From Jesus Christ to Christianity: Early Christian Literature in Context

The scholarship that forms the backbone of this work developed in a period of change in South Africa which precipitated a search for moral accountability and the place of old religions in the new order. Religious studies mirrored these changes and adopted a new focus on Christianity against its historical background, and the study of the Books of the Bible as a collection of ancient literary texts. This study contends that by studying Christianity in context readers are bettter equipped to understand its function in their own environment, a process deemed particularly necessary in Africa, where religious belief and practice tend to overshadow critical engagement with religion as an academic discipline. Contributing editor Eben Secheffler is Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of South Afirca. Gerhard van den Heever is Senior Lecturer of New Testament Studies, and the other contributors are all academics in the fields of theology at the University of South Africa.