Valeriy Alikin

A dissertation. The strength of it is its compendium of relevant passages in early Christian and other writings of antiquity. It also offers a useful summary of the research in the past few decades that attempts to situate the earliest Christian worship in the wider context of table fellowship the the Hellenistic and Roman epochs, with its bipartite structure of deipnon followed by symposium. The author uses a topical approach (Lord's Supper, reading of Scripture, preaching, singing and praying). Unfortunately, the same few texts offer information on many or all of these topics. The resulting repetition is tiresome for the reader. In addition, although the author expresses all the sensible precautions about generalizing on a phenomenon that could have had varieties at various times and places, in his conclusions he seems overly-confident that his sources point to a weekly, Sunday evening gathering that had its origins in Jerusalem in the first years of the Christian movement. As a consequence, he at times reads a text in a way that supports this conclusion, thus going beyond what the text in question offers in the way of evidence. Useful for students of the topic, but others might wish to look elsewhere, such as Smith and Taussig's Many Tables: The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today (1990), which has the more general reader in mind.… (lisätietoja)