Acts of Persuasion: Why Did Gentiles Convert to Christianity?

As the late and esteemed Larry Hurtado asked, “Why on earth did anyone become a Christian in the first three centuries?”¹ The familial, economic, and social costs of turning from the worship of the traditional pagan gods and converting to “the Way” (the earliest term for Christianity; see Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14) were serious.

So how did the early Christian movement persuade gentiles that its God, its gospel message centering upon a crucified and resurrected Messiah, and its attendant way of life were superior to competing Greco-Roman ways of worship and piety toward their gods?

I propose the book of Acts and its engagement with Greco-Roman religion provides a significant window into answering this question and establishes a defining feature of Christian identity throughout its history. Acts makes abundant use of Greco-Roman religious discourses in order to show that the early Christian movement embodies the superior elements of Greco-Roman religious, philosophical, and civic traditions. More directly stated, Acts depicts the Christian movement as a more superior cult, community, and philosophy with respect to its competitors.

A superior deity

People in the ancient world believed the pagan gods provided humans with tangible benefits in exchange for their worship. Power is the single most important and essential aspect of a god. Aristotle summarizes the teachings of an earlier pagan theologian, Xenophanes: “For the essence of God and of His power is to rule and not to be ruled, and to be the most powerful of all. In so far then as He is not most powerful He is not God.”² The gods demonstrated their true divinity through power and providing benefits to humans in the empirical world: healing, prophecy, and answering prayers for safety and security. Itinerant soothsayers, healers, and wonder-workers frequently mediated these divine benefits and, at times, even established cults to their patron deities.

The Acts of the Apostles too demonstrates the superiority of the Christian cult by telling stories which depict the God of Israel and Jesus the Messiah as having unrivaled power to the pagan gods, magicians, and rulers.

1. Turf-wars

Acts narrates a variety of episodes which pit the emissaries of the Christian deity against soothsayers and magicians. The episodes function most basically as a contest between deities; and according to Acts, they result in the conversion of many to the Christian movement. Often these stories accompany the movement of the gospel into new geographical regions—places which were often beholden to the power of Satan at work in magicians, soothsayers, exorcists, and false gods.

Luke depicts the Samaritans as deceived and beholden to Simon, a practitioner of black magic (8:9–13). Acts sets the story up as a competition. On the one side is Philip, who proclaims the Messiah to the Samaritans and performs signs, wonders, and exorcisms (8:5–8). His opponent refers to himself as “someone great” (8:9b) and receives the confession “this one is the power of God which is called great” (8:10b).³ And yet the contest is anticlimactic as Simon recognizes the superior power of “the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” at work in Philip (8:13).

There is more to the story, but it is sufficient for my purposes to note that the power of God at work in Philip results in joy and receptivity to the gospel among the Samaritan villages (8:8, 25).

In Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas proclaim “the word of God” by the power of the Holy Spirit (13:4–5), and this results in a contest with “a certain Jewish magician and false prophet whose name is Bar-Jesus” (13:6). When Bar-Jesus opposes the success of “the word of God,” Paul proclaims a curse upon the man: “Now the hand of the Lord is against you and you will be blind, unable to see the sun for some time” (13:11).

In Malta, when Paul is apparently attacked by a viper—a symbolic enemy of the Christian movement in Luke–Acts (e.g., Luke 3:7; 10:18–19; 11:11–12)—Paul “shook off the beast into the fire and he suffered no evil” (Acts 28:5). Paul’s immunity to the viper marks him as God’s prophetic emissary who is protected by God and is able to triumph over evil (see Luke 10:19). Paul’s immunity to the snake, whereby he conquers the demonic, demonstrates that Jesus’s resurrection power is at work in Paul.

2. Divine justice for God-fighters

The reader will likely remember how Gamaliel warned his fellow members of the Sanhedrin to leave the Christian movement alone “lest you be found to be fighting against God” (Acts 5:39). The notion of “god-fighting” likely originates from early Greek stories, such as Euripides’s Bacchae which use a “plot of divine punishment” to refer to what happens when deities are resisted and opposed.⁴ Here the King of Thebes refuses to offer cultic worship to Dionysus and is, as a result, referred to as a god-fighter (Bacchae 45–46). The god punishes the king’s hubris by inflicting him with a shameful and violent death.

Luke shares a variety of stories whereby God brings a violent end as judgment against those who fight against him and his people.

