In Peter Brown’s writing The World of Late Antiquity and Larry Hurtado’s The Earliest Christian Artifacts, they both discuss their different views on the creation of Christianity.

In one of the chapters from The Earliest Christian Artifacts, Larry Hurtado discusses the history of Christians and their use of the codex. Throughout his writing, Hurtado interwines the use of evidence and viewpoints from multiple sources. For example, Hurtado states, “…items identified on the LDAB as Christian amount to 35.4% of the aggregate number logged across the entire period of its coverage (chart 1).” (The Earliest Christian Artifacts p. 46). Not only does Hurtado back up the facts he has given the audience with sources, but with charts and graphs. By doing this, Hurtado builds up his credibility to his audience, who he assumes knows the basic background of Christianity and ancient writings, but he wants to further their education on the subject. In this chapter, he has discussed various ideas about the Christians use of the codex, ranging from economic aspects of book production to the marked Christian preference for the codex format. In his writing, he tends to stay away from giving his personal opinion directly or even at all. He has given the audience many reasons why other scholars believe that the Christians’ chose to use the codex over scrolls, yet does not state why he believes so.

Peter Brown gives a very opinionated piece. In contrast to Hurtado, Brown gives strictly his thoughts. Though his writing is a very informational and factual piece, he decided to stay away from giving others viewpoints on this subject, using solely his thoughts and beliefs as evidence. Brown writes about the positive and powerful aspects of Christianity, giving details on powerful leaders, their accomplishments, and big events that have happened in the past. His goal it seems is to depict the history of Christianity in a bright light. He knows his audience is well educated on the topic of the religion, but he wants to open their minds up and show them that Christianity was all-powerful. Just as Hurtado used graphs and charts, Brown incorporates the use of pictures. Though the two authors use these things in different ways, they both fulfill some type of purpose. Hurtado uses various charts and graphs from different sources to back up his evidence, while Brown uses his pictures to create a mood for the audience. He uses certain images of Greek and Roman architecture to depict their strength and influence the audience to hold Christians at a higher regard. In contrast to Hurtado, Brown simply builds his credibility on his obvious expertise in this field.