INTRODUCTION
1 For information about the temple, its excavation, and the historical background to its destruction, see the report of Barbara Gassowska, “Maternus Cynegius, Praefectus Praetorio Orientis and the Destruction of the Allat Temple in Palmyra,” Archaeologia 33 (1982), 107–127.
2 Ibid., 113.
3 For a fuller statement, see Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2013), 89–106.
4 Gassowska, “Maternus Cynegius,” 119.
5 Eberhard Sauer, The Archaeology of Religious Hatred in the Roman and Early Medieval World (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2009), 157.
6 I will explore the issues of gain and loss more explicitly in the Afterword.
CHAPTER 1
1 There are numerous authoritative biographies of Constantine. Among the most hard-hitting accounts written by scholars for scholars are the following: Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1981); Timothy Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014); and Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000). Somewhat more accessible to the general reader but fully authoritative are Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) and David Potter, Constantine the Emperor (New York: Oxford University, 2013). See also the interesting account of Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor (London: Quercus, 2009).
2 See, for example, Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian, The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
3 I am not using the term “pagan” in a derogatory sense but simply to refer to the broad array of non-monotheistic religions embraced by virtually everyone except Jews (and then Christians) in antiquity. See further my discussion on pp. 76–78.
4 We will be discussing pagan religions more fully in chapter 3. For general overviews, see the brief treatment of A. D. Lee, “Traditional Religions,” in Lenski, ed., The Age of Constantine, 159–79. For a particularly useful book-length discussion, 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). Now classic is the elegant book by Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987). A 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). For my comments about paganism as an “ism,” see also 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, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 15– 41.
5 Among the many authoritative accounts of the period, see the useful and detailed studies in Alan Bowman, Avril Cameron, and Peter Garnsey, Cambridge Ancient History, The Crisis of Empire: 193–337, 2nd ed., vol. 12 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
6 There have been scholarly controversies over how, precisely, the system was supposed to work. I am following the reconstruction of Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion, and Power, 63.
7 See the works cited in note 1 for this chapter.
8 Not only was the opposing army commanded by Maximian, the highly experienced father of Maxentius, but so too had been most of Severus’s own troops several years earlier. They appear to have continued to have felt close loyalties to their previous general, and so deserted to him when the opportunity arose.
9 Galerius had never been to Rome and apparently did not realize just how large it was. He did not bring enough troops for a siege.
10 See the references given in note 1 for this chapter. The two main primary sources from Eusebius are his 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)—and a biography of Constantine (the only one of him to survive from antiquity) called The Life of Constantine: see Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1999). Quotations are taken from this translation.
11 See Lee, “Traditional Religions.”
12 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, chapters 13–18, 27.
13 A translation of the panegyric, along with the others delivered to Constantine during his career, can be found in C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rogers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
14 See the references in note 1 for this chapter. The account is found in Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 1.27–32.
15 In his comments Eusebius seems to intimate that this was based on a private audience with the emperor, but more likely it was a public event, probably a dinner of the bishops who had attended the Council of Nicaea (discussed in chapter 8) after the completion of their work in 325 CE. This means, of course, that Constantine’s recollections of his vision were revealed to Eusebius and the others some thirteen years after the event itself.
16 Eusebius, In Praise of Constantine 8.1; see also Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.47. The most recent and the fullest discussion of Constantine’s visions is Raymond van Dam, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Van Dam applies recent developments in the studies of memory to argue that it is really impossible, at the end of the day, to know what, if anything, actually happened. The accounts of the visions are hopelessly at odds with one another, and even if we just stick with one or the other, there are enormous problems. The fullest version of Eusebius, for example, presents Eusebius’s biased reporting of what he claimed he heard Constantine say many years after the fact. But Constantine had reasons of his own (i.e., biases) for shaping his story the way he did. Moreover, he was remembering the past in light of all of his thinking and experiences in the meantime, so that his recollections of the past may not be an accurate reflection of what happened, or what he thought happened, at the time.
