Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World

Download or read book Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World written by Judith Lieu and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This book is a highly original exploration of how a sense of being 'a Christian', or of 'Christian identity', was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. Contemporary discussions of identity provide the background to a careful study of early Christian texts from the first two centuries. Judith Lieu shows that there were similarities and differences in the ways Jews and others were thinking about themselves, and asks what made early Christianity distinctive.