Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 Ce

In Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, Eric Rebillard goes much further in problematizing group formation in late Roman Africa. [Rebillard] stridently critiques the widespread scholarly tendency to assume that 'Christians' (and, for that matter, 'pagans') represented an identifiable group in late Roman society. [He] stresses that religious affiliation was only one facet of these individuals' identities and did not translate automatically into participation within the 'internally homogeneous and externally bounded groups' (2) generally presumed by historical analysis.

It is certainly refreshing to have to consider 'the intermittency.. of Christianness' (p. 93) in the everyday lived experience of individual Christians during the vastly changing religious and social conditions prevailing in North Africa over these nearly three centuries. Rebillard acutely raises the pertinent questions of what exactly it meant to be a Christian over these years and what were the parameters of Christian identity. For this, Rebillard has done us a stimulating and innovative service.

The sensation one gets reading Rebillard's book is similar to donning a pair of 3D-glasses. Each lens filters properly so that in combinationwe see new and marvelous things.

Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE is a provocative and very important book. Eric Rebillard argues that 'Christian' was not a relevant or influential identity marker for insiders or for outsiders in late antique North Africa. This book offers a very important, and for many of us long-awaited, paradigm shift for the discussion of late antiquity and early Christianity. Much as `pagan' seems to be merely a rhetorical construction rather than a self-definition, so also `Christian' did not have the implications of boundary or group identity that most historians assume.

This book makes an important contribution to the growing field of religious identity studies and is likely to redirect the study of Roman imperial religious identities into new and more productive directions. By identifying and offering a methodology to avoid problems-such as artificial reification and acquiescence to clerical perspectives-that have bedeviled recent studies of Christian identity, the book should have a major impact on the field.