This collection of fifteen essays explores ancient fiction and relates it in new and insightful ways to early Christian literature. These essays analyze the precise nature of ancient fiction investigate individual examples of ancient fiction such as Charitons Chaereas and Callirhoe Xenophons Ephesian Tale and the anonymous Life of Aesop and illuminate the New Testament Gospels and Letters of Paul as well as the apocryphal Acts by comparing this Christian literature with the form and content of ancient fiction.