Judith Lieu on Scholarship and Church History

Over at the Church Times is an excellent interview with Prof Judith Lieu, The Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, about scholarship, her own career, Paul, Marcion, and what people should know about church history.

People’s ideas about the Early Church can be a fantasy, ignoring the realities of slavery, which even early Christian writings take for granted, or the restricted roles available for women; and, although we appeal to ideas of family, family meant something very different in that period. On the other hand, early Christianity is a source of inspiration, and a check against later developments that came to be seen as unchangeable.