Inventing Superstition

by Martin, Dale B.

• ISBN13: 9780674015340
• ISBN10: 0674015347
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

The Roman author Pliny the Younger characterizes Christianity as "contagious superstition"; two centuries later the Christian writer Eusebius vigorously denounces Greek and Roman religions as vain and impotent "superstitions." The term of abuse is the same, yet the two writers suggest entirely different things by "superstition." Dale Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity. Inventing Superstition weaves a powerfully coherent argument that will transform our understanding of religion in Greek and Roman culture and the wider ancient Mediterranean world.

Author Biography

Dale B. Martin is Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Superstitious Christians	1	(9)
Problems of Definition	10	(11)
Inventing Deisidaimonia: Theophrastus, Religious Etiquette, and Theological Optimism	21	(15)
Dealing with Disease: The Hippocratics and the Divine	36	(15)
Solidifying a New Sensibility: Plato and Aristotle on the Optimal Universe	51	(28)
Diodorus Siculus and the Failure of Philosophy	79	(14)
Cracks in the Philosophical System: Plutarch and the Philosophy of Demons	93	(16)
Galen on the Necessity of Nature and the Theology of Teleology	109	(16)
Roman Superstitio and Roman Power	125	(15)
Celsus and the Attack on Christianity	140	(20)
Origen and the Defense of Christianity	160	(27)
The Philosophers Turn: Philosophical Daimons in Late Antiquity	187	(20)
Turning the Tables: Eusebius, the ``Triumph'' of Christianity, and the Superstition of the Greeks	207	(19)
Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of a Grand Optimal Illusion	226	(19)
Notes	245	(38)
Works Cited	283	(18)
Index	301