I’m still drafting away on my book on the difference Jesus’ ethics made on the moral conscience of the West, and one thing I’m ruminating on is whether Christian emperors were more ethically conscious (in a way moderns would recognize) than their pagan predecessors.   Here’s a first draft of my discussion of the matter.

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With the Christianization of the empire there were to be sure major beneficial effects on wider society and sometimes these came not from the actions of church leaders in providing material assistance to the poor, hungry, orphaned, widowed, homeless, elderly, and outcast, but on occasion from the imperial government itself.  This started already with the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who converted to the faith in 312 CE.   In some ways Constantine’s new religious commitments affected his interventions in social problems rampant throughout the empire.

Infanticide had been practiced since time immemorial, especially in cases where an unwanted child was born to a family that simply could not afford it.  In 315 CE Constantine passed legislation that applied to all the cities of Egypt proscribing infanticide and specifying that parents who lacked the means to raise the child be provided with food and clothing from the state in all the cities of Italy.  Later he addressed a comparable issue:  parents being forced to sell children into slavery for funds to the rest of the family.  In legislation directed to the Roman administers of north Africa, Constantine instructed them stop the practice by providing support for the families from state-owned warehouses.   In the legislation itself he gives the reason” “For it as variance with Our character that we should allow any person to be destroyed by hunger or to break forth into the commission of a shameful deed.”

The emperor intervened in other situations as well, on a thorough ad hoc basis.  The church father Athanasius reports that Constantine provided the large city of Alexandria an annual grain supply for widows, and possibly for others living in poverty (Athanasius, Second Apology); and on the occasion of a church synod called in Jerusalem in 335 CE, he provided funds and clothing to those who were destitute. thus Eus. Life 4.44)

It should not be thought, however, that the Christian emperors beginning with Constantine worked to create a “kinder and gentler” nation, or that they actively sought, as a rule, to implement Christian morality as reflected in the teachings of Jesus.  Quite the contrary.  It may be difficult to fathom, but Christian emperors after Constantine legislated against the masses of the impoverished even more harshly than their pagan predecessors.  Late rin the fourth century Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius I – the one who made Christianity the official empire of the state — passed laws against beggars that drove them into quasi-slavery.

One of the most interesting and unexpected studies of morality under the Christian emperors over the course of their first hundred years is called “What Difference Did Christianity Make?”  In it, Ramsey MacMullen, a professor of ancient history at Yale looked so see if the advent of Christianity played any role at all in improving lives for slaves, changing sexual mores, or banning or diminishing public interest in the excessively violent and bloody gladiatorial games (or expressions of pity for the bloodied or killed victims).  No, the new faith appears to make no difference at all in any of them.

One area where Christianity did make a difference was in judicial penalties.  But it was not that the system was Christianized, made more merciful, leaning toward forgiveness or at least reformation of criminals instead of retribution.  No, penalties became far more harsh and torture became more common.  This happens already with laws passed during the reign of the Christian Constantine.  The following are a few examples

  • The guardians of a girl who was seduced were to have molten lead poured down their throat
  • Bureaucrats who abused their office were to have their hands cut off
  • Tax collectors who abused women delinquent in their payments were to be “done to death with exquisite tortures.”
  • Slaves who informed on their masters were to be crucified;
  • For a variety of crimes involved having the convicted tied into a leather sack with snakes and tossed into body of water to drown.

We all may have difficulty accounting for the heightening of judicial violence.  MacMullen himself postulates a Christian source.  He points out that the rise of cruel punishments occurred just at the time that Christian readers began to be drawn to books that falsely claim to be written by Jesus’ apostles known widely today as “apocryphal apocalypses,” which routinely describe, often in graphic detail, the torments of hell reserved for sinners for their crimes against God.  MacMullen calls this set of books: “the only sadistic literature I am aware of in the ancient world.” If God inflicts these kinds of tortures on sinners, shouldn’t his representatives on earth?

MacMullen also plays with the idea that Christian rulers were in particular open of this kind of judicial justice, as opposed to their pagan predecessors.  As he explains one of the key contrasts between paganism and Christianity:  There was also a major difference: pagan beliefs left daily morals to philosophy.  For pagans, only correct cult mattered.  Christian zeal in contrast was directed over all of daily life.  Hence, threats and torture, the stake and the block, spread over many new categories of offense.”   

On any account, the Christianization of the empire was a mixed bag when it came to public and private morality.   It is all too simple to take sides on the matter.  Many devout Christians insist that morals were brought into the ancient world, or at least radically improved, because of the advent of this new faith, a faith of love, charity, and forgiveness, teachings that made the world and many people in it better.  Anti-Christians often insist the opposite, that without Christianity we would not have had religious wars, inquisitions, crusades, and pogroms against Jews leading to the Holocaust.   Who is right?  Maybe the better question is, Is either of them wrong?

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2024-07-26T10:18:54-04:00July 30th, 2024|Fourth-Century Christianity|

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26 Comments

  1. fishician July 30, 2024 at 9:10 am

    Glad you made this article free. I shared your post on Facebook, hoping some will read it. I think today’s political situation is not unlike what was happening in the Roman empire, Christianity being used for some good, and some evil.

