I. History of the Jews to the first century

            1.Post-exilic Judaism

After the Jews returned from the Babylonian Captivity (thanks to Cyrus the Great), they rebuilt the Temple at Jerusalem that was the center of their religious life.  They had created a theocratic community based on the Torah (God's law, the Pentateuch) with the high priest assisted by the high court (Sanhedrin) as the power of the community.  (NOTE:  There is no distinction between civil and religious law here—the Sanhedrin enforced both.)

During the Babylonian Captivity when the old temple was destroyed, the Jews met in assemblies (GK=synagogues) for formal worship and instruction in the Scriptures.  The Temple, rebuilt again by Herod, would be destroyed by Titus (the son of emperor Vespasian and would succeed him in 69-79 AD) and these synagogues would be the center of Jewish religion.  For Jews the temple was the house of God where the shekina "the Presence" uniquely dwelt.

Many Jews were Hellenized and spoke Greek so that the LXX [supposedly 70 scholars produced 70 identical translations independently] was produced at Alexandria in 3rd BC.

Following their historical fate as inhabitants of a buffer zone between two of the Hellenistic kingdoms, the Jews were controlled first by the Ptolemies and then, after 198 BC, by the Seleucids.  The Jews soon found that the Hellenizing policies of the Seleucids, especially Antiochus IV, were intolerable.  As a result, they revolted in 167 BC, the famous Maccabean Revolt; they gained their independence gradually, and established an independent monarchy [the independent Hasmonean kingdom].   NOTE:  It is during the Hasmonean kingdom that three religious movements appear for the first time:  the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. 

             2. Roman occupation

But there was a new power over the horizon with which the Jewish people would have to contend, and which would ultimately end their independence in 63 BC:  the power of Rome.  The Roman general Pompey was invited to settle a dispute between two Maccabeans.  He sided with Hyrcanus II and his supporters, one of whom was the ruler of Idumea, Antipater II.  From this point forward, however, Palestine was considered to be controlled by Rome. And in the reorganization by Augustus, it fell under the administration of the imperial province of Syria.  Unlike senatorial provinces, Roman troops were stationed in imperial provinces to keep order and were governed by a military governor called a "Legate" who, in this case, resided at Antioch.  There were also "districts" that were testy enough to be governed directly by the emperor through his "prefect" (later "procurator").

By 37 BC Herod the Great (r.37-4 BC) was appointed the king of Judea by Mark Antony.  He was a builder who constructed a palace, a theater, a hippodrome, and the rebuilt Temple at Jerusalem.  But the Jews never liked him: for one thing he was ½ Jew and ½ Arab.

After Herod's death Judea was made into a minor Roman province ruled by governors called procurators.  Life for the Jews under the procurators was exceedingly difficult.  Pontius Pilate (r.26-36 AD), for example, was described by Agrippa I as "...by nature unbending and severe with the stubborn," and accused of "...the taking of bribes, wanton insolence, rapacity, outrages, countless and continuous murders, endless and most painful cruelty."  This portrait is confirmed by the Jewish historian Josephus who chronicled a number of events that provoked the Jews under Pilate and the other procurators, leading to riots, beatings, and executions.  In one case, says Josephus (who likes to inflate figures), 20,000 Jews were killed in a riot that was prompted when a Roman soldier ridiculed some Passover pilgrims with an indecent gesture.  There thus emerged within Judaism groups of revolutionaries who looked back to the militaristic Maccabees and their zeal for the Law as great heroes.  These "Zealots" were already active in spirit, if not in name, in the period prior to the birth of Jesus.  In AD 6 or 7, Judas the Galilean and a Pharisee named Zaddok attempted to arouse the people to revolt against the first Roman census.    Self-styled prophets and messiahs appeared from time to time and eventually an even more radical group, the Sicarii (Latin sicarius, "dagger"), emerged to foment revolution by assassination.

Clearly the policy of the tyrannical and brutal procurators met with increasing opposition led by more revolutionary Jews; ultimately, the forces of moderation could not contain them and a Jewish revolt ensued in 66.  By 70 AD Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed (though a fortress at Masada near the Dead Sea held out for 2 years).  The Jews would be driven out of Jerusalem after another revolt led by Simon bar Kochba in AD 132-35.  From that time on, Judaism became primarily Diaspora Judaism, and Judaism without a homeland, until the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

  II. State of the Jewish Religion in the first century

            Four main sects of Judaism had emerged by the first century.

