The Bacchanalian

No problem. Read Rodney Stark's Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. (or via: amazon.co.uk) is a good read with lots of analysis and backup information. Stark gives a very detailed account of the demographic rise of Christianity from the 1st to the 4th century AD. Stark is quite generous in his estimate of the Christian population in the early 4th century. Edward Gibbon, the author of the monumental work: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk), states the Christian population of Rome in 300AD is only 5%. Margeret Mitchel also provides some good analysis on early Christain demographics in her book: Origins to Constantine (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Huon

The origin of the word "peasant" is the latin "paganus".

mountainman

There is also alot of conjecturing going on with Stark's account.
It suffers from a number of problems: the primary one being the
evidence itself.

This sounds a little closer to the 0 Mark. We are talking about a very small and insignificant minority of people whose names appear to be largely unknown outside of the account of Eusebius. The fact of the matter is that we do not appear to have any totally unambiguous corroborative evidence from the archaeologists that any form of a "chrestian cult" existed in the empire before the fourth century.

The military persecutions of other indigenous Hellenistic religions and cults by the order of Constantine following his military supremacy in the eastern empire c.324 CE were in fact the precursor to the Council of Nicaea, not the aftermath of that "council".

These religious persecutions resulted in the burial of traditional cultural figurines and sculpture, as is described in the article above. These religious persecutions also resulted in the burial of traditional cultural books which would otherwise have been sought out for destruction by the orthodox new testament canon preservers.

The Bacchanalian

Yes, there is a scarcity of information from this time. But we still have to try. Stark did draw many of his conclusions from a lot of inferences he made throughout the ancient world. For example he went and analyzed grave stone inscriptions and determined that 300AD seems to be a tipping point where a lot of Christians started coming out of the closet. Reasonably good analysis if you can find the evidence for it.

Yes we can argue about so many of the details, but based on this source and several others we can reasonably conclude that early Christianity was an urban phenomenon and their numbers were not very substantial at the time of Constantine.


Of course it is going to be hard to find evidence for actual Christians living before 300AD becuase so many of them were living in the closet.

For the first, second and first part of the thrid century there would only be very small numbers of Christians. We would only be talking in the thousands. So, we have another reason why it is hard to find evidence for their existance.

Now this is partially my opinion and what I have gathered elsewhere. The Crisis of the Third Century (235-280 AD) was the pivitol moment for the success of the Christian movment. The Crisis of the Third Century help to transform the Christian movment from an obsucre band of nobodies into a movement to be reckoned with.

I cannot over emphasize how much of a disaster the Crisis of the Third Century was for the Roman Empire. The Crisis of the Third Century saw the collapse of the once flourishing Roman economy and the disintegration of Roman Empire itesef. The Roman empire split into three different states during this time. Fortunately, the Roman Empire was able to put some of the pieces back together again, but it was never the same again.

Just imagine for a moment if in our modern world we suffered a world wide economic collapse to such an extent that we were forced all the way back into a barter economy. This is what happened in the Roman Empire. The Roman economy went from a world where goods were traded freely across vast distances to a world where goods and food had to be produced locally. This massive economic collapse had a profound impact on the standard of living of Roman citizens.....and it was not good. You can also think about what that would do to our standard of living

Next we throw into the confusion a collapse of central authority. There was something like 50 emperors during the Crisis of the Third Century. Rome had a lousy system of political succession and it helped make things much much worse. The prosperous Roman world had come to an end quite dramatically and no one knew what to do about it. Of course when Diocletian came along he tried to repair things, but the damage was already done.

The psychological impact of the Crisis of the Third Century was profound. At the start of the 3rd Century life was still good (by ancient standards). Paganism and the current Roman state were the unquestioned religious and political systems of the Roman world. And why would anyone question them, together they allowed Rome to conquer and control the world. But the Crisis of the Third Century changed all that. The Roman citizen's faith in their Pagan gods and political system were shaken to the core. Paganism and the Roman state became discredited systems. This provided Christianity a golden opportunity to impress themselves upon the suffering Roman citizens.

As Ironic as it may seem, the Christians may have actually made life better for people. During the Crisis of the Third Century, when a disaster struck a city of town, it might have only been the Christians who were able to organize some relief help. The Christians where able to provide structures during a time when the time tested Roman structures were failing miserably. So it is inevitable that people would turn to Christianity. The Pagan gods seem to be failing us but this Christian god seems to have something going for it. As the Crisis of the Third Century receded after 280AD, it was the Christians who proved to be the most resilient. This lesson was not lost on the leadership of Rome. Diocletian made many reforms, most important of which was to find a solution to the political succession problem with his Tetrarchy. But he failed miserably too. It is no accident that Constantine looked to Christianity for a solution to Rome's problems. Constantine saw in Christianity an idea that would help unify the Roman world.....one God.....one emperor. It is debatable weather Constantine actually believed in the Christian faith, but he saw in as a vehicle to unify the faltering Roman world.

There is so little discussion about the Crisis of the Third Century in the history of rise of Christianity, but it was essential for its success. Had the Roman empire developed a better system of political succession, the chaos that ensued during the Third Century may never have happened and the Christian faith may never have gotten its foothold on power that eventually got in the 4th century. There is nothing magical about the rise of Christianity. They were at the right place at the right time and were well equipped to take advantage of a calamity that saw them take power. After all, would not you want to try someone new in power if all the others were failing miserably?





dddd

mountainman

WIKI: Concepts of decorum, increasingly sensed as inhibitive and stultifying, were aggressively attacked and deconstructed by writers of the Modernist movement, with the result that readers' expectations were no longer based on decorum, and in consequence the violations of decorum that underlie the wit of mock-heroic, of literary burlesque, and even a sense of bathos, were dulled in the twentieth-century reader

mountainman

Twenty five years later when imperial laws were enforced, such as "Religious priviledges are reserved for Christians" a lot more Christians started coming out of the pagan closet. The OP cites figurines which were buried on account of laws such as this. The "Early Christian Closet" has also been described as "The Green Room". It it reminiscent of the life of a circada, living underground for many years before arising, usually after the rains, into the sun for a brief foray. The archaeological evidence for the new testament is a variously listed register of citations none of which are unambiguous. I am critically skeptical of Stark's conjectures.