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A review by daj89
Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity by James J. O'Donnell
3.0
This is an odd book. For one thing, it starts out by saying how annoying tour guides in Rome can be, and it presents itself as an alternative to the standard story of paganism and Christianity that those tour guides repeat. Yet with his flippant, chatty style, O'Donnell becomes nothing other than a slightly annoying tour guide.
Academia has been undergoing a shift in thinking about paganism and Christianity for more than 40 years, and O'Donnell wants to convey that revised viewpoint to a wider audience. A few ideas stand out as most important, though it takes him a while to get around to them. First, "pagan" is an insulting blanket label for anyone who was not a Christian or a Jew, and it lumps together people who had nothing in common and never thought of themselves as being part of a unified group. Second, although Christians portrayed their conversion of the Roman Empire as a grand struggle, the pagans after Constantine's conversion never organized resistance to Christianity, even though several points in history have traditionally been interpreted as signs of such resistance. Emperor Julian tried to restore state support for traditional cults but did little more than that; a handful of Roman officials at the end of the fourth century happened to be pagan but did practically nothing to advocate their beliefs; the Battle of the Frigidus, part of a typical Roman succession dispute, had nothing to do with paganism. Third, the distinction between Christian and pagan could be very blurry well into the fourth century. Finally, Christianity reinvented itself as it rose to preeminence, so that a lot of the traits we take for granted (e.g., communion as a formal ceremony rather than just a shared meal) developed in the fourth and fifth centuries, not earlier. An increasingly hard division between Christian and non-Christian was one of those developments.
All those points are generally supported by the recent scholarly work that O'Donnell is distilling, in books such as [b:The Last Pagans of Rome|9238885|The Last Pagans of Rome|Alan Cameron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1288185934l/9238885._SX50_.jpg|14119184]. However, his attitude toward the traditional cults rather undermines his credibility. He spends several chapters describing these cults, but he can't fully grasp the mindset of the ancient "pagans". Neither can any modern person, really, but many scholars have attempted to do so. O'Donnell's iconoclastic approach and his flippant style make him seem to dismiss those attempts. For instance, when discussing polytheistic offering rites, it's worth pointing out that the food didn't vanish from the altars and there's no empirical reason to believe the gods interacted with it in any way. But O'Donnell hammers at that point insistently. It comes across as incredulity that anybody believed this stuff. If you see it that way, you won't be surprised that the traditional cults crumbled with barely a whimper. While he may not intend it, O'Donnell feels like he's slipping into the old assumption that Christianity succeeded because the traditional cults were unappealing and moribund. That assumption has also been challenged in recent decades, starting with [b:Paganism in the Roman Empire|559800|Paganism in the Roman Empire|Ramsay MacMullen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328870830l/559800._SY75_.jpg|546965] and [b:Pagans and Christians|37839|Pagans and Christians|Robin Lane Fox|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1210123406l/37839._SX50_.jpg|37633] in the 1980s.
O'Donnell is no Christian partisan and seems to be an all-around skeptic. He points out, for instance, that all forms of Christianity today are so different from the Christianity of the fourth century that it's strange to even call them the same thing. But even there, he notes that one of the things that distance ancient Christians from us is that they believed the pagan gods were real—they just called them demons. That's perfectly true, yet it gives the impression that ancient Christianity is alien to modern Christianity because it was more like paganism, with the implication that paganism is even more alien to modern people than ancient Christianity.
Thus, even though O'Donnell is often quite insightful about how Christianity evolved and triumphed, his attitude distances us from polytheism rather than helping us grasp the way polytheists thought. And if we don't understand that, we don't have the whole picture. Mediterranean peoples worshipped multiple gods for thousands of years. Millions of modern people in places like India and Japan have loosely similar customs. Polytheism appeals to people, for whatever reason. If O'Donnell dismisses it so blithely, how far can we trust his account of its disappearance from the Mediterranean?
Academia has been undergoing a shift in thinking about paganism and Christianity for more than 40 years, and O'Donnell wants to convey that revised viewpoint to a wider audience. A few ideas stand out as most important, though it takes him a while to get around to them. First, "pagan" is an insulting blanket label for anyone who was not a Christian or a Jew, and it lumps together people who had nothing in common and never thought of themselves as being part of a unified group. Second, although Christians portrayed their conversion of the Roman Empire as a grand struggle, the pagans after Constantine's conversion never organized resistance to Christianity, even though several points in history have traditionally been interpreted as signs of such resistance. Emperor Julian tried to restore state support for traditional cults but did little more than that; a handful of Roman officials at the end of the fourth century happened to be pagan but did practically nothing to advocate their beliefs; the Battle of the Frigidus, part of a typical Roman succession dispute, had nothing to do with paganism. Third, the distinction between Christian and pagan could be very blurry well into the fourth century. Finally, Christianity reinvented itself as it rose to preeminence, so that a lot of the traits we take for granted (e.g., communion as a formal ceremony rather than just a shared meal) developed in the fourth and fifth centuries, not earlier. An increasingly hard division between Christian and non-Christian was one of those developments.
All those points are generally supported by the recent scholarly work that O'Donnell is distilling, in books such as [b:The Last Pagans of Rome|9238885|The Last Pagans of Rome|Alan Cameron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1288185934l/9238885._SX50_.jpg|14119184]. However, his attitude toward the traditional cults rather undermines his credibility. He spends several chapters describing these cults, but he can't fully grasp the mindset of the ancient "pagans". Neither can any modern person, really, but many scholars have attempted to do so. O'Donnell's iconoclastic approach and his flippant style make him seem to dismiss those attempts. For instance, when discussing polytheistic offering rites, it's worth pointing out that the food didn't vanish from the altars and there's no empirical reason to believe the gods interacted with it in any way. But O'Donnell hammers at that point insistently. It comes across as incredulity that anybody believed this stuff. If you see it that way, you won't be surprised that the traditional cults crumbled with barely a whimper. While he may not intend it, O'Donnell feels like he's slipping into the old assumption that Christianity succeeded because the traditional cults were unappealing and moribund. That assumption has also been challenged in recent decades, starting with [b:Paganism in the Roman Empire|559800|Paganism in the Roman Empire|Ramsay MacMullen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328870830l/559800._SY75_.jpg|546965] and [b:Pagans and Christians|37839|Pagans and Christians|Robin Lane Fox|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1210123406l/37839._SX50_.jpg|37633] in the 1980s.
O'Donnell is no Christian partisan and seems to be an all-around skeptic. He points out, for instance, that all forms of Christianity today are so different from the Christianity of the fourth century that it's strange to even call them the same thing. But even there, he notes that one of the things that distance ancient Christians from us is that they believed the pagan gods were real—they just called them demons. That's perfectly true, yet it gives the impression that ancient Christianity is alien to modern Christianity because it was more like paganism, with the implication that paganism is even more alien to modern people than ancient Christianity.
Thus, even though O'Donnell is often quite insightful about how Christianity evolved and triumphed, his attitude distances us from polytheism rather than helping us grasp the way polytheists thought. And if we don't understand that, we don't have the whole picture. Mediterranean peoples worshipped multiple gods for thousands of years. Millions of modern people in places like India and Japan have loosely similar customs. Polytheism appeals to people, for whatever reason. If O'Donnell dismisses it so blithely, how far can we trust his account of its disappearance from the Mediterranean?