Introduction
At least since the time of Ferdinand Christian Baur in the mid-nineteenth century, the concepts of “Jewish Christianity” and “Gentile Christianity,” together with related binary pairs (Jewish Christian / Gentile Christian, Jews / Gentiles), have functioned as basic categories in the critical investigation of Christian origins. Adopting the voice of his hero Paul, Baur speaks of “my Gospel of Gentile Christianity, as opposed to Jewish Christianity,” the English terms rendering Heidenchristentums and Judenchristentums, respectively.Footnote 1 Speaking of Paul's success in establishing “a Gentile Christianity,” Baur says that “the greater the strides were which the Gospel made among the Gentiles, the greater was the importance which the Gentile Christians assumed over the Jewish Christians.”Footnote 2 Such increase in importance notwithstanding, the “Jewish-Christian party opposed to [Paul],” he says, remained “powerful,”Footnote 3 and the “conflict between the Pauline and Jewish Christianity”Footnote 4 continued to mark the early history of the movement. The place of this conflict in Baur's reconstruction of Christian origins is well known, and his characteristic terminology is readily recognized.
Although Baur's specific reconstruction was eventually eclipsed, his programmatic question,Footnote 5 together with the binary categories with which he framed it, have continued to shape scholarly discourse down to the present day. For his various successors, from Bousset to Harnack to Bultmann, and down into our own complex, post-Holocaust, post-Christendom, pluralistic, and globalized era, Jewish/Gentile binaries have functioned as basic tools of analysis.
Right from the beginning, however, the terms have formed quite an uneven pair. “Jewish Christianity” has been subjected to intense scrutiny, with finely wrought debates over how the category should be defined, where the boundaries should be drawn, whether this or some other term is the most appropriate, and so on, together with second-order accounts of the history of the debates.Footnote 6 By contrast, while “Gentile Christianity” is equally well established as an analytical category, appearing frequently in standard reference worksFootnote 7 and usually playing an important contrastive role in any discussion of Jewish ChristianityFootnote 8 or of the “parting of the ways,”Footnote 9 it has attracted much less direct scholarly attention.Footnote 10
To a certain extent, of course, this is not surprising. Even for Baur, “Gentile Christianity” was less significant a category than “Jewish Christianity,” in that for him it functioned simply as a convenient cipher for a universal religion of the Ideal, untrammeled by the kind of ethnic restrictions and cultural barriers that, in his view, were characteristic of Jewish Christianity. Gentile Christianity was “Gentile” not in that its membership was ethnically non-Jewish—its primary proponent, after all, was Paul, who followed a trail already blazed by Stephen and the HellenistsFootnote 11—but in that its primary opponents were those who wanted to confine the movement within ethnic and cultic Jewish boundaries. As a category, “Gentile Christianity” was useful for Baur's analysis of first-generation conflicts between Paul and “Jewish Christianity,” the movement led by his apostolic opponents. But when his attention turned more focally to the Pauline movement itself, the term tended to fall away, being replaced by “Pauline Christianity” or, simply, “Christianity.”
Although Baur's reconstruction of Christian origins was innovative, the framework within which he worked—an essentialist framework in which Christianity and Judaism (or Christian and Jew) were seen to represent distinct, non-overlapping categories—was deeply rooted in Christian tradition. Within this framework, which has continued unchallenged until only recently, “Jewish Christianity” necessarily appeared to be an anomalous, category-blurring term, and thus one requiring careful definition. By contrast, “Gentile Christianity” was virtually pleonastic, at least with respect to the adjective; if “Christianity” was categorically distinct from Judaism, then Christianity was non-Jewish—thus Gentile—by definition.Footnote 12 Whatever diversity there might have been in the definition of Jewish Christianity, “Gentile” and “Christian” were generally seen to be uncontroversial and self-explanatory as individual terms, and their combination scarcely in need of further consideration.
Conceptual categories are essential tools of critical analysis and we could not do our work without them. Tools have their limitations, however; they also require periodic upgrading if they are to retain their usefulness. In recent years many of these categories have been opened up for reconsideration, redefinition, and possible replacement.Footnote 13 Increased awareness of diversity has led to suggestions that we should speak of “Christianities”Footnote 14 and “Judaisms,”Footnote 15 rather than of monolithic “Christianity” and “Judaism.” From another angle, “Christianity” has been seen as anachronistic when used with reference to the early generations of the movement, and thus as obscuring our view of first-century realities.Footnote 16 In a similar way, objections have been made to the use of “Judaism,” in that the term is generally understood as designating a religion, one exemplar of a species to which other religions belonged, whereas for Jews (and most other groups) in the Greco-Roman period, religious observances were embedded in more fundamental ethnic structures and identities.Footnote 17 In the case of the related term “Jews,” “Judeans” has been suggested as a more appropriate alternative, both in that it is more consistent with the use of other ethnic terms in the period and in that it prevents any backflow of connotations associated with later usage into the earlier period.Footnote 18 Further, the traditional identification of universalism and particularism as an essential feature of differentiation between Christianity and JudaismFootnote 19 has been called into question, not only because one could just as easily speak of Christian particularism and Jewish universalismFootnote 20 but also because the terms themselves distort first-century realities.Footnote 21 Underlying all these areas of reconsideration is the desire to find language that compels us to deal with the ancient world on its own terms and that protects us from the pitfall captured in Krister Stendahl's adage: “Our vision is often more obstructed by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge.”Footnote 22
In this spirit, I suggest that there is value in subjecting “Gentile Christianity” to similar re-examination. My purpose in what follows will be partly negative, in that I will attempt to identify some of the term's limitations, deficiencies, and blind spots. But there will be a more positive purpose as well; I believe that a critical re-examination of the term can draw our attention to important aspects of the early Christian movement that deserve more attention. I will begin by tracing the development of the term “Gentile” itself, and then move to my more specific comments about “Gentile Christianity.”
“Gentile”: The Origins and Development of a Term
The path leading from the Hebrew 
to the contemporary English word “Gentiles” progresses through a varied linguistic landscape, some of it well known, some of it less so. The lesser known part of the journey leads out from the Latin adjective gentilis—which in its most basic sense describes a person (or thing) as belonging to a specific gens (clan, ethnic group)—and arrives eventually at the English adjective and noun “Gentile”—which describes a person as not belonging to a specific ethnic group, that of the Jews.
