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Current Trends in the Study of Early Christian Martyrdom
Abstract
This paper investigate recent scholarship on early Christian martyrdom. It discusses the shift away from the study of the origins of martyrdom to an interest in martyrdom and the body, Christian identity formation, and martyrdom and orthodoxy. It further discusses the need for a reappraisal of the evidence for early Christian martyrdom and the renewed attention that questions of dating, authorship, and provenance have received.
... 23 Martyrdom stories recount the acta (acts) and the passio (passion), the unjust political decisions condemning the martyr and the torment she consequently endures. 24 As injustice literally tears her flesh, her agonies vibrate in our own viscera, as Michel Foucault, 25 Judith Butler, 26 Emmanuel Levinas, and others have recognized. Yet the moderns do not look for politics in the body. ...
George Floyd's death was a secular martyrdom that sparked a 2020 "American Spring," reminiscent of the democratic "Arab Spring" uprisings in the Islamic world of 2011. The popular democratic revolutions in Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia also coalesced around the murder of an innocent by security forces; these modern-day martyrs reveal the religious and corporeal nature of politics itself. Martyrdom, a concept from religion, is instructive because it describes a way politics function as lived experience, a reality for which politics itself has no precise language. Secular martyrs like Floyd render the abstraction of political injustice visible and visceral, inspiring others to collective action. A second role of religion in US politics is Trumpist Christianity, a radical religion designed to support the revolutionary fascist movement coalescing around Donald Trump, or "Trumpism." Trumpism seeks to replace the American republic with a white ethnic authoritarian state through violence. Comparative international histories illuminate the functions of religion in modern politics and the importance of religious studies methodology to "reading" the dynamics of contemporary politics.
The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, and multiple permutations in the formative period of Christian history. Within those multiples lie numerous contests, as varieties of Christian identity laid claim to authority and authenticity in different ways. The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity addresses these contested areas with both nuance and clarity by reviewing, synthesizing, and critically engaging recent scholarly developments. The 27 thematic chapters, specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of scholars, also offer constructive ways forward for future research.
This essay examines the recurrent themes, images, borrowed texts, and interpretive traditions found within five early Christian works extolling martyrdom: the Epistle to the Romans attributed to Ignatius, Tertullian's Ad Martyras, Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom, Cyprian's Exhortation to Martyrdom, and Pseudo‐Cyprian's On the Glory of Martyrdom. As manifested by these five texts, the early Christian experience of, reflection upon, and rhetoric concerning “impending” martyrdom resulted in habituated practices that appropriated key imageries and biblical passages. This investigation demonstrates a developing tradition of the employment of particular biblical texts within such martyrial works, including a rising use of specific Gospel traditions. On the one hand, the meager reception of shared themes and especially the lack of common scriptural materials within the Epistle to the Romans resembles Tertullian's Ad Martyras. On the other hand, the Origenian, Cyprianic, and Pseudo‐Cyprianic works share a broader range of common themes and biblical quotations.
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