The Organization of the Early Christian Churches: Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford, in the Year 1880.

Here Edwin Hatch presents his idea that the historic episcopate was a late development with its origin in pagan society. These lectures provoked a conversation that lasted almost a century regarding the nature of the episcopacy. Hatch argued that Christian congregations were shaped according to patterns already present in voluntary associations of Graeco-Roman society. Within these voluntary associations, administrative officers emerged whose role was primarily financial. Hatch claimed that...