Christianity was one of a great many religions in Roman North Africa during the early Empire. Initially the religion of Rome, with its pantheon of gods (especially Jupiter, Juno, Venus and Mars), dominated. Later there was also the emperor's cult, which had to be held in reverence by all. In the coastal cities of North Africa, Punic religious traditions continued to exist, often in Roman garb – Saturn (the local Baal with a Roman name), for instance, was prominent in the religions of North Africa. The native Berber and Libyan cults also still existed, mostly with a Roman overlay. There were also gods of other parts of the empire: the African author Apuleius, for instance, was an adherent of the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Then there were also Jewish communities with their monotheistic religion of Yahweh. Healing was a characteristic of some of these religions; among them the cult of the healing god Asclepius was the most important and widespread.

Each of these religions was part of a culture that had its own management of health care, a wide variety of medical care was thus available to the sick in Roman North Africa. Ferngren refers to the existence of medical, religious, folk and magical traditions. In these traditions, Lloyd points out, the actual healers could be root cutters, drug sellers, midwives, religious healers, or the more rational kind of physicians represented in the Hippocratic texts.

This was the pluralistic religious scene in Roman North Africa during Imperial times. The Christian view of life may have brought about a great change in health care, but much of what is believed to be inherent in Christianity was actually inherited from pagan practices and beliefs and adapted to the new religion.

Greco-Roman medical views

When discussing the medical views of the Greeks or the Romans, the Jews or the Christians, it is important to keep in mind that none of these groups should be regarded as monolithic – they were as diverse in their views within each group as they were in their opposition to the other groups. It should also be pointed out that there was no organized Jewish health care system, nor a coordinated Christian health care system.