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Journal of Religious History Vol. 33, No.
4, December 2009
ADAM M. SCHOR
Conversion by the Numbers: Benets and Pitfalls of Quantitative Modelling in the Study of Early Christian Growth
Proponents and critics of numerically modelling early Christian growth have missed many complexities of this approach. This study re-examines quantitative modelling by conducting thought experiments, built from initial assumptions to population projections. First, an apostolic mission model assumes that Christianity grew via persuasive leaders; it projects a cubic growth curve. Second, a values reproduction model ties higher reproduction and conversion to certain Christian values; it projects an exponential curve. Next, a social reaction model links growth to interconfessional interactions; it projects a logistic curve. Such formal models reveal numerical parameters of conversion and the impact of various assumptions. Together, they illustrate the variability of early Christian population projections. They also showcase limitations of traditional quantitative modelling, which tends to oversimplify social conditions, to mischaracterise ancient religion, and to inspire teleological reasoning. Newer network models can overcome only some of these limitations. Used carefully, however, quantitative methods supplement familiar socio-cultural approaches.
How did the Mediterranean world become predominantly Christian? This question has, more than any other, shadowed the study of late Roman history. Generations of scholars have approached it, but each new theoretical angle seems to reopen basic questions. Rest assured, this article is not another attempt to explain the rise of Christianity. It is an effort to reassess a scholarly approach sometimes touted and sometimes derided: formal quantitative modelling. The topic may seem odd. While Adolf von Harnack attempted to measure the expansion of Christianity, most scholars have found insufcient evidence.1
1. A. von Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. J. Moffatt (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1996), esp. Vol. 2, chapters 34. Assistant Professor Adam M. Schor teaches History at Long Island University, Brookville, NY, USA. Translations of ancient sources are provided for convenience. All translations in this article are my own.
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2009 The Author Journal compilation 2009 Association for the Journal of Religious History
C O NVE R S I O N BY T H E N U M B E R S
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Some have explored types or images of conversion.2 Others have looked for underlying social or cultural transformations.3 Recent attempts to count Christians via proxy sources have been met with criticism.4 And efforts to chronicle Christianisation made little impression.5 Without numbers or reliable proxies, scholars relied on gut feeling, leaving divergent impressions of the size of the Christian community.6 It was thus surprising in 1997 to encounter the debate sparked by Rodney Starks The Rise of Christianity. A sociologist of American religion, Stark applied formal models to early Christian material. Stark described early Christianity as an organised but open movement, with a distinct social boundary and a set kernel of doctrine. The result, he argued, was consistent conversion and higher birth rates, leading to exponential growth.7 Starks work drew thoughtful responses from other scholars. But the participants tended to keep to their theoretical preferences. Social historians suggested additions to Starks conclusions.8 Cultural historians challenged his nave reading of the evidence.9 Historiographical critics questioned his social science rhetoric.10 Some respondents expressed admiration; most found aws and emerged with their assumptions intact. Still, Starks work has won over journalists and some historians. Stark has continued with his approach in the recent book Cities of
2. For example, A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), chapters 914; R. OConnell, Images of Conversion in St. Augustines Confessions (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996). 3. For example, E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 4. R. Bagnall, Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change in Early Byzantine Egypt, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 19 (1982): 10524; R. Bagnall, Conversion and Onomastics: A Reply, Zeischrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 69 (1987): 24350; S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land Men and Gods in Asia Minor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), esp. chapters 1617. See the critique of Bagnall offered by E. Wipszycka in her review of Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change, Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 62 (1986): 17381. 5. For example, F. R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization (Leiden: Brill, 1993). For a critique, see E. Wipszycka, La Christianization de lgypte aux 4e6e sicles: Aspects sociaux et thniques, in tudes sur le Christianisme dans lgypte de lantiquit tardive (Rome: Instituto Patristico Augustinianum, 1996), 63105. 6. R. L. Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 592 envisioned a stagnating Christian community of about 45% of the Roman population in 300 C.E. T. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 191 envisioned Christianity rapidly overtaking Roman society. 7. R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1997), esp. 413, 2021, 25, 4445, 79, and chapters 910. 8. For example, K. Hopkins, Christian Number and Its Implications, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 2 (1998): 185226. 9. For example, E. Clark, Review of Stark, American Historical Review 103, no. 1 (1998): 153; E. Castelli, Gender Theory and The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Stark, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 2 (1998): 22757. 10. For example, T. Klutz, The Rhetoric of Science in The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Starks Sociological Account of Christianization, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6.2 (1998): 16284.
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God.11 His numbers, proposed as hypothetical, are often treated as a reliable estimate.12 Appearances have deceived us here in many ways. Debates over quantitative modelling have not done justice to this approach, its uses, and its limitations. Starks model is one of several for organisational growth. Without concrete data, none truly counts early Christians. Every model relies on debatable assumptions about conversion and religious community. Nevertheless, the models offer perspectives unavailable from textual methods. This study aims to provide some clarity to the modelling debate by conducting thought experiments. These models are offered here neither as answers nor as caricatures, but as serious objects of consideration. Three of the thought experiments feature formal models, built from explicit assumptions to projected conversion curves (if the occasional mathematical terms prove confusing, the graphs and gures may help to clarify). Each model has merits and aws, some particular to the model, others endemic to traditional modelling. By considering all of these models, however, we may explore some dynamics of religious conversion. And the models shortcomings point to a more nuanced method of network modelling, which may better accommodate our evidence and our concerns. The Apostolic Mission Model (Cubic Growth) Conversion is a process of convincing. Those who join a religious community need to be won over by some person or force that they trust. In early Christian sources, this convincing takes several standard forms. Some claimed a direct contact with God through visions like those of Paul and Constantine.13 Others were convinced by an expert teacher, such as Clement or Origen. Many, we are told, were won over by instructors who spoke with authority.14 Others were supposedly entranced by miracles.15 These modes of conversion vary, but all of them rely on authoritative gures. Famously, Harnack described a Christian
11. For example, J. Meacham, Tidings of Pride, Prayer, and Pluralism, The New York Times, 25 December 2005, Book Review via archives [Cited 3 August 2009] available from URL: http:// www.nytimes.com; H. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), esp. chapter 1. See also H. Drake, Models of Christian Expansion, in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, Essays in Explanation, edited by W. V . Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 23. R. Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 2006). 12. For example, H. Remus, Persecution, in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches, edited by A. J. Blasi et al. (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2002), 432; W. Carter, Vulnerable Power: The Roman Empire Challenged by the Early Christians, in Handbook of Early Christianity, 453. 13. Acts 9: 19; Galatians 1: 1318; Eusebius of Caesarea, Vita Constantini, in Eusebius Werke 1. Uber das Leben Constantins, Constantins Rede ad die heilige Versammlung. Tricennatsrede an Constantin (in Greek) edited by I. A. Heikel (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902), translation: Eusebius Life of Constantine, trans. A. Cameron and S. Hill, 1.2832. 14. Matthew 7:28, in regard to Jesus. Similar power is accorded to Peter and John in Acts 4:13. Harnack dwelt on the role of authority in conversion in The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (book 2, chapter 5). 15. For example, Acts 2:43 or Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Historia religiosa: Lhistoire des moines de Syrie (in Latin), edited by and trans. P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghen (Paris: Cerf, 1977), translation: A History of the Monks of Syria, trans. R. M. Price (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1985), 26.16.
