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Welcome to the new books network. I'm Kielab Zagarin, editor of the new books network. Today I'm speaking with Professor David G. Hunter, Margaret O'Brien, flatly chair of Catholic theology at Boston College.
We're discussing an incredible six volume series, co-edited by David titled The Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Authors, Texts and Ideas. Incredible work and scholarly contribution. I'm excited today to speak with David about how this project came to be. David, thanks for joining me today on the new books network.
Happy to be here. Of course, you know, this isn't a not a typical book that I do in part because it's a six volume encyclopedia. So I have to confess, I did not read the full book in part because it is a six volume encyclopedia. But I was really curious to talk to you about it because I'm just curious how a person puts together something like this.
Obviously, you worked with other people, but it's just an unbelievable undertaking. And I'm really just fascinated by what it takes to put something like this together and also just to hear about your process. But before talking about this encyclopedia, I just want to tell you about yourself and your background. Yes, I'm happy to.
I've been teaching at the college university level for over 40 years now. 20 in state universities, University of Kentucky, Iowa State University, but also more than 20 years now at Catholic context in the Catholic department of theology. That's where I began 40 years ago at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and moved to Boston College of five and a half years ago.
And whether I was in a state university or in a department of theology, I've always focused and most of my teaching has been in the area of early Christianity from the beginnings to roughly the fifth or sixth centuries. So the area really is history of Christianity or history of Christian thought or history of theology. And I've always been fascinated, at least ever since college, with the early Christian period. And that's mostly because it's in that period, the first five centuries, six centuries or so, where the fundamental shape of Christianity developed the fundamental beliefs, the fundamental structures, doctrines, and also shape in those earliest centuries.
So I figured the best way to know something about or understand what Christianity was was to begin to study the history of it and particularly the early history. So I started really as an undergraduate. I was majoring in classics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. And the department of Greek and Latin there had a long tradition of focusing on early Christian writers.
And there were some world class scholars there in classics, but at the same time in the School of Religious Studies and the Department of Theology and Church History, there were also very prominent scholars of early Christianity. And so I was able to take advantage of both the theological area and the classical studies area, you know, there in ancient languages, Latin and Greek. And that really kind of set me on the path when I graduated in, well, God, no, that's 50 years ago, from 1976. But I've stayed active in the field and that's kind of how I got where I am today.
Hopefully something. Yeah. Sorry, keep going. No, I was just going to shift topic into the background.
Well, you know, in this, to a certain extent, I'm not the best person to ask about how it began because I wasn't there at the beginning. I think it was 2011 where a group of scholars got together at the quadrennical every four year international conference on patristic studies at Oxford. And patristic studies is the study of early Christian authors, especially after the New Testament. It's called patristics because it refers to the fathers of the church.
And I wasn't involved at that point. They were just, as I understand it, they were getting together. They were, you know, finding who was interested in this project. And then it was about two years later, it was the fall of 2013 when I was first invited to join as a, as not actually as one of the general editors.
There were two originally who stayed with the project, but I was brought in first as a lower level section editor. I was going to focus, I think, on the fourth century Latin writers, which was in one of my specialties. But within a few months, they invited me to become one of the general editors. And I think the reason, I mean, I had some reputation in the field.
Also, about 10 years earlier, it was, well, it was 2007. I had edited or co-edited with a colleague from Brown University. I had co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, which was a thousand page book with 45 chapters covering pretty widely the field of post New Testament Christianity of early Christianity. And so, you know, I had some experience with these somewhat bigger projects.
And so I was invited eventually then to become one of the general editors. And I guess the fundamental contribution, as I see it, this was certainly inspiring. The other two editors, Paul Van Hast and Bertion, both of them scholars from the Netherlands. The central vision was to try to present a comprehensive look at the development of early Christianity, but in a way that overcame what has been a separation between the study of the New Testament books and their history, their theology, and the study of Christianity after the New Testament.
