Larry Hurtado. Baylor University Press, 2017. 196 pages.
The replacement of Greco-Roman paganism with Christianity as the dominant religious faith of the Roman world is among the most significant shifts in human history. Larry Hurtado’s Destroyer of the gods explores the nature of this Christianity, and the ways in it was distinctive within its Roman context. The scope of “early” Christianity that Hurtado covers includes the New Testament and writings of the church in the second and third centuries AD. It stops short of the fourth century which saw the legalization of Christianity close to its beginning, and the illegalization of other faiths before its end—that era would deserve its own treatment in a separate work. Readers who take an interest in the way Christianity is distinctive within cultures of today’s world will find this work an illuminating book.
Chapter 1 reveals what non-Christians thought of the emerging Jesus-movement. Ample records survive which demonstrate how Christianity jarred with the values of both the parent Jewish faith and the Greco-Roman society into which it soon spread. Hurtado observes that for culturally sophisticated writers to be spending much time rebutting Christianity shows that it had become a growing force of significant cultural power. From pagan critics, who were very open to a plurality of religious expressions, it is shown that they saw early Christianity as “different, and objectionably so” (p. 20). Surviving written criticisms exist by Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, Lucian, Celsus. Criticisms included the less-than-generous misunderstanding that “Christians engaged in orgiastic sex, incest, and cannibalism” (p. 21),[1] were disloyal to the Roman state, abstained from the religions of state and local community, and aggressively encouraged others to do likewise. Another criticism that was levelled against Christianity was that it was simplistic, more a superstition than a bona fide religion, and appealed only to the lowest and stupidest parts of society. Hurtado also observes that modern scholarship of early Christianity has neglected to examine what attracted converts despite the considerable social and other costs.
Chapter 2, “A New Kind of Faith,” explores the religious environment of early Christianity and how Christianity was an altogether different kind of religion, if it could have been deemed in its context a “religion” at all. As Hurtado explains, the polytheistic faith of the ancient world was so interwoven into daily life that the Christian refusal to acknowledge the gods seemed to be a rejection of faith itself: early Christians were decried as “atheists.” Their lack of religious shrines, altars, and idols strengthened this impression, and the strident refusals to participate in the religious practices of their families and communities would have seemed positively anti-social.
The third chapter considers the formation of Christian religious identity. Modern western readers will be familiar with—if unaware of—the assumption that religion and nationality are separatable concepts. This is far from normal for most times and places in human history, not least the Roman world where one would be expected to worship the assorted gods of their nation and city. Hurtado explores the way that religion—whether inherited or deliberately adopted—was formed in the Roman world, before going on to discuss how Christian identity was defined in this context. He observes that tensions are regularly evident between a Christian identity and normal social and religious practices of the peoples they were converted from and lived amongst. For an unusually multi-ethnic religion, the matter of how much of the prevailing culture could be accommodated into the new faith was an important question to answer. Hurtado also outlines the terminology that was used by Christians and others to describe themselves and their community, observing that “the multiplicity of such terms (among earlier Christians) probably indicates a vibrant and vigorous sense of a distinctive group identity” (p. 97), although many earlier labels were dropped by Christians of later antiquity.
The fourth chapter describes how early Christianity was a peculiarly “bookish” faith. While many assume the importance of sacred texts to all religions today, it is a mistaken assumption based on the role the Scripture plays in Christianity and Judaism, and to an extent, Islam. Sacred texts are less integral to the definition and daily practice of other religions, including those of the Roman Empire. Hurtado surveys the vast amount of surviving evidence that illustrates the many and varied functions that literature played for early Christians. Evidence includes not only the content of the written text but also the form of the writing on pages and the physical artefacts that survive to the present. He also considers the work involved in composition, copying, and circulation of letters, the Gospels, and other writings by early Christians, as well as the rise of the codex (i.e. book) which was to overtake scrolls as the preferred form for Christian literature. The writing habits of those who copied the texts, together with what they reveal to us about early Christianity, are also explored.
The final chapter explores the subject of behaviour. Early Christians are demonstrated as consciously belonging to the societies they lived in, but deliberately separate from them in terms of their “true” or “heavenly” citizenship and distinctive way of life. The late second-century writing known as The Epistle to Diognetus forcefully articulates this. Contrary to the modern assumption that religion is largely about morality, Greco-Roman religions were primarily concerned with activity related to rituals and sacrifice. This chapter sketches the way Roman society permitted violence in the form of gladiatorial combat for entertainment and the exposure (i.e. disposal unto death) of unwanted infants; practices that early Christians vehemently opposed. It also describes the way sexual morality was defined: gratuitous to the sexual desires of freeborn men, restrictive to those of freeborn women, and abusive of the persons of slaves and children. In contrast to this, Christians (and Jews) had a distinctive and stringent ethic of sex and marriage. A further point of distinction on this is the fact that this ethic was grounded in theological beliefs—Hurtado points out the ways the Apostle Paul constructed his sexual ethic in 1 Thessalonians 4–5 and 1 Corinthians 5–7, and how it contrasted with prevailing norms.
Readers of Destroyers of the gods may wish to reflect on contemporary criticisms of Christianity—both correct and incorrect—and consider how and why Christianity has values that differ from and at time offend wider society. The distinctiveness of Christianity in its earliest context could also prompt Christian readers today to consider how to clarify its distinctiveness in our context, in which secular critics—often with a naïve posture of religious neutrality—deem all religions to be fundamentally very similar. Perceptive Christian readers of this book will be challenged to more firmly grasp the driving reasons behind the increasingly distinctive Christian ethic that marks us off in many ways from non-Christians in New Zealand society. For any who take interest in “how Christianity destroyed one world—and created another,” Destroyer of the gods is a must-read.[2]
Destroyer of the gods is available from Fishpond.co.nz for NZ$55 (price as at July 2024). It is also available to borrow for inter-loan through some public libraries—I read a copy from the Auckland Council Libraries, which has copies (oddly, of all places) at the Otahuhu and Otara libraries (but a great use of ratepayer taxes!). It is also available for borrowing online as an E-book through Archive.org with a simple login required.
The church historian Justo González offers illumination on how this misunderstanding came about:
“Many of the rumors … were based misunderstanding of Christian practice or teaching. Thus, for instance, Christians gathered every week to celebrate what they called a ‘love feast.’ This was done in private, and only the initiates (those who had been baptized) were admitted. Say the more, Christians called each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister,’ and there were many who spoke of their spouses as their ‘sister’ or ‘brother.’ Joining these known facts, imagination drew a picture of Christian worship as an orgiastic celebration in which Christians ate and drank to excess, put the lights out, and vented their lusts in indiscriminate and even incestuous unions.
Communion also gave rise to another rumor. Since Christians spoke of being nourished by the body and blood of Christ, and since they also spoke with him as a little child, some came to the conclusion that, as an initiation right, the Christians concealed a newborn [i.e. an infant who had been “rescued” from abandonment] and a loaf of bread, and then ordered the neophyte [new convert] to cut the loaf. When this was done, they all joined in eating the warm fish of the infant. The new initiate, who had unwittingly become the main perpetrator of the crime, was thus forced to remain silent.”
See Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present Day, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 1:49-50.
[2] Quote is from the back cover of the book.
Chris Northcott 