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mission led by apostles, teachers, and clerics.16 Many scholars have questioned this notion. Nevertheless, scholars continue to explain conversion as a triumph of religious authorities, institutional and charismatic.17 Conversion accounts (and Harnack) point to the main presupposition of our apostolic mission model. Let us assume that the prime source of new Christian converts was the inuence of individuals perceived to possess some spiritual gift. Christian scripture links these gifts to Jesus and the apostles.18 Eusebius traces them to successors: apologists like Clement and Origen, as well as martyrs. Later church historians included holy ascetics, the apostles of our time.19 Scholars have reinterpreted these Christian stories as cultural artifacts. Yet, many still stress the role in Christianisation played by arbiters of the holy.20 Any Christian mission, then, should begin with these exceptional gures. Yet, when writers refer to an apostolic succession, they usually mean clerics. Each bishops clergy managed the process of baptism. For Harnack, their presence in towns and villages marked a mature Christian community.21 Bishops and priests did not exhaust the list. In many rural areas, monastic leaders established the rst Christian presence.22 But bishops eventually subordinated these other leaders; their control of conversion stemmed from their claim to apostolic authority. A mission model posits that the growth of the Christian community depended on the efforts of holy people and clerics. So let us try to put this in formal terms. To simplify, let us assume that charismatic gures maintained one average rate of convincing, per holy person per year. Let us also assume that institutional leaders maintained another average rate of convincing, per cleric per year. If we posit zero population growth, the number of Christians would be a function of the number of active clerics and holy people. But how many Christian persuaders were there, and how did these numbers change? Precise gures are impossible. Christian sources t the apostles into symbolic numerical counts (e.g., the twelve and the seventy-two23). All these counts excluded women, even as the stories cast women in essential roles.
16. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, esp. Vol. 1, 41735. 17. For example, W. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), esp. chapter 4. See also D. Kyrtatas, The Signicance of Leadership and Organization in the Spread of Christianity, in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, Essays in Explanation, edited by W. V Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), chapter 4. On Weberian models, see C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), chapter 1. 18. A point expounded by Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. 1, 398406. 19. Runus of Aquileia, Historia ecclesiastica, in Eusebius Werke 2.2, Die Kirchengeschichte (in Latin), edited by E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen (Leipzig: 1908), 11.4, translation: The Church History of Runus of Aquileia, trans. P. Amidon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). See F. Thelamon, Aptres et prophtes de ntre temps, Antichit altoadriatiche 39 (1992): 17198. 20. P. Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapter 3. 21. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, book 3, chapter 4. 22. Early Syriac church literature emphasises the role of apostolic ascetics. See D. Caner, Wandering Begging Monks: The Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), esp. 5082. 23. Luke 6:12, 10:1.
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Martyrs, already countless to Eusebius,24 were augmented by later acta. Harnack devoted a quarter of his book to the earliest evidence of clergy region by region,25 but his sources focus on bishops, not the lower clergy. What is apparent about Christian leaders is their geographical distribution. Each community clung to memories of its charismatic heroes. Harnack, thus, noted an uneven but constant spatial spread, from town to town and from each town to its countryside.26 Christian leaders relied on nances from their parishioners, which were more or less determined by the land under cultivation. Hence, as Christian leaders expanded their geographic reach, we would have reason to assume that the Christian leadership was growing in a quadratic fashion. With assumptions in place, we can assemble a mission model formula. The number of clerics and holy people each varies with the square of the time since the mission began. Meanwhile, the rate of conversion depends on the number of leading clerics and holy people. Substitution and integration gives us a formula for the number of Christians. According to this rst model, that number should increase over time along a cubic curve.27 This thought experiment yields some conclusions. If we assume that conversion resulted from inuential leaders in a steadily expanding area, then Christian growth should slowly accelerate. One way to envision this process is as a pyramid growing sideways and upward, where the base area represents the growing Christian leadership, and the volume represents their converts. The formula would lose validity only when steady expansion ceased, either within Roman regions or beyond the frontiers. This formula, however, does not say how fast conversion would proceed; that depends on the (supposed) constants. To illustrate, let us assume some data points (see Table 1 and Fig. 1). For example 1, say there were twelve gifted apostles in 40 CE and 1000 total Christians. And say, 250 ordinary clerics in 100 CE and fty gifted ones. Assume a gifted leader can convert on average twenty-ve people per year and an ordinary cleric ten people per year. Extrapolating these gures yields the numbers in the rst column of table 1. If, for example 2, we change the rates to thirty-ve people per holy person per year
24. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica: Eusebius Werke 2.2, Die Kirchengeschichte (in Greek), edited by E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen (Leipzig: 1908), translation: History of the Church, translated by G. A. Williamson and A. Louth (New York, NY: Penguin, 1989), 8.813. 25. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, book 4, chapters 13. 26. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, esp. book 4, chapter 4. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization, chapters 8 and 10 noted the varied pace and extent of spread even within a region like Syria. 27. The equations that correspond to these assumptions are: dN H = ht 2 + k , C = ct 2 + m, = aH + bC dt where N represents the number of Christians, H the number of gifted holy people, C the number of ordinary clerics, k the initial number of holy people, m the initial number of clerics, t the time, and the other quantities (a, b, h, c) stand for constants. The general solution to these equations is: ah + bc 3 N= t + ( ak + bm ) t + N 0 3 where N0 represents the initial number of Christians (in this case, year 0 = AD 40).
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Table 1 Apostolic mission model Example 1 Parameters Holy people in 40 CE Clerics in 40 CE Holy people in 100 CE Clerics in 100 CE Converts per holy person Converts per cleric Christians in 40 CE Christians in 100 CE Christians in 150 CE Christians in 200 CE Christians in 250 CE Christians in 300 CE Christians in 350 CE Example 2 Example 3 Example 4
Twelve Zero Fifty 250 Twenty-ve per year Ten per year 1000 88 003 459 180 1.36 million 3.02 million 5.69 million 9.61 million
Twelve Zero Fifty 250 Thirty-ve per year Fifteen per year 1000 127 800 673 262 1.99 million 4.45 million 8.38 million 14.1 million
Twelve Zero Eighty 400 Twenty-ve per year Ten per year 1000 133 000 736 475 2.21 million 4.95 million 9.36 million 15.8 million
Twelve Zero Thirty 150 Twenty-ve per year Ten per year 1000 42 448 274 320 788 557 1.74 million 3.25 million 5.47 million
Example Examp le 3
32 million Christians
Example 2 Examp
40% per decade exponential growth from 1000 Christians in 40 CE (Stark's scenario)
Examp xam le e1
E Examp le 4
40 CE
80 CE
120 CE
160 CE
200 CE
240 CE
280 CE
320 CE
360 CE
400 CE
440 CE
Figure 1 Apostolic mission model.
and fteen people per cleric per year, projections emerge differently. Extrapolating these gures yields a steeper curve at every point. If the growth rate of holy people and clergy is changed, the curve shifts even more. For example 3, let us maintain the rst rate of conversion (twenty-ve per holy person, ten per cleric) but posit 400 clerics and eighty gifted holy people in 100 CE. This
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yields steeper growth. For example 4, let us posit thirty holy people and 150 leading clerics in 100 CE, which yields the much lower gures of the fourth column. Each combination of rates and initial numbers is plausible. But the projected results cut a wide range. The apostolic mission model reveals some insights as well as shortcomings. Literary sources present conversion as persuasion by gures of authority. This rst model reveals a way such a mission could proceed. Yet, plausibility is hardly proof. The model rigidly posits a constant pace of spatial expansion. It trusts the geographic scatter of clerics and holy people recorded in sources, even though Christian communities may have invented founders to rally their communities. It also takes stories of miraculous conversion as reective of events (or at least perceptions), rather than as tales to edify the faithful. Most importantly, the apostolic mission model ties Christian growth to a singular vision of religious authority. It reduces agents of conversion to two categories, institutional and charismatic, while ignoring other attributes (such as gender, education, and social rank). This model cannot account for shifts of circumstance that altered Christian perceptions of power third-century persecutions and fourth-century imperial support. Nor can it account for other sources of new Christians besides gures of authority. These issues might call for a different model. The Values Reproduction Model (Exponential Growth) Since its earliest times, Christianity meant more to its adherents than leadership and theology. It represented social values, which could become behavioural norms. Virtually all witnesses noted Christians exclusivity towards other cults.28 Many also pointed to Christian proselytism.29 Yet, it was charitable giving, mutual support, and self-control that reportedly drew Pachomius to the church.30 Crucially, it was not clerics whom he observed, but ordinary Christians, living out their teachings. The behaviours that Pachomius witnessed were summarised in quasi-normative texts (e.g., Pauline letters and the Didache).31 Not every Christian followed the written rules. But the guidebooks helped to dene Christian communities. Harnack, among many scholars,
28. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae (in Latin), trans. B. Radice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), translation: Letters and Panegyricus [of] Pliny. Epistulae 10.96 decries Christian obstinacy in refusing to sacrice to other gods. Lucian of Samosata, Perigrinus: Lucian: The Passing of Peregrinus. The Runaways. Toxaris or Friendship. The Dance. Lexiphanes. The Eunuch. Astrology. The Mistaken Critic. The Parliament . . . Disowned (in Greek), edited by and trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 13, describes the primary source of hostility towards Christians as their denial of all the Greek gods. 29. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.96 presents Christianity as an infection. Celsus calls it both a cult and a philosophy, and notes the efforts of Christians to dupe simpletons (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum: Contre Celse/Origne [in Greek], edited by M. Borret [Paris: Cerf, 2005], translation: Contra Celsum/Origen, trans. H. Chadwick [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 1.27. Elsewhere, Celsus notes the successful growth of the movement (3.10). 30. Bohairic Life of Pachomius 7, translation: Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. 1: The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples, trans. A. Veilleux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1980), 23295. See also Lucian, Perigrinus, 13. 31. Textual guidance includes both general moral principles and specic rulings (e.g., the eating of sacricial meat, exogamy, recognition of travelling believers and prophets).
