The Social Identity of the Earliest Christians

It has been said that the past is like a foreign country, that “they do things differently there.” This includes the way they viewed human personality. Using social identity theory, we will explore the fact that ancient persons like Paul or Peter or James, while certainly individuals, were not individualists in the modern sense at all. People in their world did not even have last names, which is the main way modern people distinguish one from another. Group identity was primary and individual identity entirely secondary. Furthermore, the ancients believed you were born with a certain personality, and stuck with it. Not many believed in the concept of radical change or conversion. We will explore how these sorts of approach to identity formation affect the way we should evaluate the earliest Christians. This was part of the Biblical Excavations DVD.