Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture

The perception that the Jewish scriptures became a substitute set of classics gives us a very different perspective on Christian appropriation of this ‘barbarian’ literature. It meant not just their Christological interpretation, not simply a supersessionary claim in relation to Jews, but potentially a supersessionary claim in relation to all of ancient culture. With astonishing audacity, a small persecuted community of oddly assorted persons with no natural kinship, no historical identity, claims a universality which challenges the most powerful tradition in ancient society, the Hellennic paideia which had taken over the world and colonised other traditions, Latin and Hebrew, Eastern and Western. In the course of this process the very concept of religion was redefined and philosophy reminted. Not only did the Christians prove themselves in the intellectual power struggle, but, to a traditionalist world shaped by unquestioned obligations to a society both human and divine in its constituents (the very word religio reflects that element), they introduced the concept of religion as a particular faith-commitment, truth-claim or ‘-ism’ as we understand it.

Hellēnismos, Ioudaismos and Romanitas were originally terms referring to culture; only in response to Christianity did paganism or Judaism, or for that matter at a later date Hinduism, become a belief-system as distinct from a whole culture. To characterise religion in the ancient world is increasingly recognised as a very difficult task because we approach it with Christianising presuppositions.