The path begins, of course, in Israel's scriptures, with their contrast between Israel as a people (usually 
) and the other nations (usually 
). While 
on occasion can be used with reference to Israel (e.g., Gen 12:2; Exod 19:6; Isa 51:4) and 
appears with some frequency as a term for the other nations,Footnote 23 the plural 
is almost always reserved for the nations other than Israel.Footnote 24 Indeed, the usage is so standard that the apparently inclusive phrase “all the nations” (
) always excludes the people of Israel,Footnote 25 and the articular form “the nations” (
), used in an absolute sense without further qualification, denotes not simply “the nations” but “the nations as distinct from the people Israel.”Footnote 26
This pattern is carried over into the Greek version, though in an even more sharply focused way. While the basic tendency of the translators was to use ἔθνος for 
and λαóς for 
, this pattern was subject to significant modifications. For one thing, the Greek version makes a sharper terminological distinction between “the people” Israel and “the (other) nations.” In instances where 
appears with reference to Israel, for example, the Greek version often avoids ἔθνος, either using λαóς instead (e.g., Josh 3:17; 4:1; Isa 58:2) or using some alternative expression.Footnote 27 On the other side of things, ἔθνος was routinely chosen to render 
(sing.) when indicating a nation other than Israel (e.g., Exod 1:9; 15:14; 21:8; Lev 20:2; Deut 1:28; 2:10, 21). Likewise, 
is regularly rendered ἔθνη in instances where the Hebrew term denotes “peoples” other than Israel (e.g., Exod 19:5; 23:27; 33:16; Lev 20:24, 26; Deut 2:25; 4:6; 6:14; 10:15). Further, the range of vocabulary found in the Hebrew scriptures is reduced in the Greek, with both ἔθνος and λαóς often being chosen as translations of Hebrew words other than 
and 
. In short, the Greek version provides evidence for a development in which λαóς and ἔθνη come to function virtually as technical terms for Israel (as God's special people) and the other nations respectively.
In addition, the Hellenistic era witnesses several developments in the use of ἔθνη that are very significant for our purposes. The most significant is the use of ἔθνη to denote a multiplicity of non-Jewish individuals rather than of ethnic groups. For example, in 2 Macc 6:4 we read: “For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling ὑπò τῶν ἐθνῶν, who dallied with prostitutes and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and besides brought in things for sacrifice that were unfit.” Clearly those who were dallying with the prostitutes were individuals and not nations. Likewise in 1 Macc 4:12–14: “When the foreigners (οἱ ἀλλóϕυλοι) looked up and saw them coming against them, they went out from their camp to battle. Then the men with Judas blew their trumpets and engaged in battle; τὰ ἔθνη were crushed, and fled into the plain.”
The context is a battle between Judas and his company of three thousand men (ἀνδράσιν; v. 6), and the “five thousand infantry and one thousand picked cavalry” led by Gorgias (v. 1). Here τὰ ἔθνη stands in parallel with οἱ ἀλλóφυλοι (“foreigners”—a plurality of foreign individuals) and thus serves to characterize those who “were crushed and fled into the plain” as a group not of nations but of non-Jewish soldiers. Recognizing that individuals are in view, the nrsv has rendered τὰ ἔθνη as “the Gentiles” in both cases; but since the term is rendered as “the nations” elsewhere,Footnote 28 it is more useful for present purposes to leave it untranslated. This usage—where ἔθνη denotes a plurality of non-Jewish individuals—is found elsewhere in the ApocryphaFootnote 29 and, of course, is common in the New Testament.Footnote 30
There is a certain awkwardness about this usage, however, both because the basic meaning of ἔθνη has to do with nations or ethnic groups, rather than with individuals, and because the term in its singular form always denotes a single nation, rather than a single, non-Jewish individual. In other words, there is no singular form corresponding to the plural ἔθνη when the latter is used with reference to individuals. The awkwardness becomes pronounced when the term needs to be translated into other languages. In this connection, it is important to note that the choice of ἔθνη to denote individuals was not for want of a suitable alternative. As we have observed, 1 Macc 4:12–14 uses ἀλλóφυλοι (foreigners) as a synonym for ἔθνη, and the term appears with some frequency in the literature under discussion here.Footnote 31 Unlike ἔθνη, which in the singular always denotes a single nation and not an individual, the singular ἀλλóφυλος, used substantively, refers to an individual non-Jew, and thus might appear as a more suitable term. This use of ἔθνη, awkward though it may be, is more understandable, however, when seen in conjunction with a related development, to which we now turn.
This use of ἔθνη to refer to individuals rather than to ethnic groups represents the sharpest contrast with the use of 
in the Hebrew scriptures and τὰ ἔθνη in the corresponding Greek, where these terms always refer to “the [non-Jewish] nations” and, when used with the article and without modifiers, usually speak of “the nations” in very abstract and general terms.Footnote 32 Lying in between the two, however, are instances where ἔθνη, usually articular and without modification, is used in very specific contexts, most often with reference to a very specific event involving a restricted number of people. While it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between this set of texts and those where ἔθνη clearly refers to a collectivity of individuals, it is probably more prudent to say that in these texts the emphasis is on the representative character of the collectivity; the group represents, or is drawn from, “the (non-Jewish) nations” as a general category. In 1 Macc 2:12, for example, Mattathias laments: “And see, our holy place, our beauty, and our glory have been laid waste; τὰ ἔθνη have profaned them.” The temple was profaned by a specific group, the agents of Antiochus IV; the text probably views them, however, as representatives of “the nations” in general. Likewise, after the recapture of the temple, Judas and his companions, deliberating over what to do with the altar, “thought it best to tear it down, so that it would not be a lasting shame to them that τὰ ἔθνη had defiled it” (1 Macc 4:45). Again, the actions of a very specific group of non-Jews is probably being portrayed as the work of “the nations” as a whole. Similar instances appear in Pss. Sol. 2 with reference to the actions of Pompey and his Roman troops (vv. 2, 19, 22). Even so, in attempting to discern the sense of ἔθνη in these examples and other similar texts,Footnote 33 it is not easy to discern where the balance is to be struck between “a collection of non-Jewish individuals” and “representatives of the ‘the nations’ as a whole.” In a related but distinguishable category, 1 Macc 1:14 speaks of the gymnasium in Jerusalem as having been constructed “according to the customs of the nations” (κατὰ τὰ νóμιμα τῶν ἐθνῶν), even though the custom in question pertained to a single ethnic group, the Greeks.
