DCHindley

I'll be honest and admit I have not read this book. I do remember it being discussed on Crosstalk2 when it first came out in 1996.

If one goes to the Amazon page for the book The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (or via: amazon.co.uk), there is a long list of books he has written the titles of which suggest they were really written as forms of Christian apology:

Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. (how person to person conversions grow numbers exponentially, with his opinion that gnostics were stubborn pagans flying in the face of this rising new faith)

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (he thinks they were fully justified because Islam was bad, baaad)

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (maintains that Christianity alone embraced reason and logic, and this gave Christian regions a tactical advantage in developing commerce)

Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief (early tribal peoples glimpsed divine truths obscured in later civilizations, which offered too many metaphysical options, but insistant claims of revelatory monotheistic religions - Judaism and Christianity - captured divine truths most perfectly for the benefit of society)

One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (a grand theory of the social and political effects of monotheism in every corner of the globe since the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten)

For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (sequil to above, investigates the role of monotheistic religions in reformations, witch-hunts, slavery and science)

Are we seeing a pattern here? I believe I skimmed through Rise of Christianity at a bookstore way back then but ultimately did not buy it. I generally do not buy apologies, unless it is to better understand a specific social scientific point of view (for example, I have bought books by members of the Context Group - who also emphasize how Christianity drastically improved human interrelations from the norms of antiquity; Richard Horsley - Sociology of the Jesus Movement, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence; and Gerd Thiessen - Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, Social reality and the Early Christians, Psychological aspects of Pauline Theology). Yes, I consider all of these works as forms of apology (or what I call "advocacy scholarship"). The difference is that these folks are not consciously aware of how their agendas have colored their analysis. Stark, on the other hand, is fully aware of what he hopes to communicate.

One very interesting review of Rise of Christianity is found at the link below:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R5E2NBW...cm_cr_rdp_perm

DCH

Toto

Rodney Stark claimed to be an agnostic when he wrote The Rise of Christianity. He had spent his career up to then as a sociologist of religion, focused on the "new religions" a/k/a/ cults, in particular the Unification Church and the Mormons, where he seemed to some of his critics to be a cult apologist, trying to portray the Moonies as making a rational choice in their conversion rather than being the brainwashed cult members that others saw. (He was criticized for taking money from the Moonies.) He regards religion as a rational choice.

The Rise of Christianity does seem critical of some Christian beliefs, since it portrays the growth of Christianity as a natural social process that did not require any miracles or exceptional founding figure. But it contains a very sympathetic view of early Christians, and Christians have tended to approve of the book.

Stark is overly accepting of the historicity of Acts. But since he is looking at this from a broad social science perspective, he is more concerned with trends than particular events. His picture of early Christianity is not based on any original research. He relies on established histories, even where he shows some skepticism.

In 2004, Baylor University made Stark the head of their Institute for Studies of Religion, which they considered a coup. As a condition of taking this appointment, Stark agreed to convert to Christianity(!?!) His writings around this time became notably more pro-Christian.

andrewcriddle

Rodney Stark's claims have been discussed in earlier threads.

To simplify: the argument is that either there were very few Christians in 100 CE or Christianity grew much more slowly, (in % growth per year), between 100 and 250 CE than it did between 250 and 300 CE. Rodney Stark chooses the first alternative. On the basis of the second alternative there could plausibly be as many as 40,000 Christians by 100 CE.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

or there is a further = a third = possibility that the evidence will support, and that further possibility is that there were no christians in the 1st century of the "Canonical Kind". When one examines the detailed evidence being cited at the basis of the demographical conjectures one remains unimpressed with its ambiguous nature.

Johnny Skeptic

Rodney Stark's population model partly uses archaeology and papyrology. Stark shows via experts in those fields that there was only a very small Christian presence in the first century. James Holding and N.T. Wright are certainly biased regarding Bible apologetics, and they know that a large Christian presence during the first century would be helpful for Christian apologetics, but nevertheless, various kinds of evidence has convinced them that the Christian church was very small in the first century.

