I have read all of your books, I think, I am currently listening to the lecture series on Jesus to Constantine. I feel a bit unfulfilled about what attracted pagans to the religion about Jesus. Your primary argument is that miracles convinced people that the Jewish God was superior to other gods and that would serve their needs here in present life. Maybe you have more on the subject in other works or can discuss more at length. I just think there had to be more to it because so many were willing to die horrible, painful deaths. Was it the charismatic nature of some Christians in their gatherings to experience a living Holy Spirit? Was it the promise of eternal life? Was it.a sense of righteousness?
Kwolck, welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, I cannot offer an answer, but wanted to mention that Dr. Ehrman does not monitor forum posts. You will have better luck posting a question in a blog entry comment.
I expect his upcoming book, The Triumph of Christianity, will have quite a lot to say about the appeal for Gentile converts.
The book of Acts talks about how Paul would go about trying to convince people. It was his custom to try reason with people in the local synagogue.
“As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,….”
Acts 17:2
Other places in Paul’s letters suggest that Paul did do miracles that convinced people.
Also some were convinced by how Paul lived and then they became a model for others:
“For we know, brothers and sisters ** you do not have permission to see this link **The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.”
1 Thessalonians 4-8
He also made arguments in Greece:
Acts 17:22-34
“22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor** you do not have permission to see this link ** and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said,
“For we too are his offspring.”
29Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’
32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ 33At that point Paul left them. 34But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”
Bart’s citations of a few ideas on this question have stuck with me as points to criticize, but I haven’t until today seen an opportunity to do so.
One point he makes is that while pagans could accept many gods, Christians could accept only one. Hence, when paganism lost a convert to Christianity, an entire platoon of gods lost a follower. So when Jesus scored 1, the pagans lost 30. That’s an interesting idea but it fails to recognize that getting someone to reject all other gods is a tall order. It’s not just about rejecting the vast majority of faddish gods that pagans could embrace. It included rejecting the two or three gods that the average pagan might really feel devotion towards.
What could make a pagan quit all his faddish gods for Christianity? One argument is that Christians offered a community of believers that served as a form of social insurance, and particularly, care for a believer when he or she fell ill. This is a compelling idea. Bart disbelieves that it could not have been important, because plagues wiped out everyone regardless. I disagree. Lacking help from others, a person in ancient palestine would be more susceptible to death due to things as routine as food poisoning and influenza. With help though, these common maladies are infinitely more survivable and humans even become immune to the flu. So while pagans avoided their sick, Christians were expected to brave the risk. They did, and probably won many converts doing so.
Now as we begin to celebrate Christmas all over the world, it is time to remember the sophomoric claim that Christmas is just a pagan festival to celebrate the return of the sun from its winter solstice. Pagans all over will celebrate that the earth will not be plunged into darkness forever as the days grow longer again. Of course, only really stupid people can’t remember that last year the days began getting longer just after winter solstice. Merry Christmas, and remind all your stupid friends in the pagan intelligentsia that the sun brings longer days after winter solstice every year.
Matt2239 said
Bart’s citations of a few ideas on this question have stuck with me as points to criticize, but I haven’t until today seen an opportunity to do so.One point he makes is that while pagans could accept many gods, Christians could accept only one. Hence, when paganism lost a convert to Christianity, an entire platoon of gods lost a follower. So when Jesus scored 1, the pagans lost 30. That’s an interesting idea but it fails to recognize that getting someone to reject all other gods is a tall order. It’s not just about rejecting the vast majority of faddish gods that pagans could embrace. It included rejecting the two or three gods that the average pagan might really feel devotion towards.
What could make a pagan quit all his faddish gods for Christianity? One argument is that Christians offered a community of believers that served as a form of social insurance, and particularly, care for a believer when he or she fell ill. This is a compelling idea. Bart believes that it could not have been important, because plagues wiped out everyone regardless. I disagree. Lacking help from others, a person in ancient palestine would be more susceptible to death due to things as routine as food poisoning and influenza. With help though, these common maladies are infinitely more survivable and humans even become immune to the flu. So while pagans avoided their sick, Christians were expected to brave the risk. They did, and probably won many converts doing so.
Now as we begin to celebrate Christmas all over the world, it is time to remember the sophomoric claim that Christmas is just a pagan festival to celebrate the return of the sun from its winter solstice. Pagans all over will celebrate that the earth will not be plunged into darkness forever as the days grow longer again. Of course, only really stupid people can’t remember that last year the days began getting longer just after winter solstice. Merry Christmas, and remind all your stupid friends in the pagan intelligentsia that the sun brings longer days after winter solstice every year.
