MacDonald offers biblical scholarship at its best: nuanced, multidisciplinary, detailed, informed, critically engaged, and insightfully reasoned.
-- Choice
…MacDonald has given the field of early Christian studies a valuable resource, and one that humbly invites further scholarship. Her depth of knowledge in the field is evident, and even those who may disagree with some of her interpretations of Scripture or historical data will nonetheless be aided by her research.
-- Fides et Humilitas
MacDonald’s analysis is careful and cogent, her conclusions measured (respecting the limits of the evidence), and her approach fully informed by relevant ancient evidence and scholarly work.
-- https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com
Here is a deeply researched and informative study that casts light on an overlooked dimension of early Christianity, namely, the place of children and their influence in the life and traditions of the church in its formative period.
-- The Bible Today
In The Power of Children, Margaret MacDonald continues her previous work on early Christian families and house churches, probing deeper into what we know and can surmise about the most silent members of early Christian communities. The Power of Children is the best book available on children, households, and the household codes in early Christianity.
-- Emerita
A wealth of insight
-- Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
The book is a powerful contribution to the study of Christian children in antiquity and, after reading it, it is impossible to read the household codes without pondering the lives of ancient children. Not only is MacDonald’s book now required reading for those studying Christian children in antiquity, it must be required reading for those who study the Deutero-Pauline Epistles.
-- Journal of Theological Studies
Well-researched, accessible, interesting, and insightful.
-- Review of Biblical Literature
This book makes an important contribution to the study of children in early Christianity by incorporating and comparing a wealth of material on children in the Greco-Roman world to that of diverse New Testament texts and by arguing that children were both participants and a focus of attention in early Christian communities.
-- Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
MacDonald weaves together her intimate knowledge of cultural values of honour, patronage and gender hierarchy with fruitful, new insights on the lives of children, parenting, slaves and the composition and functioning of the early Christians in community. It is a wonderful contribution to continued work on families and households in early Christian scholarship.
-- Studies in Religion
