Combining classical, epigraphical, and biblical sources with social-scientific methodology, this monograph questions the way in which modern scholarship has tended to discuss ancient conversion. The author challenges long-held assumptions of psychological continuity between ancient and modern people, and offers in place of these assumptions a model founded on the categories the ancients used themselves. Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean religions and philosophies, including Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity, framed their religion in the language of patronage / benefaction and loyalty, and thus an understanding of ancient conversion must start there.

Stephen G. Wilson was Professor of Religion at Carleton University, Ottawa, and Director of the College of Humanities until his retirement in 2007. His contributions to the study of the religious identities of Jews, Christians, and Gentiles in the first three centuries of the Common Era are widely acknowledged; his interests have been no less in the contrasting and sometimes conflicting religious identities within each of these three groups. Among his best-known publications are The Gentiles and the Gentile Mission in Luke DEGREESActs (1973), Luke and the Law (1983), Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70 DEGREES170 CE (1995), and Leaving the Fold: Defectors and Apostates in Antiquity (2004). The present collection of essays develops further Wilson's researches on the general theme of identity and interaction. The sixteen contributors to this Festschrift include Kim Stratton on curse rhetoric, Adele Reinhartz on Caiaphas, Willi Braun on meals and social formation, Philip Harland on meals and social labelling, Richard Ascough on missionizing associations, John Barclay on Judaean identity in Josephus, John Kloppenborg on the recipients of the Letter of James, Laurence Broadhurst on ancient music, Larry Hurtado on manuscripts and identity, Edith Humphey on naming in the Apocalypse, Michele Murray on the Apostolic Constitutions, Roger Beck on the Late Antique Ohoroscope of Islam, Graydon Snyder on the Ethiopian Jews, Alan Segal on Daniel Boyarin, Robert Morgan on theology vs religious studies, and William Arnal on scholarly identities in the study of Christia

Jerome H. Neyrey, Professor of New Testament at the University of Notre Dame since 1992, is widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to social-scientific criticism of the Gospels and the Epistles. In this Festschrift the contributors notably advance the cause of social-scientific New Testament study. David Aune writes on Christian beginnings and cognitive dissonance theory, Zeba Crook on constructing a model of ancient prayer, Craig deVos on good news to the poor in Luke, John H. Elliott on envy and the evil eye, Philip Esler on the development of a non-ethnic group identity in John, Bruce Malina and John Pilch on the wrath of God, Halvor Moxnes on masculinity and place in Luke, Douglas Oakman on coinage in the Judean temple system, Carolyn Osiek on motivation for the conversion of women in early Christianity, Eric Stewart on the city in Mark, and Gerd Theissen on early Christian communities and ancient organizations.