The impatience with “rational behavior” that Ramsay MacMullen expresses in his review essay, “The Translation of History,” has apparently led him to misinterpret portions of our book, Origins of Roman Christianity. Moreover, in addition to locating so-called “factual errors” in our work, he recommends the Kahneman-Tversky attempt to inject psychology (and neuroscience) into market behavior as a kind of “new economics” that challenges the “rational-agent model” and thus supposedly has value in religious history and the social sciences as well. He is incorrect as regards both methods and facts.

Issue Section:
Comment and Controversy
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© 2013 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.
2013
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