Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review, an instructor of
Liturgy in the Anglican Studies Program at Regent College, Vancouver,
and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Hope, B.C.

“Religious rivalries” was the theme of a series of seminars that the
Canadian Society of Biblical Studies held at the annual Congress of the
Social Sciences and Humanities from 1995 to 2003. The 1995–97 seminars
became the basis of the book Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for
Success in Caesarea Maritima (2000) edited by Terence Donaldson. The
1998–2001 seminars led to Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for
Success in Sardis and Smyrna (2005) edited by Richard Ascough. North
Africa was the focus of the seminars in 2002–03, and a book for that
is now in production.

This book focuses on methodological issues highlighted during the whole
nine years. The opening essay by the editor Leif Vaage is a revised
version of the paper that launched the series by raising questions about
commonly accepted understandings of how and why Christianity became the
dominant—but not only—religion of the Roman Empire. This is the
first of five essays that comprise Part 1 of the book, “Rivalries?”
which includes Philip Harland’s useful exploration of the place and
health of cities in the ancient world, the milieu in which Christianity
first spread and grew. Part 2, “Mission?” contains three essays, one
each on Christianity, Judaism, and Mithraism. Part 3, “Rise?”
consists of four essays; in the final one, Vaage argues that “it was
especially the manner in which earliest Christianity resisted Roman
rule, which made it such a probable successor.” For that resistance
was shaped by a religious vocabulary that was “expressedly political
and so frankly imperial” and was the same vocabulary used by the
imperial cult.

All the essays in this volume are solid and all raise issues that call
for further exploration, much of which has been begun in the other
volumes. The Canadian Society of Biblical Studies is to be commended for
a valuable contribution to the future of both biblical and church
history scholarship.