The Oxford English Dictionary describes someone who dies as a martyr in the Christian church as someone who “chooses to suffer death rather than renounce faith in Christ or obedience to his teachings, a Christian way of life or adherence to a law or tenet of the church.” Embedded in this definition are certain principles: (1) that individuals have a choice to either live or die, and (2) they prefer to die, because they value either a way of life, a law, a person, or a principle more highly than their own life. (Pg.29)
1956 Norbert Brox, a German Catholic Bible scholar, published an influential book called Zeuge und Märtyrer [Witness and Martyr], in which he argued that it was in the middle of the second century, with the publication of a story called the Martyrdom of Polycarp, that the meaning of the term changed from simple witness to martyr. The book was essentially an enormous word study of the term martys in the ancient world. He tried to show that, gradually and through use, the meaning of the word shifted, so that it came to mean someone who died for Christ. Christianity, in other words, redefined the term. From this, Brox, and many modern scholars since, concluded that it was Christians who developed the language of martyrdom and thus Christians who are responsible for martyrdom in the modern sense of the word.
It is certainly true that Christians should be credited for coining the word “martyr” as we now use it. Moreover, it doesn’t seem to have been the case that ancient Jews, Greeks, or Romans had their own technical terms for people who died for their religious beliefs. They were heroes who died good deaths. In creating or, perhaps better, developing terminology to describe people who died for Jesus, Christians were doing something new. The development in the meaning of this particular term is not due to some self-conscious effort on the part of Christians. It is tied to the fact that Christians acted as legal witnesses (the original sense of martys) and were subsequently sentenced in actual courtrooms.
At the same time, however, we have to ask whether the existence of pre-Christian martyrdom hinges on ancient people having words for things. I would argue that it does not. There are lots of concepts for which there aren’t English technical terms that have meaning for English speakers. Take, for example, the French phrase déjà vu. There is no English equivalent for the sense of having already experienced something before, but everyone, from an early age, knows the feeling. Or take the German word Schadenfreude, which generally refers to the satisfaction one experiences in the failure of others. We don’t need to know German or even the word itself to be familiar with the concept. Concepts can exist even if one’s native language doesn’t provide a single definitive word for them. It’s a mistake to say that because Christians adapted the term “martyr,” they also get credit for coming up with the idea.
Another way to think about the origins of the concept of martyrdom is to think in terms of ideas rather than words. The Oxford English Dictionary describes someone who dies as a martyr in the Christian church as someone who “chooses to suffer death rather than renounce faith in Christ or obedience to his teachings, a Christian way of life or adherence to a law or tenet of the church.” If we take this widely held definition of a martyr, rather than the word itself, as our starting point, then the evidence starts to look different. Embedded in this definition are certain principles: (1) that individuals have a choice to either live or die, and (2) they prefer to die, because they value either a way of life, a law, a person, or a principle more highly than their own life. (Pg.29)
WE&P by:EZorrillaMc.
The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
Candida R. Moss
Travel in Life 