In this intervening set of texts, then, various specific and limited groups of non-Jews are designated by the broad and general term ἔθνη. What this choice of designation accomplishes is to link these groups with that scriptural category—“the (non-Jewish) nations” (
, τὰ ἔθνη)—which, more than any other, served to give Israel its distinct identity. In the case of the related set of texts in which ἔθνη designates collections of individual non-Jews, it seems plausible to suggest that the choice of ἔθνη, instead of an alternative such as ἀλλóφυλοι, was made for similar reasons. Those who consorted with prostitutes in the Jerusalem temple (2 Macc 6:4) were not simply foreigners (ἀλλóφυλοι), they were typical representatives of “the nations” from whom Israel was to remain separate and whose ways Israel was to shun. By denoting individual non-Jews as ἔθνη, these texts characterize them as members of “the (non-Jewish) nations.” This dual sense of ἔθνη—both “nations” and “non-Jewish individuals or groups”—needs to be kept in mind both with respect to early Christian usage and in any consideration of the term “Gentiles” that eventually came to be used as the English equivalent.
At this point, we turn our attention to the Latin Vulgate and its influence. The Vulgate is significant because of Jerome's (occasional) use of gentilis,Footnote 34 which eventually came into English as “Gentile” (with parallel developments in various Romance languages). The adjective gentilis marks someone as belonging to a particular gens, the latter term referring in its basic sense to a Roman clan or family and, in extended usage, to a nation or ethnic group. Used substantively and in this extended sense, then, gentiles (plur.) denotes fellow members of a particular nation or ethnic group. Since gentiles refers to individuals rather than nations yet retains a readily apparent link to the related term for nations (i.e., gentes, the plural of gens), it offered the potential to fill the gap for Latin speakers that was created in Greek by the use of ἔθνη with reference to individuals.
Jerome, however, took only tentative steps in this direction. With respect to the Hebrew scriptures, for 
(and 
) he used gens (gentes) and (about half as often) natio (nationes), without any apparent difference in nuance. In the Apocrypha as well, he almost always chose gentes and (less frequently) nationes as a rendering for ἔθνη. Even in those instances where ἔθνη clearly denotes individuals, he eschewed gentiles, using gentes in almost every case.Footnote 35 Similar patterns appear in the New Testament: gentes is his preferred term for ἔθνη; even when ἔθνη refers to individuals, Jerome renders the term gentes or, on a few occasions, nationes.Footnote 36
On twenty-two occasions, however, Jerome uses gentilis—seven times as an adjective (six times in the singular, once in the plural)Footnote 37 and fifteen times as a substantive (once singular, the rest plural).Footnote 38 In addition, the related forms gentilitas and gentiliter Footnote 39 appear once each. Of this total of twenty-four, six are found in the Apocrypha, the rest in the New Testament.
In four of these twenty-two cases, gentilis renders some form of ἔθνος. In one instance (1 Esd 5:9) the word is used in its basic sense (member of the same clan or nation) and with reference to Israel itself. Here the plural is used to render the singular ἔθνος: “those from the nation” (τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔθνους) becomes “those from their kinfolk” (ab gentilibus eorum).Footnote 40 In the other three instances, however, gentiles renders the plural ἔθνη, used with the sense of “non-Jews.”Footnote 41 In one of these, individuals are not necessarily in view: Tobit abstained “from eating the food τῶν ἐθνῶν” (Þ gentilium)” (Tob 1:10–11). In the other two instances, ἔθνη clearly has the sense of “non-Jewish individuals.” Acts 14:5 recounts an incident in Iconium, in which an attempt was made to mistreat Paul and Barnabas “by both ἔθνη and Jews (τῶν ἐθνῶν τε καì Ἰουδαίων),” which appears in the Vulgate as gentilium et Iudaeorum. In Rom 15:27, speaking of the collection for “the saints at Jerusalem,” Paul says: “for if τὰ ἔθνη (Þ gentiles) have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things.” While it is not clear why in cases where ἔθνη conveys the sense of “non-Jewish individuals” Jerome did not use gentiles more frequently, these instances demonstrate that he certainly could use the term in this way.
In the remaining eighteen of its twenty-two occurrences—eleven of the substantives and all of the adjectives—gentilis is used to render Ἕλλην or related words.Footnote 42 The choice is curious, in that it is not readily apparent why Jerome preferred this generic term, which identifies a person as belonging to a particular though unspecified nation, to some form of the more specific Graecus. Nevertheless, each instance occurs in a context in which “Greek” is set over against Jewish realities in some form, which gives gentilis the connotation of “non-Jew.” So in 2 Maccabees, the increase of “Hellenization” (Ἑλληνισμοῦ) becomes an increase of gentilis conversationis (4:13), Jason's shift to “the Greek way of life” (πρὸς τὸν Ἑλληνικὸν χαρακτῆρα) becomes a shift ad gentilium ritum (4:10), and changing over “to Greek customs” (ἐπì τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ) becomes a change ad instituta gentilium (6:9). For Latin readers, the Greek (Ἑλληνίς) Syrophoenician woman is a gentilis (Mark 7:26), as are both Titus and the Greek father of Timothy (Ἕλλην Þ gentilis; Gal 2:3; Acts 16:3; also 16:1). The “Greeks” (Ἕλληνες) who approach Philip because they want to see Jesus are gentiles in the Vulgate (John 12:20), as are those whom, his opponents allege, Paul brought into the temple (Ἕλληνας Þ gentiles; Acts 21:28).Footnote 43 Most striking are instances where Ἰουδαῖοι and Ἕλληνες are paired: “both Jews and Greeks” becomes Iudaei atque gentiles (Acts 19:10, 17; 20:21)Footnote 44; “Jews or Greeks or the church of God” becomes Iudaeis et gentilibus et ecclesiae Dei (1 Cor 10:32; also 12:13).
While Jerome's choice of gentilis might appear curious to those who are aware of the Greek version, translations are opaque to their originals, which means that for the most part Jerome's readers would have been oblivious to the corresponding original uses of “Greek” or “Greeks.” To be sure, there may have been a certain curiosity attached to the use of the general term gentilis in contexts where the gens in question was not further specified. Nevertheless, since contextual usage determines meaning, this would have readily given way to an understanding that, where gentilis was paired with Iudaeos (or gentiles with Iudaei), it had the sense of “a non-Jew” (or “non-Jews”). In other words, for readers of the Vulgate, gentilis (gentiles) came to acquire the sense that “Gentile” (“Gentiles”) has for English speakers. Of course, the similarity in sense is not incidental. Given the place of the Vulgate in the Roman church, it is not surprising that this usage became common in a range of cultures—and, subsequently, of languages—within the world of Roman Christianity.
