The papers during this quantity have been provided at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held on the college of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to enquire aspect by way of aspect the 2 very important events of conversion that body overdue antiquity: to Christianity at its commence, and to Islam on the different finish. hard the competition among the 2 stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent technique, and Christian conversion as a essentially religious one, the papers search to isolate the behaviours and conditions that made conversion either the sort of universal and this type of contested phenomenon. The unfold of Buddhism in Asia in generally a similar interval serves as an exterior comparator that was once now not stuck within the internet of the Abrahamic religions. the quantity is organised round numerous subject matters, reflecting the troubles of the preliminary venture with the articulation among norm and perform, the function of specialists and associations, and the social and person fluidity at the flooring. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and rules approximately conversion conversion aren't infrequent in societies experiencing non secular switch, and the 1st part of the ebook examines a number of the major matters stated by way of surviving assets. this is often via 3 sections studying assorted features of ways these ideas have been - or weren't - placed into perform: how conversion used to be dealt with by means of the kingdom, the way it was once continually redefined by means of person ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and the way it was once enshrined via various types of institutionalization. eventually, a topographical coda examines the results of non secular switch at the iconic holy urban of Jerusalem.