Reviewing Mack's Re-Visioning

  Because Axis Mundi has, to date, dedicated itself solely to publishing articles and not review essays, the publication of the following papers marks Axis Mundi’s review publishing “debut.” This “review symposium” on Burton L. Mack’s A Myth of Innocence is therefore something of a milestone for the journal. It is also an exciting occasion for scholars such as myself, whose research interests primarily revolve around the field of Christian origins, because the publication of this book in 1988 was a milestone in the establishment of our field. In a time when most students of early Christianity were occupied with hermeneutical studies of the New Testament, trying to decipher the texts and make them relevant for contemporary theological insight, Mack was a pioneer, treating the texts not as material for exegesis but as “artifacts” from prior communities engaged in social formation and rhetorical representation. Mack viewed these textual representations as “identity markers” by which groups of early Christians defined themselves in the hectic social economies of the Hellenistic world. In this way, he helped establish a distinctly North American style of biblical studies, which many now designate as the study of "Christian origins,” in contradistinction to the more traditional field of “New Testament studies.”