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Loading...In retrospect, it may seem that that it was inevitable that the Christian religion would take over the western world, more or less destroying the many Greek and Roman religions that had been around for time immemorial. Was it? And was this Christian take over actually a “triumph” to be celebrated?
I continue my thoughts with another excerpt from the Introduction to my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018).
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Indeed, the triumph of Christianity was something like a miracle.
When addressing a handful of followers, Paul wrote, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:10-11). He certainly could not have imagined that, about two thousand years later, we would be arguing how the “Christian religion would take over the western world.”
What is incredible is that, in fact, what he preached was against any common sense.
He convinced his followers that Jesus, a man crucified in Judea, did not die but resurrected, and that soon he would come back from heaven through the clouds. All who believed in him (including the already dead) would join him with transformed bodies to live forever in heaven, while the earthly world would suffer something like a total annihilation by God’s (Jesus’s Father’s) wrath.
This is not very different from some weird modern cults, like Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate, that convinced his followers a UFO coming behind a comet would transport them to another dimension.
Yes. Precisely because the victory of Christianity is the victory of a cult, it is not a good thing for the world. In my book “Seven Deadly Sins of Scammer Jesus: and How He Harmed Chinese People”, which I just posted on Amazon, I explain how Christian cult doctrines have brought great calamity to the world.
The fact that Christianity started as a cult is not a problem per se.
The problem is its pursuit of world dominance (“in the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, in heaven and on earth … EVERY TONGUE CONFESS that Jesus Christ is Lord”), the compelling nature of its message—‘believe or you will be destroyed’—and the way they consider us non-believers.
When Jesus sent the ‘seventy,’ he ordered them to ‘remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages’… but what if ‘they do not receive [them]’? Then God’s wrath will fall upon them, and ‘it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town’ Jesus even goes further, condemning entire cities: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!… And you, Capernaum? You shall be brought down to Hades” (Luke 10:1-15).
The promise of total destruction for non-believers is dealt with in detail in Revelation, a book that, in Bart’s own words, is ‘ a horrible depiction of god, portraying him as a ruthless tyrant who…wants not just to crush all opposition but to torture everyone who does not believe in Jesus.’
The doctrine of Christianity is a typical cult doctrine: internally, it deceives believers; Externally, it belittles, discriminates and curses unbelievers.
It is not only not sacred, but quite the opposite: it is an evil doctrine. The colonial crimes, slave trade, discrimination, and genocide committed by Christians in history have proven this point. The burnings of witches within Christians have also proven this. So the doctrine of Christianity should not continue to exist.
I do not blame Christianity for these crimes.
Imperialism, colonialism, genocides, slavery, and so on are not inventions of Christians nor of the Western world. In China, India, Africa, or pre-Columbian America, all of this was also commonplace before any European or Christian arrived.
Here in Latin America, we have replaced a romantic vision of saintly Europeans bringing civilization and Christianity to evil and brutal natives with another romantic vision of pure and eco-friendly natives being massacred by greedy, evil Europeans. Reality is far more complex than that.
Western imperialism and colonialism were the result of their more advanced technology rather than their religion. Had the Aztecs achieved a more advanced technology than the Spaniards and ‘discovered’ and then conquered all Europe, I don’t think we would blame Huitzilopochtli (or any other Aztec god) for the outcome.
The teachings of Christianity allow believers to commit evil without any psychological burden. This is the reason why Christianity must take responsibility for the sins committed by Christians.
The correct religion encourages believers to do good and punishes them for doing evil. Christianity, on the contrary, instigates and condones believers to do evil.
Did the Aztecs believe their Kings were God?
When Christianity began the Roman Imperial Cult still believed that the Roman Emperors were God.
I’m contemplating if the whole world considered their Kings to be God. Even the ancient Jews, although it’s not written that way anymore in the Bible, believed their Kings were God. Jesus thought he was going to become King of the Jews; therefore he must’ve thought he was God too.
So that’s how it was. The world is no longer the same.
In reference to the chinese people?
Yes, epidemics and cults can both be contagious.
In my opinion, Christianity’s dominance in the ancient roman world was at least quite significantly driven by its teachings on eternal damnation/hell, creating a powerful fear of afterlife consequences. This fear-based approach would indeed encouraged conversion by offering a clear way to avoid eternal punishment. I think this strategy persists in the so called modern fundamentalist evangelical environments and can also be seen in the explosive rise of Islam which I suspect is an offspring of ancient early christianity partly based on the difference of the christology, which similarly (continue) emphasizes eternal reward and punishment.
Even today, I think this “strategy” is remarkable powerful, that this approach continues to thrive despite so many contradictions, errors, and facts in its sacred schriptures that don’t align with modern understandings of the world . I am sure that the enduring power of fear and promise many times/often overshadow logical inconsistencies, helping Christianity (or other) maintain influence even in an age of scientific and rational inquiry.
