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These peoples had no single name for themselves but a variety of names, and sometimes no name. The use of the term Christian was very rare.

First and second century groups employed a range of names for themselves. Since these groups were very diverse their names were also different. They did not all call themselves "those belonging to the party of the anointed." It also is likely that many of these group names have been lost or never written down.

Although there must have been at least several hundred different names for Jesus peoples during the first 200 years of the Common Era, our research over the past two years of the seminar has identified only 24 in actual documents.

The one thing that unified all the groups of this movement was that they regularly dined with each other. ... Meaning and benefit emerge in meals when those of different classes, ethnicities, and social standing eat together. However, this attractive and compelling practice of diversity by groups of the anointed had some problematic examples as well. ... Both bathing and communal eating practices of Jesus groups during the first two centuries of the Common Era were important community activities. The bathing practices in particular had a strong effect across broad swaths of these communities.
As people strove against imperial pressure both of these practices healed and energized otherwise broken people and relationships providing them with a sense of belonging to a safe community.

No one in the second century would have proposed a collection of writings of 20 or 30 documents to act like a New Testament. There was little interest in a written religious authority in the second century. No one proposed it, and no one assembled something like a New Testament.

These first 200 years of the Common Era are not the territory of something to be called the New Testament. There's little organization or dogma as people and groups work on defining their identities in unsteady but creative times. The writings, the people, and the identities are fresh, free, and incomplete.

... a long silence follows his life when Paul was all but forgotten except in a handful of communities that remembered him as their founder. Nearly a hundred years after his death in the mid-second century he began to be name-checked by an aggressive group of partisans who had rediscovered his legacy. But others reacted either with hostility or with relative indifference to this obscure character from the past.

When we search these other second century writings for Paul's substantive or distinctive ideas, we typically do not find them. Even those who knew of Paul and mentioned him may not have known his writings. Acts purports to tell Paul's story, but notoriously, never once mentions him writing letters.

A century after his death. Paul held an ambiguous or even ambivalent status. The impression is not of an ancient and well-established authority stretching back to his own time, but rather of a recent introduction that various leaders feel compelled to stage manage and resolve. The flurry of literary activity, all dated approximately to the mid-second century bears witness to a significant adjustment of traditions to make room for Paul.

Throughout the first and second centuries we see not only a great deal of diversity but also fluidity and experimentation in all aspects of the life of the communities of the Jesus movements. Members of early Jesus communities grew up within Greater Israel and identified with Israel's tradition. Israel had long dealt with its diversity by orthopraxy, not orthodoxy, that is by correct practice and not correct teaching. The Jesus groups initially followed in this tradition, but competition between teachers for new teachings created new schools and began to shift the balance more toward teachings than practice.

The real situation is fluid exhibiting a great deal of experimentation. We do not have heresy and orthodoxy in competition but a whole series of schools and teachers engaged and interacting in conversation debate, and experimentation.

The movement of Gnosticism to the scholarly side removes a confusing category from our ongoing work of rethinking the history of early Jesus schools and associations. We are moving from an idea that Gnosticism was a real force, the primary heresy that threatened the pure trajectory of Christianity, to the actuality on the basis of evidence for the absence, the non-existence of Gnosticism. We must rethink the entire assumption that a unified, heretical Gnosticism played a primary role in how the first two centuries unfolded. Using Gnosticism as an analytical category seems to hide more than it reveals and if we really want to understand the writing called Gnostic we need to set aside that designation.

1. They Resisted the Roman Empire
A wide set of what we call Jesus clubs, movements for the Savior, communities of the Anointed, and schools of the Lord successfully resisted the Roman Empire. These peoples' resistance against Rome often kept violence at bay and gave their people courage and an experience of safety. A key dimension of their resistance to empire was invoking God's compassionate and strange empire, or kingdom, as later translators have it, in contrast to Rome's cruel and dominating one. These various groups made fun of Roman military power and mocked Rome's claim of divine power, even though they themselves had almost no power. The Empire of God challenged the Empire of Rome. Caesar Augustus as Lord conflicted with Jesus Anointed as Lord.

