Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study [Hardcover]

Tertullian's thought and life come alive in this marvellous study. Written during the revisionist fashion in the 1960's, the book is still required reading. The text is very readable, and extremely detailed, containing more than enough references to take a newcomer to the critical literature. The starting point for any English speaker wanting to know about Tertullian, although not all of his views have found acceptance.

In his first major work which was based on his Phd. thesis, T. D. Barnes offers a striking revision of what was then current opinion on Tertullian. The book has of course two stated purposes: An historical and a literary study. Barnes states that no biography of Tertullian is possible. However, his historical analysis is keen. First of all, the author points out the dearth of information about North African Christianity prior to 150 C.E. and the sparseness of further information from the late second century C.E.

This places Tertullian as the first major Christian author west of Alexandria in Africa. He carefully demolishes Jerome's assertions that Tertullian was the son of a Roman military official and a priest of the Church. Based on his reconstruction of Tertullian literary corpus, Barnes assesses what can be known. For Barnes' observations about the nature of the persecution of Christians by the Romans, the book is worth reading alone. He sees persecution as random in time and location. It crops up here and there but almost continually by the time of Tertullian. A frightening picture of fear is mapped out. Persecution and the subsequent responses to it in Northern Africa ripped the Christian Church there into schismatic factions. This situation was only settled by the eventual Muslim conversion. And, Barnes correctly argues that Tertullian eventually embraced Montanism. This of course put him at odds with the Roman Church center which eventually designated Montanism as heretical. The sweep of historical analysis presented here is wide and thought provoking.

Why not five stars? The literary analysis is less persuasive. This was amply pointed out by A. Momigliano who was one of Barnes doctoral advisers in his review of this book many years ago. In spite of his Montanism, Tertullian had a lasting and profound effect on the Roman Church and its thought. Both Cyprian and Jerome credit him highly. However, Barnes gives Tertullian's theology far less attention than it deserves. His dating of the works of Tertullian's corpus is not argued with overwhelming force and is suspect. And lastly, Barnes proposes that Tertullian was a Christian Sophist which may be the weakest part of the work. However, all that being said, the two short reviews previous to this are right when they state that this is the place for all English speakers to start their study of Tertullian. There may be something in the French language that compares, but I do not read the language. It may also be the definitive starting point of any study of the early Christian Church in central north Africa. This is an immensely exciting book well worth reading and accessible to almost all.

This book is the best book ever written on Tertullian in English. The summaries of the content of each work are full of life, and Tertullian himself lives in these pages.

Much of the book is taken up with a detailed and systematic exploration of what we think we know about the man and the world he lived in. Barnes wrote this in 1971, under the influence of 1960's revisionism, and his conclusions have since been revised (see the appendix written in 1985 in which he discusses this). But simply reading how he goes about evaluating the data, and how he refers to it, will be a liberal education for most people.

The humanities does not have to consist merely of people promoting their prejudices. It can be solidly fact-based and data-driven. Barnes provides this marvellous example of a Roman historian discussing a difficult subject in the most objective manner possible.