Twilights of Greek and Roman Religions: Afterlives and Transformations—A Response

Abstract

This essay theorises the mythographic historiography that goes by the phrase “Christianisation of the Roman Empire.” It considers the work of Eusebius, and some direction-setting contemporary authors, as examples of historiography that, in essence, replicates the perspectives of the Christian sources themselves. The essay investigates the theme of the Christianisation of the Roman Empire as a discourse. The theme is studied through the lenses of mediaeval anthropology and hybridity or syncretism as normal modes of constructions of religious discourses in relation to religious change. It is normally taken as fact that Greek and Roman cults and religions became extinct after the so-called Constantinian Revolution. However, the evidence of religious history is more complex. Christianity/-ies is, one can say, an epiphenomenon of a multitude of processes of cultural shifts and demographic changes affecting the circum-Mediterranean world. The “old religions” did not suddenly cease to exist but continued to shape nascent Christian discourses and practices. This process was not an even one, it differed in pace and shape from one geographic locale to the other—therefore the plural, twilights. Reading the evidence from outside the triumphalist framework characterising early Christian writers, one is left with the unavoidable impression of the interpenetration of “paganism” and Christianity. Christianity was born as a syncretic phenomenon in a process of cultural bricolage. This has some implications, not only for how we conceive of the origins of Christianity, but also for how we conceive of religion as object of theoretical reflection.

Keywords:

• historiography
• mythography
• discourse
• Christianisation of the Roman Empire
• invention of tradition
• Christian supersessionism