In a series of articles published through the 1980s and 1990s, Shaw provided a novel interpretation of the phenomenon of banditry and of the relationship of autonomy and violence to sustaining state power and force, drawing on Josephus, and engaging critically with the work of British Marxist Eric Hobsbawm.

Shaw later shifted his focus to understanding how early Christians produced sectarian or religious violence by the popularization of images of ideological enemies, and through the mobilization of sentiment using both the idea and the practice of martyrdom.

In Bringing in the Sheaves, Shaw explores the relationship between the reaping of cereal crops in the Roman Empire and the ways in which people began thinking about death and vengeance in their social relations.

[3] Shaw's views have received strong criticism and have generally not been accepted by the scholarly consensus:[4] writing on New Testament Studies, Christopher P. Jones (Harvard University) answered to Shaw and challenged his arguments, noting that Tacitus's anti-Christian stance makes it unlikely that he was using Christian sources; he also noted that the Epistle to the Romans of Paul the Apostle clearly points to the fact that there was indeed a clear and distinct Christian community in Rome in the 50s and that the persecution is also mentioned by Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars.

[8] In an article for Vigiliae Christianae, John Granger Cook (LaGrange College) also rebuked Shaw's thesis, arguing that Chrestianus, Christianus, and Χριστιανός are not creations of the second century and that Roman officials were probably aware of the Chrestiani in the 60s.