American Society of Church History

Gods and the One God by Robert M. Grant Review by: Henry Chadwick Church History, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-520 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3166657 . Accessed: 17/02/2014 17:25
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BOOK REVIEWS
Gods and the One God. By ROBERTM. GRANT. Library of Early Christianity. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986. 216 pp. $18.95. This volume is characteristic of a scholar whose knowledge of the ancient sources is always firsthand and deep. At the same time, it is written so that one who runs may read, and there is even a risk that the first-year student, to whom the book can be confidently recommended, will not easily recognize the range of critical judgment here deployed. As the title might lead one to expect, the book offers a narrative analysis of some of the differences that came about in ancient society and its institutions when Christian monotheism succeeded in conquering polytheism. That transition is central to Robert Grant's story, though the later stages of the pagan-Christian conflict are only alluded to. He begins with the collision between Christianity and polytheism recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, certainly the most vivid and authentic picture we possess of what life felt like for Roman provincials of that age. Paul the missionary criticized the gods hesitatingly venerated by the Athenians, who, for all their skepticism, still felt that one could not be too careful. But on the Areopagus he might reasonably have expected an audience already sympathetic to the negative parts of his thesis. It is doubtful whether Stoic philosophers took the cults very seriously, and wholly certain that Epicureans did not. So at this. stage the cult was a neuralgic thing and not the ancient philosophical tradition. Other encounters with paganism in Acts occurred at Cyprus, Corinth, Lystra, Ephesus, and Puteoli (western home of the Baal of Sarepta and the colonists from Tyre). Oriental deities also traveled westwards, like Isis to Athens, the Aegean, and Rome, Serapis to the Aegean, Dionysus to Egypt and to Italy. Judaism infiltrated everywhere and stuck out like a sore thumb, seldom admired in the Greco-Roman world but an object of fascinated curiosity. Like the Jews, the early Christians were against idolatry (1 Thess. 1:9) but tended because of their universalism to adopt a more militant stance than the synagogues. Grant might have told us more of the Christians who knocked heads off statues or hissed disapprobation as they passed a temple. One crucial text relating Christian monotheism to belief in many gods is 1 Cor. 8:4-6, but more than one deduction could be made from that text. What could the old gods do for anyone? They were expected, if propitious, to provide physical safety, healing, rescue from shipwreck, success in love, fertility in procreation, and prosperity in commerce or military action. They either kept kings on thrones or not, as circumstances might determine. Basic expectations were for miracles and prophecies of the hazardous future. They spoke not only through oracles, which by Plutarch's time were in decline (including a diminished facility in the improvization of Greek hexameters), but also by dreams such as those catalogued in the gripping pages of 519

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520

CHURCH

HISTORY

Artemidorus. Gods were pleased to be praised, and the aretalogies advertised their success in the market. Some deities such as those of Egypt, Isis, and Serapis (one should add the God of the Jews) were respected as especially potent. The power which could annually cause an event as colossal as the Nile flood was good to have on one's side. The myths recorded the exploits of the gods, notably by heroes such as Dionysus, Asclepius, and Heracles. From page 75 onwards the book is less about cult and more about the Christian assimilation and critical digestion of philosophical theology, with the implicit question whether or not pagan philosophical reflection on religion anticipated developments in the early Church. Texts successively drawn upon to illustrate affirmative answers to that question are called to witness: Pseudo-Aristotle's de mundo; Plutarch; the middle Platonists Albinus, Apuleius, and Atticus; Aelius Aristides; Maximus of Tyre; and Lucian. Philo makes only a brief appearance (the contentious might think too brief) to introduce the second-century Christian apologists, along with Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen. Grant sets aside W. L. Knox's fascinating and indemonstrable suggestion that the conventional praises of Isis influenced the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs 8. But certainly Isis became a cosmic goddess in the Hellenistic world and in that sense anticipated Pauline and Johannine language about the cosmic Christ in creation. Apollo, Athena, Dionysus, and Hermes are also credited with a cosmic role. The remainder of the book studies specifically Christian themes, Christology, and the Trinity. First there is a study of the Antiochene Christology of Ignatius, Theophilus, Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus. Chapters follow on the spirit (prophecy and Montanism) and on the development of the divine Triad with middle Platonist analogies in Numenius of Apamea. Care is taken to guard against the simplistic notion that trinitarianism was Plato with a Palestinian accent. But Grant concludes this valuable study with the reflection that there was some fittingness in the Christian appropriation for liturgical use of a number of pagan temples such as the Parthenon, which became a Church of Saint Mary for a lot longer than it served to honor Athena. Cambridge University Cambridge, England
HENRY CHADWICK

Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the Initial Confrontation. By JACOBNEUSNER. Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. xv + 246 pp. $27.50. The Judaic sages of Genesis Rabbah and Eusebius of Caesarea on the meaning of history, the sages of the Talmud of the Land of Israel and John Chrysostom on the Messiah, and the sages of Leviticus Rabbah and Genesis

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