Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Wilde Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion ; 1922) - Hardcover

Goodman, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198149417 ISBN 13: 9780198149415

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1994

Synopsis

This study tackles a central problem of Jewish and comparative religious history - proselytization and the origins of mission in the Early Church. Why did some individuals in the first four centuries of the Christian era believe it desirable to persuade as many outsiders to join their religious group, while others did not? In this book, the author offers an explanation of the origins of mission in this period, arguing that mission is not an inherent religious instinct, that in antiquity it was found only sporadically among Jews and pagans, and that even Christians rarely stressed its importance in the early centuries. In the first half of the book, the author makes a detailed and radical re-evaluation of the evidence for Jewish missionary attitudes in the late-Second-Temple and Talmudic periods, overturning many commonly held assumptions about the history of Judaism, in particular the view that Jews proselytized energetically in the first-century AD. This leads him on to take issue with the common notion that the early-Christian mission to the gentiles imitated or competed with contemporary Jews. Finally, the author puts forward some novel suggestions as to how the Jewish background to Christianity may nonetheless have contributed to the enthusiastic adoption of universal proselytization by some followers of Jesus in the apostolic age. Martin Goodman is the author of "The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ" and "The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, AD 66-70"

About this title

Review

provides a fascinating analysis of Jewish missionary attitudes, and raises questions for church historians and theologians about the influences which shaped the young Church (Church Times)

for Jews and Christians this book is a rich source of interest and relevance ... There is a great deal of information and analysis that is clearly presented and cogently argued (Expository Times)

From the Back Cover

This book tackles a central problem of religious history: proselytizing by Jews and pagans in the ancient world, and the origins of mission in the early Church. Martin Goodman argues that mission is not an inherent religious instinct, that in antiquity it was found only sporadically among Jews and pagans, and even Christians rarely stressed its importance in the early centuries.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0198149417
• ISBN 13: 9780198149415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208