Images of Martyrs in Early Christian Literature: The Figure of the Roman Magistrate in the Discourse of Martyrdom
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Date
2025-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Early Christian martyrdom accounts participate in a discourse of self-definition. Rather than serving communities as records of the events, the genre of martyrdom accounts contributed to “memory history,” in which the actual martyrdoms are reshaped into the collective experience of Christian identity. The study of trial scenes thus provides insight more on the development of sectarian division and innovation within the early Church than on the practices of Roman provincial administration. A better reading of these texts, my study argues, focuses on the figure of the Roman magistrate with a methodology of intertextual analysis to reconstruct the ideologies of the groups that created them. Acknowledging that the primary sources have been fictionalized, my project maintains that these stories advance the tenets and beliefs of the communities that authored them. My project argues that the figure of the Roman magistrate functioned as a weapon in the rhetoric of contrast and exclusion through imitatio traditions in order to define and portray “true Christians” as superior over against both Jews and rival Christians. This trajectory originates in biblical trial scenes, which include such tenets and beliefs as Christian apologetics and assertions of Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. Increasingly, we find that martyrdom accounts adopt a doctrinal function to patrol the unacceptable in Christian ritual and community life. The implications of this study thus question the modern use of these sources to reconstruct the history of Roman criminal law.
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Keywords
Roman Magistrate, Martyrdom accounts, Early Christianity, Imitatio, Trial scenes