Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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* ‘He brings war to an end; he orders peace; by manifesting himself, he surpasses the hopes of all who were looking for good news.’ This inscription, written in 29 BC, was recorded on a stone slab in the city of Priene, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. It uses the plural form of euangelion – euangelia.

* Even if Luke is not to be trusted – and scholarly opinion is divided on the question of whether Paul was truly a Roman citizen – the fact that the claim could be made implies much about his background.

* According to Acts, ‘the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch’ (11.26). The implication of this statement, combined with the distinctive form of the Greek word Christianos, strongly suggests that ‘it was first coined in Latin, in the sphere of Roman administration’ (Horrell, p. 364). Indeed, Tacitus explicitly states that those condemned by Nero were abusively referred to by the name of Chrestiani. Unsurprisingly, then, neither in Paul’s letters nor in the gospels does the word appear; but already, by ad 100 at the latest, Christians themselves seem to have begun to appropriate it.

† The four canonical gospels continue to defy precise dating. Estimates range from the 50s to the 90s. The evidence for a later date is no longer as solid as it was once thought to be.