The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy Book

Great reading on pre-Constantinian church worship. Bradshaw assesses the credibility of the extant documents that much of the study of early church worship has drawn since the 19th century, and then attempts to reconstruct what can be known of their worship. A major goal of this work is to cast a critical eye toward the liturgical scholarship of the mid-20th century and bring the reader up-to-date on current scholarship; for me, this is important as I believe many of my understandings of this subject have been shaped by people reading these scholars. Bradshaw's primary thesis is to disprove the prevailing theory that the oldest elements of church worship can be discerned from what elements are held in common across the different primary sources. On the contrary, the process of standardization was a later development, and that many times the earlier elements are those that were at variance with their contemporaries. Another goal of the work is to dismantle prevailing notions that there were set forms in 1st century Christian and Jewish worship, which Bradshaw shows were not standardized until at least post CE 70. Overall, to me this is a solid scholarly work that is readable enough for those interested in the subject.