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Loading...Many of us have agonized over leaving the faith we held dear and clung on to for long periods of our life. Most of us have never thought about what it would have been like for ancient peoples to leave *their* religions, not to move to agnosticism or atheism, but because a *different* religion was taking over. That is part of what I address in my book The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017).
I have been providing posts summarizing the issues I address in my various popular books. I’ll continue to do that now with Triumph. This is how I begin the book, not in a place one might expect! But with one of the great poets of doubt in modernity…
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“The ancient triumph of Christianity proved to be the single greatest cultural transformation our world has ever seen. …”
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Professor, I have posted a very small e-book on Amazon titled ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Scammer Jesus: and How He Harmed Chinese People ‘.
This is a single article, and I think it can refute your above viewpoint and prove the opposite viewpoint:
The victory of ancient Christianity was definitely a disaster for the world.
I don’t claim it was a good transformatoin, only that it was the most signficant one.
Sorry, perhaps the translation software’s inaccurate translation misled me
Ah, technology. Can’t live with it, and can’t live without it….
“Can’t live with it, and can’t live without it….”
I heard that concerning girls in summer school high school.
I can’t live without the increase of technology & modern medicine!
I think the issue with Christianity worldwide is it is European, started from Greco-Roman & expanded.
In China, I recall, last century, to get to higher positions within theState Church Bureaucracy, one needed to have attended USA seminary.
I’m an ABC, my Christian education came from Rome, Germany, France, England & the USA [all then global hegemonies].
And if it was from China or S Africa, it was rooted in UK or USA fundamentals.
We are blessed with modern technology [also from the USA]!
I took histories or overviews of global religions in high school, but none in Undergrad.
Actually in China MBA grad university, I took why the particular rulers direction was right [Hu] & it was so well presented & taught, also I lived & witnessed China from a poorer economy-wealthy so I believed that reformation & truth!
Now I chant, but refuse to make that a religion.
but is Christianity now in defeat?
As the USA has been declining over the past 25 years [then a global hegemony to bipolar reality by 2007]
In addition, in a certain sense, the success of Jesus and Christianity is also a successful example of all subsequent cult activities, so Jesus and Christianity also need to be responsible for all cult harm incidents in subsequent history.
I don’t think one can really blame Jesus for what followed his death rather, it was those who claimed he’d been raised, Paul in particular for his contributions to the theology of the faith and his evangelistic activity. All who followed and spread the religion relied on what was written about Jesus which, as Dr Ehrman and others write, isn’t exactly about what the historical Jesus said or did.
“isn’t exactly about what the historical Jesus said or did.”
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Yes, the historical Jesus may have been so painful on the cross that he could not speak. Several other people on the cross should also obviously not be in the mood to chat.
But Jesus performed false exorcism tricks, propagated the teachings of cult, claimed to be the Son of God and the kingdom of heaven was about to come, all of these were things that Jesus did during his lifetime.So he was responsible for the events that his words and actions may cause in subsequent history.
The success of Jesus and Christianity is also a successful example for all subsequent cult activities, so Jesus and Christianity also need to take partial responsibility for all cult harm incidents in subsequent history.
At the same time, the cult doctrine of Jesus’ ” Only those who believe in me can be saved, and those who do not believe in me will all die ‘has also been imitated and copied by various subsequent cults. So Jesus and Christianity are actually the ancestors of cults.
The cult doctrine above should be the words spoken by Jesus himself during his preaching, and he was certainly responsible for it.
I think that there has been a lot attributed to Jesus by his followers that probably wasn’t true. Dr. Ehrman’s book, “Misquoting Jesus,” explains a lot of this. If Jesus was the apocalyptic prophet of a new milllenium, he was one of many apocalypticists warning people to repent and get ready for a new age – the kingdom of God. Why people believed that he was raised from the dead or performed miracles or exorcisms can probably be attributed to embellishing his image after he died. That’s what I think anyway. If you want to lay blame at anyone’s feet, I think it should go to Paul, the fathers of the church, and many subsequent followers and their hermaneutics. The range of interpretation of biblical texts is mind-boggling!
