Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History, The

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1997 by Vivian, Tim

The Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History. By William H. C. Frend. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. xiv 412 pp. $39.00 (cloth).

I remember standing not long ago on top of the walls, now entirely covered by sand, of the ancient monastery of Saint John the Little in Egypt and looking out at the desert expanse of the Wadi Natrun. Scattered around the monastery were about a hundred kams or slight mounds of darker-colored sand, each the site of an ancient monastic habitation, now buried by the desert. What historical treasures lay under all that sand? What could those mounds, properly excavated, tell us about the history of early monasticism?

W.H.C. Frend, the eminent historian of the early Church, has been exploring such mounds for almost sixty years; now, in this fascinating book, drawing on his experience and expertise both as a historian and as an archeologist, Frend sets out to write, for the first time in English, the history of Christian archeology, from its "curious beginnings in 326" with Saint Helena's search for the true cross "to the avalanche of discoveries" today (p. 384). He records the slow evolution of archeology from its captivity to antiquarianism, "pious fraud," and "genteel pillage" (p. 25) to its status as an international, ecumenical, and interdisciplinary science. Along the way he shows how archeology (and scholarship in general) has been the child of its times, conditioned by social, religious, political, and intellectual movements, often "the handmaid of colonial foreign policy" (p. 110).

The most interesting parts of The Archaeology of Early Christianity are the many chapters on the 19th and 20th centuries. Frend is particularly adept at interweaving stories of discovery with accounts of how those discoveries have affected our understanding of early Christianity. The story of the first discoveries at the famous site of Dura-Europos reads like something out of Indiana Jones. Prior to the late 19th century, histories of early Christianity relied almost exclusively on literary evidence; the great achievement of modern archeology has been to show "how archaeological evidence and literary evidence were [both] needed to provide a convincing picture of early-Christian life and the crosscurrents of its thought" (p. 214).

Frend believes that archeology has made two major contributions: (1) it has elucidated major transitions in the Church, from paganism to Christianity in the late 3rd century, from Late Antiquity to the Byzantine era in the late 5th century, and from Byzantium to Islam in the 7th. (2) It has "enabled the non-orthodox traditions to speak for themselves" (p. 385): "The chief gain" just prior to World War I "had been in the new knowledge of the Christian dissenting movements.... Donatists, Montanists, Manichaeans and Coptic and Nubian Monophysites at last could begin to speak for themselves through inscriptions, papyri and the steady accumulation of material evidence" (p. 168).

As good as the book is, there are some problems: Frend rightly laments the "deplorable lack of method" (p. 73) of many early archeologists, but such criticism would have more meaning, especially for non-specialists, if the author gave more thorough discussions of the state of methodology during various periods. More importantly, one of the book's great strengths also leads to one of its weaknesses. Frend's personal accounts of his own archeological work in Nubia and North Africa make for fascinating reading (one hopes that he will write his memoirs), but they also lead to a glaring omission: Frend does not give Egypt the attention it deserves. He devotes almost all his space on Egypt to Nubia and Nag Hammadi, and omits the enormous historical wealth that has come and is coming from new discoveries in monastic archeology. He makes only one passing reference to Evelyn-White's monumental The Monasteries of the Wadi N Natrun, and completely overlooks Winlock and Crum's The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes and Walters's Monastic Archaeology, as well as the important discoveries at Saint Menas, Bawit, Saqqara and, most inexplicably, Kellia. My complaints are, however, the grumblings of a Coptologist. The Archaeology of Early Christianity should be read by everyone interested in early Church history (Anglophiles will be interested in the portions on the British Isles). W.H.C. Frend has written a fascinating book, one that is both engaging and enlightening.

TIM VIVIAN

Bakersfield, California