Helen Rhee s outstanding work is the first book to bring together The Apologies and the semi-fictional Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts in a single study. Filling a significant gap in the scholarship, she looks at Christian self definition and self representation in the context of pagan-Christian conflict.

Using an interdisciplinary approach; historical, literary, theological, sociological, and anthropological, Rhee studies the Christians in the formative period of their religion; from mid first to early third centuries. She examines how the forms of...

Christians in the formative period of their religion, from the mid first to early third centuries, sought new ways of relating their lives to the dominant society that surrounded them. As doctrine and practice became established, hostility from the wider world was often extreme. Christians used many literary forms to strengthen their own self-definition. Prominent among these were the Apologies as well as the semi-fictional Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts. These forms used the existing literary patterns of Greco-Roman society to present distinctively Christian ideas, attitudes and...