This book tackles a central problem of comparative religious history: proselytizing by Jews and pagans in the ancient world, and the origins of missions in the early Church. Why did some individuals in the first four centuries of the Christian era believe it desirable to persuade outsiders to join their religious group, while others did not?
In this book, the author offers a new hypothesis about the origins of Christian proselytizing, 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.
Much of the book focusses on the history of Judaism in late antiquity. Dr Goodman makes a detailed and radical re-evaluation of the evidence for Jewish missionary attitudes in the late Second Temple and Talmudic periods, questioning many commonly held assumptions, in particular the view that Jews proselytized energetically in the first century CE. 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 proselytizing by some followers of Jesus in the apostolic age.

Martin Goodman

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Oxford, Oxford, New York, England, 1994

F First Edition, 1994

Includes bibliographical references (p. [175]-188) and index.
"Contains the Wilde Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion ... delivered ... between January and March 1992"--Pref.

Contains the Wilde lectures in natural and comparative religion, 1992.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

<p>This is a controversial and important new examination of the origins of Christian mission, set against the background of ancient Judaism and the pagan culture of the Roman Empire. The author's conclusions suggest that mission was not inherent to either early Judaism or Christianity, and was only sporadically practiced in antiquity by these religions. Clear, accessible, and at the same time displaying considerable scholarship, this book will provide an important challenge and a stimulus to both theologians and historians. In invites a total reconsideration of the grounds for religious conversion in both Christianity and Judaism.</p>

An examination of the origins of Christian mission, set against the background of ancient Judaism and the pagan culture of the Roman Empire. The book concludes that mission was not inherent to either early Judaism or Christianity, and was only sporadically practiced in antiquity by these religions.

This text tackles a central problem of Jewish and comparative religious history: proselytization and the origins of mission in the Early Church. The author offers a controversial theory that mission is not an inherent religious instinct, and that its importance was rarely stressed in antiquity.

The author offers an explanation of the origins of mission in the Early Church, 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

xiv, 194 p. ; 22 cm
"Contains the Wilde Lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion ... delivered ... between January and March 1992"--Pref
Includes bibliographical references (p. [175]-188) and index

2023-06-28