(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
Loading...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).
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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 accept the bizarre cultic practices established by age-old tradition. The door was wide open for the superior Christian faith to enter in and take over.
Thus, for example,
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Dr. Ehrman, You are famous for pointing out that we don’t have the originals of the New Testament, or the copies, or the copies of the copies, or the copies of the copies of the copies. But the earliest copies of Aristotle are from 1200 years after they written. Not only don’t we have originals, we don’t have the copies, or the copies of the copies, and so on for, say, 20 generations if you think a copy could last a 60 years. So should I feel 5 times as much doubt about the validity of Aristotle than I do about the New Testament, or since Aristotle has obviously not been watered down or dumbed down in all that time, 5x as as confident in the New Testament as I do in Aristotle?
Not five times as much necessarily. But three points are important: 1) Aristotle scholars know full well that we may not have the original words of Aristotle gien our manuscript evidence; there are scholars who spend years of their lives trying to determine the wording of various passages in his books 2) Copyists of Aristotle had far less reason to change his text than did scribes of the NT, since they all were followers of Jesus with distinctive views of Jesus who sometimes had to copy passages that disagree with their views 3) unlike the earliest copiests of Aristotle, the earliest copiests of NT writings were not trained professionals, but only local folk who knew how to write. They made far more mistakes as a result.
I don’t buy it. If I was going to take all the time and cost to write out an entire book by hand because I found it so moving and significant that I wanted to pass it on to someone I wouldn’t thereby change the thing that I found so moving. I would want them to have the same experience I had. I think 3 – 5 generations from the originals to Codex Vaticanus is no big deal at all seeing how little Aristotle changed in 12 to 20 generations.
The only reason for anyone at all to take the massive amounts of time to copy a book by hand is because they found it hugely important. That never stopped them from changing the book to make it make better sense, or to make the sense that it made (to the copyist) clearer or less ambiguous, or to “correct” the mistakes made by the copyists. Ironically, for the NT, it was precisely becuase it WAS so authoritative that it was so frequently changed. (And early on, lots of the changes were simply mistakes because the copyists were not trained to do that kind of work, unlike later and unlike virtually all copyists of Aristotle)
Plus, the writers of Vaticanus were themselves working with old manuscripts, probably 2 or 3 generations old. That leaves only 1 or 2 generations left back to the originals, nowhere near enough time to support the massive doubt you want to pour onto it.
How would we know if all those generations go back to a copy made directly from Vaticanus that (the copy) had, say, 497 mistakes in it? How would we be able to tell?
The burden of proof is not to say unless you can prove it was changed 497 times then you must assume it was changed 497 times. Or if you can’t prove it wasn’t changed 497 times then you must have massive doubt. You weigh up considerations to inference to the best explanation. 1. manuscripts do not pass down more and more errors with time, there is constant quality control, or they would be jibberish by 1000 years on, 2. in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were professional operations and were working with manuscripts several generations old, and had strict quality control, 3. that only leaves 1 or 2 generations where there could have been copy errors , 4. just as in academic writing you don’t assume malicious intent or incompetence, or making obvious errors without proof. Inference to the best explanation is that there was not enough time to bear the amount of doubt you want to foist on them.
I don’t assume it was changed 497 times.
Not sure if you’ve studied the manuscript tradition of the New Testament? Have you collated any of our early manuscripts? It’s a worthshile exercise to compare, say, P66 with a 12th century manuscript to see differences. Or P66 with an early ms such as Alexandrinus. Or, say, Codex Bezae with Siniaticus. If you’re interested in pursuing the issue, I’d suggest reading David Park, The LIving Text of the Gospels. He is one of the premier texual schoalrs of our time and is by no means an eccentric thinker. (If you want to see him seriously at work, take a look at his monograph on codex Bezae)
religious right has changed christianity from emphasis in late 1980s to unChristian hate growing from y2k.
