Early Christianity in the Framework of Roman Religion: Georg Wissowa

Georg Wissowa (1859–1931) was one of the leading figures in the history of ancient religion around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Based on a clear division of labour of classical antiquity and the discipline of Classics on the one hand (excluding early Christianity) and the discipline of Theology on the other (including all phenomena that served to construe the origins of Christianity), Wissowa's manual Religion und Kultus der Römer mentions Christianity only in passing. Digging into the unpublished papers and the works of his doctoral students, the article is able to reconstruct a more nuanced image of his position beyond confessional priming and polemics.

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