INTRODUCTION
This chapter was initially written in 1994 to suggest both a rationale and
a few possible lines of inquiry for a seminar of the Canadian Society of
Biblical Studies (CSBS), which would focus on the question of religious
rivalries in different urban settings of the early Roman Empire. The chap-
ter is thus essentially a list of leading questions. It will also become appar-
ent that my own particular interests and competencies lie in the field of
earliest Christianities. This angle of vision is certainly not the only per-
spective, and conceivably not even the best one, from which to define such
a conversation. Nonetheless, because a decidedly Christian, viz. Protestant
view of things has shaped historical research in the area, it has still seemed
useful to introduce the following studies with a critique of certain stock fea-
tures of that traditional perspective.
EDWARD GIBBON
The eventual success of Christianity in becoming the official religion of
the Roman Empire is an historical phenomenon that has been variously cel-
ebrated and lamented but still remains inadequately understood. Typically,
the fact of Christianity’s emergence as the empire’s dominant persuasion
is construed mutatis mutandiseither as the inevitable triumph of a com-
pelling truth (albeit initially ignored and benightedly disparaged) or as
due to the opportunistic chicanery of politically astute but otherwise quite
conventional believers (a.k.a. the deceived and the deceivers). Edward Gib-