Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Christianity (review)

Guy G. Stroumsa. Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Christianity. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 112. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Pp. xii + 345. $137.50.

In this book the author has gathered twelve previously published pieces as well as six new chapters into a broad, four-part study of the "religious revolution of Christianity." These address the radical nature and dialectical transformations of Christianity, the growth of intolerance, the emergence of new anthropological conceptions and, finally, the "dualistic trends" in Christianity that produced a "revolution within the revolution" (2). Stroumsa admits that he has consciously opted for the long durée (first through fourth centuries) in these eighteen chapters. The result is a work that offers some rather extravagant generalizations.

The unifying theme of this work is the conflict between the novel "intuitions and assumptions" of early Christianity and the patrioi nomoi of the Greeks, Romans, and Jews (2). This theme, having the complaints of Celsus at its core, has been central to a number of studies, including Carl Andresen's Logos und Nomos (1955). Stroumsa draws upon Andresen, though he omits other helpful treatments such as G. Bowersock's Fiction as History (1994) or A. Droge's Homer or Moses? (1989). The first portion of the book, entitled "Radical Religion," guides the reader through a variety of discussions surrounding this theme, including the tensions between irenic and eristic teachings within early Christianity, its roots in the "double helix" of the Judaic and Roman nomoi as well as discussions of Celsus and the development of the Christian barbarosa philosophia. Stroumsa provides helpful insights into the universal commands of love in early Christianity and the irenic and eristic tensions inherent in the desire to take Christianity to all nations. Also of interest is his analysis of the individualistic nature of Christianity's universal doctrine of love, which Stroumsa identifies as proto-Freudian, over and against the communal tendencies of the patrioi nomoi (23-25). While he correctly contrasts these perspectives Stroumsa might have gone further in exploring the general Hellenistic roots of canon as well as the Judaic roots of Christianity relating to questions of exclusivity as well as of creed and canon. As P. Schäfer has shown (Judeophobia 1998) the labeling (or self-definition) of Christianity as a barbarosa philosophia was not, necessarily, unique in the ancient world.

Similarly, in the second part of the work, "Living with the Other," Stroumsa provides good insight into the demonization of pagan religion and then, once the Christians had "conquered the Empire," the demonization of the Jews (153). Here Stroumsa might have drawn more from Greek and Roman intolerance when analyzing the development of Christian intolerance (133-34). His statement that the "Christian revolution suppressed freedom in the name of liberation" (99) might very well have been compared to the imperial propaganda of Rome. On this point, his complaint against Christianity's growing intolerance must certainly be linked to its Romanization. That Christianity gained greater intolerance as it grew in political power might suggest that traditions present in the pagan structure were as much a part of growing intolerance in late antiquity as was the Christian tradition. Certainly, the cementing of creed and canon by the fourth century illustrates a form of intolerance present in nascent Christianity and hardened by struggles with heretics and pagans. However, the will to make Christian belief state-sponsored required a leap from an individualistic faith to a more communal religion, a leap that must be blamed as much on Roman tradition as on the hardening of Christian doctrine. In the end, modern questions of intolerance, as broached by Stroumsa and many others, are, as ever, ana-chronistic and seem always to assume Christian culpability.

In part three, "Shaping the Person," Stroumsa provides some of his best discussion, focusing on the individuality of Christian belief and the unity of body and soul with all that this unity implies within the Hellenistic context. New...