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recognised the importance of a clear values barrier.32 Even Ramsey MacMullen, who distanced himself from theology, acknowledged Christian exclusivity.33 And no matter how elaborate or basic the list of shared behaviours, Christian numbers, both born and reborn, depended on the witnessed living of Christian lives. The importance of Christian values and their social implications leads us to the main presupposition of our second model, the values reproduction model. Assume, this time, that the main source of new Christians was the attractive way in which Christians lived out their values. Assume that these values were observably enacted that Christians lived in public accord with their quasi-normative literature. Finally, assume that the advantages of these values were also observable. Our task, then, would be to deduce the relative impact of particular behavioural norms on conversion and reproductive population growth. Let us start with values that may have affected Christian reproduction. Our previous model assumed a static total population. Yet, scholars have suggested that Christians differed reproductively from their contemporaries, with some norms declared population positive and some population negative. As positives, one may count mutual support and care (particularly amid famines and epidemics), as well as prohibitions on abortion, contraception, and infanticide. Most notably (though perhaps anachronistically), Stark cited the command to be fruitful and multiply.34 As negatives, one may cite sexual continence, even among ordinary Christians.35 It is difcult to determine the balance of forces. It is also difcult to compare birth and death rates across the Roman world. Roman settlement was either shrinking or growing depending on the region;36 infanticide, abortion, and gender imbalance are hard to measure.37 Funereal evidence suggests that Roman demographics differed little from the typical pre-modern pattern, shaped by disease, nutrition, and violence.38 Still, even small differences might alter the six live births per woman required (on average) to maintain a stable Roman population. And it is possible that Christian growth contributed to regional demographic expansion.
32. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, book 2, chapter 3; A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 2168; E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 12737. 33. R. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100400) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 1724. See also J. B. Rives, Christian Expansion and Christian Ideology, in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, Essays in Explanation, edited by W. V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), chapter 2. 34. Mutual care: Stark, Rise, 8290; prohibitions on abortion, infanticide: 1227; be fruitful: 116. 35. See A. Vbus, Celibacy: A Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society, 1951). 36. See R. Duncan-Jones, Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity, in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by S. Swain and M. Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2052. 37. See Castelli, Gender Theory and The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Stark, esp. 23741. 38. See B. Frier, Demography, in Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 11: The High Empire A. D. 70192, edited by A. Bowman et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 787816.
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Now let us turn to how values could inuence conversion. Early Christians may have been vilied, but their values won admiration, even from some persecutors. Observers might have seen a community pooling nances, ransoming prisoners, visiting the sick, and supporting widows and orphans. They would have heard people sharing affectionate expressions and advocating self-control.39 And they would have noted stories of martyrs, condent about salvation. Moreover, observers were not left to watch. Christians may not have preached too loudly, but they did encourage converts: As the oft-quoted Tertullian said, men are made Christians, not born Christians.40 The constant stream of converts would itself display a life path to others.41 For purposes of this model, the particular list of values is less important than this basic proposition: the social impact of Christian values would depend directly on the number of Christians enacting them. More Christians would mean more effect on population growth. And more Christians would mean more display of values, and thus more attraction of converts. With new assumptions in place, we can build a values reproduction formula. The change in the number of Christians depends on the number of converts plus the number of Christians born, less the number dying. The average birth/death rate depends on the Christian population, multiplied by some (supposed) constant. Meanwhile, the rate of attracted converts (we assume) also depends on the size of the Christian population, again multiplied by some constant (the rate at which observers were attracted to displays of Christian values). These assumptions produce a familiar demographic result. Each year, the Christian population would grow by the same percentage; numbers would grow exponentially over time.42 As a thought experiment, this second model leads to its own conclusions. If Christian values consistently affected reproduction and survival, then the number of Christians should grow, at rst, more slowly than the rst model, then more speedily. One way to envision this process would be to imagine a colony of bacteria. In a particular suitable environment, such colonies grow at a constant percentage per hour, so long as food and space is available. The values reproduction model would indicate a similar growth curve for Christians, in a given suitable environment, so long as raw materials (potential converts) remained.
39. Consider the Pauline language of attachment (cf. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 8494). 40. Tertullian, Apologeticus (in Latin), translation: in Tertullian, Minucius Felix, edited by and trans. T. R. Glover (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 18.4. 41. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine, 2501. 42. The differential equation corresponding to these assumptions is: dN = (c + b) N dt where N represents the number of Christians, t represents time, c represents the growth rate due to conversion, and b represents the growth rate due to reproduction (the birth rate less the death rate). The general solution to this differential equation is: N = N 0 e(c+ b)t where N0 represents the initial number of Christians.
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Table 2 Values reproduction model Example 1 Parameters Christians in 40 CE Rate of growth as a percentage of Christian population per decade (via conversion, via reproduction) Christians in 40 CE Christians in 100 CE Christians in 150 CE Christians in 200 CE Christians in 250 CE Christians in 300 CE Christians in 350 CE Example 2 Example 3 Example 4
1000 40 (35, 5)
1000 30 (25, 5)
500 40 (35, 5)
5000 30 (25, 5)
1000 7530 40 496 217 795 1.17 million 6.30 million 33.9 million
1000 4827 17 921 66 537 247 042 917 231 3.40 million
500 3765 20 254 108 946 586 019 3.20 million 16.9 million
5000 24 133 89 604 332 686 1.24 million 4.59 million 17.0 million
This assumption, of course, begs the question: What if conditions changed? Scholars have suggested many such shifts, some negative (e.g., the growing hostility of non-Christians and the government), others positive (e.g., increasingly ascetic Roman sensibilities). If conditions varied over time or by region, it might affect both the survival/reproduction rate and also the attractiveness and visibility of Christian values. Yet, so long as the overall growth rate remained positive per person per year, numbers would still increase along an (different) exponential curve. The exponential growth template has already attracted scholars and yielded observations. The model projects a tiny Christian community for the rst few generations. This seems to make sense of the invisibility of Christians in early imperial sources. At the same time, it projects rapidly increasing numbers in later generations. Christian growth might look miraculous. But to Stark, it was a matter of arithmetic.43 And yet, an exponential model does not tell us when the explosion of Christian growth took place. Again, much depends on initial numbers and the supposed rate of growth (see table 2 and Fig. 2). For example 1, assume there were 1000 Christians in 40 CE (as Stark does). Assume a slightly positive rate of Christian reproductive growth (5% per decade) and a rapid rate of growth via conversion (say, 35% per decade), for a total of 40% (also Starks suggestion). Our formula would then produce Starks numbers, in column 1 of Table 2. Forty per cent struck Stark as reasonable because it approximated the recorded growth of the Mormons, still renowned for large families. But results shift dramatically if, for example 2, this rate is reduced to 30% per decade (with a 25% conversion rate, perhaps closer to the portion of Mormon growth
43. Stark, Rise, 4. Stark noted that actual conversion may have been lumpier, (Rise, 11) with periodic spurts and reverses, but this does not alter his assumptions about long-term momentum.
