%0 Journal Article
%1 schott_living_2008
%A Schott, Jeremy M.
%D 2008
%J Journal of Late Antiquity
%K Ammonios_Sakkas Apostasie Euseb_von_Caesarea Konversion Origenes Porphyrios
%N 2
%P 258--277
%R 10.1353/jla.0.0023
%T ‘Living Like a Christian, but Playing the Greek’: Accounts of Apostasy and Conversion in Porphyry and Eusebius
%V 1
%X This study focuses on a set of conversion narratives from the late third and early fourth centuries: Porphyry of Tyre’s and Eusebius of Caesarea’s conflicting accounts of Origen’s reputed apostasy from Hellenism and Ammonius Saccas’s alleged abandonment of Christianity for philosophy, and fourth-century reports of Porphyry’s supposed flirtation with Christianity. It argues that these narratives functioned as a means for Christian scholars and pagan philosophers to establish boundaries between themselves and their opponents and as a way to obfuscate broad dogmatic and practical similarities between Platonists and Christians. This reading of conversion and apostasy narratives opens the door to a more nuanced, if more complex, appreciation of the fluidity and permeability of religious and philosophical identities in Late Antiquity