Just this week I was thinking about your book and trying to remember how, or if, you addressed what modern marketing mavens would refer to as the Tipping Point in the march of Christianity (or was it more like a creep? at least until Constantine?) towards dominance of the socio-philosophical-religious landscape. Specifically, these questions came to mind: 1) What was it that created the “stickiness” of the message of the Jesus movement in all of its variations, in the first four centuries, especially when the Kerygma was still evolving and was different for Jews, gentiles, and gnostics, and not as simple as the modern Four Spiritual Laws seem to suggest; 2) Who were “The Few” responsible for spreading “the Message”? The Law of the Few, as you will recall, is the concept in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point that suggests that the success of social epidemics depends on a small group of people with specific social skills. He calls these people “messengers” and identifies three types: connectors, mavens, and salesmen (we might call them apostles and their successors, or emperors, or influencers); 3) the socio/historical context which provides opportunity for “the message” to take hold.
Yes, these are questions I deal with directly in Triumph of Christianity! I don’t take it any of these three directions per se.
Remind us please, what you consider to be the essential stickiness of the early message and why it stuck.
Sorry, I don’t know what you’re referring to.
It’s the idea from The Tipping Point, that a message, or a product, has a kind of stickiness to it that attracts followers or consumers. So, within the cultural context of the first few centuries, please remind us what you believe was so unique or special about the Christian message that made it sticky.
The thesis of my book The Triumph of Christianity is that Christians convinced people (slowly, but over time it mattered) that the miracles performed by the Christian God were superior to those of any/all the other gods, and since converting to this God required abandoning all other gods (this was the only God that required this) the converts won by Xty were lost to everything else, and no other religion was doing that, so that overtime, Xty took over. There might appear to be obvious objections to that, but I deal with all of them, I believe, in my book if you’d like to give it a read.
Thanks. I’ve read it and a number of your other books; very illuminating btw. While the so-called miracles may have been persuasive that the Xn god was all-powerful, that doesn’t seem like the heart of the stickiness of the kerygma to me, which is what I’m getting at. Would someone convert just because of a story about a miracle? What about, “what’s in it for me?” Evangelism today is very different from that. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!” comes to mind from the 4 spiritual laws. We know that over the ages, people have converted for many reasons, not the least of which was for the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life with God. But also to be part of a community of faith here and now. While I think there is merit to your thesis based on the religious culture of that era, please explain why you think the “message” is so different today.
Ah, the miracles were *ALL* about “what’s in it for me.” I too need miracles. Look at my life! And hey, how about a miraculous afterlife to boot!
I propose that Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose,” is a more powerful, compelling, and comforting reason to believe than the notion that, “the miracles performed by the Christian God were superior to those of any/all the other gods,” which you state as your thesis. For as Paul said in Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” While it wasn’t articulated until 325 CE by Athanasius (as far as we know), divinization, theosis, the profound idea that, “God became man so that man could become God,” was an essential part of the kerygma. I think it was the hope of overcoming the meaninglessness or curse of death (depending on one’ view of it) by gaining eternal life through union with God, that was the motivation for conversion. Afterall, we know that some of the most ancient known religious practices were funerary in nature, intended to conduct the deceased into it.
Thanks for deciding to do a mini-series of posts on your book The Triumph. Off topic request: Please give us blog members another update on the progress of your current book in progress. What is the proposed title at this point? Thanks much!
It’s in draft, ready to be revised. I hope to have it off to the publisher in the fall.
Good luck!
A modern-day Christian songwriter wrote a song with the following lyrics (this is “Sunrise After Tilling” by John Coleman). It’s not about disbelief but it is about doubt or at least discouragement. I bought the album at the National Christian Youth Convention in Tasmania in 1997 (along with another by the same artists). Fun times.
“I’m at a low point, ebb point
Lost the straight ahead point
I thought that I had grown up
But oh, how wrong.
I’m at a child point, growth point
Oh, what’s the whole point
A life of chasing rainbows
But never finding gold.
The faith that has sustained me
Comforted and soothed me
Now hangs like a cross of wood
Around my neck.
What am I learning, feeling
Where’s the idealism
That drew me to this place of barrenness?
Where is the new beginning
The sunrise after tilling
Where are the shoots of green growing
Through the soil?”
Dr. Ehrman,
Pardon the unrelated question, but may I ask, what do you think of this new “evidence” about the Shroud of Turin that just came to light? I know it’s not your exact bailiwick, but I’d be curious to know your thoughts on this controversial relic.
There seems to be “new evidence” every year or two, and it almost never is convincing to people who really understand the old evidence. But it sells books and makes headlines….
