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Loading...I have been discussing and excerpting the Prospectus I wrote this last summer on my book that I have tentatively titled, The Triumph of Christianity. Here I discuss the beginning of the Christian mission, and how “Christianity” went from being a small Jewish sect to being a large number of gentile communities (with special emphasis on the work of Paul).
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- From Jew to Gentile: The Rise of Christianity (two chapters)
This section will discuss the very early years of the Christian movement as it shifted from being a sect within Judaism to being a largely gentile religion, all within the space of about 50 years.
By everyone’s reckoning, Christianity began among a group of Jesus’ Jewish followers who believed that he was the messiah of God. In this section I will need to provide background to what the term “messiah” meant to ancient Jews. I will not give an extensive account of Jesus’ life and teachings, only enough to show what his overarching message was and how he acquired adherents to that message during his public ministry. It was only after Jesus’ death that his followers started to think that he was a divine man, and this belief arose because they came to believe he had been raised from the dead.
That in itself is an interesting story, but as it is the subject of my earlier book, How Jesus Became God; I will not need to cover that same ground at any length at all here. What I will need to emphasize is one important point, that the Jewish followers of Jesus immediately after his death quickly redefined what the term “messiah” meant, away from the traditional Jewish understanding that the messiah would be a powerful leader who established Israel as a sovereign state in its own land. The earliest Christians came up with the idea of a suffering messiah, one who was to die for the sake of others and rise from the dead (an idea not attested in any ancient Jewish writing).
Christianity, then, began with a small group of Jesus’ followers who maintained that he had been sent from God as his messiah who died for the salvation of the world. They naturally tried to convince their fellow Jews this was the case. And in most instances, they failed miserably. The vast majority of Jews (both then and now, of course) thought that the idea of a crucified messiah was a rather abhorrent oxymoron.
When Jesus’ followers continued to insist that Jesus was the divine man who died for others, and most Jews refused to listen, tensions arose. This led to the earliest persecutions of the Christians — unofficial, sporadic, and local opposition, sometimes violent — at the hands of non-Christian Jews. Christians retaliated, but, since they were by far the minority party, they did so not by force but almost entirely with rhetoric, insisting that God had rejected his own people (but only because they rejected him first).
To some extent it was the failed Jewish mission that …
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Hello Bart,
What you are writing about Paul sounds great, looking forward to the rest.
Question: How did the Church of Rome get started? Will you touch on this at all in “The Triumph of Christianity”?
Jerry
I’m not sure if I will or not. The first record of a chuch in Rome at all is Paul’s letter to the Romans, and he greets a bunch of people there, indicating that it was reasonably large and well known already. He also says he had never been there, so at least we know that he’s not the one who started it….
Curious to know if the historical Jesus also preached to the Gentiles or if he restricted his preaching to his fellow Jews? As a historian, what seems to be the more convincing opinion in your estimation?
I don’t think he ever got outside of Galilee or Judea, and that he never went to big cities except for Jerusalem, so he may have run across some gentiles, but there wouldn’t have been many and he never apparently traveled to gentile places to preach.
Dr. Ehrman, I have a pet theory about the why and whatfor of Paul’s mission, and I’m curious what you make of it. Namely, Paul’s mission was primarily a mission to bring about the Parousia. From our current standpoint, the idea of having to wait a few years for the Parousia seems trivial in comparison to the almost 2,000 years today’s Christians have since waited. That has led to a hindsight bias in which Christians throughout the ages have effectively rationalized away the fact that Jesus stubbornly refuses to return (“One thousand years is like a day to God!”, etc.).
But if we put ourselves in the place of those early Christians, only a year or two out from Jesus’ death, we may appreciate how interminably frustrating it must have felt. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Jesus was a no-show. Just stop and think — set aside all the hindsight bias — and just imagine the frustration, the anxiety. People in that position are going to start feeling desperate, and desperate times call for desperate measures. I can imagine all the disciples throwing out ideas, and the one idea they must have immediately landed on was that Jesus’ message must be spread to every Jew, even those within the Diaspora. And so started the early Christian concept of the Gospel, or “good news”, first to the Jews. And once all the Jews received the “good news” then maybe Jesus would return.