1.      Sadducees:  These were the aristocracy, influential landed gentry and hereditary priests who controlled the office of the High Priest and the Temple in Jerusalem.  They taught strict adherence to the law and perpetuation of temple ceremonies.  They attempted to maintain cordial relations with their Roman overlords, “with whom they could share a common culture, since they tended to be more Hellenized than other sections of the population” (Fredriksen 87).  THEY REJECTED THOSE VIEWS WHICH WERE MOST DEVELOPED IN THE NON-PENTATEUCHAL, POST-EXILIC SCRIPTURES, NAMELY, ANGELS AND DEMONS, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.

NOTE:  The belief that there is no afterlife actually seems to be supported by Biblical passages:

2.      Pharisees:  Unlike the Sadducees, most Pharisees were not priests, but lay scholars whose main influence was in their development and preservation of the oral legal tradition.  They were rooted in the synagogue and known for pious living (alms, tithing, prayer, and fasting) and interpretations of the Torah, especially in areas such as food purity, crops, Sabbaths and festivals, and family affairs. 

In direct contrast to the Sadducees, they accepted the larger notion of Scripture, as well as newer views such as angels, demons, and the resurrection of the dead.  It was the Pharisees who survived the war with Rome and reorganized Judaism along Pharisaic lines at the coastal town of Javneh (Jamnia).  Here the books of the Jewish Scriptures were decided, the oral traditions collected, and the prayer against the Christians (Nazarenes) and Heretics added to the important set of Jewish prayers, the Eighteen Benedictions.  Henceforth, the heart of Judaism was the Torah, the synagogue, and the interpretation of Torah by the rabbis.           

3. Essenes:  The Essenes, who are not mentioned in the rabbinic literature or the New Testament, are described by the ancient writers Philo, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder.  They first appear under the Maccabean High Priest Jonathan (161-143/2 BC) and subsequently disappear during the wars with Rome, about AD 68.  Though some Essenes lived in the towns and cities, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and the subsequent excavation of nearby Khirbet Qumran (the ruins of a Jewish "monastery" along the Dead Sea near the Wadi Qumran) have convinced most modern scholars that most of the scrolls were composed and copied by the Essenes, and that Pliny is correct when he says that an Essene community lived there, apparently in the caves in the cliffs.  They believed, like the Pharisees, in physical resurrection of the body.  They felt they were a true remnant of God's people and preached a New Covenant as they waited for God to destroy the powers of evil and inaugurate His kingdom.  THEIR LITERATURE, COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION, AND ESCHATOLOGICAL ORIENTATION HAVE BECOME EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR UNDERSTANDING THE RISE OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY!”  

4. Zealots:  This sect was looking for a political Messiah to overthrow the Romans (they demanded Jews not pay taxes to Rome or acknowledge the authority of the emperor).

III. Jesus

  We know little about him because he never wrote anything and nothing was written about him in his lifetime and ignored by Roman and Jewish historians (other than a few scant references).  Beyond this, much of the Gospel story has been relegated to fiction by recent critical scholarship.  One particular example is that the death and crucifixion seem to be a midrash (details of a fictional story line constructed from passages in scripture) of Old Testament verses.
  Historians particularly like primary sources as evidence of historical persons.  Primary sources include all sorts of documents and artifacts:

1.  Writings by the person in question.

2.  Eyewitness accounts of the person by contemporaries.

3.  Artifacts.

4.  Epigrams,

5.  Church and temple records.

6.  Imperial archive documents.

7.  Letters

8.  Legal records

9.  Diaries

10. Newspapers

11. Photographs and/or videos

12.  Catalogues

13. Maps

14. Treaties, etc.

            Let’s compare three supposedly historical figures, Socrates, Jesus, and Abraham Lincoln.  All three are dead men who have been extremely influential in history and about whom much has been written.  The following chart compares the evidence available to historians to decide the historicity of stories passed down about them.