2. They Practiced Gender Bending
A wide range of Jesus peoples practiced gender bending-that is, gender roles were fluid and flexible. One of their primary identities was that they were neither male nor female, but all were "one" through different lived, experienced realities of gender pluralism. Women, and a significant number of men, rejected both male dominance and female passivity. A wide swath of Jesus groups rejected marriage and traditional families, with the envoy Paul often leading the way. Although some Anointed groups and individuals supported male dominance and demanded female obedience to men, many men shifted toward acting more vulnerable and less domineering. Women cut their hair and dressed like men. These gendered activities and actions brokered new possibilities for identity among various Jesus peoples, well beyond the regular masculine/feminine dichotomies of the first two centuries.

3. They Lived in Chosen Families
With traditional families increasingly broken and dispersed, a variety of Jesus groups started living in experimental family groups. These new family groups were voluntary; that is, they lived together increasingly outside of blood or married relationships. Whereas previously the primary relations for living arrangements were extended families of multiple generations with cousins, aunts, and uncles in the mix, Jesus people associated daily with each other according to mutual support and affection. More and more "supper clubs" became crucial and core associations of daily life. Economic sharing provided ways that members of these groups bonded. In some cases, larger housing arrangements came into play for the groups through a donor exhibiting compassion. Although most of these new kinds of families were small, occasionally a wealthy person provided larger space for bigger groups.

4. They Claimed Belonging to Israel
The largest and most common identity of Jesus groups was their allegiance to Israel, regardless of whether the groups or members came from Israel-based bloodlines. This bond applied whether they lived in geographical Israel or around the Mediterranean basin. Small and large groups understood themselves to be following the God of Israel, read Israel-based holy writings, prayed and meditated according to the various Israel-based forms, bathed ritually according to Israel's traditions, and—perhaps most of all—gave allegiance to their Israel-born teacher and leader, Jesus. Since Jesus belonged to Israel by blood and practice, the larger Jesus movements assumed and explicitly practiced Israel's ways. But after the Bar Kokhba War (132-136 CE), the second major revolt against the Roman
Empire of the people inhabiting the territory known as Roman Palestine, this allegiance was increasingly challenged.

5. They Had Diverse Organizational Structures
As was the case with larger Israel itself, the many different groups, schools, clubs, and Anointed communities had a variety of practices, beliefs, and organizational patterns. These peoples
had no central leadership and so had neither interest in telling nor the ability to tell the myriad groups how to practice or what to believe. The models for such organization were local and
occasionally regional, and so Jesus groups generally followed the diverse club organizational rules or the varieties of synagogue practices around the Mediterranean. The idea of Christian synods and ecumenical councils lay in the distant future. As occurred both in local clubs and in synagogue patterns, it was normal for different groups to dispute with one another about practices and beliefs.

6. They Had Persisting Oral Traditions
Writing did not dominate the life of the early communities of the Anointed to the same degree as surviving documents have dominated how we have imagined their life. There was nothing like the New Testament in the first two centuries CE. Throughout those centuries, Jesus peoples celebrating, arguing, and debating combined many forms of speaking and writing. Reading—as in all Mediterranean cultures�� was done together publicly, especially when the few people who could read would read to a whole group. But often there was no reading. There was significant writing among the different groups, but this writing was part of a boisterous, complicated community dialogue, group reading, ritual practice, and—most of all—intense discussion. Much material overlapped Israel's developing readings of Torah, the Prophets, and Wisdom literature, the writings increasingly being set apart, designated as particularly meaningful for the life and identity of these peoples. Other writings were letters between communities, partially developed stories, and songs from within communities. Important writing was also done through a few words etched in stone and referenced as rules or statutes for Jesus clubs and associations.