At the same time I can imagine some proposing that the “good news” must be spread to the righteous Gentiles as well. Even the Pharisees believed that many righteous Gentiles would be accepted into ha-‘Olam ha-Ba (the World to Come) — irrespective of how the Pharisees are protrayed in Acts 15 — so it would only make sense that to Christians such as Paul the “good news” must be spread to these Gentiles as well. That’s the scene we find in Acts 15, where it was agreed that righteous Gentiles only need accept the Noahide Laws to earn a place in the coming Kingdom. I notice many scholars see this as some kind of unprecedented moment, but the Rabbis who later compiled the Talmud generally also believed that Gentiles only needed to accept the Noahide Laws (as understood by them rather than later Jewish theologians such as Maimonides) to partake of the World to Come. And this is a belief that is still taught in Yeshiva’s today, that those righteous Gentiles who keep, at minimum, the Noahide Laws will partake in the World to Come. So none of this revolutionizes or up-ends Jewish thought or teaching in any way. And so what Paul was doing by bringing the “good news” to the righteous Gentiles was probably the most Jewish thing he could have done!
Anyway, I think that the urgency we see in Acts 15 and the urgency we see in Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was just the act of a desperate man and a desperate movement that felt they needed to adequately lay the groundwork in order to bring about the Parousia and, with it, the Kingdom. Alas, the fact that this sense of urgency has now lasted for the better part of 2,000 years I believe says more about human psychology than it does about the veracity of Christian expectations. But that’s just me.
Yes, I think this is a plausible reconstruction…
Bart, you have often stressed that historians do not always deal not in empirically verified facts but often only in probabilities. You’ve taught various criteria used by historians that help them establish what is more probable than another possibility. So, while I understand your application of the criterion of dissimilarity to Paul’s slip or confession that he received the Gospel from others, I can’t see how you can express with so much certainty that “Paul did not invent this set of ideas but inherited them from followers of Jesus before him.” Why are you so sure when he is elsewhere so adamant that he received the Gospel from no one?
Read 1 Cor. 15:3-5. He tells us explicitly that he got his basic message from others. when he says in Galatians that he did not recieve his “gospel” from others, he means his gospel that justification comes to gentiles apart from keeping the law, not the gospel that the death and resurrection of jesus are what bring salvation.
Okay. I’ve got it. Thanks, Bart. Still hard to imagine how rural, Galilean Jews could come to believe–even of they had come to believe that Jesus had acquired some divinity and ascended to the Father–that Jesus’ death and resurrection could bring salvation when
1. that kind of salvation (release from the wages of personal sins) was not what they had been looking for in a messiah
2. that kind of salvation is what Jews had looked for from God alone, and
3. they already had means to obtain that kind of salvation by practicing the teachings of the Torah.
Do you explain how all this could have been the case in How Jesus Became God?
No, but I hope to deal with it to some extent in my next book.
“He converted a few people. They converted their families and some friends.”
It is interesting that there are so many references to entire households being baptized after being visited by early Christian missionaries. Would this be a link back to pagan religious practices where the head of the house decided which deities would benefit the family and the rest of the household had better follow suit?
Yup, the head of the household made the decisions.
“When Jesus’ followers continued to insist that Jesus was the divine man who died for others, and most Jews refused to listen, tensions arose. This led to the earliest persecutions of the Christians — unofficial, sporadic, and local opposition, sometimes violent — at the hands of non-Christian Jews.”
Another interesting post. I assume your most of your sources for the above quote as well as these first two chapters are the books of the New Testament. I am just curious if you plan to use any other sources for this 50 year period?
I”m afraid for the first fifty years there simply aren’t any other sources.
Paul is a interesting and confusing figure to understand. Do you think in terms of his contribution to the development of Christian beliefs, do you think he formulated/created some “new” beliefs (“creating” them in light of his former beliefs or in light of his reading of the Law, Isaiah, etc.)- or was he merely passing on/elaborating on/defending the beliefs of those before him? Or a combo of both?
I think he did a bit of both. The idea that Jesus’ death brought salvation, as shown by his resurrection, was one that he inherited. But he developed it signficantly and in new directions.
Hmm. Am I wrong in thinking the main appeal of the very earliest Christian teachings would have been the new faith’s apocalypticism? The claim that believers would be immortal, living in that amazing earthly “Kingdom of God,” very soon…a concept that was completely new to the pagans, but which Christians claimed (wrongly) had its origins in “ancient” Judaism.
And later, promises about an afterlife (for believers) that was more appealing than that described in any other school of thought…coupled with threats about an afterlife (for non-believers) that was more horrific.
I’m not sure. I should think outsiders would find some of the apocalyptic claims to be a bit bizarre!
