Scholarship has begun to show a growing sophistication when examining the role of culture in the development of early Christianity. However, for the most part, the rhetorical and intellectual influence of earlier scholarship remains profound. Cultural categories are narrow and dichotomous. There is Jewish and Greek influence on early Christianity. Early Christians are described as either "Gnostic" or "Heterodox" and "Orthodox." There is also the catchall category of "Hellenism" from which many "western" minds seem to believe all Christianity emerged. Much of late antique culture is described as Greco-Roman, often irrespective of geography and with little or no recognition of the local cultures subsumed under this category. Paganism (another catchall) is contrasted with Judaism and Christianity. It is not my contention that any of these labels are absolutely inaccurate. Rather, my point is that the cultural perspective of scholarship in early Christianity remains narrow and is dominated by the categories of Christian theological disputes that date back to the Reformation in some cases and even earlier doctrinal disputes in others. Missing from this discussion are the realities of cultural syncretism and diversity that we now know to be the reality not only of our own times, but times past as well.

The categories that dominate our discourse are assumed to be neat. Unfortunately, more often than not, such categories are misleading and unable to account for the complexities of human culture. The "Orthodox" are orthodox in the way we imagine the term. Greeks, Romans and Jews are shaped as much by our cultural understandings as they were by their own. And the heterodox are grouped into categories or boxes that are unhelpful for gaining a meaningful understanding of the complex and diverse groups of people they represent. In this paper I will examine the narrowness or cultural blindness of scholarship on early Egyptian Christianity. Specifically, I will examine how this scholarship largely ignores the possibility of any Egyptian cultural influence on early Christianity in Egypt. It is my contention that by doing so a more realistic, if less neat and categorical, understanding of the origins of Christianity is ignored.

With these words from the early twentieth century a cannon was fired across the bow of Christian scholarship and much of the scholarship since these words were published has been, consciously or not, a response to the thoughts of Walter Bauer. This is especially true in regard to scholarship of early Christianity in Egypt. At the turn of the twentieth century very little was known or written about early Christianity in Egypt. As Bauer noted, early Egyptian Christianity remained a mystery in his day. Fortunately, this dearth of knowledge about early Egyptian Christianity is less true today than it was in the early twentieth century. However, our knowledge about early Egyptian Christianity is not significantly more advanced today. This is largely true because Bauer and the scholars who have subsequently challenged him have not been able to free themselves from the rhetorical/doctrinal categories of Christian history.

Bauer viewed himself as a "historian, like a judge," who must "preside over the parties and maintain as a primary principle the dictum audiatur et altera pars (let the other side also be heard)." For Bauer there were two sides in the evolution of Christianity "Heretic" and "Orthodox". The former was weak and its voice had been drowned out in history and the historian must "assist it, as best he can." In the end, historian/judge Bauer ruled that "until the late second century", Christianity in Egypt was "decidedly unorthodox." Many of the subsequent attempts to understand early Christianity in Egypt have been governed by similar doctrinal categories and more sophisticated cultural understandings have, until recently, been set aside.

One of the significant scholarly responses to Bauer's view of early Egyptian Christianity was put forward by Colin Roberts. Roberts, in an impressive piece of scholarship, examined the use of nomina sacra, words noted as sacred by being abbreviated with a horizontal line above them, in Christian manuscripts from the second century of the common era (C.E.). While I find Roberts's evidence that the system of nomina sacra is Christian in origin most convincing, I believe his explanations for where the system was invented to be inadequate. Indeed, I believe Roberts's explanations for the origins of nomina sacra were determined by scholarly arguments over "Gnostic" and "Orthodox" Christian origins at the expense of more culturally plausible explanations.

Roberts's argument that the nomina sacra system predates the formation of a catechetical school in Alexandria and was "a powerful influence throughout and beyond Egypt" seems entirely plausible. However, his suggestion that nomina sacra emerged from the Church of Jerusalem and that "reverence for the Name derives from the Jewish background" are not persuasive and, indeed, fly in the face of much of the evidence he presents. An examination of Roberts' arguments show the extent to which outmoded doctrinal thinking governs his conclusions. For example Roberts argues that despite the fact that most all of the textual evidence emerges from Egypt,

Jerusalem is a more likely site because it "would carry the authority of the leaders of the Church." Yet on numerous occasions in his manuscript, Roberts states categorically that there is no evidence for Jewish, Greek or Roman influence on the development of nomina sacra. Roberts tells us that,

Though Roberts believes that the presence of texts like Irenaeus's Against Heresies in second century Egypt indicates that the church of Rome assisted Christians in Alexandria, he categorically states that "whatever Alexandria got from Rome it was not its manuscript tradition." So if the tradition of nomina sacra is clearly not linked to Jewish, Greek or Roman traditions, then why does Roberts locate the tradition in Jerusalem? There is a two-fold answer.

