The birth of Christianity was marked with revolutionary
concepts; such as love your enemies and have mercy and take care of the weak.
This type of character was unheard of and mercy was regarded as detestable to
the Romans. Romans would often abandon deformed children but Christians would
find them and raise them as their own. Christianity showed up at the perfect
time in world history. Romans lived in mostly urban cities and when Christians
arrived on the scene—they also were more prevalent in the urban cities rather
than in the countryside.
“On Christmas Eve” the gods drank, eat, lied, fornicated,
loved, envied and did every other human trait they desired; the gods were
essentially human in every quality except they were thought to be immortal. There
was no life after death except for those who were exceptionally fortunate to
gain enough glory on earth. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary describes Paganism
as “A heathen; a Gentile; an idolater; one who worships false gods. This word
was originally applied to the inhabitants of the country, who on the first
propagation of the Christian religion adhered to the worship of false gods, or refused
to receive Christianity, after it had been received by the inhabitants of the
cities.” The Romans were far more religious than the Greeks, Persians,
Egyptians, or other pagans of their era. “Every public act began with a
religious ceremony, just as the agenda of every meeting of the senate was
headed by religious business.” Nothing of any significance was done in Rome
without the performance of the proper rituals.
The formation of the city of Rome is believed to have taken
place during the 8th century b.c. and is mixed with mythical legend.
Romulus and Remus were twin brothers believed to be conceived by the god Mars
and abandoned. Luckily for them, they were found by a she-wolf who took pity on
them and fed them milk. Later the brothers built a town and argued over who
should be in charge; Romulus overpowered Remus—who died in the fight. Romulus
became the first king of this town, which he named Rome, after himself. In the
Roman Empire, most people sailed across the Mediterranean Sea and most of the
large cities were along the coast. Romans worshiped hundreds of thousands of
gods but the Roman gods were never loved but simply feared. However the most
widely loved religions came from the oriental regions of Egypt and the Middle
East. Isis and Cybele were both Oriental religions and both were the most
widely celebrated religions in the Roman Empire. In the city of Rome, their was
11 temples to Isis, 6 to Cybele and 4 to Jupiter. The Oriental religions were
most loved by the Romans because they provided a greater amount of satisfaction,
“acted upon the senses, the intellect and the conscience at the same time, and
therefore gained a hold on the entire man.” The Roman gods were a civic duty to
worship but the oriental ones were a personal choice. Christianity itself was
in many respects an Oriental/Eastern religion which became a totally Western
religion after its birth place was virtually destroyed in the 7th
century a.d. by Muslim conquest.
The Roman Empire was a cruel and crime ridden (especially at
night) place as well as the birth place of many of civilizational advances in architecture
and many other advances. This is the world in which Christianity was born. We
know that many of congregations which the Apostle Paul established had temples
near-by in which orgies would take place and prostitutes would roam. The Pagan
world in which Christianity developed was very addicted to lust, blood-lust. Crime
was so high that only those who were accompanied by armed guards would walk the
along the narrow streets of Rome. On Christmas Eve, Judaism was the only fully developed
monotheism available in the Roman West. It is well known that the Jews played a
crucial role in preparing the way for the Christianization of Rome but little
is known about the influence which Oriental faiths played in preparing the way.
Jesus Christ established the New Covenant age with his death
and resurrection. The old covenant was written in stone but the new covenant is
written on our hearts, made possible only by faith in Christ, who shed his
blood to atone for the sins of the world. Too often, we think of Jesus Christ
as this very serious religious fellow, who was very nice and did a bunch of miracles
and while his mission was extremely important— there are aspects of him which
are not talked about very often. He is seen by many people as this
non-confrontational pansy. Consider these verses of Jesus and how he spoke to
the most “religious people” of his day—the Scribes and Pharisees:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are
like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full
of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you outwardly appear righteous
to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Matthew
23:27-28
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape
being sentenced to hell? Matthew 23:33
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these
things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, You are those who justify
yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men
is an abomination in the sight of God. Luke 16:14-15
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and
Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found
those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers
sitting there. And making a whip of
cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he
poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And
he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things
away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” John 2:13-16
He shouted crude language about the hypocritical scribes and
Pharisees and basically rioted in a marketplace full of people—does that sound
like a wimp? People tend to think that Jesus was always “dead” serious and
never laughed or had no sense of humor but consider Matthew 7:3 “Why do you see
the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in
your own eye?” This verse is concerning judgment
and that if you see some small sin your brother is doing and call him on that
but fail to notice the huge sin that you
are partaking in, then that is the height of hypocrisy. Think about that verse
as if you had randomly heard someone say that to another person… Obviously a
log cannot fit in someone’s eye but for that matter neither can a camel go
through the eye of a needle. That’s
real. That’s funny. The humor we find most in the Gospels is that of irony.