17 See the discussions in Rambo and Farhadian, The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion.
18 See note 16 for this chapter. As to what Constantine actually saw (if anything), there have been numerous suggestions over the years, none as tantalizing or widely discussed as one made by a German scholar named Peter Weiss, who argued that Constantine may have seen a “solar halo.” Solar halos are an unusual but completely normal optical phenomenon in which the light of the sun is refracted by millions of ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. The sun is surrounded by a bright halo—you can see many instances online—and sometimes appears to have rays shooting out in a few or in many directions. You can imagine seeing the phenomenon and thinking that the sun looks like a laurel wreath, or even a cross. Sometimes the phenomenon lasts as long as two hours, appearing suddenly and disappearing as quickly. Did Constantine and the soldiers with him have such a vision? Some scholars have maintained it is at least possible. Others have argued there is no way to verify any such “naturalistic” explanations of allegedly “supernatural” occurrences and pointed out that all such explanations are hopelessly speculative. Weiss’s article was first published in German in 1993. The article was translated by A. R. Birley, with some revisions by Weiss, as “The Vision of Constantine,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003), 237–59.
19 See, for example, Potter, Constantine the Emperor: “In 312, Constantine’s God was both the Sun and the Christian God. It may not have been hard to make this leap, for in some Christian communities the sun god was already equated with Christ” (pp. 158–59).
20 Eusebius suggests that Maxentius had designed the bridge to collapse under stress and planned to draw Constantine and his forces onto it as a trap. But the plan backfired when his troops were routed and needed to make a hasty retreat back to the city. It is an intriguing claim but rather difficult to credit.
21 In addition to Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, see H. A. Drake, “Constantine and Consensus,” Church History 64 (1995), 1–15.
22 Rather than being an imperial edict issued from Milan, it was a letter from Licinius based on an agreement he and Constantine had reached at a meeting they had held earlier in Milan.
23 See the fuller discussion in chapter 8.
24 English edition in Mark Edwards, Constantine and Christendom (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003).
25 See note 21 for this chapter.
CHAPTER 2
1 Biographies and studies of Paul are legion. For a fuller account of my perspective, see Bart D. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). A classic in the field, approaching Paul from the perspective of social history rather than theology, is Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). A helpful but very brief book-length treatment is E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Longer (massive) and more recent is E. P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2015). Another recent and informed contribution is Albert Harrill, Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
2 The seven undisputed letters: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. On the issues of forgery in antiquity, the matter of terminology (is it appropriate to call such works forgeries?), and the dubious authorship of the Pauline letters, see Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012).
3 See my discussion in Forged, 202–209.
4 For a dating of the book in the early second century, some six decades after Paul’s death, see Richard Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2006).
5 For overviews of Judaism in the time of Paul, see Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014) and E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE to 66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).
6 This has long been the contention of E. P. Sanders, a premier scholar of both Paul and ancient Judaism. See his books cited in notes 1 and 5 for this chapter. His classic statement of this view is in his scholarly monograph Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).
7 See the discussions of Cohen and Sanders in the books cited in note 5 for this chapter.
8 See my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
9 There are numerous book-length treatments just on the chronology of Paul’s life and ministry. One widely used treatment is Gerd Luedemann, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
10 A number of scholars object to calling the early followers of Jesus “Christians,” since many of the distinctive features of Christianity—especially its cardinal doctrines—had not yet developed. On the other hand, the same could be said for centuries, and yet no one hesitates using the term “Christian” for followers of Jesus in, say, the year 250. My view is that the very basic notions that made the Jewish followers of Jesus distinct among other Jews were already in place by the time Paul converted. These were the beliefs that Jesus’s death had somehow brought about salvation with God and that God had then raised Jesus from the dead and taken him up to heaven to “sit at his right hand.” Such views were known to Paul even before he himself became a follower of Jesus, and I think there is no harm in calling anyone who subscribed to them a Christian (without denying, of course, that the person could also be a Jew). The term “Christian” first appears in the New Testament in Acts 11:26 and 1 Peter 4:16.
11 For an account of Jewish messianic expectations at the time, see John Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
12 See my discussion in Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014).
13 The Greek could also be translated “revealed his son in me.” If that is the proper translation, it would mean that the revelation of God occurred within Paul—that is, it was a personal insight that he received, in his own mind.
14 I do not mean to imply that his thoughts occurred in a vacuum. Since Paul had been persecuting the Christians, he already knew, of course, that they claimed Jesus was the one favored by God who had been raised from the dead. The thought processes that I describe here are how he figured out for himself how this was possible and what it all meant.
15 Harrill, Paul the Apostle, 26.
16 One particularly helpful study of Paul’s mission is Terence L. Donaldson, “ ‘The Field God Has Assigned’: Geography and Mission in Paul,” in Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, ed. Leif E. Vaage (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 109–37.
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.
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: HarperSanFrancisco, 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).
