Inventing Superstition

From the Hippocratics to the Christians

Dale B. Martin, Dale B. MARTIN

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780674024076, 9780674015340
• eBook ISBN: 9780674040694
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

The Roman author Pliny the Younger characterizes Christianity as "contagious superstition"; two centuries later the Christian writer Eusebius vigorously denounces Greek and Roman religions as vain and impotent "superstitions." The term of abuse is the same, yet the two writers suggest entirely different things by "superstition."

Dale Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity.

Inventing Superstition weaves a powerfully coherent argument that will transform our understanding of religion in Greek and Roman culture and the wider ancient Mediterranean world.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Superstitious Christians
• 2 Problems of Definition
• 3 Inventing Deisidaimonia: Theophrastus, ReligiousEtiquette, and Theological Optimism
• 4 Dealing with Disease: The Hippocratics and theDivine
• 5 Solidifying a New Sensibility: Plato and Aristotleon the Optimal Universe
• 6 Diodorus Siculus and the Failure of Philosophy
• 7 Cracks in the Philosophical System: Plutarch andthe Philosophy of Demons
• 8 Galen on the Necessity of Nature and theTheology of Teleology
• 9 Roman Superstitio and Roman Power
• 10 Celsus and the Attack on Christianity
• 11 Origen and the Defense of Christianity
• 12 The Philosophers Turn: Philosophical Daimons inLate Antiquity
• 13 Turning the Tables: Eusebius, the “Triumph” ofChristianity, and the Superstition of the Greeks
• Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of a GrandOptimal Illusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index