David Litwa has published on a wide range of topics related to the history of the early Church, including works on Hermetica (2018), the little-known group of the Naassenes (2023), angelology and demonology (2022), and a translation with brief commentary of Hippolytus’ Refutation of All Heresies (2016). In his most recent book, Litwa takes the reader on an exploratory journey to early Christian Alexandria on the perhaps a bit too optimistic hypothesis that more can be said about the origins and earliest history of Alexandrian Christianity than has often been thought. In ten chapters equally divided into two parts (I. Beginnings, II. Early Christian teachers and movements) and preceded and concluded by a long introduction and a substantial conclusion, Litwa looks for traces of Christian presence and literary activity in the Egyptian capital.
The introduction fairly addresses the old Bauer thesis and its reception, pointing out that Bauer was most probably right on several “smaller claims” (6), including the suggestion that fourth-century orthodox authors tended to forget or dismiss such figures that did not fit their idea of Christianity. The section on Eusebius deals with his (polemical) version of the subapostolic origins of Alexandrian Christianity (“the Mark legend”), which then leads Litwa into a critical assessment of the still often cited thesis that pilgrimaging Alexandrian Jews may have brought the message home after having heard Peter preach in Jerusalem, as told in Acts 2,10 (8-10), and of Colin Roberts’ thesis about the Jerusalem links on the basis of the use of nomina sacra in early papyri (10-14). For Litwa, Alexandrian Christianity soon distanced itself from its possible Jewish links and reached out to the Gentile population of the city. Its Church also developed a distinctive theology that gave an important place to Platonising concepts and that he summarises under six headings: “an idea of a transcendent God distinct from creative agencies, the manifestation of God as a primal Human (theandry), the transmigration of souls, the rejection of corruptible flesh, and the deification of the mind”, the sixth one being a reservation towards the figure of a crucified Messiah that itself functions as a sort of catalyst to turn interest towards the five other items (15). The Introduction concludes with a list of twenty works, most of these from the Nag Hammadi corpus, but also including the Letter of Jude (not mentioned in the analysis), the Letter of Barnabas, 2 Peter, 2 Clement, and the Preaching (Kerygmata) and the Apocalypse of Peter that would all have been produced in Alexandria.
The first chapter is a bit of an outsider as it deals with Philo, but Litwa manages to give it a place because of the parallels he sees (rightly so) with ideas and concepts of Christian theology. Actually, Philo “scores a perfect six” on his scale of typical Alexandrian theologoumena (32). Litwa is more sceptical than many scholars about how Christianity reached Alexandria. He is particularly critical of the “Jewish Palestine mission” thesis, as said above, but his own surmises do not offer much of an alternative beyond the general observation that it must be early and most probably was carried by traders and visitors rather than “missionaries” (39). The same is true of what we can take from the figure of Apollos, known from 1 Corinthians and Acts: “all we can know comes by a process of inference and educated guesswork” (53). That is a fairly reasonable conclusion that makes one wonder why the author spends a whole chapter on the personage. The series of three Jewish revolts in about sixty years, the second of which particularly affected Egypt, caused much damage to the Jewish communities in the country, some of which resided there for decades and even centuries, and must have contributed to the rise of Gentile Christianity in the region, but again the how and when are impossible to pinpoint any further. Litwa makes a case for situating the Epistle of Barnabas and the two Peter documents listed above in Alexandria, but the evidence remains fragmentary and any conclusions must be tentative at best. All three works (to different degrees) show an interest in Gentile rather than Jewish Christianity, but they also try to recuperate Jewish heritage for their own purposes (87).
The second part stands on firmer ground as it deals with a series of figures that are known to have hailed from or resided in Alexandria, but it is not possible to argue in each and every case with the same strength that these personages carried on typically Alexandrian theology or concerns. Litwa is aware of this and occasionally laments it (see 135: “Much of the evidence discussed in this chapter [on Julius Cassianus and his furthering of a branch of ascetic Christianity] is fragmentary and contested”). That is certainly correct, as it is probably also true that this type of Christianity did not carry the day at its time, which makes the search for a “typical” theology at this early stage all the more difficult, and perhaps even misleading. It may work for a good number of figures from the second half of the second century that almost all ended up, rightly or wrongly, being labelled “Gnostics” in polemical literature, but it does not cover the whole of Alexandrian Christianity of the first two centuries. Since the evidence often is so fuzzy, Litwa is probably right to reject the double label of “the Great Church” and “the many schools” to characterise the Church of Alexandria in this early period and to argue instead for the “many schools” model, as he does in his Conclusion (168-179). The first notion is applicable only to a (much) later situation, though Litwa is perhaps a bit too hasty to demote the so-called “Catechetical school”, with towering figures like Pantaenus, Clement and Origen, as one among many. The problem is that here again, as with so many other aspects of the early history of the church in Alexandria, we simply lack the evidence to successfully rate the real impact the “many schools” and movements had on the religious scene.
Litwa is to be commended for having tried to sketch a picture of the early days of what would become one of the three major players in late antique Christian theology. In general, his assessments are correct or defensible, even if at times perhaps too optimistic about what we can take from some of the sources with regard to the promotion of a characteristic Alexandrian theology. It is a pity that, especially in the first part, the text is marred with a number of typos (see, e.g., the double “also” on p. 6, the repeated use of “Robert’s” for “Roberts’” on pp. 10 and 12).