Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network – Biblical Studies
Episode: Judith M. Lieu, "Explorations in the Second Century: Texts, Groups, Ideas, Voices" (Brill, 2025)
Date: November 25, 2025
Host: Jonathan Lookadoo
Guest: Judith M. Lieu

Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

This episode features a conversation between host Jonathan Lookadoo and renowned scholar Judith M. Lieu about her new book, Explorations in the Second Century: Texts, Groups, Ideas, Voices (Brill, 2025). The discussion digs deep into the complexities of early Christian literature in the second century, investigating how texts, genres, identities, and boundaries were negotiated during a period marked by experimentation, fluidity, and the search for self-definition among emergent Christian groups. Lieu's scholarship challenges conventional boundaries, inviting readers to rethink genres and categories and to appreciate the dynamic, contingent nature of early Christian history.

Judith M. Lieu: Academic and Personal Background

[03:09]

• Lieu introduces herself as British, with academic training at Durham (under Kingsley Barrett) and doctorate from Birmingham.
• She describes her life as combining “academic critical study” with “roles within the life of the church,” holding her academic work and lay Methodist commitment “in what I hope is a creative tension.”
• Her academic focus began with the New Testament (esp. Johannine epistles), gradually expanding to include the broader Greco-Roman and Jewish contexts and eventually, second-century Christian literature.
  • Notable Quote [03:56]: “I’ve always thought of the New Testament as part of something bigger.”

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging Disciplinary and Genre Boundaries

[05:56]

• Lieu highlights how traditional boundaries between New Testament and "later" literature are artificial. The emergence of different genres (apologies, martyr acts, letters) should be viewed as overlapping and interwoven rather than strictly separate.
• On reading second-century apologies and martyrdom accounts as overlapping genres, Lieu notes:
  • Scholars too often assign texts like Justin’s Apology or the Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne to neat categories based on form rather than rhetorical intention.
  • Both kinds of texts project constructed identities, address internal audiences, and experiment with inherited literary forms to define “who we are.”
• Notable Quote [06:36]:

  "Justin’s Apology actually uses a lot of other genre in the meantime...We’re looking much more at the way that an early Christian thinker is trying to define, present, convey himself...the Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne...isn’t just ‘here’s something you might like to know about’—it’s actually trying to persuade readers to give a picture of who we are, what we think about, what we believe in." – Judith M. Lieu

• Lieu characterizes both genres as "experimental early Christian texts interacting with existing genre from their environment to explore who we are and who I am and to try and persuade a readership.”

2. The 'Laboratory' Metaphor for the Second Century

[10:14]

• Lieu unpacks the metaphor of the second century as a "laboratory": not just a place for controlled scientific experiment, but a site of real historical experimentation—social, textual, doctrinal—whose outcomes were open-ended.
  • She compares the historian’s view (looking back as if the destination—e.g. Nicaea—was always inevitable) with the reality of the time: a wide range of “false starts and non-productive attempts” and divergent experiments, any of which could have taken root.
• She acknowledges the limits of the metaphor—power dynamics and exclusions always shaped which ‘experiments’ thrived.
• Notable Quote [12:58]:

  "When we do our church history, we look at it rather like a railway journey...But actually, we need to see the second century as a period where the goals, the eventual outcome is not yet determined. And there are all sorts of ways of exploring and experimenting...We don't think there's a whole lot of competing ways...The laboratory is much more fluid in the possibilities that have been explored." – Judith M. Lieu

3. Internal Dynamics and Drawing of Boundaries

[15:35]

• The discussion turns to how Christian leaders (Paul, John, Ignatius, Irenaeus) articulated distinctions between “us” and “them”—but with boundaries that were far less clear-cut in practice than polemical texts suggest.

  • Irenaeus, for example, developed a stronger language of heresy: a “wrong choice,” not simply a different school of thought, and grounded his case in a claim to apostolic tradition and continuity.

• Ignatius advanced differentiation via ecclesiological structures (bishops/deacons) and unity of doctrine; his vision was likely aspirational, projecting an ideal rather than describing on-the-ground realities.

• Johannine texts used a dualistic “us vs. them" dynamic, sometimes targeting Jews (with tragic later consequences), other times internal “antichrists.”

• Paul was deeply invested in defining right belief and practice, but his opponents were often other Jesus-followers (e.g., Peter, James).

• Notable Quote [17:32]:

  "Irenaeus is trying to say at one and the same time, we're entirely different, but lots of people don't notice we're entirely different. And therefore I've got to make it quite clear we are....Heresi originally in Greek was simply used for a philosophical school...but when that language gets picked up by Irenaeus...it’s got a much more developed and clear negative association." – Judith M. Lieu

• Lieu drives home that boundaries were aspirational and fluid, strategic more than descriptively “real.”