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Examp m le 4
Example 1 (Stark's scenario)
Examp x m le l 2
Example Examp e3
40 CE
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Figure 2 Values reproduction model.
because of conversion and not those large families). This lower rate produces lower numbers, especially in the late third century. It delays the explosion of numbers; it would take until 438 CE for Christians to reach the population level of 34 million. Varying the initial number of Christians causes a less dramatic but noteworthy effect. If, for example 3, we return to the 40% growth rate but posit only 500 Christians in 40 CE, we get intermediate numbers, with 34 million Christians around 371 CE. A larger initial count of Christians, however, would elevate numbers earlier, even with a slower rate of growth. For example 4, a 30% per decade growth rate but 5000 Christians in 40 CE produces higher numbers in the third century, with more middling gures in the fourth. Once again, with plausible initial numbers, the results cut a wide range. This values reproduction model reveals its own insights and shortcomings. Like the rst model, it offers a plausible accounting of Christian growth. The demographic arguments may have an appeal, given the epidemics of the late second and third centuries. This model does not rely on the clergy or stories constructed for edication. Still, it rests on assumptions equally problematic. In this model, Christian growth depends on Christians visibly living out published values. Imperfect individuals would not negate the validity of the model. But problems arise if one ignores the systemic gaps between the publishers of values (all literate, mostly male) and the majority of women and men who supposedly lived them. Problems also arise if one selectively reads Christian values. Prohibitions on infanticide could have been outweighed by sexual continence. The attraction of charity could have been overshadowed by the repellent of combativeness. A constant growth rate demands that the Christian
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community retain both its exclusivity and its openness (as Stark suggested). But these values could easily conict; they would become difcult to maintain as the community grew. This is not to suggest that social boundaries were impossible, but the idea that Christians could continue to build outside relationships in consistent proportions, without compromising some of their distinctive values, does not seem convincing. Perhaps another model could do better, accounting for conversion without recourse to idealised behavioural norms. The Social Reaction Model (Logistic Growth) Conversion to Christianity was never just about theology or behavioural norms; it was about group relations. Christian praxis demarcated the church as an imagined community,44 linking unacquainted people across hundreds of cities. Still, Christians always built local manifestations of the church. Christians would not have to preach widely, scholars note, to win the attention of potential converts.45 They need not even make displays of their values. The presence of Christians could be partly hidden from imperial governors, but not from nosy neighbours and relatives. Even a gender imbalance, which Stark suggested might have led to interconfessional marriages, is not required.46 Ordinary interactions carried many forms of innovation across the Mediterranean. They could spread Christianity along the existing Roman social fabric. The social embeddedness of Christians points to the presupposition of our third model, the social reaction model. Let us suppose, this time, that the main source of new Christians was not enacted values, but ordinary social contact. Stark posited that people tend to convert when their social relations tilt more within the new community than outside it.47 Here, we need not go that far. Let us posit that every time a non-Christian was in social proximity to a Christian, there was a set probability that he would convert. To simplify, let us again assume that overall population numbers were constant. Our task, for this model, would be to deduce the overall impact of this kind of ordinary social interaction on Christian growth. First, let us give this template of conversion some more detail. Not every interaction between Christians and non-Christians had the same chance of producing a Christian convert. Different forces would draw one towards the Christian fold or away from it. Forces of attraction might include recognition of authority or the appeal of Christian values. They might also include the desire for social inclusion. Forces of repulsion might include the weight of traditional cult practices, the appeal of other spreading cults, the desire for common
44. To borrow the concept from B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1996), 57. 45. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine, 187212 called martyrdom a publicity moment; also MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100400), 3542 suggested the parade of competing healers as a point of contact. 46. Stark, Rise, chapter 5. 47. Stark, Rise, 16. For a more detailed exploration of social interaction and conversion, see J. T. Sanders, Conversion in Early Christianity, in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches, edited by A. J. Blasi et al. (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), 61941.
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ground with others in Roman society, and the pull of elite access. We need not agree on all the forces at work. But we could agree that a conversion would require sufcient drive to surmount the forces that held would-be converts back.48 Let us posit, then, that under certain conditions, to those who had sufcient social contact, Christianity was marginally more attractive than the alternatives. But what were those certain conditions? Beyond particular social pressures, interacting individuals were also affected by the political and cultural environment. Contacts might be quickened by sympathetic leaders, by increased trade and travel, or by pre-existing sites of interaction (such as synagogues). Contacts might be weakened by prejudicial attitudes, regional isolation, gender separation, distinctions of social rank, or the threat of persecution (though martyrdoms probably did raise the Christian prole). For someone already interacting with Christians, conversion catalysts might include theological similarities, shared values, or understandable rituals. Conversion inhibitors might include theological or moral dissimilarity, fear of persecution, and pressure to conform. All of these forces could t into our model. This template might seem harder to quantify, but it gains from a precise analogy from the physical sciences. Chemical reactions, like conversion, depend on the probability of interaction. To react, however, molecules must loosen existing bonds, surmounting an energy barrier determined by the forces involved. The rate of reaction depends on the concentration of the limiting reagent, the overall environment (such as the temperature), as well as the presence of catalysts or inhibitors. The best analogy is autocatalytic reactions, in which the chemical products encourage the reaction to continue. This template of conversion presents just such a scenario, where conversion depends on the number of non-Christians, as well as the number of accessible Christians. The rate of an autocatalytic reaction shifts over time along a bell curve; the reaction accelerates (as the product increases), then peaks and decelerates (as the reagents run low). The concentration of product over time follows a standard logistic curve. And so should the reaction model of conversion.49 Standard logistic curves are appealing because they play a large role in the study of social diffusion. Innovations, such as new crops, have been observed
48. This conception corresponds to a threshold model of decision making: see D. Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (New York: Norton, 2003), chapter 8. 49. The differential equation for this model is: dN N = rN 1 dt K where N represents the number of Christians, t the time, r the initial compounding rate of conversion, and K the total population available to convert (assumed to be constant). The general solution to this equation is:
N=
KN 0 e rt K + N 0 ( e n 1)
where N0 represents the initial Christian population.

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to spread in similar ways.50 Standard logistic curves initially grow like exponential curves, but limiting factors rein them in asymptotically. In the case of conversion, this means early results similar to the previous model, with growth levelling off at the level of reproduction. Richard Bulliet observed a logistic curve for the frequency of Arabic names in Iran, a proxy for conversion to Islam.51 Roger Bagnall noted a similar pattern for biblical naming in Egypt (a proxy for Christian conversion).52 A logistic curve probably would have been Starks suggestion, if he had not chosen to simplify his model.53 A model based on logistic curves also appeals because it can include several factors observed in conversion. One is the socio-cultural environment. For chemical reactions, the presence of inhibitors or catalysts can be factored into the equation. Similarly, we could augment the social reaction formula to account for the changing political climate, increasing familiarity with monotheism, or regional variation. The results would be different conversion curves in various regions and periods of time. The second factor is the presence of non-convertibles. Many chemical reactions do not nish; existing bonds and reverse reactions push them to equilibrium. A similar idea may be applied to Christian growth. The limit in a logistic model for conversion could represent the entire population, or a lower equilibrium, the number of people open to conversion. The rest would represent those whose non-Christian attachments could not be broken (or who won back enough Christians to reach balance). This equilibrium may also vary with conditions. It might have changed as the government grew more supportive in the fourth century, or as pagans and Jews reorganised in response to Christian growth. Nevertheless, this logistic model cannot tell us how fast Christians converted, or how far conversion proceeded. Here, the numbers depend on the initial count of Christians, the rate of growth, and the limits imposed by the environment (see table 3 and Fig. 3). We start again with 1000 Christians (in 40 CE) and an initial growth rate of 40% per decade. For our rst example, assume no limit besides the total population (50 million). In this case, the formula projects numbers close to Starks model until the mid-fourth century. The projections drop, however, if we posit lower limits, assuming only 30 million potential converts (example 2). They drop further (and earlier) if we posit a limit of 20 million (example 3). Of course, initially slower growth rates would have as dramatic an impact as they do in the exponential model. For our fourth example, an initial growth rate of 30% per decade (with 1000 Christians in 40 CE and a limit of 20 million) would track close to the gures for 30% exponential growth, until it slowed in the late fourth century.
