ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes an extensive study which rigorously employed the respective methodologies of literary analysis and social scientific analysis. Literary analysis required the establishment of the original text (textual criticism), then the inclusion of portions of some texts into later ones (source criticism), and finally the development of theses over time (redaction criticism). Information gleaned from source criticism as well as from extra-biblical historical information made a sequence of dates of composition possible. The application of social scientific inductive analyses to the texts and their sequence and dates of composition yielded a developmental process of the early Christian movement, with different sociological interpretive concepts shown to be relevant at different points in that process. The movement emerged as a new religion seeking recognition and creating structure, and eventually as a sect maintaining identity through boundary maintenance and orthodoxy.