Jesus was so controversial that he even stated this
about himself “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and
they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating
and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of
tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” Matthew
11:18-19
One of the most amazing details about
the Bible is its references about women. In the ancient world, women were
treated very poorly compared to men. Thus when the Gospels record that a woman
was the first to see Jesus Christ risen from the dead, this is very strange, considering
the testimony of women was not as highly regarded. Yet in God’s eyes men and
women were equal. Indeed, from its earliest beginning Christianity was
predominated by women. The Apostle Paul actually wrote to some of the deacons
of churches which were women and as the church historian Henry Chadwick noted “Christianity
seems to have been especially successful among women. It was often through the
wives that it penetrated the upper classes of society in the first instance.”
Christian women had just as many inscriptions on their tombs, were far more
likely to survive during birth (because Romans often killed their female babies
by abandoning them), and Christian marriages were far more equal, had more sex,
less divorce and most Christian women had a say in whom they married. Christians
Worshippers of Roman gods and their temples had no use for women, Isis and
Cybele worship allowed for women to join, Jewish women were treated much better
but Christian women were treated the best. Christian women, slaves, poor and
the disabled--flocked to Christianity, because it treated the least among
people greater than any group in the Roman Empire. Yet many of the first
followers of Christ were among the wealthy classes. Contrary to much belief,
Christianity did not start among the lowest of classes. Karl Marx was wrong,
when he claimed that “The history of early Christianity has notable points of
resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter,
Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared
as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of
all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome.” Karl Kautsky (1854-1938),
the German editor of Marx’s works believed that Jesus was one of the first
socialists and that the early Christians briefly achieved true communism—this belief
is absurd considering that communism is a fundamentally utopian belief that
people can make a perfect society on earth. Yet the Bible states something
entirely different, that people sin and therefore perfection on earth by humans
as an ideal unto itself is anti-God.
It would seem that the debate about
the social status of the first Christians would be settled by Paul’s “irrefutable”
proof text, when he noted of his followers that “not many of you were wise
according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble
birth” 1 Corinthians 1:26 This verse clearly shows that there were Christians
who were powerful and of noble birth. Considering that by the year 40 A.D. there
were around 1000 Christians and that a very small fraction of the Roman Empire
were of noble birth, it is remarkable that any of the tiny group of Christians
were of the nobility. “Many Bible scholars have been troubled by 2 Corinthians
8:9 wherein Paul remarks “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty
you might become rich.” Could this be true? Was Jesus once a rich man? Many
interpret this metaphorically in reference to his spiritual riches but this
interpretation is greatly compromised by the fact that the verse occurs within
a context wherein Paul is asking the Corinthians to contribute money, not prayers,
for the poor in Jerusalem. Jesus was believed to be a carpenter. According to
the traditional Jewish practice all rabbis “learned a trade to fall back on,
since it seems extremely likely that Jesus was a well-educated rabbi.” Only
three times in the Gospels are “building” or “construction referenced and are
so elementary that one need not be a carpenter to have such knowledge. However “Jesus
constantly used examples involving wealth: land ownership, investment, borrowing,
having servants and tenants, inheritance, and the like… these examples may not
reflect that Jesus was a son of privilege, but they surely do suggest a privileged
audience.” It is commonly objected that Jesus advised that wealth was a barrier
to salvation and that one should give one’s wealth to the poor. Yet rather than
seeing this as a “poor man’s” complaint against the rich, it is at least as likely
that this statement was coming from someone who is in a position to say, “do as
I have done.” Indeed, the apostles, those Jesus hung around and followers seem
like they are of noteworthy social status. What Karl Marx failed to realize
when he wrote that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature... the opium
of the people” is that “religion is more often the opium of the dissatisfied
upper classes, the sigh of wealthy creatures depressed by materialism.” The
poor and foolish in Jesus’s time were illiterate. Buddha was a prince who
converted sixty of the nobility. Zoroaster built a successful movement after
converting the king, queen and court of a nearby kingdom. Early Taoists as well
as Confucianists were recruited from among the Chinese elite, and Moses was a
prince. It would seem by simply looking at the history of movements, they were
not started by the poor but are spiritual ventures of the privileged.
