yalla

Whatever, I'm not fussed.

I was reading Bagnall for other purposes but I do note that he says the following which relates to the paucity of evidence and which may be relevant to this thread:

"The earliest letter that can be said certainly to be written by a Christian ..... is dated to
the early third century ........But letters datable to the second century with confidence are never securely Christian, and letters with definite marks of Christianity are not firmly datable to the second century." p8

Incidentally he has a rather scathing approach to christian scolarship re papyrological dating of texts in particular to the dating of P52.

Anyway, enjoy.

sotto voce

I wonder what criteria he uses. Probably not those of a Christian.

yalla

Thats a strange statement, do Christians have their own criteria?
I recall he goes into identifying the religious background of letters and other background stuff.
As I said, I was reading his book for reasons other than to do with population, but noticed the connection to this thread so I thought I'd give a heads up.

sotto voce

Surely you are aware that every 'denomination' that claims to be Christian has its own statement of faith, that requires assent for members? To say nothing of personal behaviour, that is of course often totally unknown to historians (as in this case), but which is as important as belief, for many denominations. This is why it is fundamentally unscholarly to describe any historic figure (or even a living person) as Christian. The historian claims only what he can reasonably and uncontroversially demonstrate. Which is a lot less common than one may suppose, when it comes to matters Christian or allegedly Christian. The rule book changes in that context. There does not even seem to be such a book today, for some.

That doesn't help, unfortunately.

The 1% figure is useful. It produces a raw number that is greater than some seem to project, while being far lower than makes sense if one is minded to call a whole empire Christian! It does make sense if 1% is sufficient to represent a lore that is compelling, even if it is not popular.

Toto

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