A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire

by Keith Hopkins

In this provocative, irresistibly entertaining book, Keith Hopkins takes readers back in time to explore the roots of Christianity in ancient Rome. Combining exacting scholarship with dazzling invention, Hopkins challenges our perceptions about religion, the historical Jesus, and the way history is written. He puts us in touch with what he calls "empathetic wonder"-imagining what Romans, pagans, Jews, and Christians thought, felt, experienced, and believed-by employing a series of engaging literary devices. These include a TV drama about the Dead Sea Scrolls; the first-person testimony of a pair of time-travelers to Pompeii; a meditation on Jesus' apocryphal twin brother; and an unusual letter on God, demons, and angels.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Philosophy, Ancient History, Spirituality

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1999

About the author

Morris Keith Hopkins was a British historian and sociologist. He was professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to 2000.
Hopkins had a relatively unconventional route to the Cambridge professorship. After Brentwood School, he graduated in classics at King's College, Cambridge in 1958. He spent time as a graduate student, much influenced by Moses Finley, but left before completing his doctorate for an assistant lectureship in sociology at the University of Leicester (1961–63).
He returned to Cambridge as a research fellow at King's College, Cambridge (1963–67) while at the same time taking a lectureship at the London School of Economics, before spending two years as professor of sociology at Hong Kong University (1967–69) After a further two years at the LSE (1970–72), he moved to Brunel University as professor of sociology in 1972, also serving as dean of the social sciences faculty from 1981 to 1985.
In 1985 he was elected to the Cambridge chair in ancient history. The fullest account of his career and significance as an ancient historian is in his British Academy necrology (W.V. Harris, Proceedings of the British Academy 130 (2005), 3–27).

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a very ambitious book: Hopkins tries to explain how Christianity was capable of reaching an unlikely 'triumph' in the Roman empire. He does so by evoking the variegated religious landscape at the time, using an original, experimental approache: next to the traditional historical story he presents visits to the Roman age through a 'teletime machine', combined with television interviews and plays. In my view this is not a success. The different chapters are very uneven: the experimental pieces are a failure, the others rather boring.

[Dergrossest · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book about the rise of Christianity from relative obscurity to the official religion of the Roman Empire in less than 400 years proves that you can sometimes be too clever for your own good. Instead of strictly presenting a traditional-type historical analysis, the atheist author intersperses a series of periodically interesting, although not always successful, detours and literary devices, including time travelers, mock TV specials and critical correspondence with his believer friends and colleagues. While deserving an A+ for originality, this approach disrupts any natural flow and leads to multiple narrative cul-de-sacs.

Nevertheless, the book presents many interesting facts about the all-pervasive and public nature of pagan religions in antiquity, the failure of other contemporary monotheistic faiths to catch fire, the many valid questions as to the historical accuracy of the Gospels and the heavy price paid by the faith and the faithful as Christianity moved from a religion of inspiration and liberation to a more bureaucratized instrument of societal control and institutional self-interest. Finally, despite his occasional snarkiness as to us foolish believers, I appreciated the author’s recognition of the many unique aspects of Christianity (i.e., first really supranational/ethnic religion, its focus on charitable works and the poor, its emphasis on forgiveness, etc.) which made it so attractive to many. However, this is still a complex and often difficult book which is not for the casual reader.

[Vann Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keith Hopkins’ A World Full of Gods is a book important to any—Christian or atheist—who wants a grasp on how the teachings of the church (Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant) arose in the earliest centuries. I would not recommend this book to a nascent Christian who must believe stories about miracles to be stories of historical fact.

While in places the reader’s eyes will glaze over, in many other places the human side of how the teachings evolved will elicit a prayer of thanksgiving from Christians mature in their faith.

The book is full of treasures, such as the long quote (p 284) from St. Augustine that he wrote on his deathbed in which he questions whether it was spiritual arrogance that made him abandon the wife he loved, Floria. “Now that I’m dying, in the loneliness of my monkish bed, I can’t help but remember the warmth and beauty of her body, and regret my wasted years…But why, O my God, why did I waste my life in the desert of continence? Wouldn’t it have been better to continue yielding to human love, rather than surrender to ostentatious piety? Did the rod of Christ really demand fear of sin instead of the fulfillment of love?”

Among pages as dry as dust, there are sections filled with insight. Highly recommended for those whose faith is internalized. To be avoided by those who faith is not fully rooted.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to read this book, so I was a bit disappointed to find that the quality of the writing varies wildly from chapter to chapter; the author tries to be far too clever for his own good and include goofy testimonials from "time travelers" and such, but at other points it has some solid insight into the nature of the pagan Roman empire and just how unlikely was the "strange triumph of Christianity" (if one can even agree on what "Christianity" was or is . . . ). Some of the book is solid, so 3/5, but a major disappointment to me . . .

[Carley Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have ever been interested in the rise of Christianity from a small persecuted religion to the dominant one it is today-this is the book to read. The author does a fantastic job of not only chronicling the rise of christianity, but comparing it to other contemporary religions, such as Mithraism and how Christianity came out victorious.