It was a Roman world, so it was still a Greek world with respect to religion an philosophy. While Elysium was part of the underworld I thought some earlier Greeks saw it as … almost earthly – just west of the end of the world. The point being that there may well have been very fertile ground for a Kingdom of God.
One of the main reasons I read your trade books and blogs is that you think, and, hence, write so clearly. Very few are able to do this. These posts help illustrate how you do this. Ron
This may be impossible to know but I often see that Paul and Jesus didn’t always teach the same message and even though at the beginning of Paul’s ministry the life and teachings of Jesus was being spread orally, I wonder that when Paul was winning converts to the faith did Paul teach his own message and theology?
Yes, he certainly taught his own message.
Prof Ehrman
1.So you don’t think Paul would have viewed the so-called “God-fearers’ as a natural pool of potential converts?
2.I always thought Paul was a “tentmaker”. Could you talk a little bit about what that word actually means? Bad translation?
thanks!
1. I wish we knew. Paul doesn’t say anything about them. 2. There’s one verse in Acts that indicates this. It’s not clear if it means that he literally made tents or if he was some kind of leather worker.
hello Bart
you dont believe the historical Jesus said : He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
thanks
No, I don’t.
“Christianity is instead the religion proclaimed by Paul, who argued that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the only way to have salvation, quite apart from following the dictates of the Jewish Law.”
How impossible to do this, being apart and leading people–Jew and proselyte–away from the dictates of Jewish Law, how impossible among first century Jews before the destruction of the Temple and Temple Judaism. How much easier to do this afterwards, when Pharisees no longer have tactics of enforcement of Temple Judaism because there was no more Temple.
There are those who would agree and would point to how Paul had to get out of town to Caesar for such sacrilege.
“Why would anyone want to leave their pagan religions in order to be a follower of Jesus?”
Part of the answer is the same reason Queen Helena, King Monobazus, and Prince/King Izates left the religion of Adiabene/Edessa/Parthia to become Jews. Jesus was none other than a Jewish apocalyptic prophet. In Josephus’ biographical information about Helena, Monobazus, and Izates, we learn why this royal family, contemporaries of Jesus, adopted Judaism. In addition to that royal family leaving their native religion, we have St. Stephen and the Greek leaders (in Acts) who believed in Jesus’ Christianity, not Paul’s Christianity as Paul was not yet converted. Need we not just read/listen to Stephen’s speech to know why pagans became followers of Jesus; for, Jesus’ parables and inspirations were classic, as time has proven?
Jesus was not a “Christian.” He was born, lived and died a Jew. Paul was not “converted.” He too was born. ived and died a Jew. Some historians believe he had a revelation on the road to Damascus. I think he made it up.
So what made Christianity attractive was being able to tap into this divine power? God was actively involved in their personal lives. Maybe they thought when they were speaking in tongues God was truly working through them. In that case, Paul and his followers were holy rollers.
A point along that line…. was not Constantine’s motivation for the Edict of Tolerance his dream about the power of the Christian God forecasting his success in battle? If you believe that Constantine was won over by Gods power.
By the time of the so-called “Edict of Milan” he had been a Christian for months — he converted in 312. But yes, he claimed it was based on a dream of Christ.
Thanks for answering my questions Bart 🙂
Two off topic questions
1- Why did Gnosticism fade starting from the 3rd century? “Orthodox” Christianity was not state religion during that time so it wasn’t suppressed by the state, right?
2- Are there any good books that discuss how the Gnostics interpreted scripture (apart from Heracleon’s Johannite exegesis)?
Thanks a million!
1. My sense is that in the battle to win converts, the Gnostics proved less effective than the proto-orthodox; 2. I’d suggest you try one of the (many) excellent general discussions of Gnosticism, such as David Brakke’s The Gnostics.
That question, why would pagans leave their religions for Christianity, and in particular why would Greeks, who had an old and venerable religion, is what started my interest in the history of Christianity. Since you are writing another book I’m going to read, I’d like to take this opportunity to share a some speculations and questions I’d like you to address, if you would.
I read “The Christians as the Romans Saw Them” by Robert Louis Wilken, and it occurred to me that the very things that Celsus criticized about Christianity may have been the things that attracted people to Christianity (I’d give some examples, but I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment).
The Romans may have seen themselves as the heirs to Greek culture, but I wonder if the Greeks shared that view. In particular, I wonder if Greeks, or at least some Greeks, thought that the Romans had desecrated their culture, and that made it easier for them to abandon it for Christianity. Take, for example, the sacred games, of which the games at Olympus were just one example. Did the Greeks see the gladiatorial games as a desecration of their religion, turning them into a spectacle of violence and, essentially, human sacrifice? Like if the Klingons invaded Earth, took over the Catholic Church, and made public crucifixions a regular part of Sunday Mass: probably a lot of people would look for alternatives.
