An internationally recognized scholar highlights the important role the North African church played in the development of Christian thought. This accessible introduction brings Africa back to the center of the study of Christian history by focusing on key figures and events that influenced the history and trajectory of Christianity as a whole. Written and designed for the classroom, the book zeroes in on five turning points to show how North African believers significantly shaped Christian theology, identity, and practice in ways that directly impact the church today.

The early accounts of one of the most famous scenes in Christian history, the death of Peter, do not present a single narrative of the events, for they do not agree on why Peter requested to die in the precise way that he allegedly did. Over time, historians and theologians have tended to smooth over these rough edges, creating the impression that the ancient sources all line up in a certain direction. This impression, however, misrepresents the evidence. The reason for Peter's inverted crucifixion is not the only detail on which the sources diverge. In fact, such disagreement can be seen concerning nearly every major narrative point in the martyrdom accounts of Peter and Paul. The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul shows that the process of smoothing over differences in order to create a master narrative about the deaths of Peter and Paul has distorted the evidence. This process of distortion not only blinds us to differences in perspective among the various authors, but also discourages us from digging deeper into the contexts of those authors to explore why they told the stories of the apostolic deaths differently in their contexts. David L. Eastman demonstrates that there was never a single, unopposed narrative about the deaths of Peter and Paul. Instead, stories were products of social memory, told and re-told in order to serve the purposes of their authors and their communities. The history of the writing of the many deaths of Peter and Paul is one of contextualized variety.

Ancient iconography of Paul is dominated by one image: Paul as martyr. Whether he is carrying a sword--the traditional instrument of his execution--or receiving a martyr's crown from Christ, the apostle was remembered and honored for his faithfulness to the point of death. As a result, Christians created a cult of Paul, centered on particular holy sites and characterized by practices such as the telling of stories, pilgrimage, and the veneration of relics. This study integrates literary, archaeological, artistic, and liturgical evidence to describe the development of the Pauline cult within the cultural context of the late antique West.