Becoming Heretical

Affection and Ideology in Recruitment to Early Christianities

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20292004
AutoresKendra Eshleman (Boston College, autor correspondente)
Ano2011
Volume104
Fascículo2
Páginas191-216
Data de publicação2011-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHarvard Theological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0017-8160 • E-ISSN: 1475-4517
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0017816011000150
OpenAlexW2317229413
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas57

A growing consensus recognizes that the differences among Christians in the late second and early third centuries were neither as obvious nor as great as representatives of later orthodoxy would have us believe, and that what divided Christians in this period were not so much different beliefs and ideas as different hermeneutical and ritual practices. This article approaches the same conclusion from a different angle: from the perspective of potential recruits to Christianity, drawing on social-scientific models of conversion. For them, the peculiarities of doctrine and even of practice that obsess ancient polemicists and modern scholars were often largely invisible. While those features could take center stage for mature converts—and hence in retrospective accounts of conversion—they seem to have played little role in bringing people to specific versions of the faith in the first place. Rather, for many Christian recruits, the road to “orthodoxy” or “heresy” began not in ideological attraction, but in attachments to family, friends, and patrons already inside the group

Aesthetics · Affection · Ancient history · Art · Christianity · Doctrine · Epistemology · Faith · Heresy · Ideology · Orthodoxy · Period (music) · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Procession · Sociology · Theology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies