Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
www.eerdmans.com
2020 Terence L. Donaldson
All rights reserved
Published 2020
Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN 978-0-8028-7175-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donaldson, Terence L., author.
Title: Gentile Christian identity from Cornelius to Constantine : the nations, the parting of the ways, and Roman imperial ideology / Terence L. Donaldson.
Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: A comprehensive historical account of the origins and effects of gentile Christian identity constructionProvided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013782 | ISBN 9780802871756 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Church historyPrimitive and early church, ca. 30600. | Identification (Religion) | Identity (Psychology)Religious aspectsChristianity. | Gentiles. | Christians.
Classification: LCC BR165 .D66 2020 | DDC 270.1dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013782
To my early mentors, Larry Hurtado (in memoriam) and Richard Longenecker
Contents
Abbreviations
AB | Anchor Bible |
ACW | Ancient Christian Writers |
ANF | Ante-Nicene Fathers |
CBQ | Catholic Biblical Quarterly |
CBQMS | Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series |
CIL | Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum |
CP | Classical Philology |
CRINT | Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum |
ECF | Early Church Fathers |
ECL | Early Christianity and Its Literature |
ESCJ | Studies in Christianity and Judaism/tudes sur le christianisme et le judasme |
FC | Fathers of the Church |
FRLANT | Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments |
HNT | Handbuch zum Neuen Testament |
HTR | Harvard Theological Review |
ICC | International Critical Commentary |
IG | Inscriptiones Graecae. Editio Minor |
IK Knidos I | Packard Humanities Institute, Searchable Greek Inscriptions, Regions: Asia Minor: Caria: IK Knidos I https://inscriptions.packhum.org/book/480?location=1040 |
ILS | Islamic Law and Society |
Int | Interpretation |
ISL | Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae |
JBL | Journal of Biblical Literature |
JJMJS | Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting |
JQR | Jewish Quarterly Review |
JSJ | Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods |
JSJSup | Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements |
JSNTSup | Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series |
JSPSup | Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series |
JTS | Journal of Theological Studies |
Knidos | Packard Humanities Institute, Searchable Greek Inscriptions, Regions: Asia Minor: Caria: McCabe, Knidos https://inscriptions.packhum.org/text/259743?&bookid=502&location=1040 |
LCL | Loeb Classical Library |
LNTS | The Library of New Testament Studies |
LSJ | Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with revised supplement |
NHC | Nag Hammadi Codices |
NovTSup | Supplements to Novum Testamentum |
NPNF | Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers |
NTL | New Testament Library |
OAF | Oxford Apostolic Fathers |
OECT | Oxford Early Christian Texts |
OGIS | Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae |
PLO | Porta Linguarum Orientalium |
SBLDS | Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series |
SBT | Studies in Biblical Theology |
SC | Sources chrtiennes |
SEG | Supplementum epigraphicum graecum |
SNTMS | Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series |
SPCK | Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge |
StPB | Studia Post-biblica |
NovTSup | Supplements to Novum Testamentum |
TDNT | Theological Dictionary of the New Testament |
TLG | Thesaurus Linguae Graecae: Canon of Greek Authors and Works |
TSAJ | Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum |
VC | Vigiliae Christianae |
VCSup | Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae |
WBC | Word Biblical Commentary |
WGRW | Writings from the Greco-Roman World |
WUNT | Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament |
ZNW | Zeitschrift fr die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der lteren Kirche |
Preface
O ne of the things that precipitated this book project was a seemingly idle question that came to me once while I was reading Romans 11 and arrived at verse 13: I am speaking to you gentiles. What, I wondered, would Pauls non-Jewish readers have made of this term? People are not naturally inclined to think of themselves as the other to someone elses us. It is unlikely that barbarians would have found anything appealing in a term being foisted on them by self-congratulatory Greeks; one would expect that non-Jews who were attracted to Christ would have found this Jewish term for the non-Jewish other to be similarly unappealing. Its probable lack of appeal notwithstanding, many gentiles were indeed attracted to the movement; once they had come to identify with Christ, they found themselves in an environment where this identity term was one that they could hardly avoid or ignore. What then did they make of it?
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