A Deacon of Alexandria
Athanasius was born between about 296 and 298, in Alexandria or nearby in the Nile Delta, to a Christian family with enough means to give him a good Greek education. He grew up in the shadow of the Great Persecution, which fell hard on Egypt. Peter, the bishop of Alexandria, was beheaded in 311, when Athanasius was a boy.
A story about his childhood was told later. Rufinus, writing near the end of the century, says Bishop Alexander once watched boys playing church on the seashore, with young Athanasius acting the bishop and baptizing the others, and that after questioning them Alexander judged their baptisms valid. The tale is legend, but it shows how the catholic party of that day thought of baptism: a rite whose validity hung on its correct form rather than on the faith of the one baptized.
Alexander took the gifted young man into his household as secretary and ordained him a deacon. Athanasius knew the Greek Bible thoroughly, though he never learned Hebrew, and his writings are soaked in Scripture. In 325 he went with Alexander to the Council of Nicaea, where he watched the bishops of the state church condemn the teaching of Arius.
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