Between Paganism and Judaism: Early Christianity in Cappadocia

The aim of the present study is not to evaluate how successful the Christian mission in Cappadocia was in the first three centuries – which is at the base of Harnak’s masterpiece Mission und Ausbreitung and derived from his own cultural and intellectual formation – but to update and, where possible, integrate new evidence and to understand the different and changeable types of relationship that were formed between the Good News of the Gospel and the existing forms of paganism and Judaism. These themselves represented mixtures and syncretisms deriving from the encounter between Jewish and indigenous religious ideas. In particular, Theos Hypsistos came in contact with or confronted the Gospel not as winner and loser but as co-protagonist in a variegated and nuanced cultural canvas. Harnack concluded that by the time of the council of Nicaea Christianity, although not prevalent everywhere, had nevertheless subordinated the rival syncretisms. Early Cappadocian Christianity, however, was poised between paganism and Judaism and struggled to impose itself in the peculiar social environment of the region: in fact it is almost impossible to draw a clear boundary between the “henotheistic” and Judaizing pagan survivals.