Christianization, “Identity,” and the Problem of Internal Commitment

This chapter argues that of the many historical insights papyri provide into the growth of Christian religion, evidence for an (internal) Christian “identity” is absent. Indeed, identity itself is a methodologically imprecise and often anachronistic concept when applied to early Christianity. Papyrological evidence for scripture use, naming practices, institutional development, and religious infrastructure all reflect multiple aspects of formative Christian cultures, from which we can critically extrapolate models of external religious identity or group self-identification (using the categories of Brubaker and Cooper), but not the internal identity so often presumed of early Christians.