This brings us to English usage.Footnote 45 Forms derived from the Latin gentilis have come into English in two basic senses.Footnote 46 The primary sense of the word—“a member of a particular family or clan”—came into English with the added element of nobility: as an adjective, “gentil” (also “gentile,” “gentille,” “gentle”) was used with reference to someone of noble birth or rank, or someone exhibiting the virtues or manners normally associated with nobility. Various related nouns—“gentil,” “gentillesse,” “gentry,” “gentleman”—convey the same sense of nobility in nominal forms. This set of uses is attested as early as 1225.
The second sense of the word—our primary concern here—developed under the influence of the Vulgate. From the late fourteenth century, “Gentile” was in common usage with reference to non-Jewish persons and nations, both as an adjective (“of or pertaining to any or all of the nations other than the Jewish”) and as a noun (“one of any nation other than the Jewish”), to use the OED definitions. With respect to the English Bible, although the term did not appear in the late-fourteenth-century translation of John Wycliffe,Footnote 47 it was widely used in William Tyndale's translation (from 1524), and also in various other versions prior to the publication of the King James Version in 1611. The kjv carried over Tyndale's pattern of usage in large measure and, because of its dominance in the English-speaking world during the subsequent three and a half centuries, it provided the vocabulary and shaped the discourse for scholarly discussion of matters pertaining to Jews and non-Jews in studies of the Bible and of Christian origins.
The plural form “Gentiles” appears some 148 times in the kjv—thirty in the Old Testament, nineteen in the Apocrypha, and ninety-nine in the New Testament. In addition, the singular form appears twice (Rom 2:9, 10). Although the currency of the term in the early seventeenth century might have been influenced by its appearance in the Vulgate, the influence of the Vulgate on kjv usage is more indirect: for the most part, the kjv does not follow its lead in passages where Jerome uses gentilis for forms of Ἕλλην; only rarely does the kjv render these forms as “Gentiles.”Footnote 48 The vocabulary of the kjv is also influenced by a development from a different direction. Under Germanic influence, the term “heathen” came into English usage by the end of the tenth century, which resulted in a situation where translators had a choice of three words with overlapping meaning—nations, heathen, and Gentiles—as renderings of 
, ἔθνη, and related words.Footnote 49 Further, like “Gentiles,” in both its singular and plural forms “heathen” referred to individuals, rather than nations.
In the Old Testament of the kjv, “Gentiles” appears much less frequently than “nations” (299) or “heathen” (143). In all thirty of its occurrences, “Gentiles” renders 
. Fifteen occurrences are found in passages from Isaiah that translators might have seen as messianic; in any case, each passage deals with eschatological themes and assigns a positive place to the 
.Footnote 50 Generally speaking, “nations” seems to function as the default choice, especially where a neutral term seems appropriate, whereas “heathen” is chosen when the wickedness of the nations is in view, and “Gentiles” when there is a positive messianic or eschatological overtone. Still, there are exceptions.Footnote 51
In thirteen of its nineteen instances in the kjv Apocrypha, “Gentiles” renders ἔθνη.Footnote 52 While the term appears much less frequently than “heathen” (seventy times), there seems to be little rationale for the choice of “Gentiles” where it does appear. One point of interest is that “heathen” is preferred to “Gentiles” in the cases discussed above in which ἔθνη refers either to individuals or to very specific groups of non-Jews.Footnote 53 This illustrates the point that “heathen” functioned as an alternative to “Gentiles” as a term for non-Jewish individuals (though “heathen” was also used, with slightly more frequency than “nations” [sixty-six occurrences], to render ἔθνη when it referred to non-Jewish nations).
In the New Testament, the proportional use of the three terms is strikingly different: the instances of “Gentiles” (ninety-nine, with two additional instances of the singular) significantly outnumber both “nations” (thirty-seven) and “heathen” (seven). In most of its appearances, “Gentiles” renders ἔθνη; five other occurrences render some form of Ἕλλην:Footnote 54 it appears for ἐθνικοί once (3 John 7), and it was added by the translators on two occasions (Acts 13:42; 1 Cor 10:20). This pattern of usage is sharply differentiated from that of the Vulgate as well. In the Vulgate, gentes functions as the standard equivalent for ἔθνη. Where gentilis appears in the New Testament, it renders ἔθνη only twice (Acts 14:5; Rom 15:27); the other fifteen occurrences correspond to various forms of Ἕλλην. In the kjv New Testament, however, “Gentiles” emerges as the standard translation for ἔθνη.
This usage, which stands in contrast to both the Vulgate and the rest of the kjv, requires some explanation. To a certain extent the preponderance of “Gentiles” can be accounted for by the fact that ἔθνη is used much more frequently in the New Testament with respect to individual non-Jews. But since “heathen” also refers to individuals, this does not fully explain the preference for “Gentiles.” One might surmise that by the early seventeenth century, “Gentiles” was the preferred term for discussing early Christianity and its transition beyond a purely Jewish environment, and that in the New Testament the kjv simply reflected current usage. Whatever the reason for the preference, however, there can be little doubt as to its effect: because of its reach and influence, the kjv had a decisive effect in shaping subsequent thought and language concerning what has come to be referred to as “the Gentile mission” and—to return to the theme of this paper—“Gentile Christianity.”
One final observation before turning to Gentile Christianity per se. I began this paper with the statement that “Gentile Christianity” and related terms have been in common usage “at least since the time of Ferdinand Christian Baur.” Not only do the terms appear in English usage, however, long before the translation of Baur's work into English (1876),Footnote 55 but there is good reason to believe that Baur was influenced by discussions of Jewish and Gentile Christianity that had already been going on in England.