Finally, I read somewhere (it might have been Wilkens, or Fox’s “Pagans and Christians”) that educated Greeks in the first century generally believed that what we call the Greek myths were just that, just stories, and that there was one all-powerful god, and maybe a lot of local spirits who needed occasional appeasement, or who were maybe just manifestations of the one god. If so, perhaps the transition from paganism to Christianity was not as big a jump as we sometimes imagine.
Yup, I think that’s right. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about pagan monotheism just now….
You might want to reconsider your proposed title. Rodney Start wrote a book called, “The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion.”
Yes, I know!
We have many well-documented modern equivalents of cults taking hold, making converts of people who were raised in a well-established faith. However, none of them has ever taken hold and spread the way Christianity did, not even Islam.
Mormonism is perhaps a poor example, since it basically piggybacks off of Christianity, claims to expand upon it, complete it. But look at what people were willing to do–to risk–in order to follow Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. They were frequently threatened with violence, with expulsion from their communities, for a man who couldn’t even produce the fabled golden disks he’d purportedly based his new scripture upon. Why?
There must be some common factor that links all people who embrace a new religion, and abandon the one they were raised in. Some kind of restlessness, discontent. No belief system can ever appeal equally to everyone. So when a new one comes along, there will be those who sense something in it more compatible with their personality, their worldview. They were never entirely comfortable in the faith they were born into. They were looking for something else.
But Christianity had something these other cults didn’t have–its founder wasn’t asking people to sacrifice themselves for him. He had sacrificed himself for them. That separates Jesus–at least the Jesus we know from the gospels–from all other cult founders. He was different. And however much his story and message was altered after his death, something genuine and compelling and original in it, that stood out. That inspired the people who wrote about him. That contained the seeds of many religions.
Have you any idea why he sacrificed himself? He certainly didn’t die “for our sins.”.
Readers of this website might find the second round of the Ehrman-Bauckham debate (really more of a discussion than an adversarial debate) of interest. It is available on youtube. For me, the best part of the debate focused on how the author of Mark could possibly have written down the Sermon on the Mount four decades after the sermon was given. Try to write down from memory the recent presidential state of the union address. You get the point. The main drawback of the debate is that toward the end I had difficulty figuring out where exactly Dr. Bauckham agreed and disagreed with Dr. Ehrman. I, however, think the main point is quite clear: People invented and changed stories about Jesus.
Yes, I’ll be posting that soon.
Professor Ehrman,
Who actually received Paul’s letter to the Romans in Rome itself? The first chapter just addresses it to “those beloved of God in Rome, called to be saints”.
I am wondering what Paul would have instructed the letter carriers to do with his letter, in specific terms.
The believers in Rome regularly met, and Paul had the letter sent to them.
Professor Ehrman,
Can I ask your opinion about my conclusion below?
When the Jewish leaders of Rome.come to Paul at the end of Acts, they tell him that they wanted to find out about this sect that is spoken against everywhere.This suggests that there was no Christian community at Rome at that time.
This conclusion is reinforced by what you write above about Paul’s modus operandi: “Paul instead came to a new town that had no Christians in it, started a business…”
Interesting point. I’m away from home and all my books, so I can’t check. But it’ would be interesting to know if Acts thought there was a Xn community that Paul had come *to*.
Another thought I had has to do with psychology. Guilt and Shame are common aspects of being human, although I highly doubt they had those concepts in antiquity, I’m sure they felt those emotions. Paul, with his message of forgiveness and grace via belief in Jesus, may have been attractive to those early converts as a means of dealing with those emotion just as it is for people today. Is that plausible, even though it is untestable, or is that too much of a modern construct?
I’d say it’s possible — but that it’s a theory that can’t be tested!
“To some extent it was the failed Jewish mission that led Christian missionaries to take their message to non-Jews, the gentiles.”
It has always amazed me that the Jewish followers of Jesus so quickly began to preach and convert Gentiles. I tend to think that Jesus himself must have given some kind of impetus or authorization of inclusion of lost tribes (importance of the twelve) and therefore also paganized Jews. I also think that there were probably larger groups of followers of Jesus living in some of the local villages during Jesus’ lifetime. This would help explain the early growth of ‘Christianity’ in the the first few years, especially among more mixed communities. The Syro-Phoenician woman strikes me as one of the more historically plausible stories in the gospel.