I don’t think we can assume that pagans didn’t look out for each other. Yes, Christians took it more seriously–as a duty that went far beyond family and community–but important not to oversimplify. The story of Hypatia paints a rather different picture–there would have been a wide variety of personalities, positive and negative, in both camps, who should have been helping each other, but ended up in opposition.
Jesus said to look at the person, not what he or she professes to believe, but how he or she acts on those beliefs. However, in practice, people tend to be clannish, and Christianity in many ways became what it professed to loathe–sectarian, judgmental, and often quite hypocritical. Also, at times, quite violent, which is something Jesus could never have condoned. Once lots of people were joining up, the goats were joining up.
This is precisely why Jesus never intended to form a religion–he knew any such institution could be corrupted, as he felt Judaism had been corrupted. But his Kingdom didn’t come, and so we have had to live with both the rights and wrongs of Christianity and all other systems of belief.
At Christmas–which is both pagan and Christian–I think we could appreciate all our shared values, and I have known some absolutely splendid pagans. (Two of whom were born Jewish, and were complaining about the rise of pagan fundamentalism, but that just goes to show you that people seek their bliss in all times, all places).
godspell said
At Christmas–which is both pagan and Christian–I think we could appreciate all our shared values
What part of Christmas is pagan? No part. I fully appreciate the need for tolerance in our world of wildly different viewpoints.
No one can however dispute the power of simple ideas like… “turn the other cheek,” …”go the extra mile,” …”love your enemies,” …”do unto others”, and “render unto Caesar…”. All in four anonymously authored Greek codices.
It’s not about tolerance (though that is nothing any Christian should despise or belittle through faint praise). It’s a fact. The tree is pagan. Hollly and Mistletoe, obviously. The choice of date is pagan (no scholar believes Jesus was born on December 25th). Most of the innumerable accompanying traditions throughout the world are pagan (you should see some of the Mexican religious parades in my nabe–though that’s a very different brand of paganism peeping out).
When we speak of Yuletide, we are referencing a decidedly non-Christian tradition–
** you do not have permission to see this link **
There was no Christmas in early Christianity. No early sources refer to there being any celebration of his birth. It is a very late tradition, that came into being while Europe was still being Christianized, and much as its origins may be oversimplified or outright falsified by people making cheap jokes, it is largely assembled out of earlier non-Christian traditions, because the people who invented it were not converted Jews, but converted pagans. And that is precisely what makes it such a powerful tradition, the most popular holiday in the world, and while Jesus may be at the heart of it, look if you please at the animated specials and remind me how many of them even mention him. And of course the god of consumerism reigns supreme now. (Black Friday, indeed.)
So a lot of modern Christmas is venal and commercialized, but at the heart of it, we have a mixture of Christianity and paganism. And what the hell is wrong with that? Christianity as we know it was a blending of many traditions around the memory of a crucified Jew–and shouldn’t we celebrate that? And most of all, remember what he really wanted of us. That we should love one another. Have life, and have it more abundantly. Joyeux Noel.
godspell said
It’s not about tolerance (though that is nothing any Christian should despise or belittle through faint praise). It’s a fact. The tree is pagan. Hollly and Mistletoe, obviously. The choice of date is pagan (no scholar believes Jesus was born on December 25th). Most of the innumerable accompanying traditions throughout the world are pagan (you should see some of the Mexican religious parades in my nabe–though that’s a very different brand of paganism peeping out).When we speak of Yuletide, we are referencing a decidedly non-Christian tradition–
** you do not have permission to see this link **
There was no Christmas in early Christianity. No early sources refer to there being any celebration of his birth. It is a very late tradition, that came into being while Europe was still being Christianized, and much as its origins may be oversimplified or outright falsified by people making cheap jokes, it is largely assembled out of earlier non-Christian traditions, because the people who invented it were not converted Jews, but converted pagans. And that is precisely what makes it such a powerful tradition, the most popular holiday in the world, and while Jesus may be at the heart of it, look if you please at the animated specials and remind me how many of them even mention him. And of course the god of consumerism reigns supreme now. (Black Friday, indeed.)
