we can speak of friendly rivalry as we can of intense competition or inter-
action, and that a lot depends on the nuance we give to the terms. Perhaps
all we need to recognize is that whichever term we use, it must retain suf-
ficient flexibility to encompass all the evidence we wish to consider. Thus
we could think of intense, modest, and friendly rivalry as a sort of scale that
may comprehend a fair amount of our evidence, even if it does not cover
it all. This is not to claim, of course, that rivalry was the only way that reli-
gious groups interacted. In the ancient urban setting, in particular, co-
operation on some levels may have been unavoidable and equally important
for success (see Lightstone, chapter 5; Harland, chapter 2).
From the start, the notion of mission has been held up to scrutiny. In
chapter 1 of this book, Leif E. Vaage programmatically subjects Adolf von
Harnack’s classic description of the “Mission and Expansion” of Chris-
tianity to a severe critique. This is an important move, and it throws out a
number of issues for us to ponder. One is the importance of mission itself.
The image we get, from Paul and Acts, of Christianity as an aggressively
evangelistic movement has too often been allowed to colour our picture of
subsequent centuries where, in fact, there is very little evidence to sustain
it. Likewise, the notion of mission within Judaism has recently been crit-
ically appraised by a number of scholars, with the result that, at least before
the fourth century CE, there appears to be remarkably little evidence for a
proselytizing mission. At the most, we can speak of a centripetal move-
ment of some interested Gentiles toward Judaism, but not of a centrifugal
mission out from it (see also Donaldson, chapter 6).
There is some evidence for peripatetic philosophers plying their wares
in the towns and villages of the Mediterranean world, and it is clear that
some of them hoped to influence the behaviour of the public at large. In gen-
eral, however, pagans did not aggressively propagate their philosophies
and cults. Martin Goodman (1994) has brought some refinement to the dis-
cussion by differentiating between informational, educational, apologetic,
and proselytizing missions, defining the latter as the desire not only to
change the behaviour of, but also to recruit, complete outsiders. Perhaps this
broader understanding of the concept of mission can accommodate those
who wish to retain the notion (see, e.g., Mason, chapter 7) while allowing
that the critique of Harnack’s view has considerable force.
A related issue then arises. If religious groups in Mediterranean antiq-
uity did not extend their membership through aggressive missionary activ-
ity, how did they survive and grow, in particular, at a time when the options
were so many and the clamour for people’s attention so confusing? Recent
work on the spread of cults in the modern world has provided one key,
nora
(Nora)
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