    • sLiu August 9, 2024 at 3:28 pm

      Dear Dr:

      I want to thank you. last decade WHEN living in Shanghai, I had a difficult time understanding theblog or letters & you wrote most clearly.

      ” Christianity being used for some good, and some evil.”

      20 years ago, I thought all the folks I study to understand the Bible & right Christian living were 1st Rome, Italy, Germany, France, UK and finally USA. Where is China, Watchman Nee’s lectures were translated by an Englishman from an attendees notes. Right what accuracy [or delusion].

      The Christianity I grew up with was from 1970s-early 90s fundamental or”far right”. Today’s USA political Evangelical is political, not humble, followers of Christ/God or love Thy neighbor.

      Thanks Dr Ehrman for your utter devotion to clarify the Good News to us, unfortunately those that should be carrying that message are concerned with the here & now!

      as my undergrad marketing professor taught: Jeremy Bentham: all beings pursue satisfaction[my awful remembering]

  2. TTHorne56 July 30, 2024 at 10:01 am

    Question: Where can one find the study by MacMullen that you referenced in this post?

    • BDEhrman August 3, 2024 at 12:24 pm

      The best way would be to do a Google search and see waht you come up with.

  3. Jimmy July 30, 2024 at 10:31 am

    Hi Bart,
    Have you ever thought of raising extra money for charity by playing bible trivia or similar trivia with selected blog members ? If someone got lucky and beat you, they would have something to brag about! If I were a betting man my money would be on you to come out on top.

    • BDEhrman August 3, 2024 at 12:24 pm

      Ha! Never occurred to me. But if we do it remotely, how can we be sure someone’s not cheating?!

  4. nanuninu July 30, 2024 at 12:08 pm

    Having your hands cut off is just a slap on the wrist compared to what God is going to do to you.

  5. mwbaugh July 30, 2024 at 12:18 pm

    This is a disappointing finding, though I can see its parallel in the modern world. There are many Christians who are opposed to harsh punishments and specifically the death penalty who cite their faith as the reason, but other Christiand are among the most vindictive. My sense is that it is the mainline Christians who have more of a focus on the ethical teachings of Jesus who are more merciful and the fundamentalist/evangelical churches who are more likely to focus on hell and apocalypse who are harsher. I wonder if there is a parallel distinction in ancient times.

  6. Stephen July 30, 2024 at 12:23 pm

    I look forward to this book as much as any you’re written. Metaphorically speaking, it seems you’re going to burst some bubbles. Recently there have been a slew of “Everything good in the West came from Christianity” books. It’s useful to note that most practical, functional attempts to improve society, the social welfare state, women’s suffrage, Abolition of slavery, etc., were post-Enlightenment projects.

  7. 1SonOfZeus July 30, 2024 at 8:35 pm

    New Insights Into The New Testament – 2024

    I’m thinking of attending your virtual conference. I think I might get the Elite pass. 🤔

  8. Karlpeeter August 1, 2024 at 3:35 am

    Hi bart
    You said that you think that in. 1Corinrhians 15 : 3-8 paul gets the 500 witnesses from tradision but he seems to not get any tradisions after him so he dosent belive dose but he belives those before him. So did he have a core belife that he would be the last witness?

    • BDEhrman August 3, 2024 at 12:33 pm

      He appears to think so. He was the “last one.”

  9. Patty August 1, 2024 at 7:34 am

    Christianity has this uncanny way of making life remarkably better and terribly worse.

  10. flcombs August 1, 2024 at 1:05 pm

    Not meant to be political at all, just comparing with the Bible. I always find the claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation interesting. I do think that the founders tried to form a government as “moral” as they could for their times. But It looks to me to be more from the Renaissance thinking, plus many key founders appear more Deists than actual traditional Christians.

    For example, where does the Bible teach freedom of religion: is it really OK to worship any god (or none) you choose? When I compare with the Bible, what in the constitution is actually from it, rather than Renaissance thinking?

    Was allowed chattel slavery based on the Bible?

    Christians often condemn Muhammed having a 9 year old wife, even though that was centuries ago. Well, as of 1880 in the U.S., the age of consent was 9 years (some states 8, some 10). So in that regard, what is the morality and improvement the first hundred years? (The movement to change that started in England due to press coverage of child prostitution)

    It seems “morality” often evolves by societies (experiences and conditions: wars, etc ). Religious beliefs and interpretations follow.

