Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures, c. 360–430.By Maijastina Kahlos. Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion,Theology, and Biblical Studies. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007.

摘要

Maijastina Kahlos sets out to explore the discursive construction of Christian andnpagan identities in early Christian polemical and apologetic literature. In thenintroduction, Kahlos discusses some classic interpretive problems posed bynearly Christian apologetics. Christian apologists argue against a highly contrivedn“paganism” that usually bears only a distorted relationship to the materialnrealities of traditional religious practice. Apologetic literature (and particularlynthe post-Constantinian texts that are the focus of Kahlos’s study), moreover,npresents a triumphalist historical narrative of Christianization that influencesnmodern understandings of the history of late ancient religions. Thus, by layingnbare the strategies by which late ancients constructed pagan-Christian difference