Surprisingly, Judas is depicted as a god-fighter who opposes the Messiah and his people (Acts 1:16–20). Judas’s motivation to betray Jesus due to greed (Luke 22:3–6) is an obvious Lukan indication that Judas is one of the text’s primary antagonists (so too Acts 5:1–11; 8:18–23; 16:16–18). Ironically, the very money Judas acquired through greed became the means that led to his own death. Judas left the money behind and it was used to “acquire a field as the payment for his wickedness” (Acts 1:18a); and it is on his acquired land where Judas died a violent death: “falling headfirst, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines spilled out” (1:18b).

When Ananias and Sapphira hold back some of the profits from their sale of the land, their deceit marks the first potential threat to the unity of the church—a unity marked through the generous sharing of possessions with one another (5:1–11). As a result, Peter declares to Ananias: “you have not lied to humans but to God” (5:4; emphasis added). Immediately, Ananias drops dead (5:5). When Peter receives a deceitful response from Sapphira, she is rebuked for “testing the Spirit of the Lord” (5:9). She immediately drops dead at the feet of the Peter. The narrator emphasizes the emotions of fear, amazement, and dread that came upon the church as a result (5:5b, 11). The scene provides a powerful warning that the true God is not to be taken lightly. He is willing and powerful enough to mete forth justice against those who actively resist and oppose him.

3. Prison escapes

Related to the theme of god-fighting are the three narrations in Acts of prison escapes (5:17–26; 12:1–25; 16:25–34).⁵ These imprisonments of the Christian deity’s agents resonate with stories where god-fighters oppose the appearance of a god in a new location (as noted with the Bacchae). In each of these episodes, the success of the Christian movement meets opposition, and the authorities—the Sanhedrin, Herod Agrippa I, and the local authorities in Philippi—respond by incarcerating the disciples.

The accounts are filled with irony. God exhibits his implacable plan to establish the gospel in Jerusalem (and beyond) when his angel simply unlocks the prison doors, leads the apostles to the temple, and declares: “Go and take your place in the temple, and tell the people everything about this new life” (5:20 CEB). Later, Luke makes sure the readers know that Herod Agrippa I—the one who harassed the Jerusalem church, murdered the disciple James, and imprisoned Peter (12:3–5)—dies the death of a God-fighter. The angel of the Lord strikes him down and “he was eaten by worms and died” (12:23).

As you study Acts, use Logos’s Atlas tool to track all the geographical references.

A superior community

Another way the ancients argued for the superiority of their ethnic, civic, or political community was by giving stories and arguments for the superiority of their rulers, laws, way of life, and virtues. Acts also depicts the earliest Christian movement as a superior people based on

1. their king who has created a unified people and
2. their commitment to hospitality, fellowship, and philanthropy.

1. The messianic king and his unified family

Friendship was one of the most popular topics for reflection in ancient philosophy, as exemplified by the likes of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and the Epicureans. But no text was more influential than Aristotle’s books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that humans are inherently social and that flourishing thereby requires friendship.⁶ A friend shares all things with one another, so much so that a friend will even “lay down his life in their behalf.”⁷ In cases where a friendship is predicated on shared character and virtue, “a friend is another self.”⁸

Acts too depicts the early Christians as a unified and diverse community of friends who were capable and willing to resolve conflict.

While the idyllic depictions of the Jerusalem Church resonate with a variety of conceptual precedents, few can ignore their echoes of the ancient moralists on friendship. Luke draws from the world of philosophical friendship in his description of the community. It is marked by “fellowship” (2:42), sharing “all things in common” (2:44; 4:32b) and “one heart and soul” (4:32).

Luke’s claim that they share their possessions (2:44–45; 4:32–35) and break bread in one another’s homes with a joyful and sincere heart (2:42b, 46) indicates that their practice of hospitality and table-fellowship resulted in a fictive family. Plutarch frequently referred to “the friend-making nature of the dining table.”⁹ What is surprising here is Luke’s expansion of the scope of friendship to include all types of people: rich and poor, Hebrew and Hellenist, men and women.

One of the primary ways that rulers and constitutions in the ancient world were evaluated was by their ability to secure unity for the people.¹⁰ Herodotus, for example, links together successful military exploits with the unity created by the victorious ruler. In contrast, he links peoples’ defeat in battle to the discord of the people (see Histories 5.3). The assumption that good kings produced harmony and unity for a people stands behind the propagandistic claims for Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire (see Plutarch, Alex. Fort. 323; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 2.2.2; 2.11.2).