As the quotes above illustrate one answer is authority, understood in an entirely anachronistic way in my view. For Roberts, the system of nomina sacra represents the seeds of "Orthodox" Christianity. He argues that, "the attitude of mind that they express, somewhere on the borderline between religion and magic, while essentially Jewish, also looks forward to later developments in Catholic Christianity." In Roberts's view the system of nomina sacra needed a centralized church authority in order for its use to be so widespread.

Another answer is that much of Roberts's argument is constructed in response to Bauer. Roberts's third chapter is nothing but a direct response to Bauer's claim that early Christianity was "unorthodox." Roberts acknowledges that "Gnosticism" was important in early Egyptian Christianity, but expends an inordinate amount of time trying to locate an "Orthodox" Christianity before or co-existent with "Gnosticism." Roberts cannot hide his disappointment that the Epistle of Barnabas, which he views as "Orthodox," cannot be proven to have been written in Alexandria. "Could it be proved, it would be valuable testimony to the existence of Orthodox Christianity near the turn of the century, that is in the dark period of the Alexandrian Church." In his footnote to this passage, Roberts also does not hesitate to let us know such evidence would also prove to be an embarrassment for Bauer. The location of "Orthodoxy" in Alexandria with roots in the Church of Jerusalem (and thus authority) is intended to be an evidentiary retort to Bauer.

My point here is not to become embroiled in the debate about who came first, "Gnostics" or "Orthodox", in Alexandria. Rather it is my contention that Roberts spends so much time in the "Gnostic" versus "Orthodox" debate that he entirely misses more plausible explanations for the origins of nomina sacra and early Egyptian Christianity that are hidden within his own evidence. Roberts is involved in a scholarly argument that exists in a vacuum from the very culture in which early Egyptian Christianity was located. As we shall see below, there is much evidence in Roberts's manuscript and elsewhere to indicate a plausible origin for nomina sacra that is located outside of the categories of "Heresy" and "Orthodoxy" and inside the religious life and culture of Egypt.

However, it is first important to briefly note the influence of Roberts, and Bauer in turn, on much of the subsequent scholarship of early Egyptian Christianity. Responding to Bauer and using Roberts as an evidentiary base for their arguments, both C. Wilfred Griggs and Birger Pearson argue for the establishment of Christianity very early in Egypt and located in a Jewish environment. Griggs uses Roberts's manuscript evidence to support a view that early Egyptian Christianity was highly literate and intellectual in nature and also closely tied to the Church in Rome. Pearson starts his own arguments about the earliest Christianity in Egypt with a quote from Roberts as a retort to Bauer. He then locates early Egyptian Christianity in Alexandrian Judaism and goes so far as to posit the plausibility of Eusebius's claim that St. Mark founded the Church in Egypt as part of a missionary effort directed from Jerusalem. David Dawson, in an otherwise brilliant rhetorical analysis of early Jewish and Christian allegorists in Alexandria, also relies on Roberts's explanation of the origin of nomina sacra. Echoing Roberts he states that "only the Jerusalem apostolic center is likely to have provided the early authority and technical precedent needed to set rules for Christian scribes."

Each of these scholars has taken Roberts's interpretation of the origins of the Christian manuscript tradition as a starting point from which to build their own scenarios for the development of Christianity in Egypt. In doing so, in my view, they have each minimized the cultural complexity of late antique Egypt and shut out equally plausible explanations for Christian origins in Egypt. Again, I do not disagree with these scholars when it comes to an early origin for Christianity in Egypt. My problem with them is how they use Roberts and the debate with Bauer to locate early Egyptian Christianity outside of Egyptian culture and inside arguments for what might at best be called a "neo-orthodox" explanation for Christian origins.

