Sunday, 19 October 2014

Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Sather Classical Lectures),
Averil Cameron, University of California Press, 1991, page 4

Talking about how early Christianity created reality from a text, Cameron suggests ...

Out of the framework of Judaism ... Christians built themselves a new world. They did so partly by practive - the evolution of a mode of living and a communal discipline that carefully distinguished them from their Jewish and pagan neighbours - and partly through a discourse that was itself constantly brought under control and discilined.

In this way, Christianity moved through the early centuries of the Common Era from a tiny , persecuted and despised minority to partnership with the Roman Empire and then to control of the Empire.