Hellenisme et Christianisme (review)

This is a collection of seven valuable studies on the relationship between Christianity and Hellenism in late antiquity. The essays together provide an insightful tapestry of treatment of the central theme. The authors bring fresh historical-critical approaches to old questions, revealing the many-faceted relationship between the traditional Roman cults and culture and Christian faith and the influence of Greek and Roman philosophy on Christian thought and expression. As a critical examination of the essays is not possible in this brief review, a descriptive summary of each must suffice.

Pierre Chuvin, weighing the credibility of selected witnesses to the christianization of the Roman Empire, convincingly argues for a complex process involving the assimilation by the transposition of the meaning of cultic and cultural features of Graeco-Roman civilization rather than by their simple eradication. A significant aspect of this was the reinterpretation of secular history and Graeco-Roman religious culture as having been preparatory to Christianity.

Claire Sotinel addresses the question of the disuse of pagan temples during this period. By careful analysis and the comparison of conflicting literary and archaeological evidence, Sotinel concludes that the temples disappeared from use by desuetude rather than destruction by Christians as suggested by fourth-century writers: a view that has been perpetuated until modern times.

Richard Goulet provides detailed argument in favor of the customary attribution to the pagan philosopher Porphyry of a work entitled Against the Christians, allegedly destroyed by imperial command early in its history. Goulet's argument is directed against the thesis of Pier Franco Beatrice, who maintains that Against the Christians never existed and that Porphyry's anti-Christian attacks were advanced instead in another treatise entitled The Philosophy of the Oracles.

Jean Bouffartigue addresses the question of the intellectual framework within which the apostate scholar-Emperor Julian attacked Christianity. In a careful study of Julian's own works together with evidences provided by the pagan philosopher Libanius, Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret of Cyr, and others, Bouffartigue convincingly shows that while Julian was more heavily motivated against Christianity in his work Against the Galilaeans by his antiquarian religious polytheism than by his philosophical convictions, the speculative stream of his thought was an important force in the shaping of his arguments.

Pier Franco Beatrice provides an illuminating study of the early history and interplay between Roman philosophers and propagandists on the one hand and Christian apologists on the other in their use and understanding of the terms "atheism" and "atheist" as they applied them to each other. Beatrice shows that the terms were used first by Christians in their critique of Roman polytheism, and suggests that self-identification by Christians of themselves as inheritors of the rejection of polytheism by early Greek philosophical thought led contemporary pagan Neoplatonists to give philosophical support as cultural propagandists to Roman polytheism and its cultic expressions.

John Rist contributes an enlightening analysis of the early Christian reaction to Platonism and the gradual adaptation of Middle Platonism by some Christian authors and of Neoplatonism by others as the media of expression for several, but not all, of the developing doctrines of Christian faith.

Irena Backus contributes an insightful comparison of the treatment of classical antiquity and Christian antiquity in the writings of major authors in the field of ecclesiastical historiography during its emergence in the sixteenth century. Backus shows that confessional orientations, Protestant and Catholic, entered strongly into the sixteenth-century appraisals both of classical philosophy and culture and of the character and historical significance of the Emperor Julian.