Bede as Historian: The Evidence from his Observations on the Life of the First Christian Community at Jerusalem

Abstract

Bede's historical interests frequently manifested themselves in his exegetical writings. In the case to be studied here, his references to Acts ii. 42–7 and iv. 32–7 and related passages, verses which describe the first Christian community at Jerusalem immediately after Pentecost, Bede broke new ground in trying to picture for himself the life of the first Christians, while accepting the traditional monastic reading of these passages almost without question. Alongside, and conflicting with the well-established view of the first Christian community as one distinguished by perfect love and monastic abandonment of the world, there was in Bede's mind a second, more historically minded, tendency to see the primitive Church as having passed through stages of development, and to try to imagine the historical circumstances in which the ideals of Acts ii. 42–7 and iv. 32–7 had been expressed.

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