Here I am relying on a suggestion made by James Carleton Paget in a very helpful essay in which he surveys the use and definition of “Jewish Christian” and “Jewish Christianity” in scholarly discussion.Footnote 56 In this essay he draws our attention to two works by eighteenth-century English writers who, each in his own way, construct a version of early Christian history characterized by a sharp distinction between two parties—one Jewish Christian, represented by the Jerusalem apostles, the other Gentile Christian, centered on the apostle Paul. The earlier of the two was John Toland, whose work Nazarenus appeared in 1718.Footnote 57 Toland argues that earliest Christianity was characterized by “a distinction of two sorts of Christians, viz., those from among the Jews, and those from among the Gentiles.” The relationship between the two was not one of conflict, according to Toland, and the Jerusalem Council represented a collegial agreement (“the original plan of Christianity”) in which the two forms of Christianity—one continuing to observe the Jewish law, the other bound only by the terms of the Apostolic Decree—were to exist side by side, both of them “to be for ever after united in one body or fellowship.”Footnote 58 It was only the disproportionate success of the Gentile mission that upset this tidy, duplex relationship.
Thomas Morgan's reconstruction, by contrast, was much more conflictual in its character. The “vast difference between the Jewish and Gentile Christians” was such that “the Jewish and Gentile Christianity, or Peter's Religion and Paul's, were as opposite and inconsistent as Light and Darkness, Truth and Falsehood [italics in original].” The earliest apostles misunderstood Jesus's intention, which had been to break through the boundaries of Judaism into a more universal religiosity, proclaiming him instead as “the Hope and Salvation of Israel only, or as the Restorer of their Kingdom.” The apostle Paul was the one (no surprise here) who rediscovered the true intention of Jesus and proclaimed him to the Gentiles as “the Hope and Salvation of all Men alike.”Footnote 59 It was the reality of shared persecution that forced the two groups closer together and, eventually, “to unite into one catholick, Christian Church.”Footnote 60
One readily hears echoes of Tübingen here, especially in Morgan's work. Of course, since both Toland and Morgan predate Baur by a century or more, the image is imprecise, unless—as Carleton Paget argues—the echoes moved in the opposite direction, Baur having been influenced by scholarly discussions already going on in England. The argument is quite plausible, given the degree of interaction between the two countries in this period.
For my purposes, however, it is sufficient to note that these two works provide evidence that the English terms “Gentile Christians” and “Gentile Chris-tianity” were current in scholarly discourse by the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote 61 Both works are peppered with references to “Gentile Christians.”Footnote 62 And while “Gentile Christianity” is less common, it nevertheless features prominently in the title of Toland's work (Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity) and is found in Morgan's as well.Footnote 63 To recast my opening sentence, then, at least from the middle of the eighteenth century, “Gentile Christianity,” “Gentile Christians,” and related terms have served to indicate a basic category in the critical investigation of Christian origins.
Critical Re-Examination
Despite their well-established usage, however, these terms are hampered by significant limitations and blind spots, and thus need to be subjected to critical re-examination. In what follows, I suggest four areas where reassessment is necessary.
The Terms “Gentile” and “Gentiles”
The first issue—a preliminary one—concerns the terms “Gentile” and “Gentiles” themselves. This usage as a scholarly category has been shaped in significant measure by how these terms appear in English translations of the Bible (and, mutatis mutandis, by how the equivalents heidnisch and Heiden appear in German translations). As has been observed, “Gentiles” was the standard translation in the kjv New Testament for ἔθνη in its exclusive sense (i.e., referring to non-Jewish persons or nations), and this pattern has been carried over into most modern translations as well. The use of “Gentile” as an adjective derives from this kjv usage rather than from any adjectival construction in the Greek New Testament.Footnote 64
As we have seen, the usefulness of the term “Gentiles” arises from a peculiarity in Jewish and early Christian usage of ἔθνη. In addition to its normal sense of “nations,” the plural form ἔθνη is commonly used to denote a multiplicity of (non-Jewish) individuals. Unlike the singular form, where “nation” is always an appropriate rendering of ἔθνος, “nations” is quite inappropriate for ἔθνη in this specific sense, where the term refers to a plurality of individuals. “Members of the non-Jewish nations,” while more precise, is cumbersome and unwieldy. The usefulness of “Gentiles” is that it denotes (non-Jewish) individuals; moreover, it offers both a natural singular form to denote a non-Jewish individual and a corresponding adjective (i.e., “Gentile” in both cases).
Nevertheless, something significant can be lost to view when ἔθνη is rendered by “Gentiles.” As with the Apocrypha, the preference for ἔθνη in the New Testament was not due to the absence of an alternative. New Testament authors could have used other terms to speak of non-Jewish individuals and groups—and did on occasion: ἀλλογενής, ἀλλóφυλος, and ἐθνικóς appear from time to time.Footnote 65 But what was suggested above with respect to pre-Christian Jewish usage is even more applicable to early Christian material: ἔθνη was preferred because it preserved the link with the scriptural use of 
in its distinctive sense of the nations other than Israel, seen as a single, non-differentiated category. This link was preserved in Latin, in that the connection between gentiles and gentes (the standard counterpart to 
/ ἔθνη) was readily apparent. But it was broken—or at least obscured from view—when the Latin gentiles became the English “Gentiles.”
Of course, the question of translation is not a simple one. Several senses of ἔθνη are present in the NT (and other early Christian literature): “nations,” used in a generic sense that includes Israel;Footnote 66 nations other than that of the Jews;Footnote 67 non-Jewish individuals;Footnote 68 what non-Jewish Christ-believers were before but are no longer.Footnote 69 Given the semantic differences, no single word offers an appropriate translation across the board; choices need to be made from case to case. But in the attempt to clarify, translational choices can mask or exclude elements of meaning as well.
One such case concerns instances where it is unclear whether ἔθνη is intended to include Israel (i.e., other nations as well as the nation of Israel) or to exclude (i.e., non-Jewish nations or individuals). Matthew 28:19 is a well-known example. Does the command to make disciples of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη include the Jewish ἔθνος, in which case “nations” might be an appropriate choice (all the nations, the Jewish nation included), or does it exclude the Jews, in which case the disciples would have been sent to the non-Jewish nations (or individuals)?Footnote 70 The book of Revelation presents another instance; given the distinction in chapter 7 between those from “the people of Israel” (v. 4) and those “from every nation” (v. 9), it is not clear whether the ἔθνη who will walk by the light of the new Jerusalem (21:24) or are healed by its tree of life (22:2) include Israel or not.
For present purposes, however, the more pertinent case concerns those instances where ἔθνη clearly has an exclusive sense—that is, it denotes a non-Jewish entity, either nations or individuals—and thus where it has often been translated as “Gentiles.” Although the choice of translation is understandable, the problematical consequence is that, while “Gentiles” captures the element of non-Jewishness, it occludes the element of “nations” that ἔθνη usually denotes or evokes.Footnote 71 Since the singular form “Gentile” refers to an individual non-Jew, “Gentiles” naturally suggests a plurality of individuals rather than of nations, especially for readers in the much more individualistic culture of the Western world.
