Late ancient Christianity

Abstract

Late Ancient Christianity. Edited by Virginia Burrus. A People's History of Christianity, vol. 2. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005, Pp. xv, 318. $35.00.) The sweeping narrative of Christianity is a drama that historians have cast and recast repeatedly over two millennia. As in any theatrical production, the playwright wields considerable power in how the story is told, which characters deliver the great lines, and what events make up the plot. Where many historians have attempted to dramatize the story of Christianity by focusing on the literary evidence left by members of the institutional leadership, whether in the works of individual bishops, or in the collective statements of faith and discipline found in conciliar documents, or in decrees handed down by Christian emperors, the scholars who have contributed to this second volume of A People's History of Christianity have engaged in a significant retelling of the story of Christianity during the of the late Roman Empire. These authors have presented a depiction of Christian that significantly widens the cast of characters, giving speaking roles to many of those who might previously have been mere extras, if they appeared on stage at all. In a sense, the very idea of a people's history is a play written from the perspective not of the hero, but of the chorus. The underlying methodology guiding this collection of essays appeals to literary sources but asks different questions of them, or it looks to literary and material sources considered outside the bounds of traditional evidence, or employs some combination of both approaches. The prevailing effort is to discover and present Christianity as it was lived out by ordinary people who identified themselves as Christians. What emerges from these investigations is a considerable variety in practice from to place, whether place is defined in terms of geographic region, or in terms of home, shrine, or basilica. The reader gains insight into the experience of ordinary Christians, including children at play, pilgrims seeking the healing power of relics, and wealthy patrons extending hospitality to itinerant teachers. What also emerges is a high degree of complexity in relationships amongst Christians, between Christians and Jews or other non-Christians, and between Christians and their own pre-Christian identities. The following two examples will help to illustrate the kinds of questions and insights that run throughout the collection. In her essay entitled Fictional Narratives and Social Critique, Judith Perkins argues that the emergence of prose fiction as a new literary genre signaled and even facilitated a rethinking of prevailing assumptions about social structures, cultural identities, and interpersonal relationships. Through the crafting of fictional accounts of the apostles (known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles), Christians participated in this process. Where scholarship had neglected these texts, Perkins finds in them valuable testimony for the kinds of self-understandings, beliefs, and attitudes motivating Christians in an earlier period (47). Her chapter first compares the Christian Acts to Greek romances to draw out the ways in which Christians sought to challenge such social and cultural institutions as marriage and elite privilege. For example, the Greek romances tended to focus on the union or reunion of a young, elite couple, while the Acts often featured a disruption of marriage when a wife understood her conversion to Christianity to necessitate her rejection of sexual intercourse. …