Persecution Complex

[xephyr]

Another one of those questions that got me started as a child, was "How did Christianity get to be so popular?" The more I learned about it, the less I liked it, and I couldn't get over the fact that the Roman persecution should have driven the whole thing out of existence very early on

Comments

[lassiter]

"Can I have another peanut-butter-an-nanner sandwich, maw?"

"Do this in remembrance of Me."

[thomasrhymer]

That should go on plaques in church restrooms everywhere.

[beowulf1723]

(Actually, I'm working on the question of "Who were the early Christians?" now, but they certainly weren't a socially conservative lot.)

No, probably not. The Epistle of Titus reflects normative Graeco-Roman attitudes about women. It wouldn't have been put in the NT if there wasn't a large number of "uppity women" in early Christian communities.

Some German theologian -- I think it was Rudolph Bultmann -- thought that the entire NT was assembled as a reaction to "Gnostic" Christian communities. Maybe, maybe not.

[baal_kriah]

When Constantine came along the empire was probably 10-15% Christian, within a century or so paganism had become illegal and the Jews suppressed and persecuted. Isn't it amazing what capturing state power can do for a religion?

[xephyr]

Indeed. Part of the question I'm researching now is the religious situation "on the ground" in Palestine from 100BC to 100AD. I'm not so sure the early church 'captured power' as much as they were co-opted by it.

It's difficult to point to anything before Nicea and say that this is clearly Christian and that is not. I would have a hard time estimating the 'Christian' population in 300AD. Would you count the Mithraeists? The Mandeans? What about the remnants of the Essenes, or the Theophilists in Egypt? Is there a hard and fast rule about how you distinguish a Jew from a Christian in Anatolia or Antioch or Egypt in 250AD? Rome (well, Constantinople) dictated the rules for what makes a Christian, and then took charge in enforcement: it doesn't seem like the early church had much of a choice in the matter.

[baal_kriah]

The estimates that scholars make of the number of Christians at the time is based mainly on ancient testimony supplemented by archaeology (especially of grave sites), so it's not very precise, and it almost certainly includes sectarians later condemned by the official church. Nonetheless, I don't agree with the idea that the state played the leading role in defining orthodoxy, though it certainly did in the enforcement of orthodoxy. What constitutes orthodoxy was already quite worked out by the time of Constantine. People like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus had worked out all the main lines before the middle of the third century. Sure, the imperial church had all those delirious disputes about Christology where Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites were defined and excluded, but the major questions about the direction and organization of Christianity had been decided long before the state got involved. The authoritarian patriarchal tyranny of the bishops is being established at least a century before Constantine.