Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity

Preface

This book is about religious rivalries in the early Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. The book is divided into three parts. The first part debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately names the issue(s) that must be addressed when comparing and contrasting the social success of different religious groups in Mediterranean antiquity. Some scholars insist on the need for additional registers; others consider it important not only to contemplate success but also failure and loss; yet others treat specific cases. The second part of the book provides a critical assessment of the modern category of mission to describe the inner dynamics of such a process. Discussed are the early Christian apostle Paul, who typically is supposed to have been a missionary; the early Jewish historian Josephus, who typically is not described in this way; and ancient Mithraism, whose spread and social reproduction has heretofore remained a mystery. Finally, part 3 of the book discusses “the rise of Christianity,” largely in response to the similarly titled work of the American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark. The book as a whole renders more complex and concrete the social histories of Christianity, Judaism, and paganism in the early Roman Empire. None of these groups succeeded merely by winning a given competition. It is not clear that any of them imagined its own success necessarily to entail the elimination of others. It does seem, however, that early Christianity had certain habits both of speech and of practice, which made it particularly apt to succeed (in) the Roman Empire. The book is about rivalries in the plural, since there are many: sibling, imperial, professional, psychological, to name but a few. Each of these has ix Preface 00_vaage_fm.qxd 2006/03/24 9:41 AM Page ix its own characteristics, conditions, complications. All, however, share the same constitutive antinomy, which therefore may function here as a basic definition. In rivalry, one needs the other, against whom we struggle, from whom I seek to differentiate myself, over whom you hope to prevail, in order to know oneself as oneself. Religious rivalries in the early Roman Empire are no exception. Christianity, Judaism, and so-called paganism existed only through such a relationship with one another (although rivalry was hardly the only condition of their existence). It is not possible to understand any of these traditions without considering how each of them used the other(s) to explain itself to itself and, sometimes, to persuade another to become (like) one of them. Rivalries. Not competition. Not coexistence. Even though not everyone who writes in this book finally thinks that “rivalries” is the best name for the diverse patterns of relationship among Christians, Jews, and others in different urban settings of the early Roman Empire. Nonetheless, to define these groups as somehow rivals with one another has served to keep together in conversation with one another the volatile codependency that characterized these groups’ ongoing competition with each other; which is to say, the way(s) in which their undeniable coexistence included not infrequently and eventually the struggle for hegemony. By making rivalries the primary axis around which the various investigations of this book (and its companions) turn, it has become possible to give a better account of the particular social identity and concrete operational mode(s) of existence of each of these traditions in antiquity. Religious rivalries…and the rise of Christianity: this book also discusses the different cultural destinies of Christianity, Judaism, and paganism in Mediterranean antiquity as a question of social rivalry. To which degree, and in which manner(s), did each of these traditions, in its variant forms, emerge, survive, and sometimes achieve social dominance by contending —competing, collaborating, coexisting—with its neighbours, specifically in urban contexts of the early Roman Empire? Under consideration here is the role of explicit social conflict and contest in the development of ancient religious identity and experience. Part 1 of the book provides a number of different points of entry into the general topic of religious rivalries in the early Roman Empire. The first chapter is introductory. Written by Leif E. Vaage initially to suggest both a rationale and some further lines of inquiry for a seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (CSBS), the essay asks a series of leading questions , taking early Christianity as its primary example, and seeks to encourage the production of alternate histories, especially if and when these are x PREFACE 00_vaage_fm.qxd 2006/03/24 9:41 AM...