The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict by George Heyman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 155 with Gooch (25I). Again, ignoring the profound theological implications of the ending of The Violent Bear It Away, Gooch claims that "the novel's final paragraph is remarkably close to (Faulkner's) "Barn Burning" (309). Thus, the reader is given so-called "prompts" that diminish rather than illuminate the depth, complexity, and the mystery that her stories come to embody. In the final analysis, Gooch's biography is a skillfully woven literal narrative of the main events and relationships in O'Connor's life, a good starting point for the more reflective and penetrating study that she so richly deserves, but which has yet to be written. John F. Desmond Whitman College The Power ofSacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict. By George Heyman. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-8132-1489-4. Pp. xxv + 256. $69.95 Explorations of the rise and "success" of the early Christian movement in the face of Roman opposition abound. From E. R. Dodd's classic social-psychological work, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (1965), to Robin Lane Fox's comparison between Christianity and ancient paganism (Pagans and Christians, 1986), to Rodney Stark's subsequent social-scientific exploration of Christianity's emergence (The Rise of Christianity, 1996), there is a longstanding scholarly curiosity about the rise of Christianity and its success in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Enter George Heyman who takes up the question, more broadly, ofwhy ancient Romans and Christians clashed in the first place, and more narrowly, how the early Christian experience and portrayal of sacrifice played an integral role in that clash and subsequent success of Christianity. In brief, Heyman argues that "The clash between Romans and Christians centered on the nature and function of what constituted proper 'religion; not 'belief This conflict was couched both rhetorically and physically within the greater discourse of 'sacrifice" (xi). Thus, Heyman's work explores Roman-Christian tension via the lens of literary discourse and rhetorical theory. Readers of Christianity and Literature will be particularly interested in Heyman's appropriation of the discourse theories of Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Bruce Lincoln among others. Arguing that sacrificial discourse in the ancient world was the underlying means whereby Rome exercised control and power over its subjects, Heyman concludes that the Roman-Christian conflict "was ultimately a collision of sacrificial discourse" (xvii). The author sets out to demonstrate this thesis in four discrete, yet related, chapters plus a concluding summary. 156 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Chapter 1 presents an overview of sacrificial practice in Roman religion of the Republican era. Drawing upon the discourse theories of Foucault, Barthes, and Todorov, Heyman observes that "discourse by its nature is also about power; who has it and how it is used to construct social identity" (6). In short, for the ancient Roman world, the rhetoric and practice of sacrifice was a form of social discourse powerfully used to construct and maintain social boundaries and peace within the empire. Examining Roman cultic and festival practices, as well as the rhetoric of the statesman Cicero, Heyman accurately and SUCCinctly surveys this already wellunderstood feature of ancient Roman religion. Chapter 2 addresses the emergence, practice, and meaning of the Roman imperial cult in the post -Republic era. Observing that the Singleprevailing feature of the imperial cult was "sacrifice;' much of this chapter is spent demonstrating (through an examination of the Hellenistic ruler cults and the "divine" status of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus) that the shift to the imperial cult of the Roman Empire was both continuous with the preceding religious sacrificial traditions while at the same time novel in its identification of the locus of authority in a single individual. Yet, because ritual is a form of public discourse, Heyman argues that "the sacrificial rituals of the imperial cult can be viewed as key forms of expression that allowed imperial power to be displayed" (78). As a result, the ritual of sacrifice would become central to the clash between Romans and Christians. Chapter 3 examines the use of sacrificial discourse in the New Testament. It should come as no surprise that Christians appropriated the...