Search

This dissertation seeks to locate the construction of Christian orthodoxy in the second and early third centuries within the broader context of the formation and regulation of intellectual communities in the early Roman Empire. Drawing on modern sociological models and using the self- and community-fashioning strategies of Second Sophistic intellectuals to illuminate the process of Christian self-definition, I argue that the formation of a dominant Christian orthodoxy was not only an intellectual and theological project, but also a social one. Social relations often preceded and shaped ideology: in the organizationally and theologically fragmented churches of the second century, embracing a heretical form of Christianity often represented a socially-motivated decision to join a particular cell rather than a conscious preference for a particular version of the Christian message. At the same time, determining what constituted proper Christian belief entailed determining who counted as a legitimate member of the Christian community, and, even more, who was competent to make such decisions. Within congregations, theoretical debates played out in terms of access to eucharistic fellowship: orthodox Christians were defined as those who were in communion with other orthodox believers. The Second Sophistic as depicted by Philostratus offers a close, although rarely recognized, parallel: the limits of the sophistic community were constructed through control of professional access, especially the ability to hear and be heard by other sophists, and sophists, including Philostratus himself, consciously fashioned themselves as insiders on the basis of their personal affiliations. The affiliations in play for both groups include not only ties to living teachers, students, and allies, but also long-range intellectual genealogies. Rather than treating these simply as reliable or unreliable historical narratives, I examine how Christian and non-Christian intellectual historians alike employ and manipulate succession lists in order to structure their community's past in ways that authorize their own normative vision of its present. Juxtaposing Christian and non-Christian strategies of authorization in this way illuminates both and sets early Christianity more firmly within the intellectual and cultural world of the early Roman Empire.