This important work challenges an entrenched scholarly consensus, that at the beginning it was inspired leaders - not ordained officers - who dominated the church. James Burtchaell illustrates that the traditional argument on behalf of clerical authority had read history backwards, and found the apostles to be the first bishops. In this study, Burtchaell reads history forwards, and demonstrates that first century Jews knew only one form of community organization, that of the synagogue. The three-level structure of offices in the synagogue - president, elders, and assistant - emerges, in the author's estimation, as the most plausible antecedent for the Christian offices which stand forth clearly in the second century. For Burtchaell, the synagogue offices were present from the moment the early Christians began to form their own congregations; the Christian experience gave the basic structure its own course of development, at the same time as the synagogue tradition was being reshaped within Judaism. For the author it is clear that, while the three offices of ministry existed from the beginning of the Christian church, their incumbents during the first century were not the leaders; they were as dominated by the charismatics of the first century as the charismatics of the second century would be dominated by the bishops. Burtchaell's conclusion is that ordained office is a foundational element in Christianity, but that, while the officers presided from the first, they rarely led. Thus, while Jesus' brother James presided as the ordained chief of the mother church in Jerusalem, it was Peter - Jesus' inspired veteran disciple - whose voice carried most authority. This revisionist historical account of Christian origins creatively subverts the established positions on church order, and thus opens up the arguments to new and larger conclusions.