Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine

An interesting and quite well-written, though ultimately unconvincing, work, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety brings together a series of four lectures given by E.R. Dodds on the subject of religious experience between about 161 and 312CE. That Dodds was writing in the 1960s is readily apparent—he draws almost exclusively on literary material in order to make a case about religious experience (ignoring what is surely a wealth of epigraphic material!), and he interprets the evidence largely through a Freudian lens. He elucidates beautifully the ways in which Christian and polytheist Neo-Platonists influenced and drew on one another, but in the light of more recent scholarship which has reassessed the nature and the vigour of show more polytheism in the Later Roman Empire, Dodds' thesis (that an enervated polytheism couldn't resist Christianity's innovations and energy) is ultimately unconvincing. show less

This is a series of lectures (4) on various aspects of Christian Pagan spirituality. It has a rambling quality that often fails to satisfy, however there are gems and wry comments sprinkled throughout. The method of comparison is one of textual literary analysis, something that might seem a little old-fashioned especially when one considers how little of the writings of Late Antiquity has come down to us. (Ie, you can't make generalizations on religious behavior with such scanty evidence.) Get it for its fluent discussion of various Christian sects and their silliness (the author is an admitted agnostic).

A good book, but flawed by the primary limits of all such books -- a reliance on the writings of the intellectuals of the times. At that, he ignores the likelihood that other writings by less fashionable authors have been lost or suppressed.
(handwritten on verso of 2nd flyleaf)