ABSTRACT
Christianity began and was shaped in its first, decisive, two centuries within the confines of the Roman Empire.1 It was recognized both by adherents and by opponents as a novel religious phenomenon, some aspects of which had no previous parallel in religious history. But many of the elements of theology and cult from which Christianity was constructed were inherited and adopted from contemporary Judaism and paganism; from the perspective of the ancient world it can be seen as a peculiarly successful oriental cult, in many ways similar to Mithraism and (most obviously) Judaism.
