Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite

Abstract

It is simply and splendidly an exercise of divine royal prerogative ' (p. 254). And in Chapter 11 he reaches the somewhat surprising conclusion that there was no official court action against Christians in Syria, Asia, Pontus and Bithynia prior to Pliny.Part Three focuses principally on defending Downing's most distinctive thesis: that Jesus 'is displayed in the synoptic texts exhibiting and articulating dissident ideas, attitudes and practices resembling strands of Cynicism in recognizably Cynic ways' (p. 309), and that 'Paul perceived the young Jesus movement as a sort of Jewish Cynicism (or Cynic Judaism)' (p. 311). His conclusion is that 'this Cynic Judaism (or Jewish Cynicism) must seem to have been part of the earliest origins of the (Christian) movement' (p. 318). The chapters are worth reading for themselves, though the extent to which Downing's findings and thesis should influence or diminish respect for Jesus and Paul is less than clear.Overall, the attempt to set Jesus, Paul and early Christianity within the historical context of the time is both illuminating and challenging.