Georg Kretchmar's "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Liturgie, inbesondere der Taufliturgie, in Ägypten" (really the first work to point out the irreducible diversity in the early Christian catechumenate). But Kretchmar's essay suffered for its inability to reach a wide audience. Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, on the other hand, has been widely read and cited as defining a new orthodoxy in the fi

A Revised Classic

When the first edition of this study appeared in 1992, the initial shock it caused was indicated in a review written by George Saint-Laurent for this journal: "Tacit assumptions are spelled out, presuppositions are investigated, and long-standing hypotheses are proved to be attractive and imaginative but, alas, unsubstantiated by the evidence . . . . Indeed, this reviewer has been forced painfully to conclude that he must revise the content of his own courses in substantive ways and discard many of those cherished 'insights' which he has so confidently presented for years" (JECS 2.3 [1994], 356). But Bradshaw's piercing methodological study of ancient Christian liturgiology has not yet had the impact it is due. Hence, ten years later he moves the following observation, without changing a word, from the midst of his first edition to page one of the second: "While conscious reflection on the methodologies appropriate to the discipline has constituted a significant element in scholarly research in such areas as biblical studies and ecclesiastical history in the course of recent decades, the same has not really been true in the field of liturgical history." Nonetheless, a growing number of scholars are coming to share the main points of Bradshaw's thesis: when the fragmentary nature of the evidence and the problems of interpreting it are adequately taken into account, rather little can be known about Christian worship in the first several centuries. What we do know points to diversity of liturgical practices rather than uniformity. Hence, the notion that "a single coherent line of liturgical evolution can be traced from the apostolic age to the fourth century" must be scrapped (ix). Bradshaw powerfully proves these points with his penetrating and, at times, devastating reviews of secondary studies and thorough analyses of primary sources. Indeed, he has set the standard for future research on ancient liturgy; any scholar who ignores this foundational work risks laboring in vain. This second edition has been expanded and restructured with very little taken out but much added. Bradshaw has amended the following chapters to include important research from the past decade: "Worship in the New Testament," "Liturgy and Time," "Ancient Church Orders," and "The Background of Early Christian Worship" (formerly "The Jewish Background of Christian Worship," now renamed to accommodate a brief section on pagan influence). The chapter on ancient church orders, which has been enriched by Bradshaw's ongoing studies of the Apostolic Tradition, is the most authoritative and concise introduction to the documents, the scholarship, and the continuing enigmas of this odd genre. He arranges the chapters on Christian Initiation, the Eucharist, and "Other Major Liturgical Sources" by geographical provenance, thereby highlighting the differences in liturgical practices among various communities. The first chapter, "Shifting Scholarly Perspectives," has seen the most revision.