Why another book on pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity? Situating this volume in a long tradition of scholarship on the end of paganism in the late Roman world, Christopher P. Jones begins by asking, ‘how far paganism was a construct that, while it certainly had a correlative in “reality”, was also something perceived or imagined by those opposed to it’ (xiii). This is a worthy and challenging question, but one which the author never really answers. Beyond the first chapter (‘The Perception of Paganism’), dealing with the language Christians used to refer to pagans, J.'s purpose is to show how pagans and Christians shared cultural practices, beliefs and concepts — what he calls ‘the ground between’ — that rendered ‘sharp distinctions [between them] impossible’ (8).

The book divides into ten slim chapters, followed by a conclusion, a timeline and an appendix on Macrobius' religious allegiance. The book's central theme is best developed in chs 4, 5 and 6. In ch. 4 (‘God and Other Divinities’), J. reminds us that both pagan and Christian imagined a universe populated by hierarchies of angels, demons and lesser divine beings. This similarity mattered because it ‘gave analogies of belief and practice to Christians trying to explain their faith to pagans and possibly to convert them’ (42). In ch. 5 (‘Idolatry’), he notes how Christians, despite their revulsion for idols, came gradually to accommodate the (pagan) idea that holy images emanated divine power. ‘In later centuries’, he writes, ‘in a further similarity with paganism, Christian icons began to talk, to weep, and to bleed’ (56). In ch. 6, turning on attitudes to sacrifice, J. argues that church leaders, despite rejecting blood sacrifice, eventually embraced and promoted the feasting traditionally associated with ritual slaughter: ‘Christian authorities … recognized they could abolish pagan sacrifice, but could not abolish the desire of ordinary people to vary their normal routine by holidays and a … change in diet’ (73). So, for instance, Gregory the Great, concerned to keep the Angles in the faith, ‘knowing that they had a tradition of sacrificing cattle to their gods, proposed that they should slaughter their cattle on Christian holy days, for instance at the inauguration of a church’ (74).

Although the book's stated purpose is to interrogate the boundaries separating pagans and Christians, J. mostly limits himself to pointing out the similarities in their beliefs and practices, offering no theoretical framework to explain what these similarities meant or why they mattered. At times he seems to suggest that they facilitated conversion to Christianity, but this never becomes the book's overarching theme. In fact, in the rest of the volume, that issue largely fades from view as J. turns more specifically to the broader subject of Christianity's expansion in the Roman world.

Thus, chs 2 (‘Constantine’), 3 (‘After Constantine: Indifference and Intolerance’), 7 (‘Debate’) and 8 (‘Conversion’) deal variously with aspects of conversion; chs 9 (‘The West’) and 10 (‘The East’) describe the patterns of Christianization of West and East, respectively. J. makes some insightful observations on each of these topics; for instance, in ch. 2, on the relevance of the Sassanian religious experience to the conversion of Constantine (21–2), though the subject demands more extensive discussion than can be afforded there. In ch. 10, J. rightly emphasizes the strength of attachment to pagan culture and tradition in the East, though he often speaks of late pagan devotion as if it existed in seamless continuity with earlier times, even when the evidence he discusses shows how much paganism was (re)invented in Late Antiquity.

The notion of conversion informing these chapters owes a great deal to Nock's classical definition, with its emphasis on spiritual rupture and embrace of a new truth. This was surprising because built into that notion is the crossing, not the erasure, of a boundary, and thus its reaffirmation. In ch. 8, when discussing mass conversions of rustics and crowds, J. writes, ‘[t]here must have been marked psychological adjustments … perhaps the most profound … for the newly converted, was the notion of sin, and its related notions of “redemption”…’ (103). While to pagans, god had to be placated for wrongs committed, the Christian God ‘wished to “save” humanity from sin … a radical departure from the idea that a human could escape divine wrath only by sacrifice …’ (104). No evidence can be adduced for these ‘adjustments’ of course, but, more importantly, instead of blurring distinctions between pagans and Christians, the comment actually throws into sharp relief what divided them: a deep spiritual chasm, a boundary crossed only after utter spiritual transformation.

The ‘common ground’ shared by pagans and Christians has attracted new interest in recent scholarship as scholars have moved away from rigid dichotomies to cast a more dynamic picture in which pagans, Jews and Christians constructed religious identities in interaction with one another. J. presents several examples of ideas, beliefs and practices that pagans and Christians had in common, but he never explains how, in resembling one another, they negotiated identity boundaries. Indeed, throughout the book, J. treats pagans and Christians as groups endowed with essentialized, rather than fluid, contested identities, outwardly alike, but inhabiting separate, distinct religious universes. The effect of this is, paradoxically, not only to reinforce the very distinctions he claims were blurred, but also to perpetuate the categories defined by dominant Christian discourse.

Finally, J. largely glosses over the work of key scholars in the field. He makes no or only passing reference to David Frankfurter, Ramsay MacMullen, Robert Markus, Eric Rébillard, Guy Stroumsa, Frank Trombley, to name a few. Open engagement with these and other scholars would have enriched this book and enhanced its contribution to the debates on all the topics it discusses.