And this was something that appealed to me because when I was doing graduate study in the early 80s at Notre Dame, this was part of our kind of division that was transmitted to me, that to a certain extent, the distinction between the New Testament and early Christianity is an artificial distinction. It's one that's based on a kind of theological sense that the biblical writings need to be treated separately because of the authority that they have among Christians. And that's, this is not a perspective of the encyclopedia, it's not in any sense a rejection of that, but it's making the point that historically speaking, there are texts that are considered early Christian or among the fathers of the church that actually may be earlier than some of the documents that are in the New Testament. But the New Testament is always treated as if it were the foundation and then early Christianity built on that.
But in fact, the distinction historically speaking is much murkier, or you know, there's much more overlap. So what this encyclopedia, and again, this was the vision of the original editors and I certainly shared it, was that it would be great to have a reference work that included both, that did not begin with this artificial distinction between the New Testament and early Christian literature. So that's in many ways the what's really new or significant about the project. In many ways it makes it very complicated because there's been so much scholarship on the Scriptures on the New Testament, Old Testament II or the Hebrew Bible II.
But scholarship in that area, again, because it's been part of the canon of scripture or it's become foundational and authoritative for Christians, there's just been a lot more scholarship in New Testament. And so there's a lot of different aspects that had to be covered in terms of the New Testament and Bertillon is the New Testament scholar who was largely kind of overseeing that part of the encyclopedia. And then Paul Van Hays and I both work in post New Testament Christianity, the fathers of the church. And so we kind of shared responsibility for that second part of the encyclopedia.
Now it's not divided like that. It's not divided quantologically as an encyclopedia. It's arranged alphabetically, which again kind of has the effect of putting together, putting side by side, both articles and books. And so there's a lot of different aspects of the New Testament and articles that deal with post New Testament Christianity.
The other thing, I guess that I would mention just in terms of the overall background and structure. If I'm remembering correctly when I first came on board, there was going to be a cutoff date for early Christianity. If I'm remembering correctly, it was going to be fairly early, maybe 300 or 400, you know, in early 300s is when the Emperor Constantine came to power. He eventually became Christian and began to favor the Christian movement.
And so that is still widely regarded, I would say, as a pivotal transitional moment in the history of Christianity. But some of the folks who were involved in the project, again, some of the section editors, and I can say something about that too, because that's a clear. Yeah, because that was a change that happened, I think, after I came in to the project that is bringing in a lot more section editors and the reasons for that I can get into it in a minute. But nowadays, I would say that the dividing points are always, to a certain extent, arbitrary in historical studies.
There's not a sharp division between antiquity and the Middle Ages, for example, we were talking about that earlier. And so, you know, where you cut off the period of early Christianity and where it becomes the Middle Ages, it's to some extent arbitrary. We wanted to include the major councils of Christianity, certainly the first, well, the first four are absolutely essential, two in the fourth century, two in the fifth century. But we wanted to include some of the other ones too.
Some of the major writers are writers from the fifth century, sixth century. So eventually, of course, we had to decide on a cutoff date. And so the cutoff date became 600, roughly speaking, you know, I mean, if somebody was really important a little bit after that. Person was included.
But that was, you know, that was a decision that had to be made. And there were other kinds of decisions like that. Even some, again, I can talk about this a little later. There was a, well, I'll say something quick about it now, which is that part of the original project involved not just looking at the New Testament and early Christianity, but also at how the New Testament and early Christian literature was received and became part absorbed into the later Christian traditions.
Now, that's another project, you know, and as what a certain point we just had to say, no, that idea is just too ambitious. That's going to take another lifetime to do another encyclopedia of the history of the reception of early Christianity. It would be a fascinating project, but it was, you know, we just eventually decided that it was too much. And already it was six volumes and many thousands of words and many thousands of pages as well.
So that's what I can say initially here about the background of the project. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, those debates about when to start or when to stop in terms of dating something or looking at chronology can be very fierce, you know, the long 20th century, the short 20th century, which is the right way to think about it. You know, as you said, this at a certain point, especially when you're working with something so big, you just have to decide when to stop.
And I'm very, I'm very fascinated by almost the logistics of putting something like this together because obviously, you know, as you said, you were the only editor on this and I'm curious, like, can you give a little bit of insight into what it actually looks like as far as like how you divvy up the sections and then how you decide. Here's who's going to write this. Here's how we're going to edit this. Here's how long it should be.
