Daniel Day Williams (1910–1973)

This work co-edited by Daniel Williams and Richard Niebuhr, the brother of Reinhold, is a collection of nine essays by "historians" who are Biblical scholars describing the function of "ministers" and priests in Christianity. Beginning with the "primitive church" of the first century to the "present" of the 1950s. Rich with references and experience, the authors are powerful preachers themselves.

John Knox describes the Primitive Church drawing upon Scripture and the the Didache. He is one of the learned Christian "historians" who remains oblivious to the troves of evidence of gnostic communities and the complete absence of a single Christian community for two centuries after the claimed entry of the Divine into history. The fact that Plutarch and Paul were contemporaries who wrote, preached, lived and traveled in the same cities with the same obsession with divinity, but never mention each other, now speaks volumes to us. Of course, Knox did not have the benefit of the recensions and discoveries we have obtained since the 1950s. However, in limning the "primitive church", Knox simply fails to address the fact of its absence. Nor is there any "connection" or link to the widespread Temple institutions in place and the Emperor cult in place.

All the "historians" authors indulge in careful scholarship, and brilliant writing, a reflection on themselves and their estimable editors.… (mer)