Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World

"Silly," "stupid," "irrational," "simple." "Wicked," "hateful," "obstinate," "anti-social." "Extravagant," "perverse." The Roman world rendered harsh judgments upon early Christianity—including branding Christianity "new." Novelty was no Roman religious virtue.

In Destroyer of the gods, Larry Hurtado demonstrates how Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive feature and opposition to them. Christianity stood apart from the Roman world through its utter rejection of the traditional gods, as well as through an offering of a new and different religious identity, not based on ethnicity. Other distinctive features of this "new" Christianity include the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, as well as an insistence that its adherents behave differently and be transformed behaviorally through an embracing of the Christian faith.

Though Christianity's novelty was no badge of honor, often earning Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts, Larry Hurtado's Destroyer of the gods demonstrates the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another.