We see the same relationship between a good king (or constitution) and a unified community in biblical Jewish traditions. For example, Chronicles shows how “all Israel” is of “one mind” to exalt David and then Solomon to kingship (1 Chron 12:38; 29:21–24). Additionally, numerous prophetic texts anticipated a time when a messianic king would unify God’s people (e.g., Ezek 34:5–23; 37:15–28; Isa 11:10–13).

So Acts also expresses the unity of the people of God as something predicated upon their common submission to the exalted Davidic Messiah. Luke’s glowing, even idyllic depiction of the church’s unity in 2:42–47 stems from the outpouring of the Spirit sent from the exalted Messiah (see Acts 2:33).

This context situates the subsequent threat to the unity of God’s people posed by the grumbling between the Hellenist and Hebraic widows over the food distribution. The threat is overcome as the twelve disciples call forth the seven Hellenists to “wait on tables” (Acts 6:2), in remembrance of Jesus’s manner of table fellowship in the Gospel of Luke (see Luke 22:24–30).¹¹ Luke depicts all of the major early Christian leaders as engaging in public speeches and councils when there were disputes, the result of which was unity and shared commitment to their mission (see Acts 1:15–26; 11:1–18; 15:1–29).

2. A virtuous people

Acts depicts the earliest Christians as proclaiming and embodying shared values related to virtue and piety. While there are a variety of shared values related to piety that could be discussed, here I will focus on how the growth of the earliest Christian movement stemmed from its commitment to hospitality and philanthropy.

Hospitality and philanthropy were prized values in the Greco-Roman world. In fact, hospitality was held up as a mark of civilized peoples (see Homer, Odyssey 4.30–37; 7.159–166; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.163–252; 8.617–724). Cicero is representative of those Roman citizens who praised Rome for welcoming foreigners. He stated that justice should be shown to foreigners so as not to “tear apart the common fellowship of the human race,” a fellowship which was “established by the gods.”¹²

Luke uses the practice of shared hospitality between different ethnic groups to show how the earliest Christians incorporated various ethnicities into a fictive kinship group (see here Acts 10:1–48; 28:1–10).¹³ He repeatedly portrays the earliest Christians as committed to extending hospitality (as host) and receiving it (as guest) from different ethnic groups. They thereby incorporate mixed populations into its people. Those gentiles who responded positively to the gospel often mimicked the behavior of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–35) by extending hospitality to the traveling missionaries (see Acts 16:15, 40; 17:1–9; 18:1–11; 28:1–2, 7–10).

Toward the end of Acts, Luke draws the reader into the Hellenistic territory of sea-travel, adventures, storms, and shipwrecks. Luke extends forty-four verses (Acts 27:1–44) to depict Paul as one who receives philanthropic kindness (see Acts 27:3) and shows mercy and hospitality to those on the ship through prophetic exhortations (27:9–12, 13–20, 22–26) and by sharing table fellowship (27:33–38). When Paul lands on the island of Malta, despite Luke’s reference to the Maltese islanders as “barbarians,” we find them to be a pious people who bestow philanthropia on Paul and the shipwrecked strangers (Acts 28:1–2). We see their climatic embrace of Paul in the hospitable reception by “Publius, the first man of the island” who “welcomed and for three days extending friendly hospitality to us” (28:7).¹⁴

Undergirding these Christians’ commitment to hospitality, philanthropy, and shared fellowship is the conviction that their God is impartial and welcomes any ethnicity who seeks justice (10:35). Acts draws upon the shared virtues of hospitality, philanthropy, and fellowship amongst the earliest Christians—values that would have appealed to Greco-Roman sensibilities.

A superior philosophy

Finally, Acts draws upon a variety of discourses to depict its movement as a superior philosophy.

Luke describes the Jerusalem apostles using echoes of the true philosophers, even Socrates, as the apostles spoke the truth to the religious authorities with “boldness of speech” (παρρησία; Acts 2:29; 4:13, 29, 31), like Socrates’s claim that they would obey God rather than humans (4:19; 5:29; cf. Plato, Apology 29D; Epictetus, Diss. 1.30) and use their voice to challenge and resist tyrannical power. In their willingness to speak truth to power, they demonstrated the integrity of their convictions and suffered as a result (4:21, 29; 5:33). Despite their lack of education and rhetorical training (Acts 4:13), many have noted how Acts frequently narrates how their teaching resulted in the conversion of those with at least some level of status, education, or wealth (e.g., priests, 6:7; the Ethiopian official, 8:26–40; a Roman centurion, 10:1–48).

