The Rise of Christianity: Preface

In this book I shall try to introduce historians and biblical scholars to real social science, including formal rational choice theory, theories of the firm, the role of social networks and interpersonal attachemnts in conversion, dynamic population models, social epidemiology, and models of religous economies. Conversely, I shall try to share with social scientists the immense scholarly riches available from modern studiews of antiquity.
Stark, Rodney. The rise of Christianity: How the obscure, marginal Jesus movement became the dominant religious force in the western world in a few centuries. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997.  p xii



I should also like to thank Benjamine and Linda de Wit, of Chalcedon Books in East Lansing, Michigan, for finding me copies of many classics - often many versions of the same one.  Being dependent on translations, much to my surprise If ound myself burdened with too many translations. On my shelves are four translations of Eusebius, for example. There are very marked differences among them on many of the passages I have quoted in this study. Which to use? On the basis of prose style, I much preferred the 1965 translation by G.A. Williamson. However, my collegues with formal training in teh area explained that Eusebius actually wrote very dull, awkward prose adn thus I ought to rely on the Lawlor and Oulton version. I am not convinced that translators need to capture the dullness of the original if they are true to the meaning of each passage.
Stark, Rodney. The rise of Christianity: How the obscure, marginal Jesus movement became the dominant religious force in the western world in a few centuries. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997. p xiii


1997TRCRS