Given these problems with the story of Jesus, here is what we think we know:

1.      Early Life

 According to the New Testament mythology, Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary around 4 BC (Bible says in reign of Herod who died in 4 BC); therefore the calculations of the 6th AD upon which our calendar depends are off by at least 4 years.  He was a carpenter in the village of Nazareth of Galilee, and evidently his father Joseph died early.  He had brothers and sisters:  "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" (Mark 6:3).  James would became prominent in the Palestinian church.  "His native tongue was the language of Palestine, Aramaic. 
     "He was baptized by John the Baptist [an apocalyptic prophet preaching the end of the world was near], and the beginning of his ministry was in some way linked with that of the Baptist" (Perrin 412).   Being baptized by a religious figure meant that one became his follower; this obviously causes some problems for some views about Jesus.  But, as we shall see, it conforms with the picture of Jesus in the New Testament as an apocalyptic prophet preaching the imminent end of the world himself.

             2. Public ministry and teaching.

            At about 30 years of age he began to preach a message of brotherly love and repentance (moral transformation) based on the immanence of the kingdom of heaven (Mt.4:17).  In a world that believed in gods, in powers of good and evil, and in demons, any hero worth believing in would have powers to exorcize demons, heal the sick, and offer hope [compare other hero/god figures who did these "miracles," such as Heracles, Dionysus, Osirus, and  Apollonius of Tyana:   Apollonios of Tyana (Asia Minor) was a famous itinerant Pythagorean philosopher who was said to have been sired by Egyptian god Proteus.  He supposedly "gathered followers, taught, helped the poor, healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons and appeared to his followers after death to discourse on immortality.  He lived through most of the first Christian centuryand shortly after 217 a 'Life' of him in was written by Philostratus.  There is no evidence that Philostratus drew on the gospels; thus, the lives of other famous heroes raise the question whether there are any literary prototypes for the New Testament 'gospel'" (Perrin 14). 

                        In the Gospels, Jesus stressed ethics (love, charity and humility) rather than legalism and ritualism (cf. Mk 7:21-23).  He chose 12 of his followers to join him in an intimate relationship traveling from village to village teaching his message for about 3 years. Although Perrin (400) says, "Though it is virtually impossible to say very much about the life of Jesus on the basis of the New Testament, the same is not true of his message.  Here our resources are greater, and historical scholarship has arrived at satisfactory criteria for determining the authenticity of material attributed to the Jesus of the New Testament," a growing number of other scholars are beginning to doubt even Jesus' existence (cf. Earl Doherty, Robert Price, G.A. Wells, etc.).   If Jesus did exist, he never seems to have intended to start another religion; in fact, he supposedly said that he did not intend to change any of the Jewish law ().  Even his "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is just a restatement of Leviticus 19:18.  On the other hand, he did seem to be an apocalyptic prophet foretelling the end of the world like his teacher John the Baptist (by whom he was baptized, a sign of becoming the baptizer's follower).

                    “The apocalyptic context of such teachings accounts as well for much of their sheer impracticality.  No normal human society could long run according to the principles enunciated in the Sermon on the Mount:  total passive non-resistance to evil—indeed, compliance with injustice (Mt 5:38-48/Lk 6:27-36)—and an absolute refusal to judge (Mt 7:1-2/Lk 6:37-38) would simply lead to the exploitation of those abiding by such rules by those who did not.  This impracticality in turn allows us to glimpse the intensity of expectation that motivated Jesus’ mission and the community that formed around him:  the Kingdom was at hand.  Those who followed Jesus, therefore, really could attempt to conduct their lives according to these demands, since—as Paul, preaching the same ethics in a similar situation of intense expectation, said elsewhere—‘the form of this world is passing away’ (I Cor 7:31)” (Fredriksen 100).  “Those scholars who want to argue that Jesus really did announce a present rather than future Kingdom somewhat compromise their case by relying, necessarily, on the later strata of gospel tradition.  A Jesus preaching such a Kingdom would have been an excellent Christian theologian but a baffling early first-century Jew” (Fredriksen 101).   
    Besides, Jesus was rather clear (if the New Testament is accurate at all) about the imminent end of the world:  "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will se the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.  From the fig tree learn its lesson:  as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates.  Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place" (Mt. 24:29-34; Mk 13:24-30).  Although Jesus was obviously wrong and that generation all died before this happened, Christians still claim the end is near even though 2,000 years have passed.  Cf. Mat. 16;28; Mk. 9:1; Lk 9:27: "some of those standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom coming in power" and Mt. 26:64; Mk. 14:16, where Jesus supposedly stated to the Sanhedrin during his trial, "you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Other problems:  "Moreover, all of the evangelists share in the interpretative process when they place Jesus' teachings at various locations in their writings, and give them time and place.  It was Mark who created the Messianic confessions at Caesarea Philippi and before the high priest in Jerusalem; it was Matthew who created the long discourses out of isolated pieces of tradition; and it was Luke who created the programmatic scene of Jesus teaching in the Nazareth synagogue.  These contexts, then, must be set aside and the isolated teachings themselves studied.

