Conversion to Christianity was a key cultural process that saw the transformation of Europe from the Classical world to medieval Christendom. The study of conversion in the early medieval world has increasingly become a focus of study for both historians and archaeologists, but there has been a noticeable lack of engagement with the methodological and theoretical problems underpinning any attempt to explore the archaeology of belief. This book, drawing on case studies and examples from sources including the ‘Celtic’ west, Anglo-Saxon England, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, tackles these key issues and in particular explores two under-theorised aspects of conversion: the relationship between archaeology and belief, and the ‘pagan’ as a key element in conversion.

With some regularity one encounters the claim that early Christian and rabbinic constructions of and responses to “heresy” exhibit striking similarities. These commonalities have been variously explained in terms of influence by Judaism upon Christianity (or vice versa) or as evidence of an undifferentiated Judeo-Christianity. This essay problematizes the idea that rabbinic and patristic discourses about heresy were remarkably similar. It argues, first, that this notion is to a significant extent based on statements in early Christian literature that should not be taken as reliable accounts of contemporary Jewish discourse and, second, that substantial differences between rabbinic and patristic responses to deviance have been insufficiently appreciated.