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Loading...I return now to Roman historian Keith Hopkins’s fascinating and influential article “Christian Number and Its Implications.” As I pointed out, for the sake of his article, and after checking it out for plausibility, Hopkins accepts the calculations of Rodney Stark that if Christianity started with 1000 believers in the year 40 CE, and ended up being 10% of the empire (6 million believers) by the time of the Emperor Constantine, you would need a growth rate of about 40% per decade, or, as Hopkins prefers putting it 3.4%).
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I have decided to leave the blog. It’s been a fun and educational four years, I simply want to give other pastures their turn.
As a parting gift, I’d like to make you aware of Lynne Kelly’s most recent book, which is about the genetics of memory. In particular, it is the story of a gene not shared with chimpanzees that can be shown to correlate with precisely those abilities that oral cultures and modern memory champions alike make use of to train their memories to the fullest extent possible. The book will be available in North America from April 2025; see theknowledgegene dot com dot au for details. Just thought it may be of interest, if not for your personal shopping list, then perhaps for one of your minions.
All the best!
Thanks for coming along for four years!
Hi Apmorgan
What other educational blogs (or as you called it: pastures) that you would recommend to be viewed?
It’s interesting to consider the possible interactions between the expanding numbers and the first written appearances of the books of the NT. On one hand, a logical conclusion could be that the spread of stories through the written word added legitimacy to the early stories, increasing the rate of conversion. But it is also likely true that the growth in Christianity influenced the stories that were written, not just in cases like 1 Timothy addressing oversight of the church, but the theological perspective of the later books. Hebrews: one who accepts Jesus then turns away (keeps on sinning) will not be shown mercy ; James: I will show you my faith by my works; 2 Peter: The Lord is… not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
It appears that after Christianity was legitimized by Constantine, and the government began to favor it in some ways, it’s likely that many of the ‘civil servant’ class may have ‘converted’ in that they saw the writing on the wall and wanted to keep their jobs, or even advance. Being a Christian began to be a way to do that. I’m wondering if there is any evidence that Christians themselves, prior to Constantine, had any power to advance other Christians into key positions? Do we have any information or documentation along those lines?
Even after Constantine it does not appear that religious views affected high-level governmental appointments. Pagans and Christians simply worked together for the common good.
Oh for a time machine!
So if we take these figures as a baseline to speculate…
1. Very early on it would have become difficult if not impossible for a single individual to know or even know of, all their fellow Christians, correct? If you have a 1000 people in 40 CE, a mere decade after Jesus’ death, you would already have groups losing contact with each other, spreading and growing in relative isolation, right?
2. The Corinthians sound like a noisy rowdy bunch but how large do you think the community actually was that Paul was writing to? 15? 20? 25? What about the community in Rome to whom Paul writes? No way to be sure of course but what are your intuitions?
thanks
1. Absolutely. Especially since most people didn’t travel. 2. Dozens, but I’m not sure how many.
I witnessed the Jesus Movement of the early 1970’s in southern California. It was sad to see so many young people reject the Christianity of their parents. Families suffered a lot of pain and confusion when they lost a son or daughter to the Born Again fad.
Do you think rebellious young people were a factor in stimulating the growth of early Christianity?
Interesting questoin. If they were, we don’t have any record of it.
The Myth of Persecution, the idea that the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire before Constantine was not “an objective description of reality,” is one I disagree with the most.
Just as in the Christ Myth theory, the main argument is the lack of evidence. We don’t have enough evidence of the historical existence of Jesus nor of the persecutions suffered by his followers.
Well, it is true that the evidence is scarce. The only references in non-Christian sources about the beginning of the Jesus movement in its first century of existence are:
Josephus:
The KILLING of John the Baptist (28-36 AD)
The KILLING of Jesus (30-33 AD)
The KILLING of Jesus’s brother James (62-69 AD)
Tacitus:
The TORTURE AND KILLING of Christians accused of perpetrating the Great Fire of Rome (64 AD)
Pliny the Younger:
The TORTURE AND KILLING of Christians in Bithynia accused of the crime of… being Christians (112 AD)
Suetonius:
The TORTURE of Christians during Nero’s time (possibly the same event reported by Tacitus)
So how can we say that it was just a Christian perception (“we are SO persecuted!”) when EVERY TIME a non-Christian source mentions Christians in the first hundred years after the TORTURE/KILLING of Jesus, it is to report TORTURES and KILLINGS of Christians?