[Andrew Imrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of my all time favorite history books. Historian Keith Hopkins has written a very unique book - using a number of different genres (including fiction and time travel) to write the history of the period when Christianity emerged out of he Roman Empire. One of those books that leaves a deep impression on you. I adored it.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was researching the Roman Empire's financial crisis of the late 3rd century and subsequent embrace of Christianity as part of the solution, I found a wealth of information in the late Keith Hopkins book "A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity." Before his death in 2004, I had often admired Hopkins insight shared in a number of television documentaries on the Roman Empire.

Although Hopkins is mostly remembered as a professor of ancient history at Cambridge, he also served a lectureship at the London School of Economics. Since my research was going to cross over from history to economics, I was excited to find his book, originally published in 1999.

But the book, like the man, was quite unconventional. Instead of a purely historic treatise on the rise of Christianity, it began with a fictional tale of time travel to first, ancient Pompeii, and then to ancient Egypt, to give the reader a taste of other competing religions during the formative years of Christianity's development. Although I was really more interested in facts than fantasy, I enjoy time travel tales so was not dissuaded from continuing to read on.

Then, I came upon a very long third chapter and it was literally stuffed with the background information and sociological interpretation I was truly looking for. I marked each usable passage with purple sticky tabs and soon that portion of the text was fluttering with purple markers.
Hopkins, a sociologist, drew parallels between the ancient Christian "revolution" and the political upheaval resulting in the establishment of communist China.

"...in Rome as in China, the veneer of virtuous prescription disguised a multitude of sins; the church grew steadily richer, and more corrupt; Christian rigorists pursued mad ends with obsessional fervor; bishops borrowed the oppressive powers of the state to bully, exclude, and even execute doctrinal rivals. "

Hopkins goes on to point out Christians viewed themselves as the fervent elect, chosen by God, and linked together by their difference from and radical rejection of others.

"...once in alliance with the state, Christian leaders exploited their newfound powers in order to impose single versions of correct belief, through votes by universal councils of bishops. Almost inevitably, once its influence and power was buttressed by the state, the church also became in part a business, distributing charity, patronage, privilege, and immortality."

How I interpreted this information and dozens of other passages in relation to the financial crisis of the Roman empire and the "conversion" of the Roman Emperor Constantine can be read in my paper, "Did Financial Exigency Drive The Roman Empire to Embrace Christianity?"

Hopkins spends the rest of his text examining Christian literature, comparing different versions of the gospels, and evaluating Christianity's turbulent coexistence with Judaism and paganism.

If you are looking for an account of purely historical events, this book, with the exception of Chapter Three, may disappoint. But, if you are open to exploring religious roots as a journey, you may find Hopkins unorthodox approach thought-provoking.

[Jeremy Poland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book was both intriguing and strange on a lot of levels, largely because I never figured out exactly what the author had set out to accomplish. Being written by a historian, who is also a self-identified 'non-believer,' the mood of the whole book came across as an unsettling mixture of very well researched tertiary information and overtly biased personal presuppositions. So, the question kept popping up in my head while reading it: why would a non-believer go to such great lengths to write about the early history and "triumph" of Christianity?
Perhaps, in part, to debunk it? To present an alternative, secularized history to compete with the self-justifying Christian historical narrative? To explore and explain some questions and holes he had had in his own understanding, while taking the reader along for the ride?

If that were the case, why go through such great lengths to try to appear being fair? Why include the long critical letters from Christian and Jewish scholars? In the end, the effect it had on me was that it was a simple buffet of: here are a lot of different ways to interpret these little details. And none of those details really seemed to have all that much to do with what I had hoped the book would address in the first place, which is the question of how this tiny movement came to subvert the Roman Empire. The best explanation I could gleam from this text on that question was something like: 'well, Christians had a very adaptive, compelling, though inconsistent, rhetorical argument that landed with the right people at the right time.' And even that claim was weakened by the repeated comparative examples of other groups and cults doing similar things. So what was that 'x' factor that tipped the scales? Christians worked harder? They were smarter (better rhetoricians)? More politically savvy -taking the right elements of stories, rituals, and values to bring unity? Poor competition? A long series of historical accidents/fate/chaos/providence? I was completely unsatisfied on that question, which I had thought would be the central focus of the book.

However, there was still some really great information in there! I thought Mr. Hopkins succeeded in creating a compelling vision of the ancient setting, religious purview, and historical context; and I also learned a lot about some non-canonical sources I hadn't been exposed to in seminary. I also appreciated the historical fiction narratives, and many of the creative liberties he took to make the work more accessible and readable. In fact, most of the sections worked on their own,particularly on the informational level; but the book never took me anywhere.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author does an excellent job explaining the intricacies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism, their mythologies, and their attractiveness to Late Antique Christians. Augustine was a Manichean for 20 years before his conversion to Christianity. Eight other contemporary African bishops had been Manicheans before their own conversions.

[Jrobertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

an interesting, if somewhat flamboyant, analysis of forces that took christianity form a small jewish cult to the state religion of rome. scholarly work.