If Stark had intended to defend Christianity when he wrote the book, it was not helpful for him to estimate that there were only 7,530 Chrisitians in the entire world in 100 A.D., but apparently he wrote what he honestly believed about the size of the first century Christian church.

aa5874

Please state exactly what you mean by "historical Jesus".

Are claiming that Jesus was exactly as described in the NT Canon, that he was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and was EQUAL to God?

Or are you assuming that JESUS was just a mere man, contrary to the NT Canon?

Johnny Skeptic

A mere man.

DCHindley

At times I have looked at Christian perspectives in the western hemisphere as falling along a two ended spectrum: at the extreme right is conservative (emphasizes an individuals' personal relationship with, and responsibilities to, God through the sacrifice of Christ), and on the extreme left is liberal (emphasizing the social obligations taught by Jesus).

These extremes are not mutually exclusive, but a matter of emphases only. Conservatives often do believe that their faith carries social obligations, but usually as a means to an end (the conversion of lost souls). Liberals may also believe that a personal relationship with God helps the individual prioritize their needs and tasks to help them work the work of the social gospel, or conversely, that fixing social problems like poverty or addiction helps people find the strength to improve their individual relationships with God.

And so it is entirely possible for a liberal to be agnostic about his individual relationship with God (not choosing one or the other denomination as the true path to faith, or necessarily believing in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is a basic tenet of most Christian denominations) but devoted to the social benefits he believes Christian ethical teachings have brought to the world at large, especially the northwestern hemisphere.

DCH

aa5874

Well, you cannot refer to the NT Canon or the Church Writings to find out about a mere man called Jesus.

In the NT, Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin, without human father, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and EQUAL to God.

Once you assume Jesus was a mere man, contrary to the NT Canon, you inherently assume the NT is fundamentally FICTION.

DCHindley

The acknowledgement that there must have been very few Christians ca. 100 CE is based on the fact that there is a sum total of no 1st century archaeological relics or literary remains that can be tied to Christianity without reasonable doubt. No smoking guns. Even 7,530 souls may have not made a dent in the archaeological or literary record by 100 CE. Perhaps because, as Paul says: "... look also at your calling, my Brethren; that not many among you are wise, according to the flesh; and not many among you are mighty, and not many among you are of high birth" (1 Corinthians 1:26). It is the wise men, the men of might and the elite classes who leave behind distinctive relics and whose literature is ultimately preserved.

We first start hearing of Christians in datable contexts in the 2nd century CE. Pliny the Younger notes that even Roman citizens were members of this association called Christian around the first decade of the 2nd century. Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Julius Africanus seem to have been real individuals, not just names attached to some stray letters or bios (like Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, or Barnabus, Clement of Rome, etc) by foggy tradition. Justin tries to explain Christianity in philosophic terms, much like Philo does with Judaism (although in a different manner). Irenaeus is most keen on establishing an orthodoxy that all "right minded" Christians could adhere to. By the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries Tertullian, a Roman citizen by birth, already feels a sense of entitlement, feeling Christians should lay claim to their rightful place in Roman society (at least in North Africa, which happens to be one of the most Romanized of the provinces alongside of Hispania).

What Stark seems to be doing is use a simple mathematical formula. If one believer begets two, then two beget four, four beget sixteen, etc. At first they are struggling uphill, perhaps because they are mostly of humble origins. But in time they get more sophisticated. Christianity develops its higher Christology, which might appeal to some in the upper classes as a kind of personal philosophy. This opens access to resources. Literature is produced. Now each believer might beget three, or four, and instead of an exponential development on the basis of the power of two, maybe it is now three, sometimes even four, depending on audience and location. Then you have what may seem like an explosion. Of course, this is an overstatement, but even relatively small rates of population growth (like 2%) can produce relatively large populations relatively quickly. If the populations for competing life philosophies are not growing or even declining in growth, the relative proportion of Christians to the rest of the Roman population will grow even more.

DCH