2024 NAPS Presidential Address: Ex-Jews, Christians, and Conversion in Late Antiquity

Abstract: In this essay, I reorient our attention to conversion in late antiquity by focusing on conversion as a narrative shaping late ancient culture rather than attending to the reality (or unreality) of converts. When we treat conversion hermeneutically rather than phenomenologically, we can begin to appreciate how conversion narratives in late antiquity produce a distinct form of affiliation we can call “religion.” Using the story of Joseph of Tiberias from Epiphanius’s Panarion as my springboard, I look at various narratives of Jews converting to Christianity and explore how they engage with, but never resolve, key questions about will and coercion, self and other, and difference and identity. The religion that emerges from these conversion narratives is agonistic, deeply shaped by imperial logics, but also open to possibilities of resistance that might have disrupted the very production of “religion.”