Jews and Others
in the time of Julian’s rule: two at Damascus, of which one has barely
been repaired, but at the expense of the Church not the Synagogue;
the other basilica lies in squalid ruins. Basilicas were burned in Gaza,
Ascalon, Berytus, and almost everywhere in that area, and no one
sought revenge. A basilica was also burned at Alexandria by pagans
and Jews.Nearly all of Ambrose’s cases relate to the borders of the Holy Land. But the
future was to show that street-level conflict, involving Jewish communities,
could break out anywhere. Indeed we know that it already had; for almost
the earliest of the long series of legislative acts by Christian emperors con-
cerning the Jews were pronouncements by Constantine forbidding Jews to
stone or otherwise attack Jewish converts to Christianity.^31
Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity
That brings us closer to a different level of religious co-existence, contact or
conflict, namely the questions of individual conversion to or from pagan-
ism, Judaism, or Christianity; of actual dialogues, discussions, or debates con-
ducted across the boundaries of religious systems; and of theoretical or theo-
logical expositions of any of these religious systems, either as such or in
explicit contrast with any of the others.
To treat these questions adequately would be to write the entire religious
and intellectual history of the period. But it may be possible to keep to the
very broadest lines, beginning with the last-mentioned level, conscious reli-
gious self-definition in contrast with other systems, returning finally to the
street-level co-existence and conflict in the half-century from the s to
the s.
It might immediately be objected that to talk of ‘‘paganism’’ at all, as a
definable religious system, as an ‘‘-ism,’’ is to apply a wholly inappropriate
and misleading category. This view could be defended for the classical period
proper, though even that was marked by profoundly different philosophi-
cal views of the gods and by explicit discussions such as Cicero’sOn the Na-
ture of the Gods, or later by Porphyry’s views on sacrifice as expressed in his
On Abstinence from Living Things. But by the fourth century the challenge
of Christianity had long since forced those who observed the cults of the
gods into explicit philosophical reflection on their system of belief and prac-
tice—which we therefore may appropriately call paganism; obvious fourth-
.Cod.Theod.,,Cod. Just.I,,Linder(n.),no.;Const. Sirmond.Cod.
Theod.,,;Linder(n.),no..