17 See the full discussion of Meeks, The First Urban Christians.
18 Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 27.
19 Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (London: SCM Press, 1959), 49.
20 See especially Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry, and Meeks, The First Urban Christians.
21 Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry.
22 Examples taken from Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 28, and Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations: 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 63.
23 See pp. 75–76.
CHAPTER 3
1 Apart from the apostle Peter in the book of Acts, in stories that I will be arguing later are legendary. See pp. 139– 44.
2 Others whom Paul names are often identified as Jews based on their appearance in other sources, including most notably Prisca and Aquila, who are clearly mentioned as Jews in the book of Acts. Paul himself does not indicate one way or the other.
3 On the gentile origins of Matthew, see my discussion in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 143.
4 For a fuller discussion, see David C. Sim, “How Many Jews Became Christians in the First Century? The Failure of the Christian Mission to the Jews,” Harvard Theological Studies 1 and 2 (2005), 417– 40.
5 For a very useful discussion of the broader phenomenon of Roman paganism, see James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2007). A terse but helpful overview is Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). A particularly valuable full assessment can be found in the two-volume collection of sources and analysis of Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998). A classic is the elegant discussion of Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987). For a more detailed, shorter study that is particularly insightful and on which I have relied heavily, see James B. Rives, “Religious Choice and Religious Change in Classical and Late Antiquity: Models and Questions,” Antigüedad, Religiones y Sociedades 9 (2011), 265–80.
6 Among many discussions of the term, see Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, trans. B. A. Archer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 7–13; Christopher Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 5–8; and James J. O’Donnell, Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity (New York: Ecco, 2015), 159–64.
7 See the works of Rives cited in note 5 for this chapter.
8 Among other things, there is the problem of terminology. Scholars not only debate what the term “pagan” may have originally meant; they dispute whether it should be used at all. A strong argument can be made that creating an “ism” out of these widely variant practices skews the world of ancient religious thought and practice. Moreover, some scholars do continue to be wary of the negative connotations often associated with the terms “pagan” and “paganism” among those who are not historians of the period.
On the other hand, none of the proposed alternatives is any better. A number of scholars have suggested that we talk instead about ancient “polytheism,” since, as we have seen, one common feature of this widely diverse set of religions is that they all assumed the existence of numerous gods. The difficulty is that even within that polytheistic world there were people—and not just Jews—who insisted on the primacy of one ultimate divine being. Some non-Jews even refused to worship any god beside this one. For that reason, “polytheist” does not capture the whole religious spectrum.
Other scholars have suggested, somewhat more plausibly, that it is simplest to refer to ancient “traditional religions.” There is a clear benefit in this term, as there is nothing negative about it, and it seems to be reasonably accurate for the phenomenon we are examining. It does have several downsides, however. For one thing, the term simply employs one later designation that ancient people would not have recognized (“religion”) instead of another (“paganism”). Moreover, “traditional religions” cannot conveniently be converted into a collective noun analogous to the word “pagans.” Finally, we should be wary of differentiating completely between the varied cultic practices found throughout the Roman world: they differed significantly among themselves, but they were not different “religions” in the way that, say, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism would be seen as distinct religions by most people today. On one hand, they lack the coherent systems of belief and practice we normally associate with religion; on the other hand, even though ancient cults were not standardized, they did share some features based on commonly held assumptions and broadly defined practices.
For these reasons, in my discussion I will follow widespread practice and continue to speak of “traditional religions,” “pagan religions,” and “paganism” interchangeably (with no negative connotations). My position is that it does indeed help to see not only what made each of these cultic systems distinct but also what all (or most) of them had in common, at least when seen from the outside, many centuries later.
9 I have taken these examples from MacMullen, Paganism, 1.
10 For that reason I prefer calling the worship of just one god within the realm of Roman paganism “henotheism” (the worship of one god) rather than “monotheism” (the belief that there is only one god). For scholars who do use the term “monotheism,” see, for example, Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen, One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
11 See especially Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, 23–28.
12 This is a thesis of Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians.
13 Translation by T. R. Glover, Tertullian: Apology; De Spetaculis, Loeb Classical Library 250 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931).