The problem is certainly present in cases where ἔθνη clearly refers to nations rather than to individuals. In the case of Simeon's hymn, for example, most English translations have followed the pattern set by the kjv: “a light to lighten the Gentiles (ἐθνῶν), and glory for thy people (λαοῦ) Israel” (Luke 2:32). The pairing with λαóς clearly indicates that ἐθνῶν refers to nations rather than individuals, but this is blocked for most readers of the English version.Footnote 72
A similar problem is present in cases where the nature of the reference—to nations or to individuals—is uncertain. For example, the βασιλεῖς τῶν ἐθνῶν whose behavior the disciples are not to emulate (Luke 22:25): Are they the kings of the non-Jewish nations or of non-Jewish individuals?Footnote 73 Or, the “people” whom God has drawn “for his name ἐξ ἐθνῶν” (Acts 15:14): Have they been drawn from nations or from a set of individuals?Footnote 74 Or, “all the Jews” who are living κατὰ τὰ ἔθνη (Acts 21:21): Are they living among individuals or is the sense distributive—“from nation to nation”? In each case ἔθνη denotes a non-Jewish entity, and so one can understand why, for example, the nrsv renders it as “Gentiles.” But while “Gentiles” captures the element of non-Jewishness, the possibility is obscured that (non-Jewish) nations are in view.
But even where individuals are clearly in view, the choice of “Gentiles” for ἔθνη serves to mute the overtones that often hover around the Greek term. In Acts 11:1 we read about a report reaching the believers in Judea “that τὰ ἔθνη had also accepted the word of God.” The report, of course, refers to the conversion of Cornelius and his companions, recounted in the previous chapter. But while ἔθνη here denotes simply a small group of non-Jewish individuals, both the unmodified articular form—τὰ ἔθνη—and the momentous significance that Luke attaches to the event (apparent in the account of Peter's dream) suggest strongly that Cornelius and his group are being portrayed as representatives of “the nations,” who have now been given a share in a message sent originally “to the people” (τῷ λαῷ; [10:42]; similarly, “to the sons of Israel” [10:36]). Likewise with Paul's sense of apostolic calling—his role as “apostle of the ἐθνῶν” (Rom 11:13) or as “a minister of Christ Jesus to the ἔθνη in the priestly service of the gospel of God” (Rom 15:16). To be sure, Paul often uses ἔθνη in mundane references to individuals: Peter, for example, “used to eat with the ἐθνῶν” (Gal 2:12). But the scriptural sense of “non-Jewish nations” often hovers about the term. The phrase just cited from Rom 15:16, for example, is sandwiched between passages redolent with the ethnic-national sense of ἔθνη. On one side (vv. 9–12), we find a catena of scriptural quotations concerning the ἔθνη, one of which includes the injunction “Rejoice, O ἔθνη, with his people (λαοῦ)” (v. 10). On the other (vv. 18–29), we read Paul's summary of a mission that has taken him “from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum” (v. 19) and will now lead to Rome and then on to Spain (vv. 22–24), the list of named territories (Judea, Macedonia, Achaia, Illyricum, Rome, Spain) giving a decidedly ethnic tenor to the summary.Footnote 75 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Paul saw the ἔθνη to whom he was called not merely as non-Jewish individuals, but as members of the non-Jewish nations.Footnote 76
My point here is not restricted to the use of “Gentiles” in English versions of the Bible, but is concerned more centrally with the way in which translational choices have shaped the categories we use in the task of reconstructing Christian origins. To speak of “Gentiles” or of “Gentile Christianity” inevitably filters out the ethnic-national sense of ἔθνη that would have always been present, to a greater or lesser extent, when the term was spoken or written, heard or read, in the contexts we are attempting to understand and reconstruct.
Self-identification
My second point has to do with self-identification among early non-Jewish believers in Christ. Put quite simply, no one in the first century whom we might refer to as a Gentile would have naturally thought of himself or herself in these terms. The use of τὰ ἔθνη with reference to non-Jewish nations or individuals was a Jewish construction, a particularly Jewish way of dividing the world into “us” and “them.” Left to their own devices and self-definitions, Phrygians, Parthians, or Bithynians would no more describe themselves as ἔθνη than they would as βάρβαροι.Footnote 77 In each case the term is one imposed by others—Jews in one case, Greeks in the other; and to use the term is to accept a framework in which it makes sense to divide the world in this way—into Greeks and barbarians, or into Jews and Gentiles.
Left to their own devices and self-definitions, Phrygians, Parthians, or Bithynians would describe themselves—well, as Phrygians, Parthians, or Bithynians. Ethnicity was a fundamental element of identity in the ancient world, probably the most fundamental. What has come to be thought of as “religion,” for example, was not an autonomous domain but was thoroughly embedded in the various structures of ethnicityFootnote 78—something that we who have a professional interest in the origins of what came to be known as the Christian religion need to bear in mind.
In becoming part of a Christian group, however, the various “Parthians, Medes, Elamites . . . Cretans and Arabs” (to use part of the ethnographical list strikingly placed at the start of the Acts narrative) who may have become Christ-believers found themselves in a social world where ἔθνη, in the very particular sense of non-Jewish nations or individuals, was a basic category. The term was prevalent in Israel's scriptures, which were an important part of the early Christian movement; it is the term and identity that was ascribed to them by the early Jewish Christ-believers (and, in the case of those who had already been Jewish sympathizers, by the synagogue community previously); this term and identity came to be embedded in the early Christian writings that continued to play an important role in self-definition and identity construction (and eventually became normative). From the beginnings of the “Gentile mission,” then, and through the formative period of the Christian movement, Christ-believers of non-Jewish origin found themselves identified in some sense as ἔθνη, and thus had to come to terms with an ascribed identity that, while ethnically based, was nonetheless at odds with the more inherited aspects of their ethnic identities.
