Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians: Associations, Judeans, and Cultural Minorities. By Philip A. Harland. New York: T & T Clark, 2009. xii + 239 pp. $100.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.

摘要

Although the subtitle of Harland’s extremely useful new book appears neither onnits cover nor on its first title page, “Associations, Judeans, and CulturalnMinorities” are in fact the key to Harland’s analysis. The primary contributionnof the work to early Christian studies, and to the study of ancient religionnmore generally, lies in how few pages are actually spent on “early Christians,”nand how many are spent on their world. Harland’s work is a social-historicalnanalysis of ethnic, familial, and association identity markers in the EasternnRoman Empire, and his limited discussion of early Christian sources is firmlynembedded in this context. Harland uses contemporary social-scientific modelsnof identity theory, ethnic studies, and migration studies, and applies thesenmodels primarily to understudied inscriptional evidence, in order to explorenthe social and ideological contexts in which early Christian groups first cameninto being. This is important and enlightening work, and the focus onncontemporaneous non-Christian identity markers and identity groupings is anwelcome addition both to the literature on religion in the Roman world and,nmore indirectly, on the growth of the new Christian movement.