Martyrdom, Myth, and Memory: Rhetoric and the Construction of Early Christian Identity

Lecture by Candida Moss, University of Notre Dame

Given at the University of Toronto, September 26, 2013

How did early Christians view being persecuted and becoming martyrs? In a lecture given at the University of Toronto, Professor Candida Moss offers some interesting insights into how this community believed that being persecuted was not only part of their religion, but also a sign that they were the true religion.

Moss began her lecture by noting that there has been a long-held assumption among Christians that persecution of their religion was widespread in the first couple of centuries after the death of Jesus, and that the martyrdom of early Christians forged and raised support for Christianity among Romans. However, as she explained in her recent book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, that violent persecution of Christians was much more limited and brief. Many of the accounts of martyrdoms preserved in late antique and medieval texts were not fictitious, and that for modern historians, “the quest for the historical martyr has become bankrupt.”

Moss is now focusing her research on how literature and art helped to create the early Christian identity. In her lecture at the University of Toronto, she ask what does these ideologies of martyrdom tell us about this community.

The ancient world did have the notion of suffering and dying the noble death – stories such as the Trojan War, Lucretia’s Rape, and the Maccabees Revolt all play on this theme somewhat. However, among these ancient peoples the predominant thought was the persecution was in itself not a good – to be persecuted meant that your people had sinned against your god, or that your god was impotent in protecting you.

One of the most important changes that early Christianity made was to see persecution in a dramatically different light. Following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, early Christians expected to suffer and die, and saw their persecution as a validation that they were innocent victims.

Moss then takes a closer look into the life and writings of Justin Martyr (c.100 – 165 AD), one of the most important Christian thinkers of the second century. In his surviving writings, Justin often speaks of martyrdom and persecution, and finds that Christians were being executed for just being Christians. However he also complains that those Christians who he sees as heretical are not being bothered by Roman officials. Justin explains that to be a real Christian you had to be persecuted, otherwise you were a fraud.

Justin blames the persecution of Christians on the Jews, who he sees as always punishing the righteous, whether they be their own murdered prophets or Jesus Christ. Now, they are portrayed as lurking unseen in the background, leading the persecution, and serving as the enemy of Christianity.

Many of these ideas were also taken up by other early church writers, including Eusebius of Caesarea (d.340), who wrote some of the most important works on the history of the early Church. Moss explains that Eusebius’ “martyrs were functional heroes,” who would turn up denouncing heretics or establishing bishoprics. Like Justin Martyr, Eusebius believed that the church was always under attack, and that the test of holding onto the orthodox truth was to be persecuted.

Candida Moss is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Her works include The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom and The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. She is also a contributor to the Daily Beast. You can follow her on Twitter @candidamoss.

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