."..Paul and other writers in the New Testament constantly quote hymns, confessions, benedictions, and other elements from the liturgies of the New Testament churches.  Similarly, they use lists of virtues and vices and lists of the duties of the various members of a household, which were consulted for the purpose of ethical instruction not only in the Christian churches, but also in the Jewish synagogues and in the schools of Greek moral philosophy.  But perhaps more startling, it became apparent from form criticism that much of the material presented by the evangelists in the gospels was also in a more or less fixed form and that it functioned in the life and work of the Christian churches before its use by the evangelists in their gospels.  Moreover, these forms were by no means unique to the Christian movement but were found in the literary traditions of other religious and philosophical movements in the Hellenistic world” (Perrin 401-2)

"….There is no doubt that the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the central aspect of the message of Jesus.  But having said that, one has to ask what it means to say that Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God.  To clarify this meaning, it is necessary to remember that in ancient Israel, prior to the time of the Babylonian Exile, there arose a myth about God and his Kingdom.  This is not surprising since the political form of government in the ancient Near East was a monarchy.  God was imagined as a great king who was so powerful that he created the world, brought his enslaved people out of Egypt, guided them through the wilderness, defeated their enemies like a conquering warrior, and gave them the promised land.  He was a universal king, judging the nations, and his "reign" was thought to encompass his whole creation.  This universal "reign" was the "kingdom of God" (malkuth Yahweh, 1 Chron 28:5).  The myth of the God who created the world and constantly acted to preserve, protect, and judge his people became the very foundation of the nation Israel.  As the stories of the origins and destiny of Israel were told again and again, they gave meaning to the world and life” (Perrin 412-13).

3. Death

On the Jewish holiday of Passover his fame had spread and people seemed to feel he was the Deliverer from the Roman occupation, but by the end of the week he was arrested, tried by the Sanhedrin for blasphemy and turned over to the procurator Pontius Pilate for sentencing.  He was crucified like a common criminal under the reign of emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37).  To Jewish leaders, Jesus was a troublemaker undermining respect for the Sabbath and religious rites.  They may also have seen him as an arrogant man claiming he was favored of God and could forgive sins.  To Romans, he was just another political agitator who could ignite Jewish messianic expectations into revolt against Rome.   “…Luke’s text also hints at an originally political understanding of Jesus’ messiahship.  Entering Jerusalem, Jesus is hailed as king by his disciples; when the Pharisees request that he disavow the title, he declines (19:38-40).  Later, before Pilate, he stands accused of sedition—‘We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king’ (23:3).  Shortly thereafter, he dies as an insurrectionist (23:38ff.)” (Fredriksen From Jesus to Christ 35).  Remember, “one of his followers, Simon, was a ‘Zealot’ (Lk 6:15; Acts 1:13); his followers both hoped (Lk 24:21) and proclaimed (esp., e.g., the Triumphal Entry) that ‘he was the one to redeem Israel,’ that is, that he was the messiah as understood by Jews at that time….Someone executed by Rome as an insurrectionist might be revered as a political martyr, but the brute fact of his death would invalidate any claim to messiahship.  The messiah, to function as messiah, had at least to be alive” (Fredriksen 120 & 123).  This failure is obviously why Jews have rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

IV. Paul (ca. 5-64 CE)

1.      Although he wrote nothing Jesus would be the founder of a new religion.  At his death Christianity was not a separate religion but a small Hebrew sect with dim prospects for survival.  But reports eventually spread that he had risen from the dead.  Many thought he would return soon to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth.  Although this hope has never been realized, even after 2,000 years, Saul of Tarsus [a Stoic center and a stronghold of Greek culture], a very well educated Pharisee who had been a zealous persecutor of this new cult of Christians, would have a life-changing experience (AD 35) on the road to Damascus.  This aural epiphany of Jesus Christ transformed Saul the Pharisee into Paul the greatest Christian missionary.  He was a very educated rabbi who had  studied under Gamaliel (who in turn studied under Hillel)

