Who Thought That Early Christians Formed Associations?

Abstract

Abstract In the long-standing debate whether or not early Christians formed associations like their non-Christian contemporaries (collegia, θίασοι vel sim.), it has always been taken for granted that this is how they were seen by at least some authors in the second century ad . However, a close investigation of the relevant texts by Pliny, Lucian, Celsus and Tertullian shows that this assumption is in fact unwarranted. The comparison may be fruitful as a scholarly enterprise, but the argument that it was already a preoccupation of ancient observers needs to be abandoned.

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