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In the Didache, an early church manual, readers are told to beware of visitors who live off the community by trading on their Christian name. In the Death of Peregrine, a Greek satire, Lucian mocks Christians as easy prey for exactly such swindlers.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Didache 12:5
Early Christian
1 Welcome anyone who comes in the Name of the Lord. Once you have tested him, you will recognize him, and you will be able to tell true from false. 2 If the one who comes is a traveler, assist him as much as possible. However, if he needs to stay, it should not be for more than two or three days. 3 If he wishes to settle among you and has a trade, let him work to earn his bread. 4 If he has no trade, provide for him according to your understanding, so that no one lives in idleness among you simply because he is a Christian. 5 If he refuses to do so, he is exploiting Christ's name. Be cautious of such individuals.
Lucian, The Death of Peregrine 13
The Passing of Peregrinus
Classical
13 In some of the Asiatic cities, too, the Christian communities put themselves to the expense of sending deputations, with offers of sympathy, assistance, and legal advice. The activity of these people, in dealing with any matter that affects their community, is something extraordinary; they spare no trouble, no expense. Peregrine, all this time, was making quite an income on the strength of his bondage; money came pouring in. You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on trust, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property. Now an adroit, unscrupulous fellow, who has seen the world, has only to get among these simple souls, and his fortune is pretty soon made; he plays with them.
Date: 150-160 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... Lucian concludes chapter 13 with noting that they have all things in common and that their gullibility leads them to be robbed by char latans. In Acts (2:42–47; 4:32–37) Luke presents the same image, and this Brüderlichkeitsethik confirms one of Max Weber’s insights, viz. that when people first come together on the basis of religious views, they are more closely associated with one another than with their “normal” associates, such as relatives or neighbours, and thus will help each other in case of material needs. Yet none of our sources points to such a sharing of goods in the later second century. As Lucian seems quite well informed about the Christians, as we have seen so far, it is not impossible that, directly or indirectly, he had received some idealising information about the Christians. However this may be, Lucian clearly intends to mock the Christians because of their gullibility and he notes that they fall victim to any “charlatan and huckster” that comes among them. From the Didache (12) we learn that the Christians themselves were also aware of this risk and even had coined the word Christemporos, “he who uses Christ to make a gain.” ...”
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