2.      Teaching:   "The idea that he might have been divine was too much for any Jew to grasp, as it was completely alien to any orthodox Jewish belief, but Jesus could be seen as one through whom God worked (as with the earlier Jewish prophets) and who had been exalted by God through his death.  Peter put it as follows (Acts 2:22-24):  'Jesus the Nazarene was a man [sic] commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you...You killed him, bur God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades [Sheol, the underworld]'" (Freeman 104).  "While Peter and the Jerusalem Christians were, understandably, suffused with their memories of Jesus as a human being ("a man commended by God" as Peter had put it), Paul's Christ has relevance only through his death and resurrection, in a theology presented in his own words in letters whose eloquence has reverberated through the ages" (Freeman 107).  He will formulate the doctrine that represented a fundamental break with Judaism:  Jesus resurrected on the 3rd day after his burial.  He was the Messiah (Christos in Greek), but, contrary to the Jewish conception of Messiah, he was also the son of God.  Paul taught that his death was an atonement (amends, reparation, reconciliation) for the sins of the human race (Jews or Gentiles)  NOTE:  “By contrast, the messiah of biblical and rabbinic tradition is definitely and truly human” (Fredriksen 85).   On the other hand, this savior-God idea was popular in mystery religions and therefore Paul’s Christ would appeal to the Gentiles.  Justification by faith in Jesus was all that was needed; adherence to Jewish Law, including circumcision and dietary requirements, now becomes unnecessary. 

After maybe 8000 miles of travel around Mediterranean, he was eventually arrested in Jerusalem for disturbing the peace, imprisoned in Caesurea and then beheaded in Rome in 64 (65?) or 67 AD.  NOTE:  "...it must be emphasized that Paul is, in effect, the first `Christian' heretic, and that his teachings--which become the foundation of later Christianity--are a flagrant deviation from the `original' or `pure' form extolled by the leadership.  Whether James, `the Lord's brother', was literally Jesus' blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus, or the figure subsequently remembered as Jesus, personally.  So did most of the other members of the community, or `early Church', in Jerusalem--including, of course, Peter.  When they spoke, they did so with first-hand authority.  Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he'd begun to regard as his `Saviour'.  He had only his quasi-mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice.  For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous.  It also leads him to distort Jesus' teachings beyond all recognition--to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimize it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus.  For Jesus, adhering rigorously to Judaic Law, it would have been the most extreme blasphemy to advocate worship of any mortal figure, including himself.  He makes this clear in the Gospels, urging his disciples, followers and listeners to acknowledge only God.  In John 10:33-5, for example, Jesus is accused of the blasphemy of claiming to be God.  He replies, citing Psalm 82, `Is it not written in your Law, I [meaning God in the psalm] said, you are Gods?  So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed.'  [NOTE: cf. Mat. 10.34-5; 5.17-19]
                  "Paul, in effect, shunts God aside and establishes, for the first time, worship of Jesus--Jesus as a kind of equivalent of Adonis, of Tammuz, of Attis, or of any one of the other dying and reviving gods who populated the Middle East at the time.  In order to compete with these divine rivals, Jesus had to match them point for point, miracle for miracle.  It is at this stage that many of the miraculous elements become associated with Jesus' biography, including, in all probability, his supposed birth of a virgin and his resurrection from the dead.  They are essentially Pauline inventions, often wildly at odds with the `pure' doctrine promulgated by James and the rest of the community in Jerusalem.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that James and his entourage should be disturbed by what Paul is doing" (Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception 181-2).      

3. Influence:  Through his correspondence to the churches established around the empire in which he expounded the doctrines of Christianity and answered practical questions about Christian conduct, he became an authority for the standardization of Christian belief and practice.

Therefore, Paul, a Hellenized Jew, was mainly responsible for breaking with Judaism and remolding Christianity in accordance with Greek philosophical doctrines.

   V. Persecution of Christianity. [Eusebius says 10 between Nero and Domitian]

1.      Roman view of Christians:  1) Romans were tolerant of most religions and at first Christians were thought of as a Jewish sect and were therefore protected by Roman law (Kagan 183), but Christian insistence that only their God could be worshipped seemed a subversive and dangerous idea (wouldn't accept state gods).  This did not coincide with the Roman virtue of pietas (the respect and devotion that binds children to parents, parents to state, state to gods.  Therefore, to deny the gods was to subvert the social "glue" that held the state together and made the Christians seem like traitors!  2) Christians seemed odd:  they worshipped a sacrificed criminal; they were secretive and unsociable (wouldn't associate with pagans or take part in social functions they considered sinful or degrading).