I suspect it was not the Jewish followers of Jesus per se but either those of Paul or of the people Paul got his Gospel from which, it is doubtful, would have been most of his closest followers. What is most easy to believe is that, once Jesus was crucified, almost all of his Jewish followers would have understandably given up on the notion that he was the messiah. The only evidence we have that Christianity spread much and soon is from Paul’s letters which he didn’t begin writing until c. 50 CE and Acts which wasn’t composed until close to 90 CE and possibly later. If there were “larger groups of followers of Jesus living in some of the local villages during Jesus’ lifetime,” they certainly didn’t expect him to be crucified, much less would they have believed his death would be a sacrifice for the sins of humankind. Such ideas had nothing to do with belief in the messiah.
Dr. Ehrman,
I have a couple questions:
1) So did Simon Peter believe in the idea that Jesus died for sins and if he did in what sense did that mean?
2) Also did Peter only preach to the Jews or did he preach to both? Given that Paul mentions in Galatians that Peter was assigned to preach to the circumcised and the book of Acts says Peter also preached to gentiles, so who is right?
3) If Peter preached to the gentiles did he believe that they had to get circumcised and follow the fundamental Jewish customs such as kosher and such?
1. We assume so, yes. We don’t know how he interpreted it because we have no writings from hi. 2. Apparently just to Jews. 3. This was the dispute with Paul in Antioch referred to in Galatians 2:11-14. Peter apparently was OK (at first) with gentiles not becoming jews.
Dr. Ehrman,
How exactly was Peter initially sympathetic with the idea that gentiles didn’t need to become Jews? When exactly did he did he change his mind and why? Was he initially sympathetic after the meeting he, James and John had with Paul as referenced by Paul in Galatians?
Another thing, so if Peter just preached to the gentiles why is he hanging out with gentiles in Galatians? What other way could have led him to eat with the gentiles other than preaching or at least talking to them about Jesus?
Dr. Ehrman,
I made a mistake on the first sentence of the second paragraph, I meant to say “preached to the Jews” not “preached the gentiles”.
All we know is what Paul says in Galatians, where he indicates that Peter used to “live like a Gentile” — that suggests he did not think living like a Jew was important for salvation.
I am reading Triumph of Christianity, and wonder 2 things: Which Christianity? And did they know any of the Jewish Bible?
I deal with both. I argue that most forms of Christianity shared the features that led to its spread, but only one type obvoiusly came out on top. And yes, it was one of the ones that kept the Jewish Scriptures.
Dr. Ehrman, do you consider anti-gentile or anti-pagan themes put on Jesus´ lips (e.g. Mark 7:24-30, Matthew 7:6, Matthew 10:5-16, Matthew 18:17) to be (at least somewhat) genuine Jesus´ views? To me, the criteria of embarrasment suggest so. And what about the Golden Rule of Ethics (Mark 12:31?) Does Jesus reffer to fellow Jews/Israelites, such as in Lev. 19:18, or does it include “strangers” (Gentiles? Mankind?) as well, such as in Lev. 19:34? Thank you very much
I think each case has to be judged on its own merits considering every possible angle; I don’t think, e.g., that Matt 7:6 is anti-gentile/pagan; it may just as well ahve been directed against Jews who refuse to ehar the truth. I do think the golden rule sums up most of Jesus’ ethical teachings and that one of his emphases was that the “neighbor” is not simply the fellow Israelite (hence the good Samaritan; the sheep and the goats; and so on)
Thank you doctor. I have always been a bit baffled by this “contradiction.” If Jesus really was all hippie about Golden rule to apply to the whole mankind, then it seems to be at odds with the quotations mentioned former, which seem to show some anti-gentile bias, to say the least.
What early Christian sect would you consider to be the “closest” one that resembles the beliefs/practices of Jesus and his original apostles/disciples?
Is there was such a sect, would you consider it to be the one true church founded by Jesus?
I suppose one of the Jewish Christian groups would be the closest, but we don’t have enough firm information about them to know exactly what they believed and practiced. I don’t think Jesus meant to found a church at all. It started only after some of his followers believed he had been raised from the dead.
Is there any merit to the idea that some Pagans were interested in Judaism because of its montheism, but circumcision and other aspects of keeping the law scared people off. Then the sect of Christians made it easier to be “Jewish” because gentiles did not need to keep the law (hence, no circumcision). That this is one reason Christianity caught on and spread so quickly.