triffidfood

I guess this is a fairly self-explanatory topic title?

Well okay… fairly self-explanatory … to clarify, by ‘Christianity’ I’m really referring to the various Christ (~Jesus) cults that emerged during the first century [AD], although if anyone would like to address the emergence of Christianity as it was formalised by Constantine et al, that would be interesting too.

What I’m most interested in, are the actual social~ historical (or even political) reasons why the Christ cults emerged & became popular (in all their myriad forms). Why did this happen? What was going on (in the real world, on the ground) in first century Palestine, or more widely I suppose, within that part of the Roman ‘world’?

I come from a profoundly secular/ atheistic perspective on this, however I’d be just as interested to hear from Christians (or other theists) ~ if you are a Christian, what part do you feel that social or political factors played in the emergence & subsequent popularity of ‘Christian’ belief(s), during the first century (or even, during the first four centuries AD)?

I have my own feelings about these questions, but they're not really very well fleshed out (or all that 'informed' I guess), so I'd love to hear some different perspectives on this…

Reena

I'm really curious about this myself, I very vaguely remember that in the Dead Sea scrolls community there was talk of a "teacher of righteousness", so maybe that's one of the sources... In addition the Jews were always waiting for a messiah.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will comment!

Chris Weimer

With the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Rome destroyed the primary place of Jewish thought. From it emerged the many little cults. It vied with power many other groups for a while, including Mithraism and Stoicism. But with constant warfare and plundering and bad leadership, the promise of an afterlife in Christianity attracted many of the lower-class who were usually taught that the afterlife is gloomy. Which would you pick - afterlife as a shade without any memory or physicality, or a person in heaven walking on gold streets.

openlyatheist

triffidfood,

I am almost finished reading a great book on this topic: God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch. It sums up this very topic: what was the genesis of Christianity in the Roman world?

From a secular perspective, there's no reason to believe there was ever a Jesus upon which to base Christianity. Ancient Rome was the seat of Hellenism (Paganism), and was a veritable bazaar of religious beliefs. Different god-man cults and street prophets all competed for the attention of consumers just like fast-food franchises do today.

Hellenism/Paganism would best be described as a free-market of religion. Everyone was free to worship whatever god or godess they pleased, provided they paid tribute to the Roman gods of state. All you had to do was put up a statue of Roman authority in your town or sprinkle some incense in front of a magistrate and you were good to go.

An exception to this rule were a group called Jews who had this funny notion that there was only one God and that all the rest were non-existent. Their religion prohibited them from paying tribute to the Roman gods - that would be blasphemy to them. (Blasphemy was an alien concept to Pagans.) So the Romans granted the Jews clemency and even adopted their god into the Roman pantheon, renaming the God of the Jews 'Iao'.

(Incedentally, the emergence of Judaism comes hot off the heels of a period of Egyptian history, around 1400BCE, when the Pharoah Akhenaton attempted to enforce a monotheistic state religion revolving around the sun diety Aton. The polytheists of Egypt didn't go for this and the idea of monotheism was scrapped as soon as Akhenaton died. A few centuries later, Jews claim their ancestors emerged from Egypt. Food for thought.)

In 306AD Contantine the Great rose to power in Rome. Now up until this time Rome had been ruled for a few centuries by multiple co-emperors. This was meant to create a balance of power as well as reflect the Paganistic, polytheistic attitude of the time. Constantine did not like sharing his power w/ 3 other emperors.

We know that Jews and Pagans intermingled for centuries. So it's no surprise that a new sect of religion had developed by this time: Christians. Neither Jew nor Gentile, these Christians had adopted both the monotheism of the Jews and the god-man, street-prophet, and blood ritual aspects of Paganism. Kind of like the combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut restaurants we see today this religion benefitted from the best of both worlds: for example, if you were a Christian you could claim you had the Only True God (like a Jew) and yet you could still eat pork (like a Roman).

This was the perfect religion for Constantine. One God, one Emperor. So he took a chance on this new religion and when he was successful in his campaign against his fellow co-emperors he took it as a sign that he had backed the right horse. With the favor of the one and only Emperor, Christianity boomed. In 325AD he called the first Council of Nicaea in order to formalize Christian doctrine and quell the in-fighting between denominations. This was something that never needed to be done with Paganism.

Contantine's successor, Constantius II, outlawed Paganism altogether. Then Julian the Apostate offered Paganism a brief resurgence, but Paganism could no longer match the uniformity of the Christian Church. Finally Theodosius I used totalitarian control to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

I have 1 chapter left. I wonder how it ends? :grin: