easily introduced into the Greek and Syrian cities which obeyed the
successors of Artaxerxes; but they do not appear to have made any deep
impression on the minds of the Persians, whose religious system, by
the labours of a well-disciplined order of priests, had been constructed
with much more art and solidity than the uncertain mythology of Greece
and Rome. (Saunders 1952, 316–17)
However foreign or distressingly familiar the cultural mindset may be
within which Gibbon first penned these remarks, the transparency of his
prose and the directness of his reasoning yet raise as effectively as any
later historian’s work a series of still unanswered questions. For example:
- What is the significance of the fact that, for at least two centuries (until
approximately 180 CE) and effectively well into a third, there is no extant
material (apart from literary) evidence of Christianity as a distinct socio-
religious phenomenon, since the first two centuries of self-definition and
growth remain “buried in obscurity or disguised by fiction and declama-
tion”? - Was Christianity during the first two centuries essentially, as Gibbon pro-
poses, a religion of Asia Minor and (northern) Syria and, therefore, prop-
erly should be described in these terms, namely, as another—though by
no means the most obvious or most vigorous—instance of the variable reli-
gious life of the diverse civic cultures of this region? - If Gibbon is correct that until “the sceptre was in the hands of an ortho-
dox emperor,” Christianity did not succeed in establishing itself beyond
the bounds of the ancient civilized (non-barbarian, Roman) world—per-
haps because no serious effort had been made to promote it elsewhere—
what conclusions, if any, should be drawn from this fact vis-à-vis the
reputed missionary character of early Christianity? - Does Gibbon’s statement about the introduction of Christianity among the
barbarians also hold true for Christianizing the Roman Empire, namely,
that it was simply “the various accidents of war and commerce” which first
“diffuse[d] an imperfect knowledge of the Gospel” throughout the
Mediterranean basin before Constantine? - What made it possible, or even likely, that a city like Edessa should be “dis-
tinguished by a firm and early adherence to the faith” in the midst of an
otherwise disinterested culture? Was Christianity’s success within the
Roman Empire (versus, say, among the Persians) ultimately due to “the
uncertain mythology of Greece and Rome”; in the words of Arthur Darby
Nock, the fact that there was “in these [pagan] rivals of Judaism and
Christianity no possibility of anything which can be called conversion”
(1933, 14)? Nock, however, goes on to observe: “In fact the only context