Coda

Abstract This final chapter offers a brief reception history of some of the discourses of magic examined in the previous chapters. Specifically, it considers the afterlives of the discourse of magic that emerges by late antiquity, one that makes magic into a kind of heresy, or into a sphere of belief and praxis wholly external to Christianity. Although it coalesced in late antiquity, this discourse of magic has had profound reverberations in such monumental events as premodern European witch hunts and colonialism. Scholarly adoptions of a heuristic for ancient magic that view it as formative Christianity’s other obscure evidence pertaining to ancient magic, yes, but also evidence pertaining to formative Christianity. This coda thus makes an appeal for scholarly heuristics in the subfield of early Christianity that are more flexible and therefore more able to capture Christianity’s indebtedness to magic.