The Parvenu and the Quixote: A Bourdieuian Reading of Ignatius of Antioch, To the Philadelphians 8

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a short passage of the literary corpus attributed to Ignatius of Antioch (i.e., To the Philadelphians 8) and offer a new description of both its rhetoric and social locations. Tapping into Pierre Bourdieu’s epistemology and theory of action, the aim is to question the common pattern of early Christian studies of naturalizing one voice (or a text) within competitive ancient social spaces and proceeding as though Early Christian materials represent unique moments in history. Our re-description will encourage de-familiarizing our Christian sources so we can treat them as examples of broader social phenomena. By documenting the competitive and rhetorical textures of To the Philadelphians 8, we gain insights into questions and phenomena that go far beyond church history, history of Christianity, and even history of religion.