Early Christianity

anachronistic (e.g. Price 1984: 10–19; Beard and Crawford 1985:

26–7; Feeney 1998: 12–14). Furthermore, it is now considered

wholly erroneous to assert that pagan religion was in decline in

the early Christian centuries, and that any account of the triumph

of Christianity must account for its success in the face of the

robust vitality of paganism (e.g. MacMullen 1981 and 1997; Lane

Fox 1986; K. Hopkins 1999).

The upshot of all this recent scholarly activity is that reli-

gion is now understood as a vibrant phenomenon permeating

every aspect of life in antiquity, thus making its study central to

our understanding of ancient society and culture. Moreover,

within the field of ancient religion, early Christianity occupies a

particularly important position, in that it permits us a unique

opportunity to study the dynamics of cult in exquisite detail. This

is because of the extensive range of primary sources that have

survived about Christianity from antiquity, a factor that sets

Christianity apart from other religions in the ancient world. With

the exception of Judaism, no other ancient religion generated so

much surviving documentation. That said, however, we must be

aware of the limits of early Christianity as a test case for the study

of ancient religion (cf. Elsner 2003). Christianity was fundamen-

tally different from many of the other religions found in the

ancient Mediterranean region. Christianity was a monotheistic

cult, with room only for its own god, in stark contrast to the poly-

theism of Graeco-Roman paganism, which could accommodate

belief simultaneously in many gods. Indeed, that exclusivity of

Christianity was to cause the fledgling religion serious problems

in its encounter with the Roman empire (see chapter 6). Yet for

all that, as I hope this book will show, the massive range of

sources for early Christianity allows us to study many aspects

of life in the Mediterranean world of the Roman empire in all its

diversity. That in itself makes the subject interesting and impor-

tant for those fascinated by the ancient world. Moreover, the sorts

of paradigm shifts in the study of the Greek and Roman worlds

that I have outlined above have also had an impact on the study

of early Christianity. As we will see in chapters 2 and 3, this is

WHAT IS EARLY CHRISTIANITY?

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