Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T12:45:14.990Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Social and historical setting: Christianity as culture critique

from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Frances Young
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

The third century is often cast as a period of increasing conformity to Roman institutions and values, one that carried Christianity further and further from its true and original identity. This story of conformity implies an interaction between two disparate cultures in which the weaker culture is modified and somehow diminished through its adaptation. Such a model imagines Christianity as a missionary enterprise seeking to take root in an alien culture. What this narrative obscures is the fact that Christianity was a movement originating within Roman society, invented as it were by ‘Romans’. It is precisely the fact that Christians lacked a unique cultural identity that made the emergence of Christianity such a dilemma for the Empire. Christians did not have a common ethnic identity – that distinctive dye of language, custom, ritual and local history that located other individuals and groups on the cultural map of the Roman Empire. Since the Roman elites were fastidious about their ‘Romanness’, expressed in the values of auctoritas, dignitas, romanitas and mos maiorum, these ethnic identities remained a powerful force in imperial society. When the imperial military and political map bestowed sometimes unwanted regional identities on areas organized into provincial administrative units, the custodians of this regional culture created a hybrid culture by crossing the values and traditions of this ‘Romanness’ with those of the proud, albeit local, elites. Christianity was shaped by the powerful cultural forces at work within the imperial and regional societies where it germinated.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bardy, G. Paulde Samosate, Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense études et documents, 4 (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum bureaux, 1923).Google Scholar
Beck, Alexander, Römisches Recht bei Tertullian und Cyprian (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1930).
Brown, Peter Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).
Cameron, Averil Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Chadwick, H.Philo and the Beginning of Christian Thought’, in Armstrong, A. H., ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Cooper, Kate The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Cox, P. Biography in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
de Riedmatten, H. Les actes du procès de Paul de Samosate, Paradosis 6 (Fribourg: Éditions St-Paul, 1952).Google Scholar
Dixon, Suzanne The Roman Mother (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988).
Eisen, Ute E. Arztsträgerinnen im frühen Christentum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996).
Frend, W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965).
Guarducci, M., Epigrafica greca, IV (Rome: Il Poligrafico, 1978),
Hadot, I.Les introductions aux commentaires exégétiques chez les auteurs néoplatoniciens et les auteurs Chrétiens’, in Tardieu, M., ed., Les règles de l’interprétation (Paris: Cerf, 1987).Google Scholar
Hagemann, H. Die Römische Kirche (Freiburg: Herder, 1864).
Hallett, Judith Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Haspels, C. H. Emilie, The Highlands of Phrygia: Sites and Monuments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), I –9, no. 107, plate 630.
Havelock, E. Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963).
Heine, R. E. The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia, Patristic Monograph Series 14 (Macon, GA: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation Ltd, 1989).Google Scholar
Heine, R. E.The Christology of Callistus’, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 49 (1998).Google Scholar
Herrmann, Elisabeth Ecclesia in Re Publica (Frankfurt: Peter D. Lang, 1980).
Horsley, G. H. R., ed., New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity (Sydney: Macquarie University Press, 1977),
Jo Torjesen, Karen When Women Were Priests (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
Klauser, TheodoreBischöfe als staatliche Prokuratoren im dritten Jahrhundert?Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum, Jahrgang 14 (1971).Google Scholar
Lamberton, R. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 9 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
Loofs, F. Paulus von Samosata, Texte und Untersuchungen 44.5 (1924).
Lyman, J. R. Christology and Cosmology, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).Google Scholar
McGowan, A. Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
Millar, F.Paul of Samosata, Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church, Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971).Google Scholar
Nautin, P. Lettres et écrivains Chrétiens des IIe et IIIe siècles (Paris, 1961).
Norris, F. W.Paul of Samosata: Procurator Ducenarius’s, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 34 (1984).Google Scholar
Otranto, GiorgioNote sul sacerdozio femminile nell’ antichità in margine a una testimonianze di Gelasio’, Vetera Christianorum 19 (1982).Google Scholar
Perkins, Judith The Suffering Self (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Pollard, T. E. Johannine Christology and the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
Richlin, AmyCarrying Water in a Sieve: Class and Body in Roman Women’s Religion’, King, Karen, in ed., Women and Goddesses (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Rives, J. B. Religion and Authority in Ancient Carthage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
Rossi, Mary AnnPriesthood, Precedent and Prejudice’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (Spring 1991).Google Scholar
Sample, R. L.The Messiah as Prophet: The Christology of Paul of Samosata’, Northwestern University, dissertation, 1977.Google Scholar
Smith, A. Porphyry’s Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1974).
Walzer, R. Galen on Jews and Christians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).
White, M. Building God’s House in the Roman World. Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews and Christians (London: Nelson, 1990).
Widdicombe, P. The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Williams, R.Does It Make Sense To Speak of Pre-Nicene Orthodoxy?’, Williams, R., ed., The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×