23 “Life of St. Martin” 13.8–9. I have used the translation by Richard J. Goodrich in Sulpicius Severus: The Complete Works (New York: Newman Press, 2015).
24 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Random House, 1950), 22.8.
25 Cyprian, “Letter to Demetrius,” chapter 24. Translation by Ernest Wallis, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante- Nicene Fathers, reprint ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).
26 Ramsay MacMullen, “What Difference Did Christianity Make?” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 35 (1986), 335.
27 Translation by T. R. Glover, Tertullian: Apology; De Spetaculis, Loeb Classical Library 250 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931).
28 Hoffman, Celsus, 70.
29 Augustine, “On Catechizing the Uninstructed” 5.9; translation by Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 263.
30 Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 9.
31 Ramsay MacMullen, “Two Types of Conversion to Early Christianity,” Vigiliae Christianae 37 (1983), 181, 185.
32 Herbert Musurillo, “The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1972), 106–31.
33 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 11; translation by Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library 24 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2003).
34 Saint Justin Martyr, The Second Apology, trans. Thomas B. Falls (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948).
35 Saint Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, trans. Thomas B. Falls (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948).
36 Apology 50, translation by Gerald Rendall, modified slightly, Tertullian: Apology; De Spetaculis, Loeb Classical Library 250 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931).
37 Octavius 27.6. Translation by C. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Minucius Felix (New York: Newman Press, 1974).
38 Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 11.3.
39 See Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014).
40 Against Celsus 8; translation by Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953).
CHAPTER 6
1 Pliny 10.96; translation by P. G. Walsh, in Pliny the Younger: Complete Letters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).
2 Translation by S. Thelwall, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, reprint ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
3 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 201.
4 Lane Fox illustrates the point by pointing to the oracle and temple of Apollo at Claros on the coast of Ionia, where at the time we find more than three hundred pagan dedications.
5 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.
6 As already observed. See note 1 for chapter 4.
7 Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity, A.D. 200– 400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).
8 Ibid., 101.
9 Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 63.
10 Roger Bagnall, “Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change in Early Byzantine Egypt,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 19 (1982), 105–124.
11 Bagnall’s findings were disputed by other scholars making different calculations; in his reply he stressed that, even based on other calculations, “we may reasonably suppose that Christians were well more than a majority before the end of the century; but it is hard to be more precise than that” (p. 249). Roger Bagnall, “Conversion and Onomastics: A Reply,” ZPE 69 (1987), 243–50.
12 Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, 2.324–37.
13 Frank Trombley, “Overview: The Geographical Spread of Christianity,” in Margaret Mitchell and Frances Young, eds., The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2006), 302–13.
14 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).
15 Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 185–226.
16 An effort to update Harnack in light of new evidence can be found in Roderic Mullen, The Expansion of Christianity: A Gazetteer of Its First Three Centuries (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004).
CHAPTER 7
1 The book was almost certainly not actually written by Jesus’s disciple Peter. On the question of authorship, see Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012), 65–77.
2 Translation in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, reprint ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
3 Translation by Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1972).
4 I have taken quotations from the translation by C. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Minucius Felix (New York: Newman Press, 1974). The Introduction to the volume is an excellent guide to both the book and its author.
5 See, for example, Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984).
6 Andrew McGowan, “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism Against Christians in the Second Century,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994), 413– 42.
7 Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013).
8 For translations of the early-martyrdom accounts, see Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs.
9 See Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 493–508; Moss, The Myth of Persecution, 94–104.
10 My own translation. See Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, vol.1, Loeb Classical Library 24 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2003).
11 Translation by Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs.
12 Translation by Michael Grant, Tacitus: The Annals of Imperial Rome, revised reprint ed. (London: Penguin, 1996).
13 Over the years some readers have wondered if the Christians, in fact, were guilty of setting the fire. The logic is that if they were heavily influenced by apocalyptic thought and assumed that God was soon to judge the world through a major conflagration, possibly they decided to initiate the proceeding themselves. It is an intriguing thesis, but in the end is probably not convincing. Tacitus himself thought the fire was either set by Nero or was a pure accident.
14 Quoted in 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), 10.9.
15 The letter occupies the first part of book 5 of Eusebius’s Church History, which is our only surviving account.
16 The best study of the incident is James B. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999), 135–54, on which I am dependent for many of the points I make here.
17 Rives, “Decree of Decius.”
18 Ibid., 53.
19 See Moss, The Myth of Persecution, 151–53; Eusebius’s account can be found in Church History 7.10–12.
20 For a brief history of Valerian’s persecution, see Bernard Green, Christianity in Ancient Rome: The First Three Centuries (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 161–66.
