Ignatius of Antioch invented the Christianism: Trajan and Hadrian facing the Christians

Abstract

This article deals with the conceptual change produced after Ignatius of Antioch, creator of the neologisms Christianismós and Katholika Ekklesía. The precedent that made arise the neologism ’Ioudaïsmós, born in 2Maccabees, is also analyzed. On the other hand, the relationship between the birth of a Christian identity at the beginning of the second century and the change of Hadrian’s religious policy towards the Christians is analyzed as well. Whereas Trajan ordered that confessed Christians should be execu­ted, Hadrian commanded, after having listen the Apology of Aristides, that the executions should come to an end. Aristides and the letters of Barnabas and 1 Peter are Christian texts of that time that struggle for the conso­lidation of a Christian identity different from the Greco-Roman and Jewish identities. This identity was not religious but ethnic, since the concept of religion as we know it today did not exist in Antiquity.