Book Review: The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities

Abstract

The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities. By Alistair C. Stewart. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2014. xx + 396 pp. $50.00 (cloth).Alistair Stewart challenges several near consensus positions about the origins of ecclesial structures in his account of the rise of monepiscopacy. Given the terminological differences in studies of church authority, he helpfully defines his terms along the following lines. He argues that episkopos (bishop/overseer) and presbyteros (elder) are not synonyms but perionyms, that is, two words in unspecified relationship that inhabit the same semantic domain (p. 13). An episkopos was a leader of a single Christian congregation. Although the definition of presbyteros is more complicated and discussed fully in chapter 3, the way in which it is used here denotes a collective body of church leaders in a city. Stewart traces the rise of Christian leaders who had responsibilities for multiple congregations and subordinate officers by the turn of the third century. He refers to such a leader as monepiskopos-an episkopos who exercises leadership over several Christian communities with subordinate ministers in these communities. Although Stewart clarifies how he uses these terms, his usage differs from the way in which the terms are used in some other studies and is worth noting from the outset.Chapter 1 critiques the position that episkopos and presbyteros are synonymous. Stewart examines evidence for federation in the churches at Rome, Ephesus, Corinth, and Philippi. Household congregations in these cities interacted with, but were distinguishable from, other Christian groups in their respective cities. He proposes that the origins of the episkopos lie in the economic functions that they exercised and challenges the hypothesis that the origins of the episkopos can be found in the leadership of Jewish synagogues. Stewart argues that the role of the diakonos (deacon) was closely associated with the episkopos and involved the distribution of food and charity in the eucharist. Chapter 3 places the origins of the presbyteros in the language of Hellenistic associations rather than Jewish synagogues. A presbyteros could refer to a gathering of individual congregational leaders (episkopoi) in a particular city or to honored members within a congregation who served as patrons rather than as officers.With these findings in the background, Stewart examines the evidence for federation and monepiscopacy in chapter 4. This includes studies of the development of leadership structures in Alexandria, the rest of Egypt, Bithynia, Smyrna, Philippi, Jerusalem, Antioch, and certain Asian communities. …