"This book has its ultimate origins in a series of conferences held from 1998 through 2003 that dealt with different aspects of the theme of religious identities in late antiquity. The contributors from American and Canadian universities continued their discussion from the conference halls into restaurants and receptions and ultimately to email exchanges over the course of the last five years. Since the interactions reached a point of coalescence where the contributors wanted to share their work with a broader audience, the co-editors took on the pleasant task of marshalling the works into a collected volume"--P. [1].