What they made of the situation is not easy to say, especially in the first generation or two of the movement. What, for example, did Paul's readers in Rome think of his direct address: “Now I am speaking to you ἔθνη (ὑμῖν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν)”? Or how did non-Jews among the original readers of Matthew combine their additional identities—as baptized disciples of Jesus and as ἔθνη (28:18–20)—with their native ethnic identity (Syrian, perhaps; see 4:24)? To be sure, by the time we get to Justin in the middle of the second century we find non-Jews who quite readily identify themselves not only as Christians but as ἔθνη (or as drawn from the ἔθνη).Footnote 79 Since cross-cultural studies of conversion lead us to expect that converts would be ready to accept names and identities assigned to them by their new associative group, Justin and those like him may well have had their predecessors among the earliest non-Jewish Christ-believers. The questions, then, are well worth asking, even if direct evidence is not readily available for the earliest period. Some help in filling the gaps may be provided by a number of recent works that use social-scientific studies to examine ethnicity in the Greco-Roman world in general,Footnote 80 and the JewishFootnote 81 and early Christian worlds in particular.Footnote 82
Nevertheless, as long as we think of the various readers of Paul's letters or Luke-Acts or 1 Peter simply as ἔθνη full stop, the way forward will be difficult, if not blocked entirely. To speak of “Gentile Christians” or “Gentile Christianity,” and to use this as a fundamental category of critical investigation, is to impose an alien framework (in a very literal sense) on the phenomenon we are attempting to investigate. “Gentile Christians” did not, in the first instance, think of themselves as such. Or, to the extent that they came to do so, any adequate understanding of this element of their self-definition will require us to see it in relation to prior and more fundamental ethnic identities. While “Gentile Christianity” may have its uses at a certain level of abstraction, it reflects an outsider's perspective that tends to flatten the ethnic landscape and to filter out the perceptions of those who lived at ground level.
“Gentile Christianity” and Diversity
This leads directly into a third point, one that can be made briefly. Diversity was a characteristic of the early Christian movement, and this was as true of the Gentile constituent as it was of the movement as a whole. Of course, the phenomenon of diversity is widely recognized and continues to be thoroughly investigated, so we need not belabor the point here. The use of the broad term “Gentile Christianity” has not hindered the recognition and investigation of the considerable range of diversity among “Gentile Christians.”
Nevertheless, there is a point to be made with respect to the more specific use of “Gentile Christianity”—that is, as a contrasting counterpart to “Jewish Christianity,” as one half of the binary pair constituted by the two terms. The point has to do not with any kind of diversity that might be represented by the two entities themselves, as it was for Baur where the binary pair functioned not simply as ethnic descriptors but as labels for opposing religious ideologies. Rather, the diversity has to do with different ways in which the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish Christ-believers was perceived or constructed in different parts of the movement. My point is similar to the one made by Raymond Brown quite a number of years ago in his article “Not Jewish Christianity and Gentile Chris-tianity, but types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity” (1983).Footnote 83 Objecting to a tendency among scholars to use “‘Jewish Christian’ and ‘Gentile Christian’ to differentiate theological and/or ecclesiological stances in NT times,” Brown argued that the different theological/ecclesiological stances had to do, rather, with “different types of Jewish / Gentile Christianity, stemming from the fact that Jewish Christians of different persuasions converted Gentiles who shared the respective theology of their missionaries.”Footnote 84
What is pertinent here is not so much the detail of Brown's analysis as the reminder that within the early stages of the Christian movement there was considerable debate and diversity with respect to the inclusion of non-Jews. The debate involved a number of interrelated issues: the terms on which non-Jews could be recognized as legitimate members of the group; the relative status of Jews and non-Jews within the group; the nature of the relationship between the group and “Israel,” both the Israel of scripture and the contemporary Jewish world; and so on. From early Christian literature it is readily apparent that different positions were taken on these issues, resulting in a situation where non-Jewish Christ-believers could be found in a variety of groups characterized by quite different understandings of their terms of membership.
To be sure, Brown's analysis could be extended and reinforced. On one side, we can recognize that there was already considerable diversity of opinion within the Jewish world on how “the nations” might relate in positive terms to the Torah, the Temple, and the God of Israel,Footnote 85 and that this diversity played itself out in analogous ways among groups of Jewish Christ-believers. On the other side, Brown's typology might be refined and expanded by separating out the points of divergence and extending the analysis into the second century.Footnote 86
For present purposes, however, our concern has to do with the paired terms “Gentile Christianity” and “Jewish Christianity,” which, as Brown has observed, are “imprecise and poorly designated.”Footnote 87 For one thing, the binary pair conveys the impression that the movement neatly divided along ethnic lines into two distinct and separate forms of “Christianity,” and thus occludes the extent to which individual communities contained both Jewish and non-Jewish Christ-believers. For another, the monochromatic character of the pairing masks the considerable degree of diversity within these communities as to the ways in which the inclusion of non-Jews was understood, and thus also masks the diversity among various groups of “Gentile Christians” themselves.
“The Nations” in Greco-Roman Context
Finally, attention needs to be paid to the resonances of (πάντα) τὰ ἔθνη or (omnes) gentes in the Greco-Roman world. Although the terms came into early Christian usage in their specifically Jewish sense—i.e., the non-Jewish nations—this more restricted sense would not normally have carried over into Greco-Roman settings more generally. What is of interest to me here is not the basic sense of the term, but the connections that might readily have been evoked between particular Christian formulations and analogous trans-ethnic or multi-ethnic themes in contemporary imperial and philosophical discourse. Various apologists for Rome promoted and celebrated the empire as an ideal universal commonwealth, one that gathered “all the nations” into a unified fatherland, thus bringing into reality the Greek philosophical/political vision of a single, worldwide oikoumen. As a production of the ruling elite, this discourse is highly idealized, of course, and would readily have been contested by those who had experienced the harder realities of subjugation.Footnote 88 In drawing attention, then, to the resonances between this discourse and analogous Christian formulations—Christians as having been drawn from “all the nations”; the church as a new community uniting people from “all the nations”; Christ as the light or the teacher of “the nations”; etc.—I am not foreclosing on the question of the relationship between the two discourses. Whether Christian discourse is to be seen as an implicit counter-imperial challenge, as an internalization of the values of the elite, or as something in between, is a subsequent question, to be explored from case to case. My present point is a preliminary one: simply, that the resonances are all too easily lost to view when we read these as expressions of Gentile-Christian self-definition.
This is not the place, of course, to attempt anything like a full survey of this Roman discourse,Footnote 89 nor is it the case that ἔθνη and gens are the only terms in which this discourse is carried out.Footnote 90 For present purposes, it will be sufficient to set out a representative sample of pertinent texts.