Here's the type of writing that is expected that a person is going to do that might maybe differ from maybe how they might write a monograph or a paper for a journal. Yeah, well, it's a it wasn't very complex project and it was one, you know, I have to say that evolved over over time. Once we decided to take it as far as 600 say rather than 300. One of the things that involved was paying attention to Christianity as it evolved and developed in areas outside of the Roman Empire or in places within the Roman Empire where the traditional languages Greek and Latin were not used or were used along with other local languages, native languages.
So, in Egypt, there's a strong traditions, certainly beginning from the fourth century on of literature, Christian literature in Coptic, which is the the Egyptian language, but that had been put into the Greek letters in the Hellenistic period. There's there was extensive documentation. This is an area of Christianity that's been especially developed outside in recent decades in other parts of the Middle East, Syriac, which is a kind of a version of Aramaic. So what became clear was that we needed specialists in those areas who could then advise the project and recommend scholars to write the articles that we needed to recommend what articles needed to be written.
And, you know, I think if I had to say, and I think the other editors would acknowledge this, if there was something that I brought into the project that wasn't there originally, at least not as much as it needed to be, was bringing into these specialists. It's not that I'm because I'm not one of them. I'm not with a specialist in Coptic or Armenian or Georgian or Syriac, but I know people who are, and so we were able to bring them in and they were able to take on major responsibilities. Something similar, you know, there were a couple of two dimensions I can think of, offhand of early Christianity that are generally covered by specialists, and I would say one is art and art history, early to development of early Christian art.
The other is liturgy structures of worship and prayer and so forth. And so, you know, I think it became clear after a while that we needed specialists in those areas who could then bring in, you know, advise us what needed to be done, who would go through the list. There was a preliminary list of topics to be included, but they were able to refine those topics to add other things that were important to take out things that were not so important. And so that became a big, a big part of the project as it developed then, say after 2014 or so, you know, over the last few years.
And so, you know, any, I mean, any handbook or any, let's say encyclopedia of early Christianity, that's done now, you know, in the early 20th, 21st century, would have to include those forms of Christianity, which, you know, have not. Like when I was a graduate student, you know, 40, 50 years ago, you know, the Syriac Christianity was kind of on the margins. Coptic Christianity was basically where you studied not stick material, but in the last few decades, the study of Coptic Christianity, you know, in its own has become much more important, the same with Syriac and now with other languages as well. So there's, you know, I mean, one thing I think that the encyclopedia does very well is to take account of these developments in these in these other areas.
And I think you had mentioned, or, you know, I mentioned earlier that, you know, what sort of overlooked areas might areas that have been overlooked in traditional scholarship that would be included here. I would say that's certainly one of them. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, there's still so much work being done on, you know, even on subjects that have been people that worked on working on them for, since the beginning of modern scholarship really, even before.
