In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry W. Hurtado
  • Douglas Boin
Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. By Larry W. Hurtado. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. 2016. Pp. xiv, 290. $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-4813-0473-3.)

After Constantine, the changes that befell Rome guaranteed a lasting place for the emperor in histories of the Church. For Eusebius, he upended a way of life: ransacking sanctuaries, granting Christians tax privileges, banning sacrifice. For some modern historians, from Rodney Stark to Peter Brown, Romans flocked to Christianity in the decades following. Constantine looms over Larry Hurtado's new book, as well. In his retelling, "Constantine adopted Christianity likely because it had already become so successful despite earlier efforts to destroy the movement" (p. 5).

What "success" has meant for groups throughout history, of course, has always been in the eye of the beholder: from numerical increase to a welcome acceptance. Hurtado inclines towards the former. In his view, a "combination of the power of persuasion, whether in preaching, intellectual argument, 'miracles' exhibiting the power of Jesus' name, and simply the moral suasion of Christian behavior, including martyrdom" ensured "the growth of Christianity in the first three centuries" (p. 5). Those "first three centuries" are a crucial frame for his project, too. Traditionally seen as the period when Christian Scripture was slowly being compiled, the period before the Edict of Milan is a unit of time that still carries heavy theological baggage: imagined by many Christian denominations today as an age of purity before Constantine's political compromises.

Tellingly, Hurtado never ventures into the details of this later world, and readers may wonder why. A critical voice might even ask how it was possible for the author to make an argument about the changes that swept through fourth-century Rome ("destroyer of the gods") without ever analyzing a shred of fourth-century evidence.

What Hurtado's book offers, instead, is a series of well-researched looks into behaviors that would have made early Christians seem "distinct" to those around them. Chapter 1 suggests that Romans were concerned about Christianity's being "programmatically transethnic in its appeal" (p. 25). Chapter 2 summarizes methodological advances in "religion" to argue that Christians were taught to see their faith as requiring "an exclusivist stance" (p. 58). Chapter 3 contrasts Mithras and Isis with Christianity; only the latter demanded Christians "make their Christian commitment the exclusive basis of their [distinct] religious identity" (p. 86). [End Page 143] Chapter 4, on manuscript copying and the innovative use of letter exchange (pp. 120–21), is perhaps the book's most thought-provoking look at many members of the early movement who were literate, educated, and likely from wealthy backgrounds; in it, Hurtado contends that christians chose to write in a codex form as a "deliberately countercultural move" (p. 136). Chapter 5 builds a case for Christian distinctiveness through an analysis of sexual ethics, infant exposure, marriage, divorce, and child abuse in the early Church, largely through Paul's writings, with occasional reliance on second- and third-century Christian sources.

Hurtado's book is engaging precisely because it wants to situate these topics within a larger framework. And while the book doesn't really attempt to explain change over time, it is good at inviting readers to imagine the "similarities or differences between early Christianity and its Roman-era environment" (p. 196). Disappointingly, it also clear that Hurtado wants to use his research to point an accusatory finger at "classic liberal forms of modern Christianity" which, in his opinion, "have often been concerned to align themselves with the dominant culture, affirming its values, even shifting in beliefs and practices markedly so" (p. 7). Not surprisingly, any evidence for Christian cultural compromise in the first three centuries is dismissed here as a marginal phenomenon (p. 58). This is a history of the Church still blinded by Constantine.

Douglas Boin
Saint Louis University
...

pdf

Share