I’ve been thinking the same way. If Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew, then the oral tradition might be something like “to avoid something really terrible, join us, repent, and enjoy the afterlife.”
When I was in R&D and product marketing, we always tried to create FUD (fear, uncertainty&doubt) around the competitor’s product
Hi, Bart
What is your commentary on 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 ?
[34] women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. [35] If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. [36] Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?)
• Why aren’t women allowed to talk in churches (why is it shameful) and should be subordinate? What is the law about that?
• What is the meaning of the 36th verse? – this I didn’t understand at all
Many scholars (myself included) think these verses were not originally in 1 Corinthians but were added by a later editor (they are in all our manusripts, but there are strong reasons for thinking Paul didn’t write them; if you look up the reference on the blog through a word search you’ll see some posts on it). It appears to be a situation where someone (other than Paul) thinks that women are engaging with spiritual issues in public too much “like men” and wants them to learn from their husbands rather than state their own views. The “law” may be a reference to what happened with Adam and Eve, when Eve (the woman) let her husband astray. V. 36 is simply saying that what he is urging on the Corinthians is the view held by all other churches everywhere. (Which is not true, but that’s the argument)
Professor Ehrman, In Mark chapter 7:1-6 Mark speaks of the tradition of Jews washing their hands and utensils before they eat and how the Pharisees were questioning why some of the disciples were not honoring the tradition of washing their (defiled) hands before they ate. Then in 18 and 19 it reads,
“He said to them, “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)”
The phrase in parenthesis is not in the King James Bible. Was the phrase “Thus he declared all foods clean” in our earliest texts?
The phrase is indeed in the KJV, but you wouldn’t know it! There it is translated “purging all meats” (!). THe Greek is “making all foods clean” Yes it is in all our manuscripts.
If you will allow me a follow up. Do you think Mark is saying Jesus said “all foods are clean” or is Mark making his own commentary?
Mark is suggesting that it’s what Jesus *meant* (so that he’s not quoting Jesus here but giving his interpretatoin of what Jesus’ said)
Final question Professor. Why do you think Mark quotes Jesus as saying, 8 “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” and then say you don’t have to keep kosher anymore because all foods are clean? Thank you.
Because as a non-Jew he thinks that the Jewish law holds no force for the followers of Jesus.
I don’t know Greek, but the Vulgate has “purgans omnes escas.” = cleaning all foods. “Purgans” can mean “cleaning” as well as “purging,” and I suspect back in 1600, the English word “purge” also could mean “cleanse.” This is a good example of why a modern translation is better than the KJV.
Yup!
Interesting parallel with the Mormon (LDS) church.
It took 117 years (until 1947) to grow to one million members, and another 77 years (to now) to get over 17 million. Graph looks kind of like a hockey stick.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/facts-and-statistics
I think the hardest to quantify, but possibly most important thing that lead to Christianity’s rise is the mimetic or narrative appeal of the Christian story. The idea that God takes human form to suffer and die for us, rise again, atone for the evils of the world, and that we too can have eternal life by believing. The Yale Divinity Scholar, Christian Wiman says he has no interest in Christian theology and its veracity. But he is a Christian because of the idea that God came down on human form and suffered on a cross has great poetic power. That’s a minority view, of course, but it says something. In an increasing cosmopolitan world, when the local religious traditions of the tribe did not scale up, simple, evangelizing monotheistic religions came to triumph. Especially Christianity and Islam.
Another commonality is that a sacred book that provides an theological anchor and means of evangelizing. Beyond that, and the contingencies of history, I don’t know – I’m sure Bart has given it much more thought! I’ll have to read the book
Professor Ehrman would books would you suggest to read in order to learn about the culture and religion of the first century both in the roman empire and in Palestine
I’d suggest reading the two chapters I devote to these issues in my book The New Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction, adn then move on to the books I mention in the bibliographies of both chapters.
I’m sure you have done this math. “Before four centuries had passed, these twenty or so lower-class, illiterate Jews from rural Galilee had become a church of some thirty million.” This works out to an annual rate of expansion of:
30M = 20*(1+rate)^380 //lets say 380 years
log(30M/20) = 380*log(1+rate)
0.01625 = log(1+rate)
rate = 3.8%
A business that grows at 4% is considered pedestrian, certainly not driven by divine providence. What is amazing is the consistency of growth. Few institutions last this long.
In game theory “whenever one group wins a struggle, others lose” is referred to as “zero-sum.” However, inferring such one-to-one correspondence between gain and loss in social interactions is widely recognized (especially in economics) as a subtle, albeit common, non sequitur — graduating to the title: “Zero-sum Fallacy.”
