Call Me by God’s Name. Onomaturgy in Three Early Christian Texts

Why, in the English-speaking world, is nobody is given the name “Jesus” while in Spain and Latin America this theophoric name is quite popular? Any confessional argument is ultimately insufficient and unsatisfying and therefore the quandary remains unsettled. And what of theophoric names in early Christ religion? How did early Christian writers who adopted theophoric names for themselves, or employed them for others, navigate the fine line between misuse and honor, religious qualm and religious tribute? Did they navigate it at all? In his two-volume work, the writer known as Luke calls his Christ-believing addressee “Theophilos”; the real or putative Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, nicknames himself “Theophoros”; the anonymous author of the small tract To Diognetus probably invented the designation to formally address a prospective non-Christian audience. Are such names (“beloved of god”; “sprung from Zeus”) merely hackneyed commonplaces? Or do such practices bestow “peer/gentlemanly honor” (Appiah 2010) as a manly quality shared by both sender and recipient? Or, as the meta-theophoric “bearer of God” seems to suggest, are theonyms used to rank positions and claim religious prestige? Focusing on three early Christian texts, the paper will try to work its way through these intriguing questions.