The main plank in this argument, of course, is Paul’s Areopagus speech in Acts 17:16-34. In another essay,¹⁵ I have tried to demonstrate that this text not only narrates the incongruity between the Christian movement and gentile religiosity, but that it also exalts the Christian movement as comprising the best features of Hellenistic and Roman philosophical sensibilities, making it a superior philosophy. Luke depicts Paul as a Socrates-like teacher. He proclaims philosophical ideas that resonate with Stoicism but only in order to make the claim that true piety and worship is only found in the Christian movement. Paul proves he’s no street-philosopher who peddles his philosophy upon the gullible (σπερμολόγος, “babbler”; 17:18). He demonstrates the rhetorical and educational skills necessary to hold his own with the Athenian philosophers.

In Paul’s last will and testament to the Ephesian elders in Miletus (Acts 20:18–35), his claims to have shared the full breadth of truth to his audience in both public and private (20:20–21, 26–27) resonates with ancient moral philosophers. Paul’s emphasis on the public nature of his proclamation and non-sectarian nature of the Christian movement resonates powerfully with the conduct of the good philosopher. As Paul says elsewhere, speaking to Festus, “Indeed the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner” (26:26).

Paul is also a true philosopher in that he did not receive payment for his services and did not covet anyone’s wealth or possessions (20:33). As a good philosopher, he practiced self-sufficiency by working with his hands to provide for himself and his companions (20:34–35).

Likewise, in chapters 22—26 Paul is depicted as giving rhetorically crafted forensic speeches to rulers. Paul speaks regularly with Felix regarding “justice, self-control, and the coming judgment” (24:25). He refuses to pay a bribe in exchange for his freedom (24:26). With respect to Paul’s speech to Herod Agrippa II, Malherbe notes that “Luke has Paul, like the moral philosophers, claim divine guidance (26:16–17, 22), deny that his activity has been confined to a corner (26:26), speak fearlessly to rulers (26:26), and offer himself as an example to all (26:29). Luke’s apologetic aim … [is] to present Christianity in Paul’s person as philosophical.”¹⁶

Conclusion

Acts wants its readers to accept the claim that their God is supremely power and a generous gift-giver; that their resurrected and cosmic king has brought into existence a unified and philanthropic community of friends; and that Christianity is the true philosophy.

In so doing, Acts provides an insight into one of the ways the earliest Christians attempted to convert pagans. Namely, through telling recognizable and compelling stories showing that the Christian way of life is superior to its competitors.

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1. See the recent posing of this question by Larry W. Hurtado, Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016).
2. Aristotle, On Xenophanes 977a, in Minor Works, trans. W. S. Hett, Loeb Classical Library 307 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936).
3. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture translations are my own.
4. Anne Pippin Burnett, “Pentheus and Dionysus: Host and Guest,” Classical Philology 65 (1970): 15.
5. The prison-escape stories and their literary precedents have been illumined by John B. Weaver, Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004).
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 73 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), 1169b18–23.
7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1169a18–22.
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1166a31–32.
9. Plutarch, Moralia, Vol. VIII: Table-Talk, Books 1–6, trans. P. A. Clement and H. B. Hoffleit, Loeb Classical Library 424 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 612 D-E.
10. For what follows, see Alan J. Thompson, One Lord, One People: The Unity of the Church in Acts in Its Literary Setting, LNTS 359 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 19–56.
11. See here Todd C. Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography (New York: T&T Clark, 2004).
12. Cicero, On Duties, trans. Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library 30 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 3.28.
13. See Walter T. Wilson, “Urban Legends: Acts 10:1—11:18 and the Strategies of Greco-Roman Foundation Narratives,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120, no. 1 (2001): 77–99.
14. I have written on this in much more detail in Joshua W. Jipp, Divine Visitations and Hospitality to Strangers in Luke–Acts: An Interpretation of the Malta Episode, NovTSup 153 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
15. Joshua W. Jipp, “Paul’s Areopagus Speech of Acts 17:16–34 as Both Critique and Propaganda,” Journal of Biblical Literature 131, no. 3 (2012): 567–88.
16. Abraham J. Malherbe, “‘Not in a Corner’: Early Christian Apologetic in Acts 26:26,” in Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity: Collected Essays, 1959–2012, 209–226, NovTSup 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 222.