ABSTRACT
If history is written by the victors, truism notwithstanding, then texts and their embedded ideas and theories are likewise ‘rewritten’ by the victors. The emergence, spread, and eventual success and establishment of Christianity played the most decisive role in what euhemerism as a theory of religion came to mean, not only in the first centuries of our era but commonly thereafter. It is not a hyperbole to say that most-if not allallusions to Euhemerus and euhemerism from this period were destined to permanently alter and essentially transform the theory, allowing us, for the first time, to refer to its plural form ‘euhemerisms’ with more confidence. This ‘rewriting’ was the result of specific motivations, as I will argue in what follows, mainly related to instituting an identity that could allow the early followers of the Christian teachings to establish themselves as a distinct group amidst existing ones.
