Arthur Darby Nock
Personal Information
Description
Arthur Darby Nock was born in the south of England. He trained as a classicist at Cambridge University. In 1922 he became the annual reviewer of Latin literature in The Year’s Work in Classical Studies. In 1926, the year he was awarded his MA, he was asked to introduce and translate Sallustius’s text. In the next few years he produced a flood of articles on almost every branch of classical learning, but with a particular emphasis on early Christianity and its Hellenistic background. In 1929 he visited Harvard as a visiting lecturer and he joined the faculty as Professor of the History of Religion in 1930. He stayed on the Harvard campus until his death in 1963. Over the course of his career he taught history, classics and theology.
Books
Conversion
Originally published in 1933, Conversion is a seminal study of the psychology and circumstances of conversion from about 500 B.C. to about 400 A.D. A. D. Nock not only discusses early Christianity and its converts, but also examines non-Christian religions and philosophy, the means by which they attracted adherents, and the factors influencing and limiting their success. Christianity succeeded, he argues, in part because it acquired and adapted those parts of other philosophies and religions that had a popular appeal.