1996, my last Church mentor who was Caucasian, was conflicted spouting (though then elder 1960s kicked out Witness Lee church teaching us absolutes [translator immigrant a dr from canton became a Vancouver pastor] while also sounding like a dittohead [rush Limbaugh devotee]). 1995 at some Washington DC press address, President Clinton addressed this group of then discontented White men.
I never thought that God could change. But it has from 1995 from one where I had hope in. To one that utterly does not support his most fervent & devoted absolutes. That’s why there is no 2nd coming.
Without a doubt, divine intervention would need to prepare the Church to be the proper bride for Christ as mankind lacks that honesty.
I’m watching a documentary of a YOUTUBER/historian on history of Morman church. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6sCGS6Jfc&list=WL&index=1
HOW DID CHRISTIANITY SUCCEED? Controversy creates publicity. The death of Jesus was surrounded by controversy. The EMPTY TOMB accounts generated controversy. Two powerful interests – the High Priest and the Pharisees – reacted to suppress the growing social phenomenon. The stoning of Stephen the Martyr caused the dissemination of believers to flee “outside” of Jerusalem to safe havens such as the city of Damascus. Saul of Tarsus was dispatched to go to Damascus. While this was happening, the “former” Essenes had formed the “Q” Community and were fabricating the narrative that we know as the “Q” Document. The “Q” Community “evangelized” in the Essene community and the Therapeutae community in Alexandria, Egypt. Adding “sizzle to the steak” was the fact that Jesus was falsely accused as a political threat to Imperial Rome by the High Priest. Controversy creates publicity. Three variants of this weird Jewish cult emerged. It was not evangelism, but unrestricted fellowship to the non-Jews. After that, it became competitive. Shysters, fraud artists, and scammers sought new audiences. Heaven forbid that ACTS recorded an actual physical phenomenon! Heaven forbid that Paul wrote the 14th chapter of 1st Corinthians about that physical phenomenon!
After reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years” (summarizing Christianity in only 1161 pages…! Lol), it also seems that political willpower (and luck of successions) was also a significant factor in both ‘marketing’ the Christian faith and in destroying many of the troublesome variations of Christology. It seems that Christianity might have continued to fight among their various factions for hundreds of more years had not monarchial hammers been used against some of the larger groups, such as the followers of Arius. Many bishops seemed to have been created and/or erased in efforts to cleanse perceived cancers of thought from various regions, such as Alexandria. MacCulloch seems to believe there was more widespread Christian persecution than many scholars.
Q: Do you think that the exclusionist and evangelical natures alone could have succeeded so well had Constantine and many of his successors not been as involved in forcing stabilization the Christian doctrine?
Constantine himself did not take any steps to enforce Christianity. It was his preferred faith and he let non-Christians get on with their business; it’s not really till Theodosius I at the end of the fourth century that Christianity becomes more or less the official religion of Rome and practitioners of other faiths could be punished for it. By then it was more or less a done deal that the empire was going to be Christian. So no, I don’t think polical force of any kind would hvae been required. (it did get applied, though, when it came to controlling “heresy” starting with Arius, as you point out)
Those Christian Nationalists who claim the U.S. is a Christian nation might want to look back at Roman history. It certainly could be a coincidence, just like winning a lottery after praying to god for it to happen is not evidence that prayers work, but it is a fact that the Roman Empire did fall after Theodosius and Christianity became the official religion.
Not to wax political but the trope of “decadent Europe” is still popular today among those of a Conservative bent. I simply wonder if they’ve ever actually been since Europe outpaces the USA in most social metrics, education, health, etc.
My question – it’s easy to oversimplify the situation of course but wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that Christianity was less an “invasion” of paganism than it was in many ways a natural outgrowth of Hellenism?
I don’t see Christianty as an outgrowth of Hellenism, no; it set itself up as very much in oppositon to it (and the favor was returned). That doesn’t mean that in the end Greek culture had little effect on Christianity, but it grew from a very different root.
