The first generation of Christians slowly became aware that Jesus‟ message was addressed to “all nations”. It produced a movement of itinerant missionaries, which slowly decreased in number. Subsequently, the Christian mission became the responsibility of local communities. Since few pagans could read books written by Christian authors, the community gave witness through their conduct, through testimony given during trials in the forum and through martyrdom in the stadiums. Increasingly, conversions came about through bonds of friendship, kinship and personal daily contact.

Christianity is a complex phenomenon, especially during the initial period. The use of the plural “Christianities” in historiography aims to emphasize this complexity. This paper offers some examples to highlight the different ways of life, the manifold interpretations of Jesus, the diverse organizations of churches and of worship during the first two centuries. The paper goes on to discuss the concept of Christianity and proposes a definition deriving from the impact of Jesus on believers. This impact led to his veneration, whether in an exclusive sense or not, but always in a decisive manner, given that, as the eschatological envoy, Jesus is the cause of salvation.

The conviction that from the beginning believers in Christ possessed an awareness of their own faith and that they strove to avoid dissolving into different beliefs or doctrines, was the impulse for the author of this article to argue in a point by point manner in favor of the strong collective identity of the first believers in Christ. From the margins the author offers evidence of the liminality of the believers in Christ with respect to Jews and Pagans; from the contents he offers some reflections on the canonical Gospels, the day of celebration, the organization of the community and communication between the communities. The unitive outlook with which the author approaches the first testimony of Christianity distances his point of view from the pluralistic visions which are more in fashion among historians, who prefer to speak ofChristianities and not of a Christianity.

This short note underscores the pivotal part that the Apostle Paul played in promoting the socio-cultural heterogeneity characteristic of early Christianity: Without his role in the extension of evangelisation also to the Gentiles, Christianity, as a Hebrew “sect”, would have remained much more uniform, adhering mostly to the traditional way of life handed down from its ancestors (liturgy, rituals). Paul‟s missionary turn opened the way to many other, and also more “gentile”, forms of being Christian.

This essay analyzes Origen's Commentary on Matthew, specifically the pericope of the 'rich young man', by comparing its ancient Latin translation to theGreek text as it stands in Klostermann's edition, taking into consideration, on the one hand, the surviving manuscripts and, on the other, the dissimilarGreek version used by the ancient translator. The paper illustrates how a painstaking research of the commentary's sources unexpectedly reveals Origen's exegesis and doctrines, which often remain hidden in modern translations of Origen's works.

The Vaticanus gr. 573 (14th/15th c.) contains some extracts of the Geoponica with a few lines added to the last one. This supplementary material deals withthe properties of the willow against sexual desire and fertility, and invokes the testimony of the Holy Scripture in support of this conception. Its source can be identified as a passage of Methodius of Olympus’s Symposium, that reuses in the exegesis of Ps. 136 (137) the old Greek idea of the willow as "destroyer of its own fruit" (Hom., od. 10, 510).

Hilary of Poitiers is an anomaly in the standard scholarly classification of Patristic Greek and Latin soteriology, for, though he is Latin, his soteriology shows such resemblance to Greek mystical theory that he is considered one of its major proponents. Since Harnack, the Greek mystical model is said to depend upon Platonism. However, this paper argues that Hilary teaches a "Greek" mystical model of redemption based on Christ‘s assumption of all humanity without recourse to Platonism. Hilary‘s soteriology is instead a development of Latin Stoicism and a literal exegetical understanding of the Pauline Adam-Christ parallel.

The encounter between Jesus and the rich young man in Mt. 19,16-30 (with parallels in Mc. 10,17-31 and Lc. 18,18-30) provides the setting for the teachingon the attaining of perfection, which is presented as a three-step process: the selling of one’s possessions, the distribution of the proceeds to the poor, andthe following of Christ (Mt. 19,21; Mc. 10,21; Lc. 18,22; and the unique Lukan saying in 12,33). It was a passage to which Jerome appealed frequently in hiswritings and which Finn, in his recent monograph, believes demonstrates Jerome’s extreme views. In this paper I shall examine Jerome’s references to this biblical passage in his letters and treatises to evaluate whether the first two steps in the process (self-dispossession and almsgiving) were consideredequally virtuous by Jerome.

The name of Rufinus the Syrian (as presumed author of the Liber de Fide) is frequently given for the hitherto unidentified translator of part of the Vulgate New Testament. The evidence of the text of the Liber, however, does not support the claim that it is a witness to a Vulgate text. Furthermore, the biblical text in the Liber is frequently independent of even the Vetus Latina tradition, and shows close dependence on a Greek original. The use made of biblical proof-texts further points to Greek sources for the theology and anthropology presented in the Liber de Fide.