But as you have frequently observed, in progressing from exclusivist to exclusionary, the rise of Christianity changed the rules of the game, remaking religious expansion in the diverse and tolerant world of polytheism into which it was born a zero-sum contest.
Do you think this parochialism is, perhaps, rooted in the claim by Jews to be God’s “Chosen People”?
The idea certainly found far more virulent expression in both of Judaism’s scions: Christianity (“I am the way, the truth and the life — no one comes to the Father but by me.”) and Islam (“There is no God but God, and Mohamed is his prophet.”)
The fact that “Christianity would, in effect, destroy the pagan religions of the Roman Empire” may not have been a “historical necessity.” But in the words of your fictional colleague (per Edward Albee) the church’s “baggage ticket had bigger things writ on it. ‘H.I.’ — Historical Inevitability.” 😉
It may be distantly related, yes; but Jews of course were not dealing with the same concept of “salvation” since the afterlife was rarely in view.
Good point about the afterlife, and in its absence, the (ir)relevance of “salvation.”
Greater and eternal expectations, of course, became central to Judaism’s progeny — both Christian and Muslim (whether heavenly entertainment would be provided by choirs of harp-strumming angels 😇 or the amorous attentions of 72 virgins. 🤗)
Did Yahweh’s followers somehow manage to sleep though the entire half-millennium of the Axial Age?
If the spiritual realm is exclusively the abode of god(s) who could, at most, be flattered or begged into occasionally coming to the aid of mortals in their struggles with one another and/or the vagaries of nature, what value in aspiring to a better nature — much less higher plane of existence? Human lives remain nasty, brutish and short (not to mention ultimately pointless!) ☹️
While religious/philosophical sophistication leapt and bounded across the entire known world — from Greece (Plato and Socrates) to Persia (Zoroaster) to India (Buddha) to China (Confucius and Lao-Tse) — why did Israel only get more groveling sycophants of Yahweh (Elijah and Isaiah)?
Why did Judaism not progress to something more than a primitive, animal-sacrifice cult?
My view is that it’s important not to think of religion as evolving from “primitive” to something else. The temptatoin is always to see the later forms of culture / religion as morally and spiritual “superior,” but usually that’s just because of presentist bias (we are SO much more sophisticated! 🙂 ) and can and has led to some very bad social consequences (as when Christian hoardes destroyed Greek and Roman art, statuary, temples, literature, etc…. — just to stick with anitquity — in their sense of superiority. Ouch! What we’ve lost!)
Over the last three years, my Aunt- sister of my father says: Witness Lee [local] church is better than it was 40 years ago. Yet she admits no fault to then teaching.
One of the elders has a homosexual son. To us sheep, that was something we could never touch.
As I learned from either interpretations of Watchman Nee [by an Englishman missionary] or Andrew Murray writings. USA church is really- As Ruth Graham [Billy graham’s wife] said: “If God doesn’t soon bring judgment upon America, He’ll have to go back and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!” & that was around 50 years ago!
I believed & lived that GOD doesn’t change as society does
“My view is that it’s important not to think of religion as evolving from “primitive” to something else.” — Very refreshing to read this! The Orthodox Christian apologists I still listen to love to straw man current biblical scholarship as naively stuck in the 19th Century German theologian “primitive religion progressing to sophisticated religion” phase” (I force myself to listen to them to strengthen my own critical thinking skills). “Ancient people weren’t stupid” is one of their mantras. No, no they weren’t! And actual modern biblical scholars aren’t necessarily stupid either! I find it interesting that these apologists have no problem accepting scholarly views of apocryphal 2nd Temple Jewish literature, but rarely apply the same scrutiny to the Old Testament — instead shifting to a smug tone implying “look how these knee-jerk anti-supernatural biased modern scholars refuse to accept that all of Daniel was clearly written in the 6th Century plus they make up stories about multiple Isaiahs. Ha ha! How silly!”
Finally, the cult I grew up in, a fellow believer was quite high in Shanghai last decade w/the group [China’s golden age 2005-2008]. Now I think she has her doubts, but just replies to me: thank God for his blessings!
& I know what China was like 1988, 1995-21! They are better prepared for difficulty!
“victory of Christianity is the victory of a cult”
not now, maybe long ago. but the victory of Christianity now is primarily the West > others; or the better off ability to “Lord it over the lower, or more unfortunate”!
I grew up until last decade believing “God bless America”!
what happened in USA & China in particularly is the lower or impoverished/poor classes ALL working to improve their lots in life. And almost all these “migrants” lacked civil rights & social security!
there was no Jewish God: Lord or Savior!
“The teachings of Christianity allow believers to commit evil without any psychological burden. This is the reason why Christianity must take responsibility for the sins committed by Christians.”