INTRODUCTION

It was suggested in part I that Libanius and Chrysostom had different ways of writing about religion and different approaches to issues of religious identity and religious allegiance. It was also suggested that there was a connection between the fact that they had different approaches to writing about religion and the fact that they conceived of religious allegiance in different ways. Part II will explore these ideas in more detail. Chapter 3 will study Chrysostom's construction of religious identity in his preaching. It will show that clear-cut religious identities and labels were central to his thinking. It will also show how Chrysostom used his oratorical powers to create these notions of identities as (new) ways of being for his audiences. I shall start by looking at Chrysostom's definition of the central features of Christianity in his Catechetical Sermons and elsewhere. I shall show that these definitions inevitably led him to construct a ‘Greek’ other at the same time. We shall then turn to Chrysostom's depiction of Greek religion in his sermons addressed to the Greeks and in other works. We shall see here that Chrysostom was working with a stereotype of Greek religion that functioned most easily as a direct contrast to Christianity. This will then be compared with the way that Chrysostom sought to draw clear-cut distinctions between Jews and Christians in his sermons on the Judaizers.