Recent scholars have noted the tendency of earlier scholarship to use Roman Egypt "as a crucible for proving, or at least illustrating, one's deepest assumptions about religious truth." Yet the fields of cultural anthropology and studies of the nature of popular religion have begun to disrupt earlier scholarly assumptions about the "rise" of Christianity. It is not as if scholarship has been unaware of syncretism, itself a term with considerable doctrinal baggage. However, as stated above these notions have been limited and not based on a complex understanding of culture.

Generally, it has been recognized that religious syncretism is a flawed concept, "because homogeneous and internally consistent systems of belief have probably never existed on the face of the earth, except perhaps in formal theological treatises that seek the Îcanon'." There is no religious system that in itself is not syncretic in origin. In other words culturally pure religious systems are themselves inventions that gloss over the hybrid nature that is perhaps characteristic of all human culture. Studies of religious belief in Latin America have shown that from the first contact with European Christianity until the present day indigenous pre-Christian cosmologies and folk religious ritual, which were syncretic to begin with, have survived while also adapting and integrating new Christian elements. Even Spanish Catholicism that sought to convert native persons in Latin America was not theologically or culturally pure and shows the centrality of popular practice over doctrinal understandings.

The power of local religion on the evolution of early Christianity has also recently been noted. Frankfurter has argued that "it is the religion of the village, the local community, that ultimately can continue in late antique Egypt, rather than some ahistorically abstract Christianity." A central part of the local religious culture of late antique Egypt was "magic." The term "magic" is subject to substantial cultural misunderstanding. It has been noted that part of the function of the term in the Late Antique world was to label the religious practice of another group of people as something other than and distinct from "true" religious practice. Magos in the ancient world "usually designates the beliefs and practices of outsiders of one kind or another." It would be more accurate to understand "magic" as "the autochthonous piety that has always existed, rooted in the immediate environment and its features and cycles, mediating between everyday needs and the traditions fundamental to collective self-definition." More simply, "magic" in this paper refers to the religious piety and ritual practice of Egypt. The religious piety and practice of Egyptians, originally located in Temples but eventually shifting to individuals or books, involved the use of symbols/words (the same in hieroglyphics) to affect healing, assure good harvests and maintain Egyptian traditions and self-understanding.

Between the fifth century B.C.E. and the seventh century C.E. there was a growth and mingling of Egyptian and Greek culture. This mingling was fed by a Greek, and later Roman, "orientalism," quests for ancient wisdom, reverence for the written word, longing for transcendence and control of cosmic powers." It culminated in a linguistic and mythological synthesis that is referred to as Graeco-Egyptian and traces of which exist in a considerable literary corpus known as Greek Magical Papyri. This complex cultural synthesis was widespread and influential on both the development of Egyptian Judaism and Christianity.

In briefly examining the role of "magic" in Judaism, I hope the complexities of cultural syncretism in late antique Egypt will be clear. Furthermore, a brief review of "magic" in Egyptian Judaism shows how scholarship has generally failed to understand, or completely disregarded, cultural complexity in favor of more culturally or doctrinally acceptable positions.

There was substantial ethnic conflict in late antique Egypt. As early as 410 B.C.E. the Jewish Temple in Elephantine was destroyed. By the first and second century C.E., there was open conflict between Jews, Greeks and Egyptians. Between 38 and 41 C.E. there was sporadic and sometimes horrific violence between Jewish, Egyptian and Greek residents in Alexandria. There were even celebrations of the defeat of the Jewish uprising in 116-117 C.E. in Egyptian temples in the late second century C.E. However, during and between these periods of violence there was a long history of cultural interaction between Jews and Egyptians.

Egyptian Judaism was not homogeneous and evidence indicates that marginal Jews may have had more in common with ethnic Egyptians than the historical record suggests. For one, much of the scholarly discussion of Egyptian Judaism is reliant on the writings of Philo who was caught up in the Alexandrian struggle for citizenship and status. However, despite the focus on Philo and his perspectives on Judaism, we know that there were regional differences in the practice of Judaism between Egyptian and Palestinian Jews. There is archeological evidence that Egyptian Jews used amulets and charms which may suggest a mixing of Egyptian religious practice within Judaism in Egypt. This religious syncretism apparently worked in both directions as there is also evidence that some Egyptians and Greeks celebrated the Jewish Sabbath. It has also been suggested that some Jews and Egyptians intermarried, which should not be a surprise given the long shared history of Jews and Egyptians in Egypt.

