DOC From Temple to Church by Stephen Emmel in History

Review

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Insightful but skewedBy DAJPolytheistic religion died out in the Roman Empire through a long; convoluted process. This book mostly discusses the conversion of temple buildings; which were often reused as churches. In some cases; most famously the destruction of the Serapeum of Alexandria; the traditional rites in the temples only stopped after a violent Christian attack; but as the editors say right at the beginning; the texts that describe such violent events are often; though not always; inaccurate.One of the more important things these studies demonstrate is that anti-pagan edicts from Christian emperors couldn't stop people from practicing their religion. They could be used by Christian fanatics on the ground to justify their anti-pagan behavior; but those fanatics could distort what those edicts actually said to make their points. Even more important; Christian stories of saints' lives tend to exaggerate; or even fabricate; stories of temple destruction so as to make their subjects look more "heroic". Some of the better essays in the book are more focused on the texts themselves—the types of stories they told and the way they distorted events—rather than temple buildings.Despite their cautious approach to the texts; these authors still sometimes overemphasize violent conversion. Johannes Hahn; for instance; writes about Philae as the only certain instance where a temple was attacked and then immediately converted to a church. But Philae and the End of Egyptian Religion; published the same year as this book; persuasively argues that the cult at Philae died out decades before the temple was converted.The volume is also geographically skewed. It draws its evidence overwhelmingly from the eastern half of the empire; and of the nine studies that focus on particular regions; one is about Aphrodisias in Anatolia; one is about Palestine; and seven are about Egypt. That's useful to me because Egypt is my focus; but if your interests lie elsewhere it's a problem.A slightly later book; The Archaeology of Late Antique 'Paganism'; edited by Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan; provides a more complete and convincing description of the Christianization process. It's more geographically balanced and focuses on all kinds of archaeological evidence about pagan practices. This book's focus on textual evidence makes it a good complement to Lavan and Mulryan; but this book doesn't stand on its own as well as theirs does.