50. For logistic curves and innovations, see R. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 2232, building on E. M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), 1528. 51. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History, esp. chapters 16. For other regions, Bulliet used different proxies. 52. Bagnall, Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change. 53. Stark noted that conversion would decelerate eventually. He chose to focus on the rise of Christianity (cf. Stark, Rise, 1213).
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Table 3 Social reaction model Example 1 Parameters Initial rate of growth as percentage of Christian population per decade Growth limit Christians in 40 CE Christians in 100 CE Christians in 150 CE Christians in 200 CE Christians in 250 CE Christians in 300 CE Christians in 350 CE Christians in 350 CE, limit of 50 million after AD 312 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4
40
40
40
30
50 million 1000 7529 40 476 216 951 1.14 million 5.60 million 20.2 million Same
30 million 1000 7528 40 454 216 328 1.13 million 5.20 million 15.9 million Example 2a 18.8 million
20 million 1000 7527 40 428 215 554 1.10 million 4.79 million 12.6 million Example 3a 17.3 million
20 million 1000 4826 17 906 66 320 244 028 877 011 2.91 million Example 4a 3.08 million
40% per decade exponential growth (Stark's scenario)
(30% 0% % expon exponential exponent Examp pl le e1 growth) ow (limit 50 5 m million) 30% g growt wth) w th h Example x 2a (30% (limit limit 50 5 m million i ) Example xample 3a 3
Ex Example Examp x le e2 (limit 30 million ( o )
(3 (30% ( 3 30% growth) growth owth wth (limit 30 m million mill li )
Examp E x le 3 (limit imit 20 million milli li lio i n)
Examp Ex a le l 4 (30% % growth) (limit limit 20 million) million milli )
40 CE
80 CE
120 CE
160 CE
200 CE
240 CE
280 CE
320 CE
360 CE
400 CE
440 CE
Figure 3 Social reaction model.
Now, let us factor in a change of conditions. Assume the conversion of Constantine in 312 CE lifted prior limits. To simplify, let us set aside other issues and assume a return to the natural limits of the total population (50 million).54 This would leave the rst example unchanged. A shift from limits of
54. The technique used here is to reset the social-reaction formula with 312 CE as time 0, while employing the previously projected number of Christians in 312 CE as the initial number, the same rate constant, and the new limit (50 million).
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30 million to 50 million (example 2a) in 312 CE (when the model projects 7.18 million) renders a suddenly higher growth curve thereafter. Similar effects follow from lifting the limits in the third example (example 3a). Here, numbers would rise from 6.41 million in 312 CE sharply towards the curve of example 1. Yet, this effect cannot overcome an underlying slow growth rate. For our fourth example (initial growth rate of 30% per decade, limit of 20 million), raising the limit to 50 million with Constantine (when the gure is 1.18 million) could only elevate the curve slightly until the fth century. Changes in conditions could alter growth, but only within the range of the population and only over the long term. The social reaction model has its own advantages and shortcomings. Like previous models, it can be rigged to produce plausible results. Its projections make more sense for the fourth century, given the persistence of non-Christian communities. The model requires no specic behaviours or special leaders. But it still rests on problematic presuppositions. It assumes that the balance of external forces can be expressed in a simple rate. It also requires preset estimates for the limits of conversion, even though only the course of conversion could reveal these limits. The model cannot deal directly with differential population dynamics. And it relies on an equally rigid template for individual conversion, regardless of education, social rank, or gender. In some ways, the nuance of this model is deceptive. While it may appear more tailored, the tailoring must be done after the fact. Uses and Dangers of Traditional Quantitative Modelling The three standard models presented here all represent reasonable proposals. They showcase how varied such approaches can be. Together, these efforts illustrate how careful modelling can help us to envision religious change in the Roman world. But they also reveal the limitations of modelling. Traditional models are ill suited to some aspects of Christian religion or Roman society; used improperly, they court danger in the form of fallacious reasoning. The uses of formal modelling in ancient religious history are signicant. These models cannot tell us how many Christians there actually were. They can, however, help to investigate the factors that scholars have suggested drove conversion. The creation of models provides a plausibility test. It compels us to make assumptions explicit and see if the consequences make sense. Formal models also allow us to compare the impact of different assumptions. An apostolic mission model, for instance, projects a relatively early growth of the Christian community into a status of visible minority. A values reproduction model projects a growth process that, whether before or after Constantine, would have moved swiftly to overtake Roman society. A social reaction model projects both a small early Christian community and a rapid period of growth, while still recognising limitations on conversion specic to each period. Thus, we can see that the templates that we envision have consequences for our view of the way conversion worked at the widest scale. Perhaps the most important application of modelling is to test the numerical dynamics of the conversion process. These models all operate as if conversion
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and numerical growth were inevitable (a aw to which we shall return). Yet, they make no denitive claim about speed or time frame of conversion. Small changes in the rate of clerical spread or the probability of social connection lead to dramatic shifts in projections. Thus, we can see that it matters whether (on average) a holy persons miracle was witnessed by 20 or 40 people, whether 20 or 40 people saw an act of charity, and whether a Christian believer conversed with 20 or 40 non-Christian friends. Finally, careful use of modelling can open up new lines of enquiry.55 The majority of studies of early Christianity appropriately focus on textual interpretation. Something can be gained, however, by temporarily stepping away from specic sources and post-structuralist concerns. Scholars have expounded on the variety of early Christian practice. Yet, these expressions should take into account the limitations of literacy and number, noted by Keith Hopkins.56 Recent debates over the partition of Judeo-Christianity draw from the comparison of Christian apologetic and tannaitic literature. Yet, they can be nuanced by considering the correlation (or lack thereof) between regional projections of Christian growth and the evidence of Jewish presence.57 Models can also open up new avenues of enquiry. For instance, the social reaction model might lead us to think about what limited Christian growth in some regions and periods. The values reproduction model might lead us to consider how much Christian values would actually have been observable. The models cannot support conclusions to these questions, but they may point in directions that other approaches leave unexplored. For these reasons, formal modelling can play a useful role, even in the absence of concrete data. Still, we must recognise the limitations and dangers of this approach. A problem for any formal model is the simplication of context. All scholars recognise that Christianity grew more rapidly in some regions and decades than others. The models presented here can be run for different regions, or retrotted to account for major chronological shifts. Such customisation is required, because the models otherwise produce some absurd results. Yet, no modications could account for all the local and chronological permutations. Microvariations like these could be set aside with justication. The same could not be said of other social complexities. All the models presented here assume an undifferentiated social landscape. Many scholars make note of gender and class issues in the conversion process. For years, Christianity was considered a lower class phenomenon, though this has been discredited.58 The
55. Drake, Models of Christian Expansion, 11, put it nicely: Models allow for the reformulation of traditional questions. 56. See Hopkins, Christian Number and Its Implications. 57. Noted swiftly by Stark, Rise, chapter 2 and portions of chapter 6. 58. On Christianity as a lower class movement, see G. A. Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, trans. W. Wilson (New York: Harper and Row, 1957). For counter-arguments, see G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, trans. J. H. Schtz (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982), chapters 34; Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, chapter 4; Stark, Rise, chapter 2 summarises his conclusions about those who join new cults. But his data might also support Meeks claim: That new cults appeal to those suffering from status dissonance.