There is also significant evidence for Egyptian Jewish religious syncretism in the Greek Magical Papyri. Moses is a significant character in the "magical" texts of the Graeco-Egyptian world. The Gods are the source of "magic" power and ancient languages, particularly Hieroglyphs and Hebrew, were also important to the tradition. Gager argues that it is probable that the source of these texts were Jews, though I would add the caveat that it is also likely they were Egyptian Jews given that the traditions and texts originated in Egypt. Gager claims that both Josephus and Philo reacted against "magic" not because it came from outside the Egyptian Jewish community but precisely because it came from within. Indeed, he argues that there is much primary evidence to indicate that "magical" practices were common within the mainstream of rabbinical Judaism itself. Given this, it seems entirely plausible to me that Philo and Josephus may have represented the counter-culture in Judaism rather than the "magicians." Gager argues that until recently this information has been filtered out of history because it did not fit the conceptions of what traditional scholarship imagined ancient Judaism to have been. If Egyptian Jews in late antique Egypt, the supposed seedbed of Egyptian Christianity, were mixing traditional Egyptian religious piety and practice with there own, why not early Christians as well?

Roberts acknowledges the parallels between nomina sacra and the sacred "magical" writing tradition of Egypt. He states that "parallels can be found elsewhere, e.g. in magical texts of all kinds." Yet, he insists that the use of nomina sacra is "indubitably Jewish." However, only four pages after this insistence he states, again as he does throughout the manuscript, that "there is no legacy from the Hebrew scribes to the writers of nomina sacra." If the use of nomina sacra was the only parallel between early Christian texts and the Greek Magical Papyri, I might give Roberts some leeway. However, there are other striking parallels between Egyptian "magical" religious texts and rituals and early Christianity.

The Greek Magical Papyri contain lists of vowels and consonants that apparently served as divine incantations or visual representations. It has been suggested that vowel arrangements functioned as "spiritual sounds" or as glossolalia in actual religious rituals. "These vowels were also used to extend the visual power of amulets and to symbolize angels, cosmic regions or even Christ." Roberts argues that the use of the name of Christ in some of these texts are "of little significance" because these texts also contain Greek and Egyptian elements that are not Christian. However, there is evidence that Christians took up vowel liturgies in late antiquity, including Clement of Alexandria who used vowels such as alpha and omega to symbolize God's nature. Special arrangements of vowels and letters are also mentioned in second century Christian texts such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Shepherd of Hermas. "In the Shepherd of Hermas the protagonist receives a small book from a divine figure" which he copies, but cannot "distinguish the syllables" until after prayer and fasting. Clearly, nomina sacra are not the only parallels to be found between Christian texts and "magical texts of all kinds." Furthermore, as Roberts acknowledges, these parallels are not found anywhere else other than in Greek Magical Papyri. Given that parallels exist between early Christian texts and the Greek Magical Papyri regarding both nomina sacra and sacred vowel patterns, I conclude that nomina sacra and early Egyptian Christianity emerged from an Egyptian cultural context and not from the "Church of Jerusalem." Having located nomina sacra in the Greco-Egyptian tradition, this leaves the question of authority.

Roberts's claim that the system of nomina sacra had to emerge from an authoritative source in order to take a standard form and experience widespread use is not in itself improbable. Nor do I believe that a Jewish setting for the invention of nomina sacra is to be precluded by the evidence for parallels in the Greek Magical Papyri. As illustrated above, there was apparently a widespread practice of Jewish and Egyptian interaction in the "magical" tradition. Jews in Egypt clearly adapted their own religious practices and piety to include Egyptian "magical" ritual. Scribes working in an Egyptian scriptorium from the Jewish Egyptian tradition could very well have adopted Christianity and "invented" nomina sacra. Growing social and economic pressures are cited by scholars to explain the supposed Jewish origin of Gnosticism. Is it no less plausible to suppose that economic and social pressures could not have also given way to a Jewish conversion to a new Christian identity that would include syncretic Jewish Egyptian religious practices? This would be especially so outside of Alexandria where significant social disruption was present for both ethnic Egyptians and Egyptian Jews. Most of the manuscript evidence was also found outside Alexandria in the Arsinoe District and in or around cities such as Oxyrhynchus. This area was a site of Egyptian scribal activity and several Christian Millennial movements.