The fact is that economics doesn’t
answer all of life’s questions, i.e. wealth and power do not satisfy all human
desires. The rich being more free from material needs are able to found or join
religious movements. In modern times, the rich have flocked to democrat/leftist
politics. The American radicals of the 1960’s were among the privileged classes.
The majority of Muslim terrorists who have attacked the West have come from
highly privileged backgrounds. Buddha couldn’t find satisfactory purpose in a
palace but under a Banyan tree. “Growing up in privilege often generates the
conviction that one has the superior wisdom needed to transform the world and
the right, perhaps even the duty, to do so.”
While movements are started by the upper-class, it is
obvious that rich and poor alike often turn to Christianity. Misery, illness,
squalor and many things were common in ancient cities but as the distinguished
historian Paul Johnson states “The Christians… ran a miniature welfare state in
an empire which for the most part lacked social services. As Tertullian
explained “On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but
only if it be his pleasure, and only if he is able; for there is no compulsion;
all is voluntary.” In the year 165, a devastating epidemic swept through the
Roman Empire. Some believe this was the first appearance of smallpox in the
West. Mercy, piety and strong faith were what drove Christians during this time
to selflessly take charge of the sick and cheerfully become infected and die
along with their infected neighbors and the poor. While most Romans watched as
bodies piled up among their cities, Christians became care givers of the sick
and dying.
During the summer of the year 64, the emperor Nero sometimes
lit up his garden at night by setting fire to a few fully conscious Christians
who had been covered with wax and then impaled high on poles forced up their
rectums. Nero also had Christians killed by wild animals in the arena, and he
even crucified a few. Roman persecutions against Christians continued for its
first three centuries and at some points, it was almost completely destroyed. Nero
reportedly killed hundreds out of an estimated 2,000 Christians. Roman society was
so enamored with its own belief that Rome was made great because of the gods,
that whenever economic recessions, political instability or military
misfortunes occurred, Pagan emperors would blame it upon Christians and it was
primarily a top-down persecution. Nevertheless, what Romans didn’t understand
was that Christian bishops, priests and deacons were not like Roman nobility
but whether slave or deacon, Christians were “brothers” and the highest of the
Christian status sphere was the “holy martyr.”
Martyrs were revered among
Christians and their stories were celebrated, carefully retold and kept in
order that future generations would know of their feat. Polycarp was burned
alive at the stake in 156 and every year local Christians would celebrate the
birthday of his martyrdom. There were a substantial many who renounced their
faith because of the fear of torture but the majority would ask to be
readmitted. This was achieved by a “judicious blend of severity and mercy…. Forgiveness
after repentance attested by heavy penance was the rule.” Yet for those who
could suffer, many went through incredibly harsh tortures and never renounced
their faith. “In fact, the church fathers were forced to frequently forbid
voluntary martyrdom in an effort to prevent zealous members from presenting
themselves to the authorities. Even so, surviving documents reveal “an
astonishingly large number of volunteers.”” “Of all the proofs and all of the
testimonials, nothing approaches the credibility inherent in martyrdom. How
could mere mortals remain defiant after being skinned and covered with salt?
How could anyone keep the faith while being slowly roasted on a spit? Such
performances seemed virtually supernatural in and of themselves. And that was
the effect they often had on the observers.” Many pagans were amazed and they
grew to respect the faith they observed in Christians.
After three centuries of persecution, Christians quickly
became accepted among the Roman Empire in the reign of Constantine. Constantine
was not responsible for the growth of Christianity, as by that time, it had
already grown exponentially. In 312 there was close to 9 million Christians,
among the 60 million populations of the Roman Empire and by 350 there were 31
million. As Christians became the majority, many sought to call themselves
Christian as a way to be among the majority. Yet Paganism continued and still
had many followers into the 5th and 6th century. Paganism
never fully died off in Europe but it did slowly diminish into the minority and
Christians largely ignored paganism, while the church focused much attention in
stamping out Christian heresies.
The rise of Christianity brought women’s and many other
rights to the disenfranchised but it also suffered severe persecution and
ultimately triumphed over the dark forces warring against it.
References
Cities of God by Rodney Stark
The Triumph of Christianity by Rodney Stark
The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood
Drive Thru History: with Dave Stott’s
The Reformation Study Bible ESV
American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster,
1828.
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