21 See Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), Prologue.
22 For the course of the persecution, see Moss, The Myth of Persecution, 154– 49; Green, Christianity in Ancient Rome, 211–13; Eusebius’s account can be found in Church History 8.
23 Quoted in R. Joseph Hoffmann, trans., Celsus: On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 118.
24 See Arthur Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1989).
CHAPTER 8
1 In a letter he wrote to the inhabitants of the eastern provinces of the empire, as quoted in Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1999), 2.51.
2 The letter is cited by Eusebius in 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), 10.5. Eusebius claims, probably wrongly, that Licinius was a Christian at the time of the conference in Milan but fell to the dark side later.
3 Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000), 194.
4 As emphasized especially by Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, and “Constantine and Consensus,” Church History 64 (1995), 1–15.
5 Every decent book on Constantine discusses the Donatist controversy (see note 1 for chapter 1). For a good, brief summary see H. A. Drake, “The Impact of Constantine on Christianity,” in Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 111–36.
6 Drake, “The Impact of Constantine on Christianity,” 119.
7 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2.60.
8 The letter is cited in Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.64–72.
9 For a fuller discussion of the council, the events leading up to it, the theological issues involved, and the eventual outcome, see my book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014), chapter 9.
10 Some scholars, such as Paul Stephenson in Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor (London: Quercus, 2009), have expressed doubts about this. It is, however, what our few surviving sources report and is the more convincing position argued, among others, by Timothy Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 126–31.
11 See chapter 1, pp. 32–38.
12 A. D. Lee, “Traditional Religions,” in Lenski, ed., The Age of Constantine, 174.
13 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.42.
14 This has long been the thesis in particular of Timothy Barnes. See Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1981), and Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power.
15 He did, however, take a different line with Christian heretics, legislating harshly against them, disallowing their meetings, destroying their houses of worship, and generally making their lives miserable. See his letter to the Christian groups called Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, and Cataphrygians (Montanists) in Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.64–65.
16 For different views see Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion, and Power, 108–109; Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, 465; as well as Timothy D. Barnes, “Constantine’s Prohibition of Pagan Sacrifice,” American Journal of Philology 105 (1984), 69–72; R. Malcolm Errington, “Constantine and the Pagans,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 29 (1988), 309–18; and Scott Bradbury, “Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century,” Classical Philology 89 (1994), 120–39.
17 Translation by Clyde Pharr, The Theodosian Code (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952).
18 Translation by A. F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Works, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 452 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).
19 For example, it has been argued that he originally passed such a law but then almost immediately rescinded it in a letter; or that it was a “law” only loosely defined, in that it could be found not in actual legislation but only in correspondence sent to an administrative underling. See the articles by Bradbury and Errington in note 16 for this chapter.
20 Ramsay MacMullen, “What Difference Did Christianity Make?” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 35 (1986), 322– 43.
21 See pp. 152–56.
22 MacMullen, “What Difference Did Christianity Make?” 336.
23 Ibid.
24 There are a number of intriguing discussions. See, for example, David Woods, “On the Death of the Empress Fausta,” Greece and Rome 45 (1998), 70–86, and Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion, and Power, 144–50.
25 Noel Lenski, “The Reign of Constantine,” in Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 79.
26 See Woods, “The Death of the Empress Fausta.”
27 Even if he did not as a rule apply force to implement his specifically Christian views, there were exceptions: his confiscation of bronze statues and gold plate for the New Rome he constructed and the destruction of five pagan sites he viewed as particularly problematic either because they were located on sites sacred to the Christians or because they entailed sacred prostitution, a practice he could not countenance.
CHAPTER 9
1 These instances are cited by Clifford Ando, “Pagan Apologetics and Christian Intolerance in the Ages of Themistius and Augustine,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996), 171–207.
2 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 129.
3 For a good summary of the imperial history after Constantine that I lay out here, see Robert M. Frakes, “The Dynasty of Constantine Down to 363,” in Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 91–107.
4 One very readable recent account of Julian’s life is Adrian Murdoch, The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World (Stroud: Sutton, 2003). Never surpassed, however, is G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1978).
5 See pp. 76–78.
6 Letter 26, quoted in Bowersock, Julian, 61.
7 The best account of these policies, again, is Bowersock, Julian.
8 Letter 60, quoted in Bowersock, Julian, 80–81.
9 Bowersock, Julian, 84.
10 Letter 84, quoted in Bowersock, Julian, 87.
11 Divine Institutes 5.19–20. Translation by Mary Francis McDonald, Lactantius: The Divine Institutes (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1964).
