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Historians of the ancient synagogue often use the term “conversion” to describe any kind of adaptation of a building once designated as a synagogue into a church. This label oversimplifies and misconstrues complex processes, both rhetorical and architectural, that were at work in transforming the landscape of the late antique Mediterranean. I explore the dynamic of this triumphalist rhetoric and architectural strategy, showing that Christian writers meant something very specific by the term “conversion,” and that they invented the paradigm of synagogue conversion in order to interpret the changing landscape to their readers. The architectural program of replacement as a strategy for converting subject populations to Christianity emerged in the sixth century. By characterizing changes made to building structures and changes in religious belief as “conversion,” imperial policy concretized the association of sacred space transformation with the victory of Christianity over Judaism and paganism.

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to non-literary texts sometimes prevents the book from pursuing its analyses as far as a more free-form cultural studies approach might allow. For example, chapter 3, "'Brothers' in Associations and Congregations," is restricted for the most part to the vocabulary found in epigraphic and papyrological evidence; although Plutarch's On Brotherly Love is mentioned at the end of the chapter, Harland does not attempt to integrate such sources into the body of the chapter in a substantive way. In contrast, when presented with the lengthy and multivalent Glykon inscription in chapter 6, Harland's analysis, in which he uses, among others, Ovid, Tertullian, and Artemidorus as points of reference, successfully reaches the level of detail that these rich texts have to offer. Harland's work presents the reader with an excellent resource for the study of religious and ethnic associations in the ancient world, and his focus on the complex interactions of identities, and identity categories, assumed by a variety of persons in antiquity successfully complicates the study of the early Christian world. It also opens up several promising lines of inquiry about identity in the ancient world more broadly: what is the relationship between fictive kinship and representations of the posthumous, in funerary inscriptions? How might the stresses between multiple identity categories structure interactions between individuals or within family groups, rather than in competition or interaction between groups; or to what extent can ancient identities be said to be "individual" at all? Harland's book is a serious addition to the study of religious identity in the ancient world, and its sources and their analysis will repay careful reading.