The idea that cults compete (for authority, patronage, or worshippers) has become a topos of the study of Greek and Roman religions and is regularly invoked to explain relations between cults and religious change through time. This varied and stimulating essay collection sets out to explore the state of the idea in contemporary scholarship, and to test afresh its usefulness for the study of ancient religions from iron age Mesopotamia to the late-antique Roman West.
The editors, both of whom are well known for their nuanced theoretical approaches to the study of ancient religions, introduce the collection with a helpful survey of the concept, its history and its possible relationship with (other aspects of) contemporary politics, society and culture. V.N.'s individual contribution examines the history of religious disputations in Late Antiquity and argues that disputation does not (as is sometimes thought) disappear, but is replaced by internal disputations among Christians. No one will disagree that internal disputation is a persistent feature of Christianity; V.N. might also have reflected, for instance, on the significance of popular Christian accounts of imaginary contests between Christians and Jews or pagans in apocryphal Acts of apostles and Lives of bishops. E.'s contribution argues that Christianity out-competes Judaism and Graeco-Roman traditions in part by adopting both into its own teleological history. This is an attractive argument, though one might debate how important it is in the multi-factoral success of Christianity. (E. perhaps underplays the differences between Christianity's disputes with Judaism and with Greco-Roman religions and the extent to which Judaism employs the same historiographical strategy.)
Contributors to the collection take a range of positions on competition as a concept. T. Boiy's persuasive argument that the rise of Anu and decline of Ištar and Marduk in Uruk from the fifth century b.c.e. are a result of political competition between Uruk and Babylon, takes essentially a traditional, politically functionalist view of religion. E. Eidinow, in contrast, challenges the widespread assumption that oracular cults compete for ‘trade’. She distinguishes between cults and individual oracle providers and argues convincingly that while there is plenty of evidence that oracle providers competed with one another, it is better to see relations between Delphi and Dodona, for instance, in terms of cooperation and complementarity rather than competition.
F. Van Haeperen also challenges the ‘competition’ paradigm. She points out that though the archaeological remains of Roman Ostia can support a narrative of competition, they do not necessarily do so, and we should be wary of interpreting the archaeological record through the lens of literature (which does sometimes speak in competitive terms, notably of the triumph of Christianity). A. Busine is also interested in literary discourse. Her engaging and illuminating essay examines the treatment of Greek local histories and myths in Late Antiquity, and argues that though Christians sometimes reject these, they more often adopt and integrate them into Christian tradition, for example by adding Christian elements to them or linking them with Old or New Testament stories.
Some essays break more new ground than others. I was not sure that our understanding of impiety trials in classical Athens was decisively changed by A. Lefka's argument that such trials are not purely religious matters, but that it took a combination of religious, political and contemporary ‘psychological’ factors to bring them about. I. Jacobs shows brilliantly how in Late Antiquity the monumental landscape reflects Christian competitiveness. Christian monuments gradually take up more space, popular non-Christian events like theatrical festivals are allowed to continue only in secularised form, secular civic spaces are gradually demonised as dangerous and polluted and, where they are not built over, Christian symbols are used to purify such spaces and make them ‘safe’.
D. Briquel offers a subtle diachronic investigation of how the Romans treated Etruscan haruspication. Initially, she argues, it was presented as foreign but complementary to Roman religion (which lacked a comparable tradition). Later, in the face of competition from Christianity, the Romans claimed haruspication as a native Roman tradition, and used Christian respect for prophecy as a means to assert its superiority. I was a little less persuaded by some aspects of V. Rosenberger's study of competition among Christian ascetics. No doubt ascetics did compete at times among themselves for spiritual glory (Rosenberger might also have considered the sparse but interesting evidence for competition between male and female ascetics). In some sense, one might call resistance to the devil a form of competition, but I was not convinced that seeking the divine reward of paradise constitutes a form of competition with God.
A number of important themes emerge from the collection as a whole. One is that peaceful coexistence, complementarity and even cooperation may often be a better model for relations between religions than competition. Another is the complexity of Christian relations with other cults, as expressed in the built environment in both East and West. A third is that whether or not other cults compete with one another, Christianity competes constantly and intensely both with others and with itself. It is tempting, indeed, to go further than the editors and suggest that religious competition as a paradigm is a Christian concept whose application to other ancient cults has been somewhat misleading, if not entirely mistaken. A fourth is the twin ingenuity and ruthlessness of Christian discourse, both in writing and in building, in adopting some elements of other traditions, adapting others, demonising yet others and relentlessly developing the narrative of Christianity's triumph over opposition.
The final essay, by D. Praet, on how Ernest Renan and Franz Cumont shaped modern assumptions about competition between Christianity and ‘orientalizing’ cults of the early empire, neatly complements E. and V.N.'s introduction, and shows how much is to be gained from disciplinary hermeneutics. All in all, this is a very interesting, stimulating and productive addition to the field.