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involvement of women in the early church remains the subject of debate. Yet, Roman social hierarchy is not analogous to the economic classes of modern industrial societies. Status in the Roman world was determined by a mix of economic resources, citizenship, political rank, source of livelihood, and moral standing.59 Just as important was ones position within webs of patronage. Gender expectations varied widely around the Mediterranean, and within Christian communities. In many settings, wives and daughters were isolated from a male-dominated public sphere, but some women could assume roles as teachers, patronesses, petitioners, or pious exemplars, exercising inuence along certain social channels.60 Qualitative studies of conversion have recognised the importance of social status advancement in the choices of would-be converts. Yet, scholars also note the paradoxes of status difference in a Christian context the stature gained through self-humiliation, or the benets of calling oneself poor. Status markers could be reshaped by the conversion process; as Richard Bulliet puts it, if an emperor converts to a religion of slaves, he does not become a slave; the religion becomes a religion of emperors.61 It is clear that converts were unequal, and that gender and rank made conversion a varied experience. It is, however, difcult to incorporate any of this into our models. Social complexities thus frustrate formal models. So do uncertainties in the interpretation of the evidence. Literary portraits of Christian conversion abound, along with markers on stone or papyri. Efforts to model conversion usually start with selective use of this evidence. Either certain portraits are treated as representative types of conversion (as they are above) or documentary samples are counted as proxy measures. The use of proxy measures has met with doubts concerning the representative status of the sample.62 Reliance on normative literature is even more fraught, because a law against some act may be seen as evidence for its rarity or its common practice.63 Both samples and types raise concerns about their representative status. More serious have been the post-structuralist objections raised by cultural historians to using literary or documentary sources without regard to their (somewhat opaque) cultural context.64 This criticism, often dismissed in quantitative research, should be taken more seriously. Most scholars understand that hagiographical narratives are literary products designed to edify the faithful. Yet, even quasinormative sources (such as the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions) were
59. See, among others, M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), chapter 2. 60. For a summary of the limitations placed upon late Roman women and the openings available to them, see G. Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 61. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History, 41. 62. See Wipszycka, review of Bagnall, Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change, 17381. Bagnalls reply (Bagnall, Conversion and Onomastics: A Reply) countered some of her criticisms while agreeing that the data seriously limit conclusions. 63. See J. Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 828. 64. Most recently, see E. A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), esp. chapters 78.
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written by certain people advancing certain visions of community;65 they cannot be treated as denitive guides to ordinary Christian behaviour. Doubts of this sort do not negate the value of modelling, but they remind us of its contingent status. Our evidence is too fragmentary and culturally embedded to be certain that it accurately reects most conversion experiences. Evidentiary doubts and contextual simplications thus trouble any modelling endeavour. A greater danger, however, is teleological reasoning. The outcome (long-term Christian dominance) shapes the research process, even for those who have no judgement to pass.66 When building models, it is easy to overweight factors that explain Christian triumph. It is difcult to recognise counterforces or the contingent nature of Christian success. All of these models seem to explain the rise of Christianity, but they may explain too much. Many of the factors cited as encouraging conversion apply to pagan or Jewish religious options. Schools of philosophy offered explanations of gods and the universe, and values to live by. Universalising mystery cults offered salvation.67 Mutual aid societies offered charitable support (of a sort).68 Oracles and Asclepian shrines offered divine wisdom.69 Holy people of all stripes were credited with clairvoyance and powers of healing. And Jews, of course, demanded exclusivity and the enactment of strict values. It may be that no other religious operation combined all these features with social openness. But most formal models assume a superior Christian claim to such traits and thus a Christian theological advantage.70 This takes scholars more than halfway to the preordained answer. Unless there is direct, dateable evidence, the reasoning is circular.
65. See I. Henderson, Style Switching in the Didache: Fingerprint or Argument, in The Didache in Context, edited by C. Jeffords (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 177211; J. Draper, Social Ambiguity and the Production of Text (in the same volume), 284312; S. Patterson, Didache 1113: The Legacy of Radical Itinerancy in Early Christianity (in the same volume), 31329. On the Apostolic Constitutions, see M. Metzger, Les Constitutions Apostoliques (Paris: Cerf, 1985 1988), introductions, esp. Vol. 2, 10110. 66. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 45, professed agnosticism as a guarantee against teleological reasoning. If only it were so simple. 67. Apuleius, Metamorphoses (in Latin), translation: Apuleius/Metamorphoses, edited by and trans. J. A. Hanson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), book 11, touted the salvation offered by Isis. 68. Practices and ideals of philanthropy are the subject of much scholarly interest. See E. Patlegean, Pauvret conomique et pauvret sociale Byzance: 4e7e sicles (Paris: Mouton, 1977); S. A. Harvey, The Holy and the Poor: Models from Early Syriac Christianity, in Through the Eye of a Needle: Judeo-Christian Roots of Social Welfare, edited by E. Hanawalt and C. Lindberg (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1994), 4366; P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, (Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002). Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, chapter 3, conducted a thorough comparison of the church to Roman-era mutual aid societies. 69. Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum (in Greek), translation: Plutarchs Moralia, Vol 5., trans. F. C. Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 350501, lamented the decline of old oracles. Some new oracular sites that took up the slack are featured in Lucian of Samosata, Alexander the False Prophet, (in Greek), translation Lucian in Eight Volumes, Vol. 4, trans. A. M. Harmon (New York: Putnam, 1925), 174253; Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales, trans. C. A. Behr, Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales (Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1968), 20592. 70. Stark offers a case in point. In Rise, chapter 4, he points out the contingent nature of Christian growth. Yet, he still supposes that Christians could better explain epidemics, when Jewish leaders and pagan philosophers surely had explanations of their own. For a discussion of assumptions of theological superiority, see J. A. North, Pagans, Polytheists and the Pendulum, in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, Essays in Explanation, edited by W. V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), chapter 7.
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Related to this teleological trap is the tendency to lose the boundary between what is projected and what is evident. Formal models posit outcomes as thought experiments. Still, it is easy to slip, to treat them as evidence to be explained. Even Stark makes this slip. He projected a rate of 40% as what was required to reach a hypothetical 6 million Christians in 300 CE. But when discussing differing survival rates during epidemics, he included the 40% rate as part of the explanation.71 Some have taken Starks projections as evidence for a third-century explosion in Christian numbers, but projections are too variable and hypothetical for any such conclusion. Normally, the danger of slippage is mitigated by real data and measures of curve t, but with no concrete data, it is tempting to treat projections as equivalent to observations again blazing a circular path. Teleology and projection-evidence slippage are common mistakes in formal modelling. But the greatest danger is even more basic: rigid categorisation. As a modern category, religion concerns phenomena that need not have been closely bundled by residents of the ancient Mediterranean.72 It describes experiences that do not always t cleanly under the labels pagan, Jewish, and Christian, employed by Paul of Tarsus and later clerical writers. From the imperial to the late Roman period, Mediterranean people built communal bonds on the basis of religious practices. But not every polytheist or Jewish writer divided religion in this tripartite fashion. Even Christian writers struggled to classify many sects with obscure or mixed beliefs.73 In formal modelling, some categorical reduction is warranted. Pagan, Jewish, and Christian are legitimate scholarly labels, but one must be careful not to let the names distort our picture of the conversion process. Consider the categorisation of non-Christians. A self-identied paganism did not exist until the late third century. Even after Constantine, most polytheists never claimed membership in a single pagan community. The traits often associated with imperial-era paganism (expensive public ritual, enormous pantheons, formalism in divine human relations, absence of articulated values) form a construct that bears little resemblance to the experience of third-century pagans.74 Most models cannot account for the currents of piety (mystery cult activity, new oracles and holy people, Sybilline prophecies, cultic moralis-
71. Stark, Rise, 8894. 72. For the classic statement, see J. Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory (Leiden: Brill, 1978). 73. The tetrarchs famously labelled Christians atheists, while Jews were treated as an ethnic group. Amoraic rabbis usually reduced gentile Christians to idolaters and Jewish Christians to minim (roughly heretics, see J. Rubenstein and S. Cohen, Rabbinic Stories [New York: Paulist Press, 2002], chapter 27; N. Janowitz, Rabbis and Their Opponents: The Construction of the Min in Rabbinic Anecdotes, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 4 [1998]: 44962). For Christian problems classifying sects, see Epiphanius, Panarion (in Greek), Epiphanius (Ancoratus und Panarion), edited by K. Holl (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1915), translation: The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, 2 Vols., trans. F. Williams (Leiden: Brill, 1987, 1990),esp. 103, 179, 26, 51, 634, 66. 74. P. Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, trans. B. Archer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), chapter 1. Even J. Geffcken recognised varied currents of polytheistic piety and philosophy (cf. The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, trans. S. MacCormack [New York: North Holland Publications, 1978], esp. chapters 23).
