Joseph Sanzo’s very short book is an exercise in reassessment. He raises the question as to whether notions of “blending” and “blurred boundaries” (or “syncretism”) are actually the best way to interpret the symbols and images found on many Jewish and Christian ritual objects in late antiquity. Sanzo instead suggests that scholars have often mistaken the diversity of these words and images with a ground-level ecumenism among religious communities in late antiquity. This mistake, Sanzo argues, has given scholars a distorted picture of a late antique world in which elites purportedly drew boundaries between religiously distinct groups while non-elite group members ignored these boundaries often and glibly. This is, in Sanzo’s estimation, an incomplete and misleading presentation of the evidence. Rather, “the impulse to differentiate, malign, and slander was much more widespread” (p. 5) among late antique religious traditions than scholars have imagined (or wished to be true). Sanzo dedicates a substantial portion of his Ritual Boundaries to pushing back on this equation: elites = boundaries; laypersons = openness.

Ritual Boundaries’ introduction is key; at 24 pages it takes up nearly a quarter of the book’s argument and analysis. Sanzo begins by critiquing what he calls “‘a romantic nostalgia’ for ‘non-elite’ religion” (p. 3), one tethered to a strong sense of the weak nature of religious boundaries. Sanzo introduces one of his primary interventions: when it comes to material objects, he claims, shared symbols do not necessitate shared affections and affinities. Sanzo then previews the second theme of his book, focusing on the physical reality of ritualized, scripturalized objects to “shed light on the diverse ways people engaged with authoritative traditions, such as the Bible” (6). From here, Sanzo clarifies a set of disputed words that will prove key to his analysis (“ritual,” “magic,” “lived religion,” and “syncretism”). Sanzo posits that “unless there is a reason to think otherwise, elements that appear on a Christian magical artifact that seem to us to reflect diverse religious traditions should be treated as part and parcel of a Christian system” (p. 18).

Sanzo’s first chapter is centered on The Prayer of Saint Gregory, found in a sixth- to eighth-century Coptic codex. Sanzo uses this object to argue that while late antiquity’s Christian pastors often censored illicit rituals as non-Christian, those who engaged in these practices still shared a pro-Christian anti-outsider sentiment, as The Prayer’s pro-Christian anti-magic rhetoric betrays. The prayer was a sort of Christian magic that served to combat non-Christian magic, the latter associated with “Persian,” “Egyptian,” or “Hebrew” practitioners, linking, in Sanzo’s words, “harmful ritual with ethnic alterity” (p. 32). Per Sanzo, while Christians were willing to engage in practices deemed illicit by literate clergy and monks, they did not do so as dedicated proponents of blurred boundaries and tolerance. Their boundaries were perhaps differently configured than those of their pastors, but they were sharp and severe nonetheless.

In Sanzo’s second chapter, he turns his attention to magical objects in the late antique world, and what it is they can or cannot tell us about the relationship between Jews and Christians. Here Sanzo’s critique of a “blurred boundaries” approach is particularly sharp and sustained. In the context of magical practices, Sanzo critiques Vicky Foskolou’s influential analysis of magical objects as loci of the fluid nature of late antique religion, evidenced by what we might call a mix-and-match approach to sacred images, titles, and phrases. Sanzo argues against the presumption that a Christian use of a “Jewish” title (e.g., like Iaō) means that a given Christian practitioner was intentionally engaging in a syncretistic, interreligious activity. As Sanzo points out, “the meanings of words, images, and other cultural and religious elements can radically shift over time and across space” (p. 50).

Chapter 3, however, begins a new sort of analysis. Sanzo discusses ritual religious objects as “textual-material bodily interfaces” (p. 66), a composite of movement, sound, weight, texture, and image which, taken together, should modify the way in which scholars imagine “biblical reception among practitioners” of Christian magic “and their clients” (p. 69).

Sanzo’s fourth chapter focuses on early depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus on ritual objects. After describing triumphal motifs of crucifixion on ritual objects, he then makes the case that the shameful status of crucifixion in the ancient world would have numbered Jesus as a member of the so-called “restless dead” (p. 99). Sanzo builds his argument on a jasper gem of Jesus’s crucifixion (BM 1986, 0501.1), dated perhaps to the second or third century (though in a long endnote he does discuss the debate about the gem’s authenticity [p. 139]). These “restless dead,” victims of violent and ignoble deaths, were “neither impeded nor protected by the walls of the Underworld,” in common opinion and thus were far more vulnerable to ritual manipulation than other departed souls. Sanzo argues that this idea of the ritually vulnerable Jesus, potent among the restless dead gives way to motifs of Jesus’s crucified triumph in post-Constantinian late antiquity (p. 108).

In his conclusion, Sanzo reiterates his argument that “symbols change their meanings, connotations, and associations” through time and place (p. 110), a fact that should give scholars pause when labeling words and images as Christian or non-Christian. He reiterates that religious competition was not the reserve of the elite. Even the marginalized directed their ritual ire against other marginalized peoples. There were in the late antique world many sides, many hierarchies, and no shortage of targets.

These claims are important and merit much more evidence than Sanzo’s very short book can provide. Its brevity is, in the end, a hindrance to the significant interpretive reevaluation that Sanzo wishes to make. Moreover, the brevity of this book does not allow for a clear link between the work Sanzo does in Chapters 1–2 and the work he does in Chapters 3–4.

As a consequence of the text’s economy, other claims are less persuasive than they might have been. These include the “less mediated” nature of material sources in comparison to literary sources (44); the use of literary sources to confirm the ideological commitments of ritual clients (58–59); the actual physical gestures which material objects sustained (As Sanzo himself notes, his interpretation of certain objects requires “a high degree of speculation” [83]). Finally, Chapter 4’s claim for pre-Constantinian/post-Constantinian rupture in crucifixion-based piety would require a full chapter (or book).

The interpretive division between elite rigidity and lay fluidity may need a fundamental reassessment. Sanzo’s Ritual Boundaries convinces me that we should take this challenge seriously. Sanzo’s eye for contrary evidence is persuasive and his writing is compelling and clear. His suggestions are worthy of full consideration. I hope Sanzo will take up his own challenge and offer a fuller reassessment in a longer work.