Ethnological Apologetics: Identity Formation as a Defense of the Faith in Second-Century Apologetic Texts

A paper delivered at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society

Photo by Michael Marais on Unsplash

“Mandalorian Isn’t a Race… It’s a Creed”

The Star Wars television series The Mandalorian features a bounty hunter named Din Djarin who belongs to a people-group known as the Mandalorians. Despite being identified as “the Mandalorian,” Din Djarin cannot trace his bloodline back to the planet Mandalore or to anyone from Mandalore. In fact, Din Djarin is not from Mandalore at all, nor is he descended from any Mandalorian ancestors. He was rescued by the Mandalorians as a child, and he became one of them by embracing their beliefs and their way of being in the world.

At one point, when a character in the television series expresses surprise that Din Djarin had never set foot on the planet Mandalore, the response of two main characters is simply this: “Mandalorian isn’t a race…. It’s a creed.”

“Mandalorian isn’t a race…. It’s a creed.”

This notion that a way of life and a pattern of religious practices might form an ethnic identity can seem strange to people today—so strange and surprising that its articulation can contribute to the otherworldliness of a television space fantasy. To ancient people, however, such notions would not have seemed so strange.

Ethnic and cultural identities in ancient Mediterranean contexts were far less focused on immutable categories such as physiology, genealogy, and blood relationships and far more concerned with social boundaries grounded in shared languages and territories, common origin stories, and cultic practices. In the ancient Mediterranean world—much like the world of The Mandalorian—ethnic and cultural identities could be established not only by genealogies and bloodlines but also by religious practices, creeds, and shared stories.