2.      Nero (64-68):  One of earliest records of persecutions is found in the Annals of Tacitus (MacKendrick & Howe 390f).  A fire destroyed large parts of Rome, which shows that much of the city was made of wood.  Many Romans thought Nero started the fire, so Nero made scapegoats of Christians.  But he arrested them for anti-social stuff, not arson.  He made human torches out of them to provide light for games and wrapped them in animal skins so ferocious beasts would attack them.  "Despite their guilt as Christians and ruthless punishments they deserved, they were pitied by the Romans."  Nero will commit suicide in 68 when he hears that the Senate had condemned him to death in absentia. 

NOTE:  Pliny the Younger (110), governor of province of Bithynia in Asia Minor, writes to  the emperor asking what he is to do with Christians [MacKendrick 366f.]   In fact, from 68-250 AD, it appears that  persecutions were erratic and sporadic, localized, intermittent.  There’s only evidence for 100's or 1,000's dead. 

            3. Decius (250 AD) represents the first time Romans tried to make everybody worship in Roman religion.  This persecution only lasted one year (he died 9 months after the edict was written).  The punishment not for faith, but public witnessing, and could include execution, confiscation of property, hard labor, etc. 

4. Diocletian (285-305) in 303 said get their books!  Torture and death was widespread as he destroyed Christian churches and demanded that everyone worship the traditional Roman gods on pain of death. This was the greatest persecution after Decius.  Diocletian is an old soldier with problems:  barbarians at the frontier, a welfare state, and urban problems.  Things were so bad that he had to split the empire into E & W.  Now he is trying to get people to defend empire, and Christians say turn other cheek and wouldn't serve in army.  

 VI. Official Recognition

1.      Constantine. In 312 Constantine defeated Maxentius the Milvian Bridge in Rome to determine who would rule the empire as senior Augustus.  Constantine would attribute his victory to the assistance of the Christian God and in 313 he issues the Edict of Milan that legalizes Christianity and puts it on the same par with pagan cults.

2.      Theodosius I (379-395)  makes Christianity the official religion of the empire in 392 AD.  Now pagan cults are persecuted.  Pagan festivals, including the Olympic games, are suppressed.

3.      Hypatia (c.370-415), a pagan martyr, daughter of Theon the mathematician), murdered by the Alexandrian mob in A.D. 415, whose noble figure and death are depicted in C. Kingsley's novel bearing her name (1851).  She commented upon Plato and Aristotle, and also taught astronomy.  Among her pupils was Synesius of Cyrene (c. A.D. 370-413), a most versatile man, country gentleman and learned author, Neoplatonist and eventually Christian bishop of Ptolemais, who has left a discourse entitled `Dion' and a collection of letters and hymns (one is translated in `Hymns, Ancient and Modern').  

                  The emperor Theodosius I (378-395), a violently devout man, did everything in his power to impose orthodoxy upon his subjects, going so far as to close down the two greatest Panhellenic pagan institutions, the Olympic Games and the oracle of Apollo at Delphi.  
            Despite the triumph of Christianity, paganism flourished in many parts of the empire--particularly large urban centers with a long history of culture and intellectual pursuits.  An intellectual elite all the more ardently espoused pagan philosophies in Athens, Antioch, and Alexandria, and the Platonic Academy flourished until it was closed by decree of the Christian emperor Justinian in the year 529.  Most of the major philosophical schools survived by contributing to the synthesis known as Neoplatonism, an eclectic system of ethical rationalism taught most influentially by Plotinus (205-270), who spent most of his life at Rome as the center of a circle of important and powerful individuals.
            By its very vagueness, its tolerance, and its appeal to reason, Neoplatonism was doomed when faced by the crusading zeal and violent intolerance of early Christianity.  That violent Christian intolerance will result in the death of Hypatia, the beautiful philosopher from Alexandria.
            Lost in her studies, Hypatia was totally uninvolved in the three-year quarrel between Cyril and the prefect Orestes, who often visited her for conversation despite the fact that he was a devout Christian himself.  But now Cyril spread the rumor that the prefect was being corrupted by his friendship with an unclean pagan woman, who dared to mock the Lord by her preoccupation with heretical pagan philosophy.  One day in 415 AD, completely unaware of her danger, Hypatia rode into a mob of monks who were waiting along her usual route.  She was dragged from her chariot, stripped naked, and carried into a nearby church where she was torn to pieces with pottery shards.  In such a savage manner died a perfectly innocent victim of a complex power struggle in a denouement as bloody as any devised by classical Greek tragedy.  "With her the Greece that is a spirit expired--the Greece that tried to discover truth and create beauty and that had created Alexandria” (E.M. Forster, Alexandria 56).    
    “The murder of Hypatia signified more than the end of one remarkable person; it effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life….The Museum, with its dream of assembling all texts, all schools, all ideas, was no longer at the protected center of civil society” (Greenblatt The Swerve 2011).               

