More on conversions coming from miracle stories -- as reported by Christians, in their later legendary tales.  You might object (or probably will object) that if these tales are legendary, they don't show how people actually converted.  My point is not that these relate real events, but they show how Christians (the story tellers and authors) understood  how/why people converted, and it is striking that in virtually every case, it is precisely because of miracles, not other things.  (In my next post I'll talk about tales connected with actual historical figures).  Again, this is from my book Triumph of Christianity. ****************************** Once we move outside the New Testament the tales of conversion-inducing miracles continue.  Few are more intriguing than the conversion of the entire city of Edessa in Syria, allegedly because of miracles worked by Jesus’ follower Thaddaeus. In no small part the tale intrigues because it starts with Jesus himself, before his death, and a personal letter he sent to the king of Edessa, Abgar, in response to the king’s written request to be healed [...]

I've been arguing that Christians eventually converted the Roman empire because of their great miracles.  But, well, I'm an atheist and I don't believe in miracles. So how exactly does that square up?  How can miracles convert anyone if miracles don't happen? Well, as it turns out, it absolutely can happen (and it doesn't take a miracle!)  Before continuing on to demonstrate the centrality of miracles to the Christian take-over of the Roman world, I pause here for some reflection on how it works.... Again this is from my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), slightly edited. ****************************** How are we to credit the Christian stories of miraculous conversions?   Anyone who wants to accept these stories at face value will say they happened.  But what about anyone else?  Anyone, say, who doesn't believe in miracles? We are confronted with three inescapable facts, all of which need to be accounted for.   First, it cannot be denied that people did convert to the Christian faith, eventually in massive numbers.  Second, the early Christian accounts of [...]

Miracles.  Who woulda thought.... In previous posts I've given some of the common explanations people given to explain how Christianity ended up taking over the Roman world, all of which seem plausible (Christians attracted people because of their community life, better health care, etc) but, in my view, not sufficiently supported by the existing evidence.  I've also I've indicated that I have a decided view of the matter: that it was because of Christian "miracles."  That seems a bit odd for an atheist to argue, but, well, hear me out. Here I begin to explain it (this will take a couple of posts).  All this is taken, with minor edits, from my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon and Schuster, 2018), which makes the full case.  I begin with the paragraph that ended my previous post. ****************************** The best place to look for actual evidence of why Christianity succeeded are the actual accounts of conversions from the early church.  These are relatively abundant and scattered throughout the decades and centuries with which we are concerned.  Moreover, these [...]

One modern explanation for why Christianity overcame all the pagan religions of the Roman world is that it provided better health care than anyone else, leading to its greater survival rate.  I have to admit, when I first read about this, I thought "Whoa!  Never heard THAT one before!" It's an intriguing thesis and, I think, almost certainly wrong.  But intriguing nonetheless!  Here's what I say about it in Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), briefly edited for our purposes here. ****************************** One benefit of joining the church recently touted as particularly important for Christian growth was the availability of better health care.  This was one of the many controversial proposals set forth by sociologist of modern religion Rodney Stark, in his popular discussion, The Rise of Christianity,[1] Stark  applies his sociological training to the question and makes some intriguing suggestions.  He points out that epidemics swept through the Roman world on more than one occasion during the period that Christianity was gaining members.  The terrible plague that ravaged the empire during the [...]

On very rare occasions, pagan opponents of Christianity during the first three centuries commented on the movement, and in one case at least, explain why it was having some success in converting people.  Here is what I say about it in Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), lightly edited here. ****************************** The first extensive discussion of the Christian movement from a non-Christian source (not disinterested, of course!) comes from the end of the 170s. We do not have this source as a stand-alone document.  It is a book quoted, instead, by a Christian author, the great theologian Origen of Alexandria, who cited it precisely in order to refute it.  The book had been written by an otherwise unknown pagan intellectual named Celsus. Celsus’s work was called “The True Word.”  In it he assails Christianity as a foolish and dangerous religion that lacks all academic credentials and poses ominous problems, particularly because it leads people astray from traditional religions.  Celsus’s attack was direct and incisive.  He had read the Christian Gospels and with rapier-like wit [...]

In my earlier posts I tried to show that the two key factors in the success of Christianity in taking over the Roman world were that Christians (well some/lots of them), unlike everyone else in their world, were eagerly trying to make converts and insisted that anyone who accepted their religious beliefs and following their religious practices had to abandon the views/practices they had always had. That's not the view that scholars long held; and it's striking to me that -- unlike some other areas of historical study -- the older view still seems to be widely accepted for those who think it is just "common sense."  Here is how I talk about it in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018). ****************************** Older scholarship was virtually unified on the question of why Christianity succeeded.  It filled the spiritual vacuum created by the collapse of paganism, which fell under its own weight.  At this point in antiquity, the view held, no one could any longer believe the ridiculous myths of the pagans or [...]

Did Christians hold massive evangelistic rallies?  Is that how they converted the Roman world?  Did they send out hundreds of missionaries to go door-to-door with  their good news?  Maybe use TikTok? Here I pick up on the question of how Christianity spread in the early centuries, from my previous post, with an excerpt again from Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018).   ******************************   Christians then, starting at least with Paul, came to be missionary, convinced they had to convert the world.  Goodman maintains it was Paul himself who came up with the idea.  He was the innovator, “the single apostle who invented the whole idea of a systematic conversion of the world, area by geographical area.”[1]   At the same time, this is what makes it so striking and unexpected that outside of Paul’s work itself, we do not know of any organized Christian missionary work – not just for the first century, but for any century prior to the conversion of most of the Empire.  As MacMullen has succinctly put it: “After Saint [...]

I just now got off the phone with a reporter for the London newspaper the Independent who is writing an article on new developments in our understanding of why Christianity spread so widely in the Roman world.  (The Independent is one of the few newspapers anymore that has some articles of substance in addition to the exciting and/or depressing news of the day, given with a decided slant.)  He wanted to know what new information, archaeological finds, and or analyses have appeared over the past seven or eight years and I had to tell him that, well, I didn’t know of any.  (!)  He was surprised, but suggested a few things he had come across (“Christians had better health care/community support” etc), and I had to inform him those were old ideas. Not wanting to go away empty-handed, he asked me my views about the question, Why did Christianity take over the Roman world?  He knew I had written a book on it, but he hadn’t read it, so I went into my standard spiel [...]