The Religious History of the Roman Empire Pagans, Jews, and Christians

In recent years, there has been a great deal of re-thinking about the religious history of the Roman, Empire, from the first to the fifth century ad. These were the years when traditional pagan religions came into contact with new forms of worship and new ideas, of which some (such as Mithraism) were compatible with paganism, some (such as Judaism) co-, existed uneasily, and others (such as Christianity) suffered at least occasional confrontations. The purpose of this collection is to illustrate how scholarly work over the last twenty or so years has brought about a fundamental reassessment of many elements of ancient religious life. Key themes have been the strength of traditional religion, the evolution of Judaism in the Diaspora, and the gradual development of what we now call Christianity; above all, attention has focused on the interaction of all these various religious changes and movements, producing between them a new order of religious life. it is one of the objectives of this collection to illustrate how much has been achieved by breaking down interdisciplinary boundaries and conceiving of the process of religious change as resulting from the interaction and competition of the various communities. It is not too much to claim that there has been a revolution in our way of thinking about the whole subject and that the pieces collected here (many of them translated into English for the first time) will give the reader an opportunity to grasp the current state of an essential and absorbing debate. Book jacket.

J. A. North is Emeritus Professor of History, University College London. S. R. F. Price is Emeritus Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.