But wasn’t that other root a thoroughly Hellenized Judaism? And even though it set itself in opposition to paganism, just a conceptual level was Christianity even possible without Greek philosophy? For example, how would the doctrine of the Trinity have even been possible without it? A magnolia tree is not an oak but they both can spring from the same soil.
Yes, most Judaism in NT times was Hellenized to some extent or another. What I’m arguing is that apocalyptic Judaism rather than, say, Platonic philosophy, is the starting point for the Christian movement.
When I read discussions like this, I always find myself comparing them with the situation in Asia, especially Japan. In Japan, Shinto contains myths that many modern people would consider quite implausible, yet until the end of World War II the government enforced State Shinto and required people to venerate the emperor as a divine being. This was even imposed on people in territories occupied by Japan, and it remains one of the shameful aspects of Japanese history. After the war, the emperor himself issued the so-called “Humanity Declaration,” essentially saying, “I am not a god, Okay?,” which created a very strange historical situation.
What I find fascinating is that Christianity — which, at least at the theological and intellectual level, developed a far more sophisticated tradition — never really took root in Japan in a major way (perhaps around 1% today), whereas Korea, another East Asian country with many cultural similarities, became heavily Christianized.
This is not really a question for you, Bart, but rather a question I often ask myself.
Interesting facts that I was not aware of. The Divine Emperor of Japan. In South Korea, America is seen as preventing the Chinese invasion. In Japan, America is seen as the conquering nation. Decades ago, I read that Shinto disciples outnumbered Buddhists in Japan. It might be based on pre-WW2 data. Surveys after the war of adults born before the war continued to poll high for Shinto as the survivors of the war did not abandon their worldview. Best regards.
Could it also be that outsiders perceived the early Christian communities/churches to be ones that welcomed and took care of each other and of outsiders, whether they were of a different nationality or religion or economic class? (Though I know that we must realize from Paul that these early church communities had plenty of arguments and rivalries among themselves.) Still, I believe I remember someone saying of the early Christians something like “Look how they care for one another”. This could have been tremendously appealing to many who felt like outsiders themselves.
It’s certainly a possibility. Unfortunately none of our sources that I’m aware of talks about it as a factor in conversion.
Don’t you think that perhaps Gibbon was being subtly sarcastic?
I’m not sure what was going on in his head, or how we would know. But he certainly seems to be serious about it.
It’s a few years since I read Decline and Fall, but I got the impression that Gibbon was being a bit tongue-in-cheek about miracles. The accepted wisdom among educated Protestants of his day was that biblical miracles were genuine and medieval miracles were fraudulent. So according to this view there must have been a time (perhaps in late antiquity) when genuine miracles ceased. Gibbon asks the very reasonable question, “Wouldn’t someone have noticed when this happened?”
My guess is that Gibbon disbelieved in miracles, but could not say this outright for fear of upsetting his readers.
I doubt that restrictions would have been an attractive aspect,even as structure and order can be a draw.Westerners convert to Islam knowing the many limitations imposed.The perfect example is women who convert.But whether boundaries were a reason for converting to Christianity would be of much less impact than the promise of eternal life,granted for a relatively low cost in behavioural change. Marketing,allowances Paul established erasing Judaic dietary laws or the Sabbath- all of which would have upset Jesus greatly – ,the novelty of a weird new idea, which people crave, the community benefits, and indeed the missionary zeal must have been the added benefits. Knowing how difficult it is for humans to tame their natural impulses, and to do so in just a few generations, it seems unlikely that any but beneficial immediate perceived improvements, answering to deep fears and needs, such as the fear of death, would have been the significant causes.Lastly, I don’t know if the ” tipping point” applies here, but perhaps a critical mass was achieved, and after that it just rolled of its own energetic impulse.
Are there testimonies of lay people from the earliest times that tell us what the motivations were?
Unfortunately all we have are surviving writings and necessarily these were done by the highly educated who, again necessarily, were not “average” (i.e., lay) people. So we have to go on what they say and imply.