You know, obviously it's, you know, as you said, it's it's it's encyclopedia so it's not organized chronologically, but can you discuss maybe some of the themes or debates that are really crucial of the encyclopedia highlights maybe so, you know, and this might not necessarily be needed to encyclopedia but just specific to the field, the things that are of, you know, either of the statistics like or of the New Testament things then that are being, I guess, causing a dispute debate fighting or, you know, either, gorgially or not so much. Well, that's again, I think gets to one of the unique features of the encyclopedia is that even though we covered theology, you know, there's certainly, you know, there's articles about the Trinity there's articles about Christology or belief in in who Jesus who Christ was divinity in humanity and there's articles on the, the councils that helped to define those doctrines, but there was also a very conscious effort made not to be partisan in a theological sense, okay, so that an inclusion of documents that let's say are from Gnostic or other forms of Christianity that were ultimately judged heretical by what becomes mainstream Christianity, okay, but those are given those are treated in their own right, that's the intention that is they're not just they're not treated as deviant versions of Christianity the way in which let's say some of the fathers of the church themselves would have, you know, declared them heretics would have written a polemical treatises against them against Marcy and against Valentine's, the Gnostic and, you know, against all these other figures, but they are treated historically as part of the diversity of early Christianity or some people like to say that, you know, early Christianity's they're all of these different varieties of early Christianity so to, I mean, to a certain extent, I mean, you mentioned the debates, the debates are covered but not in the sense of, you know, trying to declare that this person won then this person didn't, you know, that in that sense but I mean, just to list some of the major sort of controversies, I would say, the certainly in the second and third century, the question about these various forms of Christianity, Marcy and Nazism, Nazism and nowadays many scholars question whether we should even use the label Gnostic or Nazism because there's a within that category, there's a quite a variety of different perspectives about God, about creation, about who Christ is, but these are treated certainly in the last couple of years as well as the question of how then the, what I like to call the mainstream, what comes to be called Orthodox Christianity, you know, Orthodox Christianity, the mainstream of Christianity does define itself to a great extent, you know, in the second and third century over against Gnostic views or Marcy and I views and so, you know, you have to take account of that, of the fact that the debate shaped certainly what early Christianity became. There's certainly attention given to debates in the fourth century and some of the major figures Christian writers in the fourth century, especially in the Greek world but some in the Latin world as well, who were engaged in really intense controversies over the question of defining the divinity, the divine character of Jesus after the Council of Nicaea in 325, the question was complex because Christians had long held to monotheism that they inherited from Jewish tradition, belief in one God, and yet at the same time, Christians begin to talk about Jesus as God, they begin to worship Jesus, they begin to pray to Jesus, so the question becomes well, you know, is there one God or there are three gods or is he kind of on a lower level of God, you know, that's what's known as the Ari and controversy in the, in the fourth century. And so then similarly, once Christians kind of resolve that issue by the end of the fourth century, a new issue arises, which is sometimes called the Christological controversy where the question kind of shifts and becomes, okay, if he's fully God, if Jesus is fully God in the same sense as God the Father is God, if in other words, if there is genuinely a Trinitarian God, then how does that, that divine nature, the Son of God become human in Jesus, how does it become both human and that becomes a major theological issue in the fifth century.
And so all of those kinds of controversies have to be covered in an encyclopedia like this, and to a certain extent, I mean, a resolution to an extent is reached in the middle of the fifth century, the famous Council of Calcedon in 451, the large segments of Christianity, both in the Syrian and in the Egyptian world, don't accept the resolution. And so even today, there are divisions among Christians that go back to that fifth century council, divisions between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Syriac, or the Orthodox Church, or Syrian Orthodox Church, which never accepted those, those things. The Councils, or never accepted the fifth, or the Council in 451, the Council of Calcedon. So, you know, those are some of the themes, topics.
But again, the, I think the Encyclopedia, it's not just an Encyclopedia of Theology, or theological concepts or debates. You know, there are plenty of articles that are of a more historical nature, even geographical. I mean, you can find lots of place names in the Encyclopedia, lots of descriptions of persons, and their, you know, their individual contributions to the development of Christianity. You can find articles, many of them are focused on particular documents or particular authors.
There are certainly articles that deal with church organizations, structure and the roles of bishops and elders or preservatives, priests, deacons. And, you know, like, for the individual articles, how is the author of that article chosen, and what is the process like for revision for review? Is it like a journal article, or is it, you know, would say it would be a little expedited? I know that, I think if I remember correctly, this project took more than a decade from, right?
So, my guess is that it probably, there's probably an enormous amount of work and thought I went into each one. Yes, for sure. I mean, there are over 600 contributors, I think something like 650 individual authors, there's close to 1200 articles, or, you know, different entries, some of them very short, but some of them much longer. The editors pretty much, the general editors would have chosen, and sometimes with the advice of one of the section editors, the length of an article.
