This book originated in a series of lectures that Nock, a Harvard professor, gave at Trinity, Cambridge, and in Boston. The first thing that struck me was the vast and assured command of classic literature not only on Nock’s part but presumed by him to be present in his listeners. I was thankful that I could quickly access Wikipedia to make up for my relative ignorance.
When Nock wrote, many researchers located the closest parallels with nascent Christianity in the mystery religions. Nock acknowledges some similarities but also stresses crucial differences. There was no recondite teaching reserved for the initiates. Even knowledge of how the central ceremony reserved to the baptized, the eucharist, was conducted was available to outsiders. Above all, Nock notes that initiation into a mystery was expensive. Only those with means need apply. What Christianity offered was available to rich and poor alike. As Nock writes: “It was left for Christianity to democratize mystery” (p. 57)
Two chapters interested me particularly. One dealt with conversion to philosophy. To Nock, this phenomenon was more comparable to conversion in the Christian sense than overtly religious responses. Concerning the latter, Nock makes the helpful distinction between conversion and adhesion. An ancient Roman could participate in a newly introduced form of worship without renouncing his previous cultic practice. As for philosophy, in contrast, its pursuit often involved the change both in worldview and in behavior associated in our minds with religious conversion. Nock underlines the point by showing examples of the vocabulary related to conversion in the New Testament—-metanoia is one example—in accounts of a turn to philosophy.
Even more interesting was the lengthy penultimate chapter, “The Teachings of Christianity as Viewed by a Pagan.” In this, Nock analyses those aspects of the Christian message that shared common ground with widely-held ideas and those that would have seemed unfamiliar and strange. As a result, Nock concludes that “the advance of Christianity stands out as a phenomenon which does not stand alone but has parallels which make its success not wholly incomprehensible” (p. 267).
Despite appearing nearly eighty years ago, I found this book worth reading. ( )