VII. Factors Leading to the Emergence of Christianity by the 4th c. AD

1.      External:

1) pax Romana  (would free of marauding pirates)

2) system of roads (ease of travel): "Fifty thousand miles of roads supplemented the great rivers as primary means of
transportation....With these elaborate networks of roads, lightly burdened travelers could cover an astonishing 90 miles a day--an  extraordinary feat in ancient times" (Sherman 144-5).

3) common language (koine Greek)

4) Romans were tolerant of religions (whose beliefs don't contravene laws of Rome or seem dangerous; didn't try to ruin indigenous culture)

5) Constantine and Theodosius:  Constantine "returned property to Christians who had been persecuted, gave tax advantages to Christian priests, and let Christian advisors play a role in his court's inner circle" (Sherman 161).  Theodosius persecuted pagan religions and institutions.

 2.      Internal: 

1) Christianity combined cult and community, i.e., it included social concerns (e.g., Christians were encouraged to take care of children, widows, poor, the sick, etc.).

NOTE:  The characteristic of charity is going to be very important in the spread of Christianity.  Many people are going to die in plagues that hit the Roman Empire from the 3^rd century on.  Paganism would suffer more from these plagues than Christianity.  Why?  Because Christians cared for the sick whereas pagans fled from the sick!  Even modest care, providing food and water to the sick, can result in many surviving.  So not only were fewer Christians dying from the plagues, but Christianity became more attractive to pagans as they saw the success Christians had during these horrible plagues (cf. Rodney Stark The Rise of Christianity, Chapter 4).

2) It was largely an urban religion until the 4th century (began to extend to the country 250-300; paganos "country bumpkin" came to mean unbeliever).  

3) It was a mystery religion.  There was widespread interest in various Oriental philosophies and religions:  Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism (a pre-Christian religious movement that synthesized many mythological and philosophical traditions), Mithraism (an Oriental religion from Tarsus popular with army whose sacred day was Sunday, whose god’s birthday was Dec. 25), Adonis (whose festival was Easter), Cybele, Isis and Osiris, Magna Mater (Great Mother), and Bacchus, to name a few.  Christianity will borrow many elements from these other cults as it progresses. 

4) It appealed to all classes (welcomed everyone--slaves, women, children, and one doesn't have to be well-born, rich, educated or talented to be worthy).

NOTE:  Women are going to play a very significant role in the spread of Christianity.  For one thing, its chief rival, Mithraism, is a male-only cult!  In addition, there was a surplus of females in Christian circles while in the pagan world there was a shortage of females.  Why?  The practices of the pagans of infanticide caused the death of many female babies and of abortion caused the deaths of many women.  Thus more females survived childhood and lived longer in their childbearing years in the Christian subcultures.  This would result in a geometric increase in females, so much so that there was a shortage of Christian men to marry.  This in turn led to secondary conversions as the Christian women married pagans who in turn converted to Christianity! 
   The result of the quantitative leap in the number of females among Christians also led to women filling important positions in the early church as deaconesses, evangelists, missionaries, etc., before men took over the hierarchy of the church and pushed women into subordinate roles in church polity.  “[S]uperior fertility contributed to the rise of Christianity” (Rodney Stark The Rise of Christianity 128).
    In addition, as we shall see, Christianity would also develop a strong church organization, as well as the ability to assimilate elements from Greek philosophy and mystery religions.           

Send comments and questions to Dr. Richard Baldwin, Gulf Coast State College.
This page last updated 3/17/12