After years away from regular writing and scholarly work, this is a return to intellectual production — a warm-up exercise following an extended hiatus. Writing, like software implementation, involves refinement of understanding as much as description of solutions.

This essay is a somewhat wide-ranging survey of language and history from the pre-Christendom period, examining several interconnected threads:

  • Rhetorical and linguistic elements in early Christianity’s development
  • Early Christian creeds and the history of testimonia
  • Roman society from the first through third centuries as context for early Christianity
  • Early Jewish Christianity

The essay contains what I hope are some interesting observations that may receive more focused treatment in subsequent posts. It draws on my 2003 PhD dissertation and reflects ongoing interest in how language — the coining of terms, the reuse of Old Testament rhetoric, the adaptation of pagan categories — was itself a theological act in early Christianity.

Read the full essay: “Away with the Atheists”: Anti-Christian Rhetorica in Pre-Christendom