Romans + Christianity

[tlclark]

I agree with this. outside of nero's persecution and Domitian, it was relatively sporadic and quiet

Yes, the major ones were "on and off" but Marcus Aurelius was also numbered among the persecutors, unfortunately.

The best indicator of the significance of Christian persecution is the letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan. They essentially adopted a "Don't ask don't tell" policy towards Christians.

The next best indicator is the "year of the martyrs" in 305. The Diocletian persecutions were a response in part to the pervasiveness of Christians in the civil administration. It shows how "bad" things had become.

One thing that many Christians fail to recongnize is the 'smallness' of the movement for a long long time

I'm most interested in how big the movement was just prior to Constantine's ascension. Christians were not worshiping underground anymore, in fact, they had their own church buildings - many of which were closed or destroyed under Diocletian.

But according to the review of the book Jenny posted, the author seems to think Christianity wasn't very widespread. By "widespread" I assume he's talking about raw numbers (how can anyone come to a definitive conclusion, BTW ?) and not geographical areas. There were Christian communities to found in every major province of the Mediterranean basin stretching all the way to Spain - the furtherest place from Palestine in the Empire. So, I'd say it was very widespread in that sense.

I'm with Theo on this one. The evidence prior to the 3rd C. is simply missing. There is no way to say how widespread it was. By the third century it is quite widespread. It didn't pop up overnight.

You also see the anti semitic thought creep into the writings of the early church fathers after the first century.

The Christians were trying to distance themselves from Judaism since the Jews fought the Revolt of 66-69 AD. Christians didn't want to be associated with rebellious groups since they didn't want to incur the wrath of Rome on themselves as well. Although Jews and Christians were persecuted a big difference is that you don't see any revolts inspired by the latter.

I'm not sure I buy this. This is a theory, it's not a bad one as theories go. The roots of rabinnical judaism are in 5th C. AD. It's a common trope that Christians differentiated themselves from Jews, but the truth is we can't make that determination due to a lack of evidence on the Jewish side. It's just as possible that Judaism differentiated itself from Christians as much as Christians did.

It started small then caught on with the slave population and rapidly changed the undercurrent of society. Constantine saw the tide growing more and more towards Christianity and latched onto it.

I think the book Jenny refered to is right on this point : Christianity was NOT a slave religion like Judaism before the Exodus from Egypt. It was popular with some local aristocrats -especially women- and it trickled down from there. Of course, St. Paul was its main exporter but he didn't proselytize among illiterate slaves. He went mainly to the intellectual heart of the Roman world - Greece.

Christianity's strongholds were in the big cities and not the countryside. Christians were found in high levels of government , for example, in the court or inner circle of Constantius I and even Diocletian's. So, given that they were small in number but yet were to be found often in such high political positions, I believe it was just a matter of time before a Christian was to become Emperor.

So, I totally disagree with the author of the book when he says the rise of Christianity was an "accident."

Theo's right on this one too. Christianity was not a secretive slave religion. It followed the same paths that Judaism did, which was popular with Roman matrons. Christianity is an urbanite phenomenon. "Paganos" refers to country dwellers and it is the rural country dwellers, that resisted Christianity, not the wealthy and middle class.

Rodney Stark is right on this one I think.

Travis