From the many museums around the world that house Greco-Roman antiquities,
collect a dozen or so images of artifacts that can be used to illustrate the social,
cultural, and religious environment in which early Christians lived and struggled to
define their unique Christian identity. Arrange and identify these in an appendix as
illustrated on p. 3.
Write a creative piece in which you assume the identity of an ancient character (real or
fictional) and describe your experiences of the interface between early Christianity and
the Greco-Roman social, cultural and religious environment illustrated in the artifacts
you collected. Some possible personas to assume are:
• a friend or traveling companion of Paul during his missionary work in Asia Minor
or Greece;
• Aquila or Priscilla (see Acts 18:1-3; 1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:3-5);
• a non-Christian trying to understand some Christians’ resistance to certain
common features of Greco-Roman life; or
• a new Christian convert struggling with the kinds of issues reflected in 1
Corinthians and/or other Pauline writings.