Of course, the reports are few, but… the Christians were also few!
How can we expect a lot of reports about a community that “made up barely 0.01% of the empire”?
We know almost nothing about those early Christians before 130 AD. The only thing we do know are reports about how they were TORTURED AND KILLED.
Can we speak about “rare occasions” of persecutions because we only have evidence of what happened in Rome or Bithynia?
What about Achaia, Macedonia, or Asia, provinces we know had Christian communities before Bithynia?
We have no evidence of persecutions there ,but we DO NOT HAVE such a complete collection of letters from the governors of these provinces as we DO HAVE in the case of Bithynia.
So the ‘rare occasions’ are, in fact, the occasions where we have ANY reference to Christians, and in 100% of these ‘rare occasions,’ the reference is… TORTURES AND KILLINGS.
Was it different in other provinces?
I think the problem is trying to extrapolate the frequency of persecution from anecdotal reports of persecution.
One modern example of such a problem is the 2019 reporting on tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic, creating concern among travelers that it was an unsafe place to travel to, despite no actual change in the frequency of injury or death among tourists in the country.
An inverse example is how we lack detailed descriptions of crucifixion, possibly because it was considered routine. Tacitus and Josephus probably mention crucifixion a comparable amount to the persecution of Christians, but from archaeological evidence, crucifixions must have happened more often than persecution of Christians, simply because there weren’t that many Christians to persecute, and crucifixion was presumably evenly distributed with respect to religious belief of the victim.
So writings on an event are generally a poor indicator of how often an event actually occurs. It is evidence of an event occurring, but not of its frequency.
I think the discussion about this subject here is based on subjective judgment without solid data or solid methodology, and I fear that your judgment here is a bit pessimistic.
For instance, there are different opinions about the population of the Roman Empire in 1 AD, and many have suggested 45 million based on some censuses, and if this is accurate then the population of the empire in 300 AD would be much more than 60 million. Furthermore, the claim that the Christians were 10% of the population is totally based on subjective judgment rather than solid data or solid methodology.
Now … We don’t have any solid data to give us valid statistics to the growth of Christianity over the years, but we could use some valid methodologies such as examining parallel cases.
It should be noted that Christianity is very unique compared to many other movements:
# The Christian movement went from its local limited domain (the Jewish community) to a foreign domain (the Roman-Greek world) in less than 20 years.
# The Christian movement managed to provide the populus with spirituality and brotherhood at the time that the commoners were living under hard conditions.
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This was particularly useful in cities, where family relationships were probably fractured. Furthermore, the Christian movement, with its focus on spirituality and brotherhood, faced no serious competition for over 600 years.
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So, we have unique aspects within the Christian movement, but still, we can find parallel cases that can be used for estimating the possible growth and influence of Christianity in its earlier decades:
# I did discuss ‘Sabbatai Zevi’ in my previous comment in your post dated August 21, 2024.
# You have mentioned the Mormons, and they grow from 0 to 2 million in less than 130 years.
# The growth of Scientology from 0 to 55k members (and probably many millions of fans) in less than 45 years.
# The growth of Protestantism in Europe.
# The growth and spread of Christianity in the Viking land in England and Scandinavia (and also in Russia).
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Examining the growth, spread and influence of the above cases (and many other cases) would provide us with a more suitable model for the growth, spread and influence of Christianity in its early decades.
I”m not sure what you’re finding to be particularly subjective? Calculating population growth is normally done on statistical grounds, and comparative data are always welcome and of course *are* part of the model.