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ing, henotheistic theology)75 that ourished alongside Christianity. Nor can most models account for the lack of boundaries in the religion of many Roman subjects.76 And paganism is not the only uid category. Christianity and the church do represent an imagined community, and a label that was widely used, but they (deliberately) masked a complicated social reality. First, the boundaries of the Christian community are more vague than the quasi-normative sources would suggest. As scholars have recently stressed, Christians of the Roman period did not fully split from the Jewish scene.77 Nor were distinctions always clear among Christians, Gnostics (whoever they were), early Manichees, and the adherents of other eastern religious traditions.78 The fact that this frustrated clerics79 only shows how much of a free rider problem there was. Early Christians lived and buried their dead, indistinctly intermixed with non-Christians.80 Sometimes, this is treated as evidence of Christian openness, but it may equally be evidence of membership gradience in our religious categories.81 Convenient labels such as pagan and Christian still have value in formal modelling. But too often, their swift use introduces a severe teleology: normative denitions of Christian afliation. The most galling early Christian practice, in the eyes of Roman writers, was certainly exclusive worship. Even stranger was Christians universal demand for exclusive worship (most Jews made no such demand of gentiles). Mediterranean communities were willing to
75. For an overview, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschutz, Religion, in Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 11: The High Empire A. D. 70192, edited by A. Bowman et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. 9921008; G. Fowden, The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antiquity, Journal of Hellenic Studies 102 (1982): 3359; P. Athanassiadi, The Chaldean Oracles: Theology and Theurgy, in Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, edited by P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14983. For a contrasting view, see M. Edwards Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine, in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by S. Swain and M. Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 21134. 76. Consider the town of Orcistus, which appealed to Emperor Constantine by ambiguously claiming to practise the most holy religion. See R. Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter 6. 77. See Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity; R. L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews, Rhetoric and Reality in Fourth Century Antioch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 78. On the term Gnostic, see M. Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). On Manichaeisms Judeo-Christian roots, see S. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Tbingen: Mohr Siebek, 1992), chapter 2. On the uidity of Eastern wisdom traditions, see D. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay A. D. 180395 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2337. 79. Even in the mid-fth century, Theodoret of Cyrrhus still confronted thousands of people he called Marcionites (cf. Theodoret, Ep. 81 (in Greek), Thodoret Correspondence, Vol. 2, edited by Y. Azma (Paris: Cerf, 1964), 1928; Historia religiosa, 21.1522). 80. This situation was lamented by Cyprian, Ep. 67.6, and has been conrmed by most funerary sites (cf. D. Bowder, The Age of Constantine and Julian [London: Rowman & Littleeld, 1978], 1824, 2113). See discussion of this evidence by MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100400), 779, 153. 81. To borrow a phrase from Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity, 245, building on the notion of radial categories developed by G. Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press: 1987), esp. chapters 57.
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accept new gods through set channels, but the notion of abandoning demons was not only disruptive; outside of Jewish circles, it was unfamiliar. People might easily accept Christ as lord and saviour, but still have to be converted regarding other religious practices. In a sense, to be baptised was to formally accept Christian afliation. Urban clerical leaders urged further steps, from avoidance of Jewish and pagan ritual to acceptance of specic theological doctrines. If confessional status were dened by such norms, we would nd many people who were distanced from clerical inuence with contradictory beliefs and practices.82 Scholars have posited that Christianity forced people to make a choice;83 all the formal models depend on this. But even this assumption prejudges the matter. Normative converts had to be convinced that they had to make a choice. The dangers of formal modelling are thus substantial. Some arise from over-schematised models, others from sloppy reasoning. But some of these concerns (particularly the problem of typecasting) are part of the nature of formal modelling. In statistical demography, it is hard to count Christians and non-Christians unless one knows how to distinguish between them. These problems do not make formal modelling useless. Modelling remains a tool for visualising social dynamics. But the shortcomings prevent standard forms of modelling from answering fundamental questions about Christian growth. Models, it appears, just cannot bridge the conceptual gaps. Or can they? Could any model follow Christian growth across the complicated realities of Roman social life? Could any model compare Christian cult to its competitors without teleological reasoning? One possible answer may lie in a new type of quantitative modelling. Towards a Network Model of Early Christian Growth The new approach to modelling is a product of network theory, a branch of mathematics devoted to analysing relational systems. Here, a network is any system that can be represented as a set of links connecting a series of nodes. Since the 1960s, the basics of network theory have found a place in anthropology and historical research. Social network theory treats society as a web of overlapping relationships, with friendships, patronage connections, and alliances as the links and people as the nodes. Network analysts collect data on relationships, to understand shapes, pathways, and patterns of development within the social fabric.84 Social network theory has been fruitfully applied to the dynamics of contained groups or the place of individuals in society.85 Network theory aided Starks research (with William Bainbridge),
82. For more on the evidence of incomplete conversion, see MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100400), 7485. See also R. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58. 83. See MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100400), 178. 84. For a guidebook to social network theory, see S. Wasserman, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 85. For anthropology, see J. Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). For historical work, see E. A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), chapter 1; M. Mullett, Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine
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including the ground-breaking conclusion that almost all converts to modern religious groups have friendships or familial bonds with existing members. In fact, Stark used the network concept to back up his projections, positing that Christianity rst grew along existing Jewish networks and existing links between Roman cities. Yet, network theory has an untapped potential, not just for analysing religious conversion, but also for modelling it quantitatively in nuanced ways that lead to unexpected conclusions. But rst, some methodological rethinking is needed.86 A network model of early Christian conversion must begin with a redenition of religious community. Standard formal models all treat Christianity as a demographic with a clear membership. This new sort of model regards Christianity as a social network, an amorphous web of people bound by shared characteristics or sentiments. Social networks may be exclusive or overlap with others. They may align with boundaries of gender or social rank, or cross boundaries. They may or may not articulate a sense of identity. Networks can be identied in various ways; one useful method is to look for social idioms, symbolic language, and gestures that people exchange to signal their afnity. In this way, we could dene a Christian network by the sharing of ritual actions (baptism, the Eucharist), doctrinal tropes (monotheism, the resurrection of Christ), holy writings (a shifting list), and expressed values (brotherhood). These symbols could be variously elaborated by different Christian subnetworks. Some of them could be shared with other groups or with all of Roman society. Network approaches do not require a precise boundary between Christians and non-Christians. They allow for quantitative analysis by counting relationships, marking well-connected members as more Christian than peripheral adherents. A network approach to religion can thus nesse the problem of assumed exclusivity. It can also deal with other shortcomings of standard models. Most models simplify the social landscape. Network theory allows for variations in the experience of gender and social rank. On the one hand, it recognises the dense webs of peer relations (female notable to female notable, for instance, or male tenant farmer to male tenant farmer) that shaped social life, inside and outside the Christian faith. On the other hand, it incorporates the vertical relationships (between patrons and clients, or husbands and wives) that pervaded Christian and non-Christian society. Many models rely on vague or rigid denitions of religious authority. Network theory suggests a more organic view of social inuence, by linking it to the relative position of individuals in the relational web. Generally, the most inuential gures in a network are those with centrality, close access to everyone else. Additional inuence accrues to
Archbishop (Brookeld, VT: Ashgate, 1997), chapters 34; C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Palestine (Tbingen: Mohr Siebek, 1997). 86. R. Stark and W. Bainbridge, Networks of Faith: Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment to Cults and Sects, American Journal of Sociology 85 (1980): 137695; Stark, Rise, chapters 36. H. Drake, Models of Christian Expansion, has introduced more concepts from network theory. Thus far, no one has adapted the theory in the context of ancient religion to create new quantitative models.