So, you know, I think, I think 6,000 words may have been the max, I'm remembering correctly, but they could go anywhere from 500. You know, if it's just the little place that's not too significant, but needs to be mentioned, you know, a 500 word entry could be sufficient, but a much longer entry for something like the Trinity. And to some extent, we did allow authors to make suggestions, I mean, in some cases, the author would say, well, you know, I'm the expert in this field, and there's not much more to say than 2000 words, you know, and so that was fine, you know, the person may have been originally assigned six, but they could, they could cut down, but conversely, you know, they were given 2000 words and they might realize, well, I need a lot more. And so that was that kind of flexibility was allowed.
The process, and it actually kind of changed over time as some of the mechanisms within the press, some of the online editing surface functions became more sophisticated. There were some shifts as we went along, but by the end, the basic process was that an article, well, the general editors would make the ultimate decision on whom to which author, which person to ask to write a particular article, though frequently the section editors would suggest someone, since they were in the process. And then the author would suggest someone, since often they had the expertise in that, you know, in that specific field. Then the, the author would be commissioned and be given the page limit, then a contract by someone in the real staff, when the article was completed, it would be sent to the section editor first who would read it.
And then if it was approved that it would be passed on to one of the, one of the general editors, and then we would also read it and make suggestions or accept it as it is. And that was the general process and there was a central, what was it called? See if I can remember that the CMS, the camera, what the, what the invasion was, but it was an in-house editing system where the call management system. That must have been that must have been it.
So one, you know, that was the basic process. So they were reviewed by both by a section editor as well as by one of the, and I think, again, this has went on for so long that I think in most topics were reviewed by more than one of the section editors at different stages, and I'm certainly certain that was the case, but I should remember, but I don't for entirely. So that was in general the process. The other thing I should mention, in fact, I could have mentioned this earlier when I was talking about the overall kind of vision of the project.
Once we decided that we couldn't give full attention to the reception of early Christianity, just because it was just such a massive topic, one way we kept that dimension was by requiring that every article had some account of the scholarship that has been done on the topic. And to, and we varied really, or the article's very to the extent that they did this, but also its significance in over time. So something on the reception, kind of how, but beyond just a simple bibliography, usually they're designated in the encyclopedia as the final section or usually it's at the end is just as historiography. And so it's not just things that have been written about it, about the topic, about the person, so forth, but also kind of shifts in how they have been viewed and shifts in the historiography and the historical writing about the topic.
And that was, you know, that was a specifically brought in after we decided not to have separate volumes on reception. Yeah, I think that that's really important. I think historiography is such an important, I guess, field or practice because it shows why, even if something has been written about the topic already why it's worth re-examining. Because there are new things that we learned that inform something that maybe we took for granted in terms of how we were interpreting something.
And I think as you pointed out, there's a lot more research on different aspects of our question that have really been highlighted in previous works of this nature. Well, well, the other thing along those same lines is that it provides an opportunity for the expert writing on the topic, again, whether it's a person, a controversy, an idea, it gives them an opportunity to say, you know, this is an area on that topic that has not been fully explored. And that would be beneficial for that it be explored. And so there's a, again, not every article would have had this, but some kind of suggestions for future research, basically.
Was there anything that you read in the course of doing this project that either surprised you, maybe believe your mind, something that you just weren't aware of, how did I not know that? Or even something that maybe knew how you're like, this is, you know, if I had a hundred more years, I would spend my time working on this too. Well, that's a good question. It's, I mean, actually nothing springs to mind right away.
I'm sure there were plenty of topics where it was something that I was only vaguely familiar with. You know, usually we tried to send things to the general editors at the final depth of the process with, you know, a topic in which we knew they had some expertise. I mean, one of the things I remember, and this is a, this was kind of a sensitive topic because there was an article on abortion in the Encyclopaedia. There isn't an article on abortion.
And, you know, the first person who wrote it had written extensively on the topic, but had just basically put in all of the evidence in early Christian sources for opposition to abortion. And this was not to the liking of the of the secondary editor or section editor rather. And so it really became a kind of sensitive topic. And, and so, in fact, one of the editors, not me, but one of the editors ended up taking over that entry himself and redoing it, you know, including some of the material that had been in there, but trying to give a more, maybe a more neutral, more balanced account.
