Conversion in the New Testament

Theoretically, the foundation of religious conversion is someone "convincing" you of their point of view.  You are converted after you are persuaded.  Put differently, religious conversion is predicated on and places a high value on intellectual knowledge.  By doing this, it reduced religion to a purely academic issue.  Naturally, this presupposes that individuals possess a high degree of intellectual capacity and that they have the ability to "freely choose" in accordance with their comprehension.  However, the reality is that only a tiny percentage of people are amenable to intellectual conversion.  Most people find that intellectual understanding is not very useful.  Religion, in my opinion, is a contemporary concept that was nonexistent in antiquity. What scholars refer to as "religion" encompasses the following Graeco-Roman categories: national cult (national deities, priests, temples, animal sacrifice), familial traditions, voluntary associations, astrology and magic, and ethnicity. The labels of ancient ethnic groups were connected to the group's place of origin. To be converted means to see Jesus as your ethnic value. Steve Mason makes compelling claims that, regardless of one's motivation, becoming an Ioudaios would have been perceived as a transition from one ethnic group to another. Steve Mason's great work, "Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History," Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007): 457-512, "argues that there was no category of 'Judaism' in the Graeco-Roman world and no form religion either.  I hope this makes sense.

I am not engaged in perennial philosophy. I have read these in the past few years. 

Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask.

Stark, Rodney. Discovering God: The Origins of Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief.

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion

Armstrong, Karen, A Case for God 

This was in my intro to religious studies class. Prothero, Stephen. (2011). God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World & Herling, Bradley L. (2016). A Beginner's Guide to the Study of Religion (2nd ed.).

I read this one over the weekend as a suggestion from a friend. Paden, William. Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion. She said it brought forth a consensus using a better methodology. Are you familiar with it?