The history of early Christian architecture has been presented as a gradual, typological transformation from undifferentiated residential buildings in the first two centuries, to modified residential buildings in the third, culminating in the monumental Constantinian structures of the fourth century. To rationalize this transformation, a great deal of scholarship has focused on identifying formal, cultural, and programmatic characteristics that might link the domus to the basilica. However, along held view is that the basilica, along with all monumental church architecture, is a Roman deviation in the evolution of Christianity. To support this argument, proponents read NT passages like the body/temple metaphor of 1 Cor. 3.16-17 and John 2.19-22 as indicative of a Christian rejection of Roman and Jewish material culture. These contrary aspects of early Christianity, the construction of monumental churches and the tacit rebuke of Roman architecture in Christian texts, have been characterized by Paul Corby Finney as iconic and aniconic. In an effort to better understand early Christian architecture, recent studies employ models from cultural theory and sociology to reveal the broader context of church building, demonstrating similar patterns of architectural development among other cultural groups living within the Empire. Richard Krautheimer and L. Michael White are foremost in this field and they have provided a solid foundation for re-evaluating the evidence. While these seminal archaeological and architectural studies have provided us with a chronology of formal and programmatic developments for the beginnings of Christian architecture, they have done little to help us understand how early Christians came to reconcile the conflicting ontological demands of being the temple in Christ (NT) with building the temple for Christ (Constantine). In this dissertation, I argue that a reconciliation between NT body/temple metaphor and Imperial Architecture, between the aniconic and iconic characteristics of Christianity, is achieved, in part, through a shift in the tenor of the metaphor that occurs through the second, third, and fourth centuries. The trajectory of this shift is traced from sources in the Gospels and Epistles through the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen to the panegyric written by Eusebius for the commemoration of Paulinus' church at Tyre in 317. I conclude that the metaphorical vehicle of the body/temple, first used rhetorically to unify and segregate the Christian community, has a hermeneutic function that reveals an architectural model in Christ Logos.

This thesis examines the form and function of four second-century Christian defences: the Apology of Aristides, the two Apologies of Justin Martyr, and the Legatio of Athenagoras. These four works all belong to the same literary genre, i.e., they all contain addresses to Roman Emperors and they all imitate imperial petitions or speeches. They are also the only such works that survive in their entirety. This thesis has three objectives. The first is to discover the predecessors, if any, of this particular literary genre. While scholars have traditionally posited Aristotle's Protrepticus, Luke/Acts in the New Testament, and Hellenistic-Jewish apology as possible antecedents, it is much more likely that Plato's Apology was the inspiration for these works. Indeed, all three apologists were philosophers prior to their conversion and the only adaptation which they make to this literary form is that necessitated by changes in the political and judicial systems between fifth-century B.C.E. Athens and second-century C.E. Rome. The second objective is to demonstrate, by a literary/historical approach, that the literary form of the apologies is fictitious. Although scholars have traditionally maintained that the apologists at least intended that their works be read and approved by their imperial addressees, both contemporary and modern works which consider the form and content of official petitions to the Emperor as well as the particular circumstances in which they were delivered, demonstrate the speciousness of this position. The third objective is to determine, by a socio/historical approach, the literary and social function of these apologies in the second-century Empire. Two questions are thus posed: what was the intended audience of these apologies and what purpose were they meant to serve? After examining possible scholarly suggestions, in particular, that they were intended for the pagan public as a means of conversion, it is demonstrated that these defences were written primarily for a Christian audience for purposes of exhortation, confirmation, and/or instruction.

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