So a lot of modern Christmas is venal and commercialized, but at the heart of it, we have a mixture of Christianity and paganism. And what the hell is wrong with that? Christianity as we know it was a blending of many traditions around the memory of a crucified Jew–and shouldn’t we celebrate that? And most of all, remember what he really wanted of us. That we should love one another. Have life, and have it more abundantly. Joyeux Noel.
There you go again.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Says here that Christmas was set as Dec 25 in the 300’s, while the word “Yuletide” first appeared in 1475 (according to your own cite). That’s an error of magnitude of a thousand years.
Christmas is about the birthday of Jesus Christ for Christians, and Jesus of Nazareth, world-famous philosopher, for others. It has nothing to do with paganism.
The celebration of it is almost entirely composed of pagan symbols. Explain to me how people in the Middle East strung lights on conifers to celebrate.
You’re just filtering this out, because you want to believe it’s entirely Christian. Christianity isn’t entirely Christian. It could not help absorbing pagan ideas, and of course Augustine was a major transmitter of those.
The 300’s is a long time after the death of Jesus, and I was hardly saying nobody talked about Christmas before Yuletide became a thing, but that’s my point–they kept adding on new pagan ideas, for centuries after the date was set–not for the purposes of a major holiday, and Christmas in the 300’s was nothing like what we have now, or at any time in the last thousand years.
You know very well how much people from Christian backgrounds celebrate Christmas, and it sure as hell ain’t what Jesus had in mind, not that he ever expected anyone to base a holiday around the very humble and humdrum circumstances of his birth in or around Nazareth. Frankly, the Three Wise Men are probably derived from Zoroastrian converts to Christianity–not technically pagans, but sure as hell not Christian, but they contributed to the mythology. And it is mythology. None of that happened, and he wasn’t born anywhere near December 25th.
godspell said
You’re just filtering this out, because you want to believe it’s entirely Christian. Christianity isn’t entirely Christian. It could not help absorbing pagan ideas, and of course Augustine was a major transmitter of those.
You know very well how much people from Christian backgrounds celebrate Christmas, and it sure as hell ain’t what Jesus had in mind, not that he ever expected anyone to base a holiday around the very humble and humdrum circumstances of his birth in or around Nazareth. Frankly, the Three Wise Men are probably derived from Zoroastrian converts to Christianity–not technically pagans, but sure as hell not Christian, but they contributed to the mythology. And it is mythology. None of that happened, and he wasn’t born anywhere near December 25th.
All the symbols and rituals of Christmas are vetted and approved by respective religious leaders as legitimately Christian, and always have been. Policing what the faithful can say, sing, and own is a long-standing function of religious leadership, who in some areas of America still proscribe board games that include dice, and any form of opener that could be used on a bottle of beer. Likewise with Christmas Trees, Christmas Wreaths, Mistletoe, Christmas Carols, Saint Nicholas/ Santa Claus, and the list goes on. It’s all approved as legitimately Christian and fully okay for the faithful.
At this time of year, all over the world, people celebrate the birth of Jesus not just by giving wonderful gifts to those they love but also by giving to the less fortunate. It’s true children today have toys that are better than any toys enjoyed by children in centuries past. That’s largely due to an oddity of industrial revolution. When factories began producing material goods for mass marketing and mass consumption, for the first time in human history, humanity’s children received not just a toy industry of affordable toys, but also a childhood of learning and play, instead one of endless agricultural toil. 
Well I guess technically the cross is a pagan symbol, since the Romans invented it as an instrument of death.
But truthfully, nobody from early Christianity would recognize any of what we do at Christmas as being Christian. And while giving to the less fortunate was certainly part of Christianity from the beginning, it didn’t begin with Christianity–Jesus didn’t invent that. Impossible to say who did. Probably some caveman. Or woman.
We got our tree last night, from a stand downstairs, run by nice people from upstate, who’ll be heading home today.
And in all the years they’ve been coming here, not one religious reference have I ever seen or heard there. The music they play is just standard popular music, most of it not even referencing the holiday. And they usually say ‘have a great holiday’ not ‘Merry Christmas.’ PC? No, they just don’t want to make any assumptions. Lots of people who buy Christmas Trees are not practicing Christians, or even raised Christian.
The Christmas Tree is a relatively late custom, and nobody needed the permission of religious authorities to put a damn conifer in their living room. It became popular in the English speaking world during the Victorian Era, because of Prince Albert. Technically Victoria was the head of the Anglican Church, but pretty sure she didn’t check with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s a decoration, and other than the general reference to life, there’s no Christian significance. It was a pagan custom, derived from the fact that Teutonic paganism often involved tree worship.