I understand Islam as being a natural reaction to the Justinian Code laws regarding apostates and pagans as the Arab defense the Holy Trinity Byzantine Empire because they worried it would spread into Arab lands where paganism still existed. At least they have the one God concept familiar to Jews and Christians, but (αλλά) (Greek for but) αλλά είναι ένας Θεός wasn’t a peaceful solution either with the Holy Trinity unless they converted.
Thankfully here in the good ol’ USA, over a 1000 years later, the Justinian Code laws and similar Islam laws do not apply anymore to apostates of any theocracy.
The shunning; I have experienced it myself but not in the sense of being sold into slavery, executed, or losing the family inheritance. No worries anymore after 20 years.
Somewhat off topic, but in terms of beliefs you have very different beliefs/opinions on many issues with Paula Fredriksen and John Dominic Crossan although you say very favorable things about them. Have you ever critiqued any of these differences of opinion or discussed them with either one. Paula talks very favorably of you but JDC is quite dismissive of your opinions. If you have written about these differences could you tell me where to find them. Your explanations are always much more cogent than others. Thanks so much!!
I think highly of both of them and there is no animosity at all. I disagree with Paula mainly on the historical reliability of the fourth Gospel (ane the results of that view) and with Dom on … most things from how to date our earliest sources for Jesus to his insistence that Jesus did not have an apocalyptic message. I do talk about those issues in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet…
Mr. Ehrman What exactly is the Holy Sprit and why is there few people who want to talk about it Thanks
In traditional Christian theology the Spirit is the third member of the trinity, eternally co-existent with the Father and the Son, of the same substance as they and equal with them in every way, though functioning differently (as do they from each other). There are, of course, numerous books written about the Spirit.
For me the “Sea of Faith” has retreated, but not fully. The tide has definitely ebbed though. Still, the rather sad little story from 2000 years ago lives on with some 2 billion followers. It spawned magnificent cathedrals, fantastic artwork, beautiful music, and joyous holidays and observances still relevant to this day. It made a pious Jew at the time do an apparently instant and complete 180 and dedicate the rest of his life to it. His writings about it are as influential as ever. And the scholarship! Mind-boggling! The Harper-Collins Study Bible alone has 7 editors and 80-some contributors, most of whom are PhDs. Can all this have stemmed from largely fantasy? Was no invisible, mysterious, inexplainable power somehow involved? (Rhetorical questions). Could be I guess. But for now, at least, I can’t help but keep on hangin’ on.
Bart, thank you for the invocation of Dover Beach; it caused me to seek out the full text of the original (via a confused and embarrassing detour through the wikipedia entry for *Benedict* Arnold!). A marvellous poem.
I wonder if there are two billion Christians? I wonder if “nones” might still be counted among those? Remiss of me, but I didn’t ask the Methodists to remove me from their records.
Professor Ehrman, what books would you suggest to read in order to try and understand the culture that existed during the birth of Christianity and first few centuries of it’s spread/consolidation, in those very places where it took over?
Thanks for your time and knowledge.
In my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction I devote two chapters to the issue (chs. 3-4), which include bibliography of books that can be turned to for more depth attention. That would be a good place to start.
I first read Dover Beach as a student in 1968. I wasn’t in a struggle with religious faith, because I never really had it to begin with. The struggle was with believing in anything at all. At the time it seemed like the political, social and cultural beliefs I had grown up in post-WW II America were terribly flawed. We didn’t have freedom and equality for all and it looked impossible to have faith in our leaders. Same story today. Probably the same story at any time in human history.
But when I read Matthew Arnold’s poetry it seemed like a beacon of reason. Dover Beach and To Marguerite were my favorites. Sad and elegiac, with regret for an innocence that inevitably has to be lost, but also a call to have the strength of mind to face reality and find the good that is actually there. Thanks for reminding me of this!
Bart, Thanks for reminding us of the Dover Beach poem. I was attending a Christian high school (in Kansas, 1961!) when our teacher has us read that poem though I don’t recall that we discussed it. It had a profound influence on me over the years as I questioned and read and agonized until I finally came to realize the impossibility of clinging to that faith in even the most liberal constructions.
Is there something wrong with my comment/question that it warrants such extensive moderation?
No, just something wrong with me. I’ve had to be away from my computer for about ten days because of, let us say, circumstances. Sorry ’bout that.