Furthermore, an Egyptian priestly origin for nomina sacra cannot be ruled out either. As mentioned above, the Egyptian priesthood was closely linked with writing and possessed their own scriptorium. Frankfurter suggests the possibility of Egyptian priestly activity in Christian apocalyptic circles in the third century and the probability for conversion of Egyptian priests in the fourth and fifth centuries. Again given the social chaos in Egypt, is it not possible that such a conversion could have happened even earlier?

Again, my point here is not to simply pile more speculation onto an area of scholarship already rife with speculation. Rather I am arguing that in addition to the extensive evidence for an Egyptian origin for nomina sacra, there also exists possible loci for the cultural authority that Roberts argues is critical for the establishment and distribution of a relatively uniform nomina sacra tradition. There does exist the possibility for an early Christian scribal group within Egypt that could have carried the Egyptian tradition of nomina sacra into the Christian manuscript tradition. The key difference between Roberts and myself, is that I am certain that the tradition is both from Egypt and that the source of authority is cultural not necessarily apostolic.

The allure of the religious mysteries of Egypt was a significant draw for Greek and Roman pilgrims on spiritual quests throughout the Roman period. "Magos (akin to English Îmagician') and its corollary mageia (akin to Îmagic') had by the Roman period assumed the sense of ritual power such as an "Oriental" priest might control and dispense for any reason, but especially for subversive purposes in matters of competition: love, justice, politics, commerce, hatred." However, the synthesis of native Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture in the Roman period brought others to Egypt seeking "the distant, alien, and therefore most thoroughly indigenous cultic wisdom ‚ as the locus of revelation and Gnosis." In the third century Psuedo-Clementine Recognitions, a young Clement seeks out gnosis in Egypt. Egypt possessed cultural authority with its ritual claims to power. Christians claimed this cultural power from the beginning.

The wand was a symbol of Egyptian religious power that originated in the Middle Kingdom. Christians claimed the wand and other key symbols from the Jewish Egyptian tradition of magic for themselves. In earliest Christian art Jesus carried a wand, "a distinctive attribute of a magician." "Miracles are the core and mainstay of early Christian imagery" and Jesus works his miracles in Christian art using a wand. Moses the popular Jewish Egyptian wonder worker in the Greek Magical Papyri is also a frequent figure in early Christian art. The most popular representation of the Apostle Peter in early Christian art is an apocryphal legend of his repeating Moses' miracle of striking a stone and getting water.

Peter and other Apostles are portrayed in early Christian literature, the Acts of the Apostles, performing great feats of magic. Indeed in the Acts of Peter, the Apostle engages in a magic contest with Simon Magnus and emerges triumphant. It has also been suggested that the Magi in the Gospel narrative are surrendering their magic power to Jesus by offering him key ingredients for potions at his birth (frankincense and myrrh).

In all these instances early Christians were deriving their authority from the ancient traditions of Persia and Egypt. These claims to authority would have a lasting impact in Christianity. In the third century Origen, responding to Celsum's claim that Christians were the equivalents of sorcerers, distances Jesus from accusations of sorcery not by disclaiming the power of magic, rather he claimed Moses' and Jesus' miracles were corollaries to magic but done for moral reformation. Origen is quite clear that he believes that "so-called" magic is a consistent system with principles that only a few understand. Not only is magic not shocking to Origen, but in his Exhortation to Martyrdom he also acknowledges the power of names and certain vowel sounds.

Throughout the early Christian period elements of Egyptian religious ritual ("magic") would be part and parcel of the Christian claim to authority. This cultural authority would have been just as strong, if not more so, than a tradition from the "Church of Jerusalem" or a sub-apostolic name, in establishing the use of nomina sacra as a part of the early Christian manuscript tradition. Indeed, the evidence indicates that the cultural authority of Egypt was influential on Christianity far beyond the manuscript tradition as a primary claim for authority in the late antique world.

