Introduction

Abstract This introductory chapter aims to problematize the popular axiom that one person’s magic is another person’s miracle. This understanding of magic, primarily as a polemical label, does not align with uses of magic in ancient Graeco-Roman literature. Magic was a vast and at times contradictory discourse, exemplified by the multiple definitions of magic we find in a text like Apuleius’ Apology. Rather than adopting a rigid heuristic that views magic as a means of identifying formative Christianity’s “other,” this chapter proposes adapting newer and more flexible, albeit more limited heuristics from Classics and other interdisciplinary work. Specifically, it argues that magic can be viewed as a series of practices that were associated with a broader stereotype of magic in the Roman imagination as well as a polemical label applied to theological enemies or outsiders. To consider any Petrine text’s discourse of magic, then, we must consider polemical accusations of magic alongside our authors’ presentation of practices commonly stereotyped as magical.