  11. dfolds August 2, 2024 at 3:27 pm

    Nice for “a” first draft, but we really need to know whether this is the ORIGINAL first draft, or a copy (or a copy of a copy) of that draft. You see, you might have been verbally inspired to compose your very first draft, but errors could have crept in since then… (tongue in cheek)

  12. ohammer August 4, 2024 at 12:53 pm

    A question: how do scholars know that Jesus’ ethics really is Jesus’ ethics? Paul quotes Leviticus ch. 19, to love one’s neighbor as oneself and, if I’ve understood him correctly, extends this to all who join his religion by invoking the saving power of Christ, not by quoting the ethics of Jesus. 15-20 years later, in Mark, Jesus seems to just quote ethical rules directly from the Torah. Another ten years pass, and now there seems to be an important innovation: Matthew and Luke have Jesus ask his followers to love even their enemies, and Luke’s Jesus universalizes the commandment in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Matthew and Luke were obviously highly educated people who like other literati were thoroughly steeped in Stoic ethics, and the Stoics of the 1st century emphasized the shared intrinsic value of all humans, and suggested that in this respect slaves and masters are united by their shared humanity. What evidence is there that Jesus’ ethics, to the extent that it added something new to the understanding of the Torah found also among other Jewish preachers, was formulated by the historical Jesus rather than the narrative “Jesus” of Matthew and Luke?

    • BDEhrman August 5, 2024 at 6:37 am

      To find out what Jesus himself taught about ethics is part of the larger quest to establish what Jesus said (and did) based on our surviving literary accounts. For that scholars use a variety of criteria. If there are ethical sayings that are very similar in tone and sentiment found in a number of sources that are independent of each other, then no one of those sources could have made them up (since the other sources heard them independently); if there are sayings that stand at odds with the views found elsewhere in these same sources, then the author creating thsese sourcs would not have made them (the views at odds) up, since they are contrary to his own. Etc. That turns out to be true of a number of sayings of Jesus.

      • ohammer August 5, 2024 at 10:19 am

        Thanks! Following those criteria the Jesus who extends care and compassion to all would seem a candidate for being a literary invention, Matthew and Luke are educated in the same Hellenistic culture where Stoicism is the most widespread and highly regarded ethical philosophy and they share a lot of material, and what really stands at odds with the mainstream ethics of the 1st century (and more akin to Leviticus 19 and its reference to the people of Israel as the recipients of the ethical rules) would be the Jesus in Matthew 15: 22-28 who insists that he is sent only to the people of Israel and seems to compare a Canaanite woman to a dog before agreeing to heal her daughter.

        • BDEhrman August 7, 2024 at 7:30 am

          Yes, one has to take that possibility very seriously. The big problem with it, though, is that Stoic philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy in general precisely did *not* have Jesus’ view that altruistic behavior should be directed toward the “stranger” and the “needy” who were not family, friends, or those on the same socio-economic level. They actually argued against it.

          • ohammer August 7, 2024 at 3:36 pm

            I’m by no means an expert on Roman Stoicism, and at the risk of not knowing the larger context, there are quotes from Seneca (who was of course prior to Matthew and Luke) that seem quite Jesus-like, such as Natura me amantem omnium genuit, “nature created me loving all people”; membra sumus corporis magni, [natura] nobis amorem indidit mutuum, “we are parts of one large body, nature created us with a mutual love”, and percussit te, recede, “if someone strikes you, step back”. The historical problem with the 1st c philosopher Musonius Rufus is that his sayings are recorded in fragmentary form, but the universal ethic of philanthropia seems even more explicit in his speeches.

          • BDEhrman August 9, 2024 at 5:55 am

            Yes, and one needs to consider these quotations of Seneca in their wider context and in light of what he says elsewhere. By “all people” of course he means what some modern British upperclass people mean when they say “people of our sort.” But yes, Paul in particular does seem to echo some of these moral teachings, but always with a decidedly Christian twist. Not even Musonius, though, taught what we would think of as a *universal* philanthopia. None of these authors would have found “love your enemies,” e.g., a viable idea….

  13. Darnit143 August 5, 2024 at 1:01 am

    Off topic, but wanted to ask if there are any big plans for your and Megan’s 100th episode of the Misquoting Jesus podcast?

    • BDEhrman August 5, 2024 at 6:45 am

      YUP! to be announced.

      • AngeloB August 14, 2024 at 7:01 pm

        Really looking forward to listening to your 100th episode Bart!

  14. meohanlon August 6, 2024 at 7:14 pm

    This reminds me of a parable I once heard-not sure of the source but it goes roughly like this:

    One day the devil (as in the Christian lord of evil; not the O.T. “OG” Satan of Job fame) and one of his minions are walking down a street, when they notice a holy man bending over to pick something up. Behold, says, the minion, he’s found a piece of the truth! Isn’t this bad for business? Not at all, says the devil, I’ll just claim it as my own and turn it into a new religion!

  15. Disbeliever.02 August 10, 2024 at 2:56 pm

    Dear Bart,
    This is something that I had not thought about but it is fascinating. As an ex-Catholic now agnostic atheist (thank you for that term by the way) one of the things that convinced that the church was not a force for good was its long history of torture and death meted out to people who had committed crimes that were imaginary and in fact impossible. This would include magic, witchcraft, consorting with demons and so forth.

    The church had a whole court system for this with a legal code parallel to those governing behavior in the real world, which is just astounding!
    Do you know if pagan cultures in the Mediterranean had done this, or done it on the scale and with the level of organization that the church of Roman did? Was there any previous tradition of this in Roman culture before Christianity?

    Thanks for all the wonderful free content you provide through your blog and podcasts -a true service to humanity!

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