Review of current research on group formation in early Christianity

Abstract

In this paper an attempt is made to gain a picture of the earliest stages of the Christian movement subsequent to Jesus' public ministry. Observations about methodological matters are made and this is followed by a brief discussion of a possible scenario regarding the earliest Christian groups. Some suggestions are also made with regard to the utilization of other disciplines such as social science methodology (with special reference to small group theories and sociolinguistics) which could be extremely helpful in obtaining a clearer picture of the earliest stages of the Christian movement