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Figure 4 Illustrations of concepts in network-based modeling.
social brokers, with important outside connections.87 Those in positions of centrality can substantially alter networks, by modifying their idioms. Those in positions of brokerage can use connections to invite others into the web. Leadership may be focused in a few individuals or diffused more widely. In either case, it has less to do with abstract ofce or rank, than with social standing, in all its localised details. Network theory thus allows for a more nuanced model of the Christian community. But how can this help us to understand conversion? While network models cannot give a precise count of Christians, they can offer new insights into the dynamics of Christian growth. These suggestions come from the eld of network science. Over the last two decades, scholars have investigated many kinds of self-organizing networks, from biological ecosystems, to economic systems, to the World Wide Web. Across elds, they have found consistent patterns in the way networks form, grow, change, and collapse.88 Because of this consistency, one can hypothesise about how the Christian community organised itself, subdivided, and found so many adherents. One insight offered by network theory concerns patterns of growth and development. In most growing networks, scholars have noted, new nodes tend to form links with those nodes that are already well connected. They also tend to form links not individually, but as small clusters. The result is a tendency in growing networks towards one basic architecture, called the modular scale-free topology (see Fig. 4). Modular scale-free networks feature a series of small cells, composed of members with only a few links, all linked hierarchically
87. On social leadership, centrality, and brokerage, see Boissevain, Friends of Friends, chapter 5. 88. See A.-L. Barabsi, Linked: The New Science of Networks (New York: Penguin, 2002), esp. chapters 47, 9, 1516; Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, esp. chapters 34, 6, 8.
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to local leading gures, then to an inner core made up of a few, extremely well connected hubs.89 In social terms, this corresponds to associations with a small number of popular leaders who hold together an otherwise segmented social scene. Different networks end up with different variations on this topology, featuring different degrees of clustering and different numbers of hubs. What network science has revealed is that these hierarchies develop naturally, as a product of both chance and the growth of the network itself. At the same time, the course of growth of these networks depends on the segmentation of adherents and the distribution of hubs (as well as their mutual relations).90 This network science template is relevant to Christian conversion because it suggests new principles and patterns of growth. Because people are attracted to others based on their existing connectivity, the Christian growth rate would depend not on the number of Christians but on the location and density of existing Christian relationships. In a modular, scale-free situation, this principle has two corollaries. On the one hand, it suggests that Christian leaders may have had a disproportionate role in conversion. Christian hubs may not be the initial cause of growth. But once a growing network develops hubs, new adherents should be attracted to them, further increasing their status. On the other hand, a network model suggests that many social actions initiate not with the hubs but within local clusters. These dense groupings, with their own mini-hubs, could also play a role in attracting new adherents. In either case, the principle is the same: Patterns of growth relate not just to the size, but also to the structure of the existing network. The modular, scale-free topology also may explain the survival of Christian communities through periods of adversity. As scholars have observed, modular, scale-free networks are robust. Not only do they grow without central direction, but also survive most attempts to wipe them out. Scale-free networks can endure the loss of many hubs, rearranging to elevate new ones. To collapse such a network, one has to systematically remove the vast majority of hubs (this is why the Internet is so difcult to shut down).91 Persecutions (like Valerians) might have thinned the Christian leadership without damaging the networks long-term growth capacity. By this logic, more effective limitations would emerge from factors that discouraged individual relations among Christians and non-Christians. As these social and cultural barriers lessened in the third century, so would the resistance of those in Christian proximity. And yet, network theory suggests that the persecutions would still affect the course of Christian growth, by altering the distribution of Christian hubs (e.g., towards lay patrons and temporarily away from bishops). The patterns observed by network theorists offer further suggestions regarding the impact of the existing social structure. In a network model, Christianity
89. Barabsi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, chapters 5, 15; Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, chapters 34, 8. 90. Barabsi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, chapter 7; Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, esp. 10829. 91. Barabsi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, chapter 9; Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, 18894.
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is seen as one of many overlapping social webs. This lack of exclusivity could be a benet, if growing networks are capable of absorbing and redirecting existing social bonds. Stark has suggested that disconnected people tend to convert; network modelling recognises this.92 But the impact of a wellconnected person converting would be much greater. An existing hub from another network might carry associates into the Christian network and continue as a mini-hub. In fact, these associates might convert (in the sense of employing Christian symbols) with as much consideration for social relations as for beliefs and values. This incorporation pattern would have a profound impact on the numerical course of conversion. Rather than a smooth curve, it would produce punctuated equilibria: periods of relative stability broken by moments of explosive growth (again, see Fig. 4).93 Thus, the growth of Christian networks could piggyback on existing associations, such as Roman civic structures and Jewish synagogues. It could also benet from the hierarchical web of patrons, which held together the Roman social fabric. The reverse process could also take place; the loss of too many well-connected hubs might lead to sudden drops in afliation. Of course, we could (teleologically) conclude that there were fewer dramatic losses than gains in the long run. The conversion of Constantine would thus represent merely the largest peak of a chain of network incorporations. Ultimately, a network model of Christian conversion offers suggestions on a front where standard models cannot: weighing the competition from alternative religious groups. Christians did not form the only spreading religious network in the early Roman Empire. All quasi-religious enterprises universalising cults (e.g., cults of Isis and Mithras), oracular operations (e.g., the chain of Asclepian shrines), traditional cult sites (e.g., temples of Jupiter/Zeus/ Ammon), the imperial cult system, philosophic schools, followings of holy people, Jewish sects represented networks of their own. Each of these networks had its own set of idioms, degree of segmentation, density of relations, tolerance for external bonds, and distribution of hubs. Theoretically, it should be possible to sketch some differences in network architecture from the (scanty) evidence. This would then enable comparisons, which might reveal new explanations for Christian success, or emphasise its contingent status. While any such comparison raises the spectre of teleology, reliance on actual evidence would mitigate the danger. Network-based modelling thus offers a new (though still limited) path in the study of religious change. Realising its potential, however, requires a technique unfamiliar to most historians: computer simulation.94 As with formal models, a detailed set of assumptions can be elaborated to form parameters, representing both the probabilities of conversion and the social patterns of Roman
92. Stark, Rise, chapter 2. For the role of social connectedness in inuencing the threshold of decisions, see Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, 22944. 93. This threshold pattern has been observed in epidemics. See Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, 16897. 94. For one example of computer simulations of religious groups, see W. Bainbridge, God from the Machine: Articial Intelligence Models of Religious Cognition (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2006).
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society. Instead of projected population curves, however, these parameters would produce a simulator of Christian growth. The results of repeated runs of the simulator could then be compared, and set against the evidentiary record. Such simulations will not tell us how Christianity actually grew and developed. Network-based modelling retains many drawbacks of quantitative projection, including the temptation of teleology. It will, however, allow us to investigate certain contingencies and to test how likely it might have been that Christians came to dominate. At any rate, it would enable a fuller illustration of the impact of our assumptions. And that may help us to explore early Christian growth without following the same old templates without merely painting by the numbers.

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Journal of Religious History Vol. 33, No.

Figure 1 Apostolic mission model.

Example 1 (Stark's scenario)

Figure 2 Values reproduction model.

where N0 represents the initial Christian population.

40% per decade exponential growth (Stark's scenario)

Ex Example Examp x le e2 (limit 30 million ( o )

(3 (30% ( 3 30% growth) growth owth wth (limit 30 m million mill li )

Examp E x le 3 (limit imit 20 million milli li lio i n)

Examp Ex a le l 4 (30% % growth) (limit limit 20 million) million milli )

Figure 3 Social reaction model.

Figure 4 Illustrations of concepts in network-based modeling.

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