The question contained in this chapter’s title continues to elicit many answers from academics, particularly in publications addressed to a larger audience.1 As has been observed by more than one scholar, however, the answers have not changed much since the time of Edward Gibbon (1737–94).2 Moreover, in my view the answers typically given are not fully convincing, so I take the opportunity here to reconsider the question – in fact, even to question the question. Instead of a critical review of the answers typically offered, I seek to deconstruct the question, using the words that compose the title of the chapter as a guide for uncovering the many assumptions that lay behind it. As a result, I will complicate the picture and illustrate the many ways that things can go wrong if fundamental assumptions embedded within the question are left unexposed, as is usually the case.

“Judaism,” “Christianity,” and “paganism” are terms that historians use to distinguish between antiquity’s different “religions.” These words – all four – have an abstract quality: They suggest unified systems of belief and of doctrine, and clear and stable identities whether for individuals or for groups. Perhaps such formulations fit the modern period. In Roman antiquity, however, different groups of people made various arrangements, both with each other and with the many nonhuman powers that filled the space between the spheres of the heavens and the earth around which they turned. “Paganism” – the larger culture housing all of the empire’s different communities of Jews and of Christians – actually refers to an overwhelmingly diverse assortment of loca sancta, practices, traditions, and convictions.1 Many of the ancient city’s social activities that we would classify as “government” or as “athletics” or as “entertainment” were in fact “religious,” shaped by ritual displays of respect for and loyalty to those gods guarding the city’s well-being. And, whether as observers or as participants, those people whom we house within our other two abstract categories, “Judaism” and “Christianity,” often and freely – even enthusiastically – joined in.

Asking about the emergence of Christian material culture is something like asking when a river becomes a river. Countless drops of water fall on innumerable hillsides and plains, and make their way downhill, following the pull of gravity until they coalesce into rivulets and trickles. Those in turn gather into larger flows – streams, creeks, and washes – which combine and combine again into stronger and fuller courses. All the rivers of the world (the Nile, the Danube, the Congo, the Ganges, and the Yangtze, as well as the smaller and more anonymous ones) begin this way, fed by tributaries and histories of rain. When does the river become a river? We can point confidently to the mouth of the delta where the river empties out into the Gulf of Mexico and call that “the Mississippi,” but we must also recognize that its outflow represents a watershed draining a substantial part of a continent.

Although the Christian movement of the first century was birthed under the shadow of Rome’s empire, it was only in the late twentieth century that New Testament scholars began giving serious consideration to the ways in which that movement engaged and challenged Roman imperial power. This relatively recent avenue of scholarly inquiry, which many refer to as “empire criticism,” is the focus of this essay. In particular, this essay will consider the emergence of this criticism, discuss diverse ways early Christian writings engaged the Roman empire, recognize and respond to scholarly criticism, and offer a concluding note on empire criticism and the Christian movement in the second and third centuries.

Classification systems using terminology or a symbolic system that is not intuitive form the basis of scientific “knowledge.” In this system, particularly unusual phenomena are slotted into established patterns. Then, when features that do not fit present themselves, scholars treat them in different ways: (1) scrubbing the anomalous data as individual peculiarity, or as contaminated by some outside influence; (2) engaging in fine-tuning the classification system by subdividing or changing categories or by refining the mathematical analysis; or (3) declaring the entire approach invalid. As scholars have worked to incorporate a growing corpus of Gnostic texts from third- and fourth-century Coptic codices into patristic accounts of Gnostic sects, older heresiological categories do not fit. Some scholars call for dropping the terms “Gnostic” and “Gnosticism,” but the preferred approach remains fine-tuning or revising categories.1 A common variant of “scrubbing data” in this field organizes divergent material from a text into editorial layers added to an original core.

In the earliest period of the Christian movements, resurrection meant many things to many people. Claims that resurrection is unique to Christian discourse or unattested in Greco-Roman thought are based on overly determined understandings that respect neither the diversity of early Christian conceptions nor the breadth of Greco-Roman lore.1 The explosion of research on resurrection forbids a comprehensive survey. In this essay, the focus will be on ontology – what resurrection meant for the body, a body different from yet in continuity with the celestial and deathless body it becomes. From this discussion follows an inquiry as to what resurrection meant with regard to human identity: Do resurrected individuals remain human, or do they transcend humanity to become a higher entity?

When was the first history of ancient Christianity written? The answer of course is not so simple. For instance, one may think of Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica (c.324) as the first account of ancient Christian history, covering the time of Christ up until the time of Constantine. However, the term historia in Eusebius’s title implies “narrative” more than a modern notion of “what happened.”1 In other words, much depends on what is meant by the category of ancient Christian history, and so debate ensues about the nature of studying this subject.

The condition of being a slave in antiquity, marked by “social death” and “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons,”1 was so miserable as to be excluded from the ancient ideal of happiness (εὐδαιμονία): “How can a man be happy when he must serve someone as a slave [δουλεύειν]?” says Callicles to Socrates (Plato, Gorg. 491E). Families in the Greco-Roman world often included slaves,2 although manumission in the Roman world was more frequent than once thought.3