The aim of this collection of essays is ‘to contextualise early Christian martyrdom in the wider, historical, cultural and social context of its appearance’ (p. 8). We begin with contributions on the New Testament origins of martyrdom, first with a discussion of Luke's presentation of Jesus’ passion (Niels Willert), and secondly with the same author's presentation of Stephen's death in Acts vi–viii (Stefan Krauter). Both contributors seek to play down the degree to which either account is influenced by Jewish martyr stories, preferring at least in the case of the story of Stephen's death, to play up the use of motifs from the pagan ideal of the noble death. An essay on the gladiatorial games follows in which Jesper Carlsen argues, amongst other things, that they functioned as a way of enforcing certain Roman values, essentially of a martial kind, though he draws no direct conclusions about how this conclusion and others that he draws might have fed into developing ideas of martyrdom amongst Christians (or indeed the way Christians described martyrdom). In an essay exploring pagan perspectives on Christian martyrdom, Jakob Engberg argues that pagan authors viewed Christian martyrdom as in some sense distinctive, and did so both from a positive and negative perspective. Related to this point is his observation that Christian claims that martyrdoms could have beneficial effects, leading even to the conversion of non-Christians, has some validity. Jesper Hyldahl follows with an essay on Gnostic attitudes to martyrdom, indicating that contestation about the idea was something experienced from within the Church as well as from outside. A lengthy essay follows in which Nils Arne Pedersen argues against the view that the first Christian to advocate a ban on suicide was St Augustine (a view advocated by Droge and Tabor), and to this effect he seeks to present early evidence for a Christian distinction between martyrdom and suicide. In a typically subtle essay, Judith Lieu attempts to break down the somewhat ham-fisted distinctions which are sometimes drawn up between apologies and martyr accounts, showing, inter alia, how apologetic motifs are to be found in the latter, and reference to martyrdoms in the former. Drawing on some of her previous work, she also shows how both are bound up in the end with attempts to articulate developing ideas of Christian identity. Anders Klostergaard Petersen explores attitudes to gender as these manifest themselves in martyr accounts; and the collection is brought to an end with an essay by Danya Kalleres in which the post-Constantinian use of martyr ideology is explored, showing both how it could be used to endorse imperial ideology and to give Christians a greater sense of attachment to a heroic past, here as a means of criticising activity in the present.

This is an interesting collection of essays, though its aims are less easy to discern than the editors in their introduction would indicate. The English prose of those for whom English is not a first language is sometimes opaque; and it is a pity that the volume comes with no index.