Any account of the success of Christianity in securing
converts in the Roman world must take account of this fluidity
of religious boundaries. Conversion to Christianity was an option
- but not the only one for those who were interested in religious
speculation. It was possible to convert from Christianity to some-
thing else, as did the emperor Julian (361–3) when he forsook
Christianity and embraced a philosophical form of paganism.
While it is true that the number of converts to Christianity
increased during the first few centuries AD, it would be wrong to
assume that this was the only possible route for the religious
history of the empire to take (S. G. Wilson 2004). If we were
to think that, then our analysis would be no better than that of
Eusebius.
Case study: inscriptions and the missionary
journeys of PaulThe purpose of this chapter’s case study is to examine how
external (i.e. non-Christian) evidence can be exploited to illumi-
nate events described in early Christian texts. My focus will be
on the missionary journeys of the apostle Paul. Although we
possess a number of Paul’s letters, it is above all on the Acts of
the Apostlesthat we must rely for an outline narrative of his activ-
ities. The letters themselves provide no coherent narrative, even
if they reveal much about Paul’s ambitions and his concerns for
the Christian communities founded by him and under his care.
The book of Actsis an appealing specimen of ancient narrative,
full of incident and adventure. But how reliable is it as history?
We saw earlier (pp. 65–6) that some modern historians of the
Roman world have been impressed by its verisimilitude, but that
is not quite the same thing as strict accuracy. The first two parts
of this case study will examine how the evidence of contemporary
inscriptions can be exploited to provide a historical framework
within which the narrative of Actsmight be interpreted. In the
third part, I will look at how inscriptions might allow us to guess
at how Paul’s missionary message was heard.
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