The presupposition and foundational theme of the discourse is the universal sovereignty of Rome. The (unidentified) author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium speaks of “that sovereignty over the whole world (imperium orbis terrae) which all nations, kings, and national groups (omnes gentes, reges, nationes)Footnote 91 have accepted, in part compelled by force, in part of their own will, when conquered either by the arms of Rome or by her generosity” (4.9.13; ca. 86–92 b.c.e). For Diodorus Siculus, “because of their surpassing humanity [i.e., that of the Romans], therefore, the kings, the cities and, in short, the nations (οἵ τε βασιλεῖς καì αἱ πóλεις καì συλλήβδην τὰ ἔθνη) went over to the Roman standard.”Footnote 92 Closely connected to this, of course, is the role of the Roman general or emperor. Cicero describes Pompey as “the vanquisher of all nations (omnium gentium victore)” (Against Piso 10), and Velleius Paterculus says of Augustus that he “was destined by his greatness to overshadow all men of all nations (omnibus omnium gentium viris).”Footnote 93
For the Roman apologists, however, conquest was but the means to a nobler end. In his encomium on Rome, Aelius Aristides praises the Romans for their generous benefaction: while previous empires and kings “ruled over, as it were, only the naked bodies of their nations (σωμάτων γυμνῶν αὐτῶν τῶν ἐθνῶν), you have filled your whole empire with cities and adornments.”Footnote 94 Further, says Aristides, generous benefaction was accompanied by good government: “The rulers who are sent to the cities and to the nations (ἐπὶ τὰς πóλεις τε καì τὰ ἔθνη)” govern in such a way that “if something must be done, it is enough to decree it and it is accomplished.” This does not mean that things are done autocratically, however; the rulers are aware that both they and “those under them” are “equally subjects” of Rome, with the result that “everything is accomplished by edict and by a sign of assent more easily than one would strike the chord of a lyre.”Footnote 95 More generally, as Strabo says, Rome is the civilizer of the barbarians; they “took over many nations (πολλὰ ἔθνη) that were naturally savage . . . and thus not only brought into communication with each other peoples who had been isolated, but also taught the more savage how to live under forms of government.”Footnote 96 Pliny strikes a similar note:
[Rome] is at once the nursling and the mother of all other lands, chosen by the providence of the gods to make heaven itself more glorious, to unite scattered empires, to make manners gentle, to draw together in converse by community of language the jarring and uncouth tongues of so many peoples (populorum), to give humanity civilization (humanitatem humani), and in a word to become throughout the world the single fatherland of all the nations (una cunctarum gentium in toto orbe patria). (Natural History 3.39)
As this statement by Pliny suggests, the end result of this civilizing process is the creation of a new trans-ethnic unity. In Tacitus's words, the effect of Roman rule is “that not individuals merely but countries and nations (gentes) should form one body under the name of Romans” (Annals 11.24).Footnote 97
Consequently, it is not surprising that Rome's fame spread among all the nations. Addressing Julius Caesar, Cicero declares that “the honours you have won in war shall indeed be acclaimed by the literature and the eloquence not only of our own but of nearly all the nations (paene omnium gentium).”Footnote 98 Likewise, events in Rome have the potential to reverberate throughout the nations. If Clodius's plot to assassinate Pompey had been successful, “not this state alone, but all nations (gentes omnes), would have lain in the dust.”Footnote 99 More generally, Cicero portrays Rome's universal significance in grandiloquent terms. The Senate house is “the greatest protection of all nations” (summum auxilium omnium gentium) and “the shrine of holiness . . . the head of the city, the sanctuary of our allies, the haven of all nations (portum omnium gentium).” Rome itself is the “citadel of all nations (arcem omnium gentium)” and—in a phrase that could not help but resonate in Christian ears—“the light of the whole world and the fortress of all the nations (lucem orbis terrarum atque arcem omnium gentium).”Footnote 100
As the Christian movement began to engage in a mission to the Gentiles and to establish itself in the Gentile world, its use of ἔθνη (and later gentes) would naturally and inevitably suggest connections and contrasts with this Roman imperial language of self-definition. But to put it this way is to highlight the problem. As long as we speak in terms of a mission to “the Gentiles” and of “the Gentile world,” and so on, we create a situation where these natural connections and contrasts are obscured from the outset.
Conclusion
What, then, are we to do with “Gentiles,” “Gentile Christians,” “Gentile Chris-tianity,” and related terms? While one can readily think of more accurate descriptors, they are probably too cumbersome and unwieldy for regular use. “Gentiles” might be replaced by “non-Jewish nations” (where national entities are in view) or “members of non-Jewish nations” (where individuals are in view). Or, since “Gentile” is well established in English usage,Footnote 101 we might speak of “Gentile nations” or “members of Gentile nations” (despite the etymological redundancy). The terms are awkward in themselves, however, and the awkwardness is only compounded when we combine them with less anachronistic substitutions for “Christians” (e.g., “Christ-believers from non-Jewish nations”) or “Christianity” (e.g., “communities of Christ-believers from non-Jewish nations”).
It is probably unrealistic, then, to think that we might do away with these terms entirely. Indeed, “Gentile” itself is a perfectly good English word, undeniably useful in both its nominal and adjective forms as a way of denoting non-Jewish persons and phenomena. Still, just as we have come to recognize that to describe the various early gatherings of Christ-believers as manifestations of “Chris-tianity” is to run the risk of distorting first-century realities or missing aspects of them entirely, so too we need to recognize that analogous limitations and blind spots accompany “Gentile” in its various forms. While “Gentile Christianity” and related terms might continue to function as a convenient shorthand, we should use them only in conjunction with more accurate longhand descriptions. That is, we should use them only in contexts in which we also take steps to define them and indicate how they are being used. This would involve a number of things: differentiating between scholarly use of terms and categories as a means of analysis from the outside (etic discourse), and terms and categories used by the ancient subjects themselves (emic discourse); in the case of the latter, recognizing that there were different groups of ancient subjects (i.e., Jewish Christ-believers, non-Jewish Christ-believers, Jewish outsiders, non-Jewish outsiders), each of which would have its own perspective on, and perhaps terminology for, the phenomenon of non-Jewish Christ-believers; taking care to avoid anachronisms; and so on.
In short, unless and until more suitable terms present themselves, when we use “Gentile Christianity” and related terms we should do so in full awareness of their deficiencies and blind spots, making every effort to clear these away, to compensate for them, and to bring the underlying realities into view.