Hello Bart! I am a new Member on Your blog after falling in love with your YouTube material and later with some of your courses. A former believer myself I de-converted back in 2015 after reading a series of books on how the human mind works and the role of storytelling in our evolution as species some time before I’ve listed to your audiobook “How Jesus became God ..”. You have answered many of my questions diligently through your work but there is always that one question that remained unresolved in my head for quite some time : Why is it that Christianity spread to conquer the western world and other prototypes of Jesus/Christianity before it did not succeed raising above a local status? Is there anywhere on your blog/ courses that I can find any piece of work addressing this question ?
Welcome to the blog! I’m gald you’ve enjoyed my work.
This is the topic of my book The Triumph of Christianity (it’s long been one of my maor interests). You can certainly find discussions of the matter (brief ones, as opposed to an entire book) on the blog; you might try doing word searches for “Triumph” and for “Christianization” and related topics.
Wow, the Knowledge Gene book looks good ap!
Dr. Ehrman, I think you bring up a good point about the small number of Christians, because I don’t think Jesus was recruiting the masses at that point, or ordering gospels to be disseminated to *everybody*.
The 7 churches of Asia were in the wealthiest cities in the world, matching the Arab trade route.
Have you considered discussing the speed of Arabian adoption of Christianity? It’s an unusual talking point that Christianity was replaced by Islam among the humble Bedouin, when the Nabataeans Abgarids considered being the first state Christianity.
I think state sponsorship is key. I’m taking a break on the First Century to work on my “Moses as Akhenaten’s Overseer Thutmosis” platie post and your Ramses info helped me today:
Imo, Horemheb is the God that battles the Pharaoh (Ay) via Moses — because Thutmosis, and not Horemheb, has the “Fan-bearer-to-the right” privilege to speak directly.
Law-giving is via Edict of Horemheb.
Avaris and El Amarna are abandoned by 1320 BCE. (430 years from 1750 BCE, the Amorite sacking of Ur.)
God Horemheb banishes ’em to Tjaru. Then God Ramses grants settlement. God is a term of address above Great King, for Kings-of-Kings-of-Kings.
Serene, I believe Christianity in pre-Islam Arab lands is underestimated and generally ignored. It’s my guess (I am open to being corrected on it) that the Shahada (“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”), which Muslims recite multiple times each day, was an intentional denial of two Christian doctrines that had been brought to Arab lands, that a human being (Jesus) was also God, and that you could have three distinct persons who were all God and still have only one God. Making this in-your-face denial of Christian tenets Islam’s first pillar, and the way a person entered Islam, almost demanded that people make a choice: they could either believe the unbelievable, or join with those who know both: (a) that humans are not gods, and (b) how to count.
23 years of lounging in Worship/prayer rooms in SFO & HKG. Other than myself, there were no “Christians” praying, but Islams doing their daily devotional [there was an arrow in Hong Kong with direction to Mecca].
What about Celsus? He apparently thought that Christians were enough of a problem that he wrote “On the True Doctrine” which was a comprehensive criticism of Christianity in 178 CE.
Yes, he did know of some Christians and their claims, and took them seriously enough — wherever he was — to respond to them. Throughout history, of course, we have numerous instances of people writing refutations of small groups that were not politically threatening, simply because they are considered ludicrous — even of individuals who posed no real social threat. For antiquity, e.g., think of (about the same period) Lucian of Samosata’s books against Peregrinus and against Alexander (terrific reads!!)
The growth of Christianity is interesting, and I’m reading the posts. But I wonder if the number of Christians will be significant 200 years from now. I’m guessing it will survive the next century. But two centuries?
I”d love to know!
I find the comparison with the growth of, for example quoted here, the Mormon church, Scientology and other groups to be somewhat disingenuous since these groups have benefited from modern communication systems and even more traditional ones with the printing press and increased literacy. I do not think these comparisons are valid in any way to the spread of early christianity.
According to Barclay (Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries, 2014) they were not referred to in Roman literature before the end of the first century CE.
I think one of Stark’s points is that the Mormon church spreads not by mass media but by person communication of one person to the next (your next door neighbor is a Mormon and you get interested and hear about it from them and eventually decide to make the leap yourself). But I may be wrong.
yesterday, Jehovah witness’s knocked on my door.
I quickly thanked them for a hand written note during the Pandemic. but couldn’t find their temple.
They are also all over downtown SanFrancisco.