Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity

<p>Luke Johnson here issues a provocative call for a radically new direction in New Testament studies that can change the way we have viewed the entire phenomenon of early Christianity.</p><p>Johnson is convinced that the dominant ways of studying early Christianity tend to miss its specifically religious character because of a disjunction between formal religion and popular religion. He proposes in this book by means of three case studies-baptism glossolalia and meals-to show how a more wholistic phenomenological approach can be made. This makes possible the inclusion of the world of healings and religious power of ecstay and spirit-in short the religious experience of real persons in the study of early Christianity.</p><p>Johnson concludes that there is still much to be learned about early Christianity as a religion if we can find a way to get at the category of real experience. He maintains that early Christian texts reflect lives that are caught up by and defined by a power not in their control but controlled instead by the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus.</p>