Again when the doctrinal (Gnostic/Orthodox) and dichotomous (Jewish/Greek) parameters for discussion are set aside, other perspectives and possibilities emerge. The "western" documents in the manuscript tradition and the paucity of other early Christian textual evidence in Egypt may point to struggles over authority among early Egyptian Christians that were not necessarily tied to doctrinal issues. Aune argues that the earliest Christians were shaped by prophetic traditions and more egalitarian and less institutional than later generations. Aune argues that the process of institutionalization did not occur at the same rate in all areas. I would like to suggest that the "dark period of Egyptian Christianity" may be the result of small but widely spread groups of Christians who held onto millennial and anti-institutional perspectives longer than in other parts of the late antique world.

Roberts tells us that the manuscript evidence for Egypt in the second century illustrates a widespread popularity of apocalyptic thinking. I would suggest that the presence of Against Heresies in Egypt in the second century could be evidence for struggles over authority not solely related to the "Gnostic/Orthodox" controversy. In Book V of Against Heresies, Irenaeus defends the visions in the Apocalypse of John against those who would deny the literal truth of the prophecy by allegorizing them. This question of allegorizing the Apocalypse of John was not a concern limited to Irenaeus. In the late third century in the Arsinoe district of Egypt a local Bishop Nepos wrote a treatise in defense of the Apocalypse of John titled Refutation of the Allegorists. There was a large millennial movement in the Arsinoe for which Nepos's text served as a defense. This millennial movement was apparently widely popular among both literate and illiterate Egyptians and begins to "reveal a fundamental conflict between Alexandrian and epichoric Greco-Egyptian religious cultures." Nepos's Refutation of the Allegorists and the early presence of Against Heresies may indicate that some conflict existed between millennialist Christians in the Egyptian provinces and allegorists in Alexandria. In both Irenaeus and Nepos we have evidence of conflict between Christians in Egypt that centered on the authority of prophecy.

Another second century text cited by Roberts as evidence of the influence of the "Church of the West", the Shepherd of Hermas, may also provide evidence of cultural concerns over authority. As indicated above the Shepherd of Hermas contains passages dealing with "magical" divination. However, the Shepherd of Hermas also attacks a false prophet who predicts the future and is seen as a wizard by people seeking his services. As Aune's analysis has shown the issue appears to be that the false prophet is working outside of Christian worship which was the normal context for prophecy in the early church. Interestingly both the false prophet and Hermas engage in prophetic activity, which seem to be linked to Greco-Egyptian "magical" divination. Is it not possible that the presence of the Shepherd of Hermas in second century Egypt was in some part due to controversies between different Christian groups over the proper role of prophecy and divination?

These questions of authority appear to have lasted for some time in early Egyptian Christianity. In the early part of the third century (233 C.E.?) Origen who was the leader of the catechetical school in Alexandria was asked to leave the city in what may have been a theological dispute, but was most certainly a dispute over authority. In Homilies written after his exile from Egypt Origen, though defending the authority of Bishops, does not hesitate to state that there can be good and bad bishops and to acknowledge that sometimes a lesser man is in charge of a better one. Origen also makes references to opponents of his allegorical biblical exegesis in his Homily 1 on Leviticus. In other homilies he argues that prophecy ended with John the Baptist, but also argues over proper prophetic behavior and even refers to himself as one who strives "for the prophetic life." In addition, Origen argues that the wand of Moses is superior to the "magic" of Egyptian sophists and enchanters. In all of these instances multiple issues are raised that were likely issues of authority throughout the late antique world, but particularly so in Egypt.

Whether in second century texts or in third century ecclesial controversies, conflict over authority seems to have been present between multiple Christian groups in Egypt. When we cast aside the normal tendency to make the early manuscript tradition fit into the neat box of a split between "Gnostics" and "Orthodox" Christians we miss the possible diversity and richness of early Egyptian Christianity. There are also explanations for the paucity of evidence for an early Christian church in Egypt that are just as plausible as a Christian community that was unable to break free from Judaism. Not all of the early Christian groups were literate and given the evidence for widespread conflict, it should also be no surprise that written texts were not widely produced. Speculation of this sort does not solve the evidentiary problem, but it does show that when doctrinal categories are set aside other explanations come forward that are not possible when shaping the evidence to fit centuries old categories for explaining the origins of Egyptian Christianity.

