I am in the midst of writing a book on Dynamics of Identity and Early Christianity (for Continuum) which tries to shed some new light on the question by looking to associations, cultural minorities, and ethnic groups in the world of the early Christians.  “Identity” has to do with the way in which individuals and groups answer the questions “who am I” or ‘who are we in relation to others?”  Social scientists emphasize that there are two main processes in identity-construction and re-negotiation: internal self-definitions and external categorizations.  External categorizations involve outsiders’ perspectives on who a group is and stereotypes about that group, and they can play a role in how members of the evaluated group re-negotiate and express their own identities internally.

In previous posts (click here), I have noted a common set of ethnographic stereotypes that were used to categorize other peoples or groups as “barbarous” and dangerous to society, particularly cultural minority groups or ethnic groups.  The early Christians, for instance, were charged with Thyestan feasts (cannibalism) and Oedipean unions (incest), and similar charges went back and forth between social and ethnic groups in antiquity.  Judeans, too, were stereotyped and charged with the same sort of activities when a particular Greek or Roman author disliked them.

Yet, as I said, the charges go both ways.  A good example of this is offered by a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon (first century BCE or CE — in the so called Apocrypha of the Bible) which characterized ‘pagans’ as dangerous and barbarous.  This author describes the ‘detestable’ activities of those who inhabited the ‘holy land’ before the arrival of the Israelites. This gives this Hellenistic Judean author opportunity to critique contemporary associations or ‘societies’ of ‘initiates’ outside of the Judean sphere in the process, calling on the same sort of stereotypes we have seen in Greek or Roman slander against Judeans. God ‘hated them for practicing the most detestable things – deeds of sorcery and unholy rites (τελετὰς ἀνοσίους), merciless slaughters of children, sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood – those “initiates” from the midst of a “society” (ἐκ μέσου μύστας θιάσου) and parents who murder helpless lives, you willed to destroy. . .‘ (Wis 12:4-5; cf. Wis 14:15-23 [NETS]).

At the same time, personified Wisdom herself is an ‘initiate’ of another, superior kind, an ‘initiate (μύστις) in the knowledge of God’ (Wis 8:4). Elsewhere the author critiques the ‘idolatry’ of Greeks generally, the ‘impious ones’ (άσεβοῦς) who do not know such ‘divine mysteries’ (2:22) and who instead establish their own inferior ‘mysteries and rites’ (μυστήρια καὶ τελετάς; 14:15): ‘For whether performing ritual murders of children or secret mysteries or frenzied revels connected with strange laws, they no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure, but they either kill one another by treachery or grieve one another by adultery’ (Wis. 14:23-24). Once again, ritual murder and sexual perversion converge in this characterization of the associations of another ethnic group.

The process of defining the ‘other’ as dangerous barbarians who will kill and eat you if they can is in fact the process of defining one’s own group as well.  This is the boundary-constructing process of distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’, and virtually all groups in antiquity engaged in such modes of external categorizations and self-definition that are at the heart of identity.

(Sure this post is somewhat long, but at least I’m trying — I’ve lost the knack for short and sweet, it seems, if I ever had it).

I just received an email from Harold Remus who pointed me to an interesting article on a mechanism designed to compute solar eclipses and to arrange the calendar in connection with the cycles of the Olympiad (ancient Olympics).  The New York Times article explains:

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.

The full article is available here: Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.

Some good news for me this past week:  I’m now associate professor with tenure at York University.  I’m very happy about that process being behind me now.

The podcast has been going well and it will now be a hiatus on episodes for July and August.  There are two more episodes (on the book of Hebrews) in the “Early Christian Portraits of Jesus” series to come in September, and then a new series on “Diversity in early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles” (’gnosticism’, Apocrypha, etc) begins in October. Thanks for the emails of encouragement about the podcast.  Episodes now generally get about 1200 or more downloads per episode, which makes that work seem really worthwhile.  What is up with my episode on Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is at 2,438 downloads, I will never know (there are other ancient writings people!).

Regarding regular posts on this blog, I’ve been extremely busy lately trying to complete a book on Dynamics of Identity in Early Christianity for T & T Clark, which is occupying virtually all of my work time and more (and rightly so as we are expecting a new baby in the Fall!). Once I feel I am getting a handle on that project, I hope to do some regular posts here and there this summer on the blog.  Time with the family is very important in the summer as well, though.  So please be patient.

Number 30 and 31 have arrived almost together — both done well:

• Biblical Studies Carnival 30 by Tyler WIlliams.
• Biblical Studies Carnival 31 by James R. Getz.