14 Translation by Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 2, 152.
15 MacMullen, Paganism, 49.
16 The History of Rome, book 39, chapters 8 to 22. I will be citing the translation by Henry Bettenson, Livy: Rome and the Mediterranean (London: Penguin, 1976).
17 See, however, my discussion on pp. 160–61.
18 Recall that in the pagan world, daimones were not necessarily malevolent divine beings that possessed human bodies, making them engage in hurtful activities, as they later came to be for Christians; they were simply lower-level divinities, some good and some harmful.
19 For a classic statement, see James George Frazier, The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion (first published 1890; reprinted many times since).
20 Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, 183.
21 For a helpful historical overview, see Dale Martin, Inventing Superstition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
22 For a hilarious caricature of “The Superstitious Person,” see the brilliant sketch in the ancient book The Characters of Theophrastus, trans. and ed. J. M. Edmonds (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1929).
23 Plutarch, “On Superstition.” I am using the translation by Frank Cole Babbitt, Plutarch’s Moralia II, Loeb Classical Library 222 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Cited in Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 18, 2n.
27 Watts, The Final Pagan Generation, 23.
28 In addition to the works cited in note 5 for this chapter, see Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010) and Marvin Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Ancient Texts, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
29 The basic meaning of the word “mystery” is simply “initiated.”
30 On Mithraism, see especially Roger Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult
in the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
31 There is less reason to think that mystery religions typically involved a deity who died and then rose again. See especially Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990).
32 References taken from Beard, North, and Price, The Religions of Rome, vol. 2, 254.
33 See Beard, North, and Price, The Religions of Rome, vol. 1, 348–61.
CHAPTER 4
1 Adolf Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, vol. 2, trans. James Moffatt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 248. As Harold Drake indicates: “Almost everyone is willing to admit that this number feels about right.” H. A. Drake, “Models of Christian Expansion,” in W. V. Harris, ed., The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 2.
2 I am using “Christian” as a broad umbrella term here to encompass all the varieties of Christianity that existed at the time, an issue I explore more fully at the conclusion of this chapter.
3 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol. 1, The First Five Centuries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 11.
4 E. R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1965), 132.
5 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, J. B. Bury, ed. 6 vols. (London: Methuen, 1909; original 1776–89).
6 Ibid., vol. 2, chapter 15, 60.
7 Ibid., 2.
8 Ibid., 2–3.
9 This is the view taken, for example, by Arthur Darby Nock in his classic work, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (London: Oxford University Press, 1933). See William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), republished innumerable times.
10 As I will point out later, this appears to be the view not only of the triumphant “orthodox” Christianity but also of many of the variant forms of the religion competing for dominance in the early centuries. See note 40 for this chapter.
11 Nock, Conversion, 9.
12 For authors who prefer to use the term “monotheism” for this phenomenon, see, for example, Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen, One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
13 Translation by Stephen Mitchell, as cited in A. D. Lee, “Traditional Religions,” in Lenski, ed., The Age of Constantine, 165–66.
14 See Angelos Chaniotis, “Megatheism: The Search for the Almighty God and the Competition of Cults,” in Mitchell and Nuffelen, One God, 112– 40.
15 Ibid., 128.
16 On the inscriptions, see Stephen Mitchell, “Further Thoughts on the Cult of Theos Hypsistos,” in Mitchell and Nuffelen, One God, 167–208.
17 Augustine, Epistle 16.1; translation by G. Clark; slightly modified; quoted by Stephen Mitchell and Peter van Nuffelen, Monotheism Between Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2010), 2.
18 Athenagoras, “Embassy” 7.1; translation by Joseph Hugh Crehan, Athenagoras: Embassy for the Christians, The Resurrection of the Dead (New York: Newman Press, 1955).
19 This is one of the truly great insights argued forcefully by Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
20 Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 98–99.