I titled this paper "Out of Egypt" because the expression is true in two senses. I believe that the evidence overwhelmingly indicates the profound influence of Egyptian culture on early Christianity both within and outside Egypt. It can truly be said that Egyptian Christianity is a product of Egyptian culture and Christianity in some respects can also said to emerge out of Egypt. However, the rhetoric of much of the scholarship of early Egyptian Christianity clearly occurs out of Egypt. Scholars write about Jews and Greeks and Gnostics and Orthodox in Egypt, but almost never discuss any of the events of early Egyptian Christianity in their Egyptian context. Indeed, in some of the scholarship one might wonder if Egyptians had any role in the life of late antique Egypt.

In addition to asserting an Egyptian cultural location for early Christianity in Egypt, I also hope this paper has made it clear how the doctrinal categories used in much of the scholarship are utterly culture blind. There is far too little blurring of the categories in the scholarship. If something does not fit the doctrinal mode for what is legitimately Christian, it is quickly filed under Gnosticism. Even a culturally sophisticated history such as that of David Frankfurter is not immune from such tendencies. After arguing strongly for the likely conversion of some of the Egyptian Priesthood to Christianity, Frankfurter simply suggests a shift to a "Christian-Gnostic" milieu. Betz also cited in this paper is convinced that the Greco-Egyptian ritual tradition ("magic") had a Gnostic orientation. While both of these scholars produce some evidence to support these viewpoints, must everything that does not fit the scholarly/doctrinal mold be squeezed into the category "Gnostic?" Were Egyptian Jews practicing "magic" Gnostic? When later Christian hermits distributed amulets and even fox claws to local people for healing were they still "Orthodox?" Was their use of Bible verses for divination "Orthodox?" If we could go back in time would we recognize the practices and beliefs of these Christians or would they seem "Pagan?" Doctrinal categories explain none of this behavior, culture does.

Even when scholarship deals with culture it frequently does so narrowly and often blindly. If it can easily be imagined that Philo could be a Jew heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, why can we not imagine that Jews, many who had lived in Egypt for generations, could not also be influenced by Egyptian religion and culture? Indeed, Jews who had lived for centuries in Egypt were no doubt Egyptian Jews. Just because Philo and other members of the intellectual community, around which so much of the scholarship revolves, found the idea of being Egyptian distasteful does not mean all persons of the late antique world did likewise. Indeed, the "Orientalist" romanticization of Egypt by Greeks and Romans indicates that there was a great attraction to things Egyptian. Whether consciously or not, the scholarly community has made the cultural bias of late antique philosophers their own. It is time to broaden the focus of scholarship beyond Alexandria and locate itself more decidedly in Egypt. Isn't it time to change our language and make room for blurred categories such as Egyptian Jewish rather than static categories like Jew or Greco-Roman. If religious practice is heavily shaped by the local as a great deal of scholarship now indicates, might we not begin to look a local culture as well as the global for answers to Christian origins?

By shattering the broad categories that tell us more about out own cultural ideas than those of the people we're studying new horizons for scholarly investigation emerge. For example, could not the conflict between millennial movements wedded to literalism and Alexandrian allegorical scriptural interpretation be just as significant as the Gnostic-Orthodox conflict in the development of early Christianity? Is it possible this conflict was critical in the formation of later struggles for authority that emerged in the doctrinal disputes of the fourth century? Could we not also begin looking at Origen culturally and find perspectives that would illuminate our understanding of this Church Father as much as by investigating his awareness of or connection to Greek Philosophy? Bostock has suggested that there is much in Egyptian culture that could prove enlightening for investigations of Origen's theology. In addition, I would suggest that Origen's attitudes about "magic," allegory and authority also have much to do with Egyptian culture.

Whatever new vistas scholarship pursues, one thing is absolutely clear. New scholarship will require new cultural understandings and a new rhetoric that breaks radically from the scholarship of the past. Scholars with a passion for understanding the origins of early Christianity in Egypt will need to understand Egyptian religion and culture as well as Judaism (both Egyptian and Palestinian) and ethnic Greeks, many of whom were also at least in part culturally Egyptian. Scholars must also rely less on categorical thinking and doctrinal terminology. It is time to recognize that early Egyptian Christianity was diverse, complex and Egyptian.

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