Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine The Nations, the Parting of the Ways, an... [#179327]

Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine: The Nations, the Parting of the Ways, and Roman Imperial Ideology by Terence L. Donaldson
2020 | ISBN: 0802871755 | English | 576 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, "gentile" soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of "the parting of the ways," the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity's legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome's imperial ideology.