This book deconstructs instances of religious conflict within the formative centuries of Christianity. It explores the theoretical foundations of religious conflict; the dynamics of religious conflict within the context of persecution and martyrdom; and the relationship between religious conflict and religious identity.

Wendy Mayer is Professor and Associate Dean of Research at Australian Lutheran College, University of Divinity, and Research Fellow in Biblical and Ancient Studies at the University of South Africa.

Chris L. de Wet is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at the University of South Africa, and Honorary Research Fellow at Australian Lutheran College, University of Divinity.

Preface

Abbreviations

Part 1: Foundations

1. Re-Theorising Religious Conflict: Early Christianity to Late Antiquity and Beyond

Wendy Mayer

2. Religious Violence and Its Roots: A View from Antiquity

Jan Bremmer

Part 2: Rhetorical and Literary Trajectories

3. Blindness in Early Christianity: Tracking the Fundamentals of Religious Conflict

Pieter J. J. Botha

4. Religious Conflict, Radicalism, and Sexual Exceptionalism in the Rhetoric of John Chrysostom

Chris L. de Wet

5. Give it Up for God: Wealth, Suffering, and the Rhetoric of Religious Persecution in

John of Ephesus's Church History

Christine Shepardson

6. Epiphanies and Religious Conflict: The Contests over the Hagiasma of Chonai

Alan H. Cadwallader

Part 3: Christianization

7. Contested Domains in the Conflicts between the Early Christian Mission and Diaspora Judaism According to the Book of Acts

Christoph Stenschke

8. Christianisation and Late Antique Patronage: Conflicts and Everyday Nuisances

Maijastina Kahlos

Part 4: Threats of Violence

9. "A Wise Madness": A Virtue-Based Model for Crowd Behaviour in Late Antiquity

Peter Van Nuffelen

10. Religious Violence in Late Antique Egypt Reconsidered: The Cases of Alexandria, Panopolis and Philae

Jitse H. F. Dijkstra

Part 5: Ancient and Modern Intersections

11. Collaboration and Identity in the Aftermath of Persecution: Religious Conflict and Its Legacy

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser

12. The Usefulness of Violent Ends: Apocalyptic Imaginaries in the Reconstruction of Society

Gerhard van den Heever