By Whom Were Early Christians Persecuted?

TY - JOUR

T1 - By Whom Were Early Christians Persecuted?

AU - Corke-Webster, James

PY - 2023/11/1

Y1 - 2023/11/1

N2 - This article offers a new approach to the study of the persecution of the early Christians. Past scholarship on this topic has offered explanations built around inter-religious animosity, which are here exposed as the inevitable result of unquestioned assumptions about those responsible. It offers instead a hypothesis that the driving agency for the violence Christians suffered came from their immediate communities, and even from their fellow Christians. It tests this via three case studies spanning the first three centuries CE and the extent of the Roman empire. In closing, it explores the wide-ranging consequences of a new model — based on local, social tensions rather than homogenized, antagonistic religious ideologies — for early Christian persecution (both its rationale and its reality), early Christianity more widely (scholars’ continuing commitment to binary distinctions between both ‘Rome’ and ‘Christianity’, and the pre- and post-Constantinian periods), and the history of religions as a whole (our assumptions about the dynamics between minority groups and the state, and our privileging of religion in explaining historic violence).

AB - This article offers a new approach to the study of the persecution of the early Christians. Past scholarship on this topic has offered explanations built around inter-religious animosity, which are here exposed as the inevitable result of unquestioned assumptions about those responsible. It offers instead a hypothesis that the driving agency for the violence Christians suffered came from their immediate communities, and even from their fellow Christians. It tests this via three case studies spanning the first three centuries CE and the extent of the Roman empire. In closing, it explores the wide-ranging consequences of a new model — based on local, social tensions rather than homogenized, antagonistic religious ideologies — for early Christian persecution (both its rationale and its reality), early Christianity more widely (scholars’ continuing commitment to binary distinctions between both ‘Rome’ and ‘Christianity’, and the pre- and post-Constantinian periods), and the history of religions as a whole (our assumptions about the dynamics between minority groups and the state, and our privileging of religion in explaining historic violence).

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85179945859&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/pastj/gtac041

DO - 10.1093/pastj/gtac041

M3 - Article

SN - 0031-2746

VL - 261

SP - 3

EP - 46

JO - Past and Present

JF - Past and Present

IS - 1

M1 - gtac041

ER -