In the Beginning Was the Meal : Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity

Taussig, a founding member of the SBL Seminar on Meals in the Greco-Roman World, brings a wealth of scholarship to bear on the question of Christian origins. He shows that in the Augustan age, common meals became the sites of dramatic experimentation and innovation regarding social roles and relationships, challenging expectations regarding gender, class, and status. Rich comparative material and rigorous ritual analysis reveals that it was in just such a swirl of experimentation that the early Christian assemblies, with their "love feasts" and "supper of the Lord," were born.