Resumen de The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities by Alistair C. Stewart (review)
In this volume he goes back to the very origins of patterns of order within Christianity as found in the first generations of Christianity reflected in the New Testament and the immediate post–New Testament environment. At its heart, Stewart’s argument goes against the prevailing consensus that the terms episkopos and presbyteros as found in the New Testament and the immediately succeeding Christian literature are synonymous, that monoepiskopoi emerged from among the ranks of the prebyteroi, who were the collegial leaders of the earliest Christian communities, and that the presbyteroi had their origins in the Jewish synagogues. Stewart’s argument is that from Christian origins, each domestic congregation was presided over by an episkopos, who primarily had economic responsibilities of patronage or brokerage and hospitality for providing the resources needed by that community in its liturgical life (and the diakonoi who assisted him had that same economic role).
