Denise Kimber Buell, in Why This New Race?, says no (see a review here). She surveys a wide range of Christian literature from New Testament writings, apologetic treatise, martyrdom narratives, Nag Hammadi texts and so on to uncover claims that Christians constitute a new ethnos (nation) or genos (people/race) (1 Peter 2:9; Ep. Diog. 1:1; Aristides Apol. 15:2-3; Acts of Andrew 33:4; 50:5), descendants of venerable ancestors (Abraham – Gal 3:29; Rom 9:7-8; Dial. 11:5; 119:3-6; Seth for Sethian Gnostics), the true Israel (Dial. 11:5; 123:5-9), neither Judean or Greek but a “third race” (Ep. Diog. 5; Clement Strom. 6.5.41 [Kerygma Petrou]; Tertullian Ad Nationes 1:8), or the “immoveable genea (race)” (Apocryphon of John, Sophia of Jesus Christ, etc.). She writes, “As formulations of those not in power, pre-Constantinian Christian texts that employ ethnic reasoning can be read as attempts to consolidate and mobilize geographically, theologically, and organizationally disparate groups under one banner-figured as a people, ‘the Christians.’” (4). She argues that ethnic reasoning allowed Christians to take advantage of the privileges granted to other ethnic communities to practice their native religious customs, to determine the criteria for membership into the Christian people, to engage in a universal mission and to uphold a pure form of “Christianness” that excluded rival Christian identities (2-3).
Her thesis seems counterintuitive because of the modern perception that ethnicity is something you are born with while religion is voluntarily chosen, but Buell argues that ethnic groups are socially constructed and that ethnic reasoning is characterized by both fixity (common origins/descent) and fluidity (changing culture, language, religion, etc) (6-10). That is, the ancients could view ethnicity as ascribed and defend a shared myth of origins (e.g. common ancestors – Abraham [Judaeans], Hellen [Greeks], Aeneas [Romans]) but also defined by a specific way of life where membership can be acquired by adopting specific customs or cultic practices (barbarians are Hellenized by adopting Greek language and culture, Gentile proselytes to “Judaism” became like native-born). Religion was an essential component of ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean. The Romans had a myth of origins (e.g. The Aeneid claimed they were of Trojan descent), but the Romans were more united by the sense that the gods had chosen them to rule and spread humanitas (civilization) to the rest of humankind (e.g. Pliny Natural History 3.39; Aeneid 6.851-3). Honouring the gods in a proper Roman way was a mark of religio while ”uncivilized” subject peoples often practiced superstitio. After the Persian invasion in 480-479 BCE the Greeks defined themselves against an Other (”barbarians”) and the historian Herodotus History 8.144.2 puts on the lips of the Athenians the classic definition of Greek identity as shared blood, language, shrines/cult and way of life. The covenant with Yahweh, whose temple resided in Jerusalem, set the Jews (or Judaeans) apart from the idolatrous nations (ethnē). The Egyptians were often maligned for venerating animal images (e.g. Plutarch Isis and Osiris; Juvenal Satires 15.1-8, 11-13; Philo Decalogue 16.76-80; Josepus Against Apion 1.224-226). Elsewhere Paula Fredrickson summarizes “religion” in the Greco-Roman world: “And gods also attached to particular peoples; ‘religion’ ran in the blood…a mark of a successful empire (the subordination of many different peoples to a larger government) was the variety of gods it encompassed (since many peoples meant, naturally, many gods) and accordingly the range of traditional religious practices it accommodated” (Fredrickson, “What Parting of the Ways,” 39-40). Could it be that, as Christians distanced themselves from Judaeans and Judaism (contrast Paul, for whom Gentile Christ followers are adopted into the family of Abraham and are grafted into Israel), since a “world religion” was not a category in the ancient world the Christians defined themselves as a people or nation with their own beliefs and customs?
- Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
- Paula Fredrickson, “What Parting of the Ways? Jews, Gentiles, and the Ancient Mediterranean City,” in The Ways That Never Parted (ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)
No comments:
Post a Comment