Under Caesar’s Sword
Responses to Persecution and Martyrdom in Comparative Perspective
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20487496 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David L Eastman (0000-0003-4880-9602, McCallie School USA Chattanooga, TN, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 55-71 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-16 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religion and Theology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1023-0807 • E-ISSN: 1574-3012 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/15743012-bja10050 |
| OpenAlex | W4385984428 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
In 2019, Cambridge University Press published an edited volume entitled Under Caesar’s Sword , the product of a three-year study on contemporary Christian responses to persecution in various parts of the world. As part of the overall findings, the project directors noted three primary methods of response: (1) Survival strategies (trying to avoid the attention of the persecutors); (2) Association strategies (building relationships beyond their own communities in order to create a broader network of potential support); and (3) Confrontation strategies (directly challenging the persecutors through various means including martyrdom, which Christians accept as an act of resistance). These categories provide a useful heuristic tool for reevaluating the discourse in some early Christian texts, including the apocryphal acts of the apostles and other texts related to martyrdom. This article employs the insights from Under Caesar’s Sword to explore examples of all three strategies from the earliest Christian centuries. However, not all strategies were equally appreciated in that time. Because suffering came to be so closely linked to Christian identity, survival strategies were sometimes critiqued as evidence of a lack of faith
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Christian Identity · Early Christianity · Epistemology · Faith · History of religions · Persecution · Political science · Sociology · SWORD · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classics · Computer Science · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Highly cited | No |
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