It’s a pagan custom (pagan in the sense of polytheist), and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all began as pagans, of one kind or another. 100% of our ancestors worshiped many gods, who stood for different parts of life.
But FYI, the first Christians to come here in numbers thought Christmas was the devil’s holiday.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The Mithras reference is probably wrong, but the fact is, the winter solstice was a holiday long long before Jesus was born. Christianity coopted it, because it was too powerful a holiday to leave for the pagans, and because they had no frickin’ idea when Jesus was born, and they had to put his birthday somewhere in the calendar.
I don’t think pagans would have converted to Christianity if it had demanded that Christians keep kosher and follow the entire Jewish law. Paul allowed for Christianity to have larger market share. I also wonder why Islam spread so quickly. We could say that it was military conquest. But that begs the question of why the Muslims were so successful militarily. I think both the spread of Christianity and the spread of Islam indicates that there is/was a demand for a more unified godhead.
Some pagans did willingly convert to Judaism, and in fact the Romans expelled Jews from Rome once or twice because high-ranking people were converting (possibly women). So the dietary codes were not an absolute deal-breaker, pagans were converting to Christianity before Paul won that argument, but they did complicate matters for a marginalized cult that started out with no power, little money, and the periodic threat of persecution.
Islam has, you may have forgotten, very similar dietary codes to Judaism, and you also have to get circumcised. But in essence, they got their Constantine much earlier. Many, in fact.
Muhammad was no doubt a great man. But had he lived as Jesus did, and died as Jesus did, would we ever have heard of him? This we know–if Jesus had never lived, there would be no Islam, as we now know it. Not that he intended to found any religion. And for the record, I doubt Muhammad would look at some expressions of modern Islam and say “This is what I meant.”
Obviously we have the works of Paul to look at regarding methods of conversion. There it seems a general flexibility in incorporating some elements of paganism played a role as well as the view that converts didn’t need to strictly adhere to every OT law(wearing mixed fabrics, dietary rules, Sabbath, circumcision) wasn’t the way of finding salvation, rather faith in Jesus. You don’t have to do anything, just accept Jesus as your savior. No huge elaborate ritual or big cash downpayment.
But what about the pagan point of view? I don’t know of any early explanations from pagans themselves as to why they converted. Indeed, there are very few early non-Christian references to Christians like those of Tacitus** you do not have permission to see this link **
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food–but ordinary and innocent food.
What this tells us is that within about 80~ years of Jesus’s execution there were already communities as far away as the north of modern Turkey large enough for the government to take notice. What it also tells us is that Christians were probably fairly non-threatening to the general public. Indeed, the Christians were pretty desperate to win souls and early Church theology emphasized the poor and downtrodden, not the elite. Charity, communal meals, and a belief that anyone can be saved is pretty appealing in a world filled with slaves, peasants, convicts, poverty and a life expectancy at birth of about 30. Former criminal? Ex-slave? Tax collector? Doesn’t matter, we’ll take ya!
Speaking of slavery, at any given point in its history Roman society was about 10% enslaved. Many slaves were flogged and beaten on farms or in hellish mines. In one instance where a slave killed his master the Roman Senate had every single one of his 200-300 slaves put to death, down to the last child. I understand that early Christians had a “complex” relationship with slavery, like Paul saying slaves should be obedient.** you do not have permission to see this link **, although there are free academic articles to look into online. Many early Christians thinkers were also highly critical of cruel masters and condemned them. While theologians like Augustine defended slavery, his view was nuanced. In a better world, there would be no slaves or masters, but in a fallen world, like war, disease, and crime it made sense that something so awful would exist. Even then, he still lobbied for fair treatment of slaves and laws to curtail the institution. By the end of the Medieval period(~1500) slavery in Europe and dwindled to a fraction of what it had been in antiquity. In the long run English Quakers would lead the world abolitionist movement.
To me, it seems like that Christians were just really good at persuading people in their first 200-300 hundred years. In a world that could be as cruel and indifferent as Rome, the generally humanitarian and merciful message they brought fourth was probably very appealing given how many down trodden there were at the time. Before they ever had formal power(and never forget how power corrupts) they were a largely ignored and occasionally persecuted group. They were also a highly motivated one, unlike the Jews or pagans, they had a strong evangelizing bent and often made it a priority to get converts.
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