4. Marcion: Memory, Doctrine, and Debate

[25:39]

• Lieu provides an insightful portrait of Marcion, remembered as the “arch-heretic,” though likely more complex in reality.
  • Marcion: second-century thinker, probably from the Black Sea coast, who came to Rome, influenced by philosophical readings of divinity and by questions arising from both Jewish and Christian Scriptures.
  • He argued strongly for a distinction between (1) the creator God (demiurge) of the Jewish Scriptures and (2) the highest God revealed in Christ, reflected in his focus on Luke and Paul. This dualism was philosophically as well as scripturally motivated.
  • Marcion’s ideas attracted communities for centuries but were also demonized in later Christian memory.
• Notable Quote [27:30]:

  “In him we also see an intersection between that scriptural textual interest, a philosophical interest...where people struggled over that God...must by definition not change...they are all developing the idea that perhaps there is...a sort of interim divine power...Marcion develops that to the extent where there is an oppositional relationship. So the creator God is the God we find in Scripture...Christians nowadays struggle with that. So for Marcion, scriptural interpretation and philosophical principle come together.” – Judith M. Lieu

5. Marcion and Paul on Judaism and ‘the Jews’

[32:47]

• Lieu argues it's hard to know how deeply Marcion cared about real Jewish communities or their fate.
• Contrasts Paul’s anguished concern for his Jewish “kinsmen” with Marcion’s lack of engagement—Marcion was more concerned with internal Christian controversy (the “threat is inside the church”) than with Judaism as a concrete other.
• Marcion read Paul’s more critical passages about Torah and the “God of this world” in an even more negative, dualistic way, foregrounding rupture rather than continuity.
• Notable Quote [35:04]:

  “For Marcion, the Jews are almost incidental...For Marcion, Judaism is more something within the church represented by those who uphold the authority of Scripture.” – Judith M. Lieu

6. Current and Future Research: Christian Epistolarity

[39:07]

• Lieu shares about her recent work on “Christian Epistolarity,” exploring what ancient letters do—how they negotiate presence and absence, construct identity, and play with time and space.
  • Letters are “a conversation at a distance” that blur the boundaries between personal and performed identity.
  • Ancient letters were public, often read by others, and intentionally shaped by their authors; even “private” letters are performances, both for actual and imagined audiences.
• Notable Quote [41:17]:

  “I'm interested in what letters do, and I pick up...ancient definitions of letters talk about letters as a conversation at a distance....In letters, we present a face...in fact, in ancient education, people often wrote letters in the name of someone else as a way of adopting their style, their way of being.” – Judith M. Lieu

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I’ve always thought of the New Testament as part of something bigger.” – Judith M. Lieu [03:56]
• “Justin’s Apology...uses a lot of other genre in the meantime...an early Christian thinker is trying to define, present, convey himself...it’s drawing on existing shapes, genres that were familiar in classical literature and in Jewish literature, noble death, martyrdom type literature. So they're overlapping...” – Judith M. Lieu [06:36]
• “We need to see the second century as a period where the goals, the eventual outcome is not yet determined. And there are all sorts of ways of exploring and experimenting...The laboratory is much more fluid in the possibilities that have been explored.” – Judith M. Lieu [12:58]
• "Irenaeus is trying to say at one and the same time, we're entirely different, but lots of people don't notice we're entirely different. And therefore I've got to make it quite clear we are." – Judith M. Lieu [17:32]
• “For Marcion, the Jews are almost incidental...Judaism is more something within the church represented by those who uphold the authority of Scripture.” – Judith M. Lieu [35:04]
• “In letters, we present a face...We create a new imagined shared space. And...what do we think we’re doing? And how does that sense of becoming present and...contemporary with...” – Judith M. Lieu [41:17]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [03:09] Judith M. Lieu: Academic & personal background
• [04:17] Path to second-century studies
• [05:56] Challenging genre/discplinary boundaries
• [06:36] Overlap between apologies and martyrdom accounts
• [10:14] The laboratory metaphor and open-endedness of second-century Christianity
• [15:35] How early Christian leaders drew boundaries between "us" and "them"
• [25:39] Who was Marcion? Memory, doctrine, legacy
• [32:47] How Marcion and Paul each understood “the Jews”
• [39:07] Current project: Christian epistolarity and what ancient letters do

Summary & Listener Takeaway

Judith M. Lieu’s scholarship demonstrates that the second century was a time of creative flux, boundary negotiation, and experimentation for Christian communities, and that genres, texts, and identities were constructed with purpose and contingency. She invites scholars and readers alike to view early Christianity not as a tidy progression toward orthodoxy, but as a dynamic “laboratory” of ideas and communities whose outcomes were far from certain. Her research also opens new avenues for studying ancient letters as literary spaces that play with presence and absence and construct imagined communities across time and space.

Recommended for:
Scholars, students, and lay readers interested in early Christian history, the development of religious identity, the function of ancient texts and genres, and the intersection of theological, social, and literary analysis.