21 Roger Beck, “On Becoming a Mithraist: New Evidence for the Propagation of the Mysteries,” in Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, ed. Leif E. Vaage (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 175–94.
22 Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1994), 105.
23 Ibid., 160.
24 Ibid., 106.
25 MacMullen, Christianizing, 34.
26 A couple of others are named—Pantaenus in Alexandria, Ulfilus among the Goths, and Frumentius in Ethiopia—but not a single thing is said in any of our sources about their actual work. For Gregory the Wonderworker and Martin of Tours, see the discussion of chapter 5.
27 This is a thesis of Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).
28 I do not mean that pagans never talked with one another about their religious festivals and practices, and the benefits they derived from them (from, for example, divine intervention in their lives). Obviously this was a matter of widespread discussion. But in none of the other religious cults was there any sustained effort to convert others, let alone the inclination to insist that only one set of cultic practices was acceptable to the gods.
29 Again, no one has expressed this view more forcefully or convincingly than Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing.
30 An idea pursued especially by a number of scholars, including John North. A particularly insightful discussion of these issues can be found in James B. Rives, “Religious Choice and Religious Change in Classical and Late Antiquity: Models and Questions,” Antigüedad, Religiones y Sociedades 9 (2011), 265–80.
31 I have borrowed this idea (with a modified illustration) directly from Rives, “Religious Choice.”
32 A possible exception, in rare instances, may have involved the most fervent followers of some of the mystery religions. See my discussion of Apuleius on pp. 122–25.
33 See note 9 for this chapter.
34 I am using the translation by Jack Lindsay, The Golden Ass (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960).
35 MacMullen, Christianizing.
36 For the following insights, I am indebted to James B. Rives, “Religious Choice.”
37 Rives, “Religious Choice.”
38 See James B. Rives, “Christian Expansion and Christian Ideology,” in W. V. Harris, ed., The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (Leiden, Netherland: Brill, 2005), 15– 41.
39 For starters, see my book Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also note 40 for this chapter.
40 I would hold that to be true of Marcionites, for example. Jewish Christian groups such as the Ebionites were also exclusivist, whether or not they were aggressively evangelistic. On the other hand, some forms of Christian Gnosticism, such as Valentinianism, appear to have drawn most of their members not directly from paganism but from fellow Christians who had already left pagan traditions.
CHAPTER 5
1 See the discussions of the book of Acts and the claims of Tertullian on pp. 162–63.
2 We will be considering a much shorter account—the very first from a pagan pen, that of the Roman governor Pliny—in chapter 6.
3 I will be citing the book from Celsus: On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
4 For example, Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
5 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 310.
6 E. R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1965), 137–38.
7 Adolf Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, vol. 2, trans. James Moffatt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 480.
8 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperSanF
rancisco, 1996), chapter 4; Hector Avalos, Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1999).
9 Stark’s uncritical use of sources is probably the most criticized aspect of his work among scholars in the field of early Christian studies. For a particularly trenchant critique, see Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Gender, Theory, and The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Stark,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 227–57.
10 Eusebius, Church History: see Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G. A. Williamson, revised and edited by Andrew Louth (London: Penguin, 1965), 7.22.
11 No scholar has argued this case more forcefully than Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
12 For a translation of the letter and fuller introduction, see Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 214–16.
13 Eusebius, Church History 1.13.
14 Eusebius, Church History 2.1.
15 Translations of these narratives can be found in J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993).
16 Acts of John 60–61.
17 Acts of John 42.
18 Acts of John 44– 47.
19 Acts of Peter 12–13.
20 Acts of Peter 25–26.
21 One exception to the rule that miracles convert appears to be the conversion of Thecla in the famous Acts of Paul and Thecla. She is a young woman who overhears Paul preaching a sermon about the virtues of celibacy in the house next door, and she converts on the spot.
22 Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Life and Wonders of Our Father Among the Saints, Gregory the Wonderworker.” I have used the translation by Michael Slusser, Fathers of the Church: St. Gregory Thaumaturgus Life and Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998).
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