But you know, there's some topics where it's hard to do that if you're being faithful to what the early Christians themselves wrote. You know, I'm trying to think of something that would have blown my mind. I mean, one thing I can say this summer marked the actual appearance of the six volumes in hardcover, but individual essays have, or articles have been appearing online through Braille since I think around 2018. And I've, whenever there is a topic that fits something I'm doing in a class and sometimes for undergraduate classes and more often for graduate level classes.
I've used entries that are found there. I'm thinking, I think offhand, there's a one of the scholars we were able to and very lucky to get involved in the project is a British priest named Alistair Stewart and Alistair has written a lot on the development of church organizations structures. He's edited a number by the number of early Christian texts that deal with these topics, not just in Greek and Latin but in Syria, and Arabic and in other languages. He's really a phenomenal scholar.
Well, you know, I was able, and of course I was doing a year or two ago on the origins of church leadership. I was able to use some of his articles and they are just wonderful, really authoritative surveys of the material. And he just knows stuff, a lot of other people just don't do, particularly having to do with church organization, liturgy, especially he's an expert. So, you know, and those are some of the things that I've found most valuable.
But we really, you know, we really did try to get authors who were prominent, who could write with authority on these topics. And so, yeah, I've definitely been very, very impressed, both as I was reading them as an editor, but also the ones I've been able to use in teaching, how helpful they have been. Yeah, on that on that point, because I think, obviously, you know, there's an aspect of this scholarship, but in Encyclopedia is also just an incredible research tool. And I think, obviously, the hope that any sort of psychopedias that can be used by, you know, by future writers looking to brush up on a topic or by students who are looking for a sort of definitive answer that isn't just, you know, something on the Internet.
Well, I guess you can actually access this on the Internet, but which is wonderful, but something that is written by an expert that has been painstakingly reviewed and with essentially lifetime worth of scholarly work. So, you have a kind of vision for how you see scholars and students using the encyclopedia, any sort of recommendation. Well, you know, I mean, we expect fully and, and real expects that most people will use it in the online format. You know, that's what's been available already.
And it's, it's extremely easy to use that way. You know, there aren't many people are going to have the six volumes, you know, on their, on their desks. And speaking of which, I haven't received my six volumes yet. I don't know, I'm sure they're on the way.
Eventually, I will have a copy. But even if they're sitting on my desk, you know, in some ways it's going to be easier to look them up or you just do a word find. It's very easy. It's a benefit to having it online.
And so, yeah, that's, that's really the way to use it. I mean, I'm sure people will find that there are topics that are not covered in. You know, that's always the problem with, you know, even one volume, maybe, especially a one volume handbook, but you know, even a six volume encyclopedia, they will be, they will be topics that where either the author didn't come through. I mean, that always happens in projects like this.
They didn't finish. I just just yesterday I received an email from a professor who is a friend of an author who just died. And the author had just about finished his entry for the encyclopedia on suicide, actually. And he, so his friend who's also a professor is editing it and we may be able to get it online in the, you know, in the next edition, but he was finishing it up.
He was going to supply the videography. So things are, you know, things are still coming in in that way. Things can get put in online, even if they're not now in the six volume hard copy. And that's, again, one of the unique features of the Brill Encyclopedia, it was envisioned from the beginning to be online so that it could be updated and corrected without.
You know, without major trouble. So. Yeah, I mean, I would say using it online and making sure your institution subscribes to the Brill Reference Library. And Brill is such a unique publisher because there really are very few other major academic publishers that are putting together these sorts of projects.
I think part of it, you know, Brill is one of the oldest publishers. So I think they have a bit of an advantage in certain ways, but it is really remarkable. Some of the work that they do, especially in art history and religious studies. It really is incredible.
So yeah, this volume and the work that you've done, it's been fascinating to hear from you about how it came together. And, you know, I think definitely students and scholars are like, well, we'll find it very useful. Yeah, that's really been my experience, you know, having used it in quite a number of classes already and I'll certainly continue to do that. David, thank you so much for being guest on the new books.
It was really wonderful to talk to you about the Brill and Psych's Elite, really Christianity authors text and ideas. Thank you so much. Thank you. Happy to do it.