12 For the contrast between Lactantius and Firmicus Maternus, see Maijastina Kahlos, “The Rhetoric of Tolerance and Intolerance: From Lactantius to Firmicus Maternus” in Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and Maijastina Kahlos, Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009), 79–96.
13 On the Error of the Pagan Religions 29.2. Translation by Clarence A. Forbes in Firmicus Maternus: The Error of Pagan Religions (New York: Newman Press, 1970).
14 De Vita 1293–1302. Quoted in Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000), 406.
15 Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2013).
16 Ibid., 9.
17 Ibid., 15.
18 Ibid., 14.
19 Prudentius 2.481–84, trans. M. Clement Eagan; quoted by Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods, 21.
20 Amelia Robertson Brown, “Hellenic Heritage and Christian Challenge: Conflict over Panhellenic Sanctuaries in Late Antiquity,” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, H. A. Drake, ed. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 309.
21 Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 76, quoted by Brown, “Hellenic Heritage and Christian Challenge,” 319.
22 Among many fine discussions, see Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1997), 159–72, 307–316.
23 The first quotation is from Aphthonius, a student of Libanius. Both quotations come from the important study by Judith McKenzie, Sheila Gibson, and A. T. Reyes, “Reconstructing the Serapeum in Alexandria from the Archaeological Evidence,” Journal of Roman Studies 94 (2004), 73–121.
24 Translation by Philip Amidon, The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia: Books 10 and 11 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
25 The events are recounted in Rufinus, Church History 11.
26 Quoted by MacKenzie et al., “Reconstructing the Serapeum,” 166.
27 Theodoret, Church History 5.22; quoted in Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1997), 167.
28 Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 168–69.
29 Garth Fowden, “Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire A.D. 320– 435,” Journal of Theological Studies 29 (1978), 77.
30 The episode is recounted in the definitive study, Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, trans. F. Lyra (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 50. See also Michael A. B. Deakin, Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr (New York: Prometheus, 2007).
31 In addition to Dzielsak, Hypatia, see especially Edward Watts, “The Murder of Hypatia: Acceptable or Unacceptable Violence?” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, H. A. Drake, ed. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 333– 42.
32 For a discussion of this view, and a strong rejection of it, see Christoph Markschies, “The Price of Monotheism: Some New Observations on a Current Debate About Late Antiquity,” in One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire, Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chapter 6.
33 See, for example, Harold A. Drake, “Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance,” Past and Present 153 (1996), 3–36; and “Intolerance, Religious Violence, and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 (2011), 193–235.
34 For these and other anti-Jewish laws, see James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews; A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
35 With respect to pagan objects of worship (though, in this case, not their worshipers), a similar view is propounded by the great theologian Augustine: “God who speaks truth has both predicted that the images of the many, the false gods, are to be overthrown and commands that it be done.” Elsewhere he insists that this “is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims.” See Augustine, Epistle 91 and Sermon 14.6, quoted in Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 169.
36 Drake, “Lambs into Lions,” 35.
37 Themistius, Oration 5, translation from Peter Heather and David Mondur, eds., Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century: Select Orations of Themistius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001).
38 Translation by H. de Romestin, “Memorial of Symmachus,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 10, Ambrose: Select Works and Letters, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., reprint ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994).
39 See Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
40 Michele Renee Salzman, “Rethinking Pagan-Christian Violence,” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, H. A. Drake, ed. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 285.
41 Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 39.
1 On how Christian bishops came to replace pagan intellectuals as the Roman aristocrats who held real power—seen, for example, in personal access to and influence over the emperor—see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).
2 As quoted in Raymond van Dam, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 22.
3 I have taken these quotations from Van Dam’s insightful study, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge.
4 For a discussion of the role of Theodosius I in the loss of freedom and the rise of intolerance, see the readable account of Charles Freeman, A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State (New York: Overlook Press, 2008). On the specific question of Christian opposition to Jews and Judaism, see James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews; A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
APPENDIX
1 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).
2 See the articles published as a collection in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), especially Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Gender, Theory, and The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Stark,” 227–57.
3 See Castelli, “Gender, Theory, and The Rise of Christianity.”
4 Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014).
5 I am exceedingly grateful to James Bell for constructing a population growth calculator for me and for his interesting reflections on the rates of Christian growth.