P.’s book provides a compelling and well-documented argument for the necessity of situating the emergence of Christianity within its broader cultural, material and religious context. Too often, scholarly research – particularly within specialised studies focused on the internal dimensions of the religious system that would later be called Christianity – takes this context for granted or does not sufficiently consider it in the comprehensive interpretation of the phenomenon. P.’s work underscores the importance of acknowledging the wider geographical, chronological and cultural-religious frameworks in which Christianity was embedded – or, more precisely, as P. articulates, within which it actively interacted. Phrygia is used as a representative case study.
While this perspective may seem self-evident, it is far from universally acknowledged. The tendency towards disciplinary specialisation has frequently resulted in analyses that isolate individual religious traditions, focusing on their internal mechanisms of genesis and development. P.’s volume not only challenges these rigid disciplinary boundaries but also transcends the traditional, textbook-like approach that still often presents religious evolution as a linear progression. Indeed, he effectively demonstrates how ‘In one’s mental map paganism precedes Christianity, but very little of the evidence cited thus far in fact antedates the evidence for Christianity in Phrygia contained in the Pauline Epistle to the Colossians’ (p. 119). The conventional narrative of Christianity supplanting paganism is meticulously redefined in this work, ultimately emphasizing the inverse perspective, namely that: ‘The Apostle Paul was at work in Phrygia before most of the inscriptions that reveal the pantheon he sought to supplant had been set up. The second and third centuries ce look like boom years for both Christianity and paganism in Phrygia, although for Christianity this was a real boom, whereas for paganism, in all probability, it was just a matter of new epigraphic habits revealing to us what had long been going on’ (p. 199).
This recognition of a religious landscape characterised not by the mere substitution of one system for another, but rather by processes of convergence, proves highly valuable in reconsidering key moments in the historical trajectory of Christianity’s establishment within the Roman Empire. The tendency to reassess the so-called systematic persecution of Christians by the Empire is now supported by a robust body of well-established scholarship. However, a study such as P.’s – relying not solely on literary sources, which have historically contributed to the construction of the ‘myth’ of persecution – offers significant epistemic gains in advancing the thesis that these persecutions were not systematically orchestrated, at least within the chronological scope considered in the volume, extending up to the mid-third century. This argument is particularly compelling given P.’s methodological approach, which draws on a vast corpus of material evidence that attests to what can be described as lived religion. As P. emphasises: ‘any friction there may have been has left no trace. More generally, we saw earlier that the third century offers no firm evidence for martyrdom or persecution’ (p. 132).
At the same time, the conclusions drawn from P.’s analysis of the material, namely that: ‘The period from about 100 to about 250 ce that saw Christianity take root in Phrygia is also the period from which evidence for pagan cults survives in such splendid abundance’ (p. 132), are not only instrumental in situating nascent Christianity within a broader framework of parallel development and interaction with the pagan religious tradition, as previously discussed. Rather, such a documentary approach also proves valuable in deconstructing, in specific instances, the interpretations provided by historical sources regarding the ostensibly ‘pagan’ origins of certain movements that, upon closer examination, exhibit distinctly Christian characteristics. One of the most compelling cases in this regard is that of Montanism. Its founder, Montanus – alongside two women, Priscilla and Maximilla – has frequently been depicted, both in the earliest sources and in later historiographical traditions, as having ties to pagan cults. However, the available material evidence offers little support for the claim that Montanus was a priest of Apollo or Cybele, just as it challenges the notion that the Montanist prophetic experience was directly rooted in pagan traditions. As P. notes: ‘Prophets and prophetesses are, obviously, easy to find in the pagan world. But a Pythia giving answers to specific questions in Delphi can scarcely be seen as a forebear of Priscilla and Maximilla receiving spontaneous revelations in Pepouza’ (p. 22). Montanist prophecy was distinctly ecstatic in nature, and its female prophetic figures appear to be Christian – such as the daughters of Philip – rather than pagan. Ultimately, Montanism emerges as an explicitly Christian movement, even in its development within Phrygia, a region characterized by a high degree of religious synergy and interaction.
This conclusion is presented in one of the six valuable appendices (titled ‘Paganism and Montanism’), which are part of the overall structure of the volume. While, as emphasised by the title, the interaction between Christianity and paganism lies at the heart of P.’s interpretative endeavour, it would be reductive not to adequately highlight the great strength of the book, namely the author’s extremely detailed analysis of the Phrygian polytheistic system, which proves to be an indispensable starting point for contextualising the processes of encounter and transmission between different religious systems. The book is systematically organised into a series of chapters that explore, in great detail, fundamental aspects of lived religion, beginning with the broader contexts of religious life and extending to conceptions of death and associated practices. Along the way P. examines the significance of priestly roles, the financial dimensions of religious institutions and the diversity of Phrygian polytheism in terms of its deities. Chapter 10 provides a particularly useful retrospective on Phrygian religion in the pre-Roman period, offering crucial historical context.
The result is a comprehensive reconstruction of what P. describes as a ‘hybrid religious system’ (p. 195), which undeniably characterised Phrygia in the second and third centuries ce. While this analysis may not provide a definitive answer as to why Phrygia adopted Christianity so early and so decisively – P. acknowledges that, more broadly, ‘Factors predisposing the Phrygians both to orthodox Christianity and to heresies such as Montanism have been identified but are only variably persuasive’ (p. 200) –, nevertheless, through meticulous engagement with material culture, P. demonstrates that the complexity of religious coexistence precedes the artificial classifications that impose hierarchical or chronological distinctions upon religious systems.
