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Religion in the Roman World: The Rise of Christianity

The rise of Christianity marks a fundamental break with the dominant values of the Greco-Roman world. Christ­ian views of God, human beings, and the world were quite different from those of the Greeks and Romans. Nevertheless, Christianity also had much in common with its contemporary religions. Consequently, to understand the rise of Christianity, we must first examine both the religious environment of the Roman world and the Jewish background from which Christianity emerged.

The Religious World of the Romans

Augustus had taken a number of steps to revive the Ro­man state religion, which had declined during the tur­moil of the late Republic. The official state religion focused on the worship of a pantheon of Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, including Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Mars. Observance of proper ritual by state priests theoretically brought the Romans into a proper relationship with the gods and guaranteed security, peace, and pros­perity. No doubt, the Roman success in creating an empire was a visible confirmation of divine favor. As Cicero, the first-century politician and writer, claimed: "We have overcome all the nations of the world, because we have realized that the world is directed and governed by the gods."

The polytheistic Romans were extremely tolerant of other religions. The Romans allowed the worship of native gods and goddesses throughout their provinces and even adopted some of the local gods. In addition, the im­perial cult of Roma and Augustus was developed to bolster support for the emperors. After Augustus, any dead emperors deified by the Roman senate were added to the official imperial cult.

In addition to the formal, official religion, the Romans had cults of household and countryside spirits whose worship appealed especially to the common people. Here, too, proper ritual was important, and it was the responsibility of the paterfamilias as head of the family to ensure proper fulfillment of religious obligations. Although these cults gave the Romans a more immediate sense of spiritual contact than they found in the official religion, these cults, too, failed to satisfy many people.

The desire for a more emotional spiritual experience led many people to the mystery religions of the Hellenis-tic east, which flooded into the western Roman world during the Early Empire. The mystery religions offered se­cret teachings that supposedly brought special benefits. They promised their followers advantages unavailable through Roman religion: an entry into a higher world of reality and the promise of a future life superior to the present one. They also featured elaborate rituals with deep emotional appeal. By participating in their cere­monies and performing their rites, an adherent could achieve communion with spiritual beings and undergo purification that opened the door to life after death.

Although many mystery cults competed for the atten­tion of the Roman world, perhaps the most important was Mithraism. Mithras was the chief agent of Ahura-mazda, the supreme god of light in Persian Zoroastrianism. In the Roman world, Mithras came to be identified with the sun god and was known by his Roman title of the Unconquered Sun. Mithraism had spread rapidly in Rome and the western provinces by the second century C.E. and was especially favored by soldiers who viewed Mithras as their patron deity. Mithraists paid homage to the sun on the first day of the week (Sunday), commemorated the sun's birthday around December 25, and celebrated ceremonial meals. All of these practices had parallels in Christianity.

The Jewish Background

In Hellenistic times, the Jewish people had been granted considerable independence by their Seleucid rulers. Roman involvement with the Jews began in 63 B.C.E., and by 6 C.E., Judaea (which embraced the lands of the old Hebrew kingdom of Judah) had been made a province and placed under the direction of a Roman procurator. But unrest continued, augmented by di­visions among the Jews themselves. The Sadducees fa­vored a rigid adherence to Hebrew law, rejected the possibility of personal immortality, and favored cooperation with the Romans. The Pharisees took a more liberal approach to Jewish law, believed in an afterlife, and wanted to liberate Judaea from Roman control. The Esenes, as revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of documents first discovered in 1947, constituted a Jewish sect that lived in a religious community near the Dead Sea. They, like many other Jews, awaited a Messiah who would save Israel from oppression, usher in the kingdom of God, and establish a true paradise on earth. A fourth group, the Zealots, were militant extremists who advocated the violent overthrow of Roman rule. A Jewish revolt in 66 was crushed by the Romans four years later. The Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and Ro­man power once more stood supreme in Judaea.

The Rise of Christianity

It was in the midst of the confusion and conflict in Judaea that Jesus of Nazareth (c. 6 B.C.E.-29 C.E.) began his public preaching. Jesus—a Palestinian Jew—grew up in Galilee, an important center of the militant Zealots. Jesus' message was basically simple. He reassured his fellow Jews that he did not plan to undermine their traditional religion: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." According to Jesus, what was important was not strict adherence to the letter of the law and at­tention to rules and prohibitions, but the transformation of the inner person: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."   God's command was simple—to love God and one another: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presented the ethical concepts—humility, charity, and brotherly love—that would form the basis for the value system of medieval Western civilization.

Although some people welcomed Jesus as the Messiah who would save Israel from oppression and establish God's kingdom on earth, Jesus spoke of a heavenly king­dom, not an earthly one: "My kingdom is not of this world."19 Consequently, he disappointed the radicals. On the other hand, conservative religious leaders believed Jesus was undermining respect for traditional Jewish religion. To the Roman authorities of Palestine and their local allies, the Nazarene was a potential revolutionary who might transform Jewish expectations of a messianic kingdom into a revolt against Rome. Therefore, Jesus found himself denounced on many sides and was given over to the Roman authorities. The procurator Pontius Pilate ordered his crucifixion. But that did not solve the problem. A few loyal followers of Jesus spread the story that Jesus had overcome death and had been resurrected. He was then labeled Christos ("the anointed one") and hailed as the Messiah who would return and usher in the kingdom of God on earth.

Christianity began, then, as a religious movement within Judaism and was viewed that way by Roman au­thorities for many decades. Although tradition holds that one of Christ's disciples, Peter, founded the Christian church at Rome, the most important figure in early Christianity after Christ was Paul of Tarsus (c. 5—c. 67). Paul reached out to non-Jews and transformed Christian­ity from a Jewish sect into a world religion.

Called the "second founder of Christianity," Paul was a Jewish Roman citizen who had been strongly influenced by Hellenistic Greek culture. He believed that the message of Christ should be preached not only to Jews but to Gentiles (non-Jews) as well. Paul was responsible for founding Christian communities throughout Asia Minor and along the shores of the Aegean.

Paul provided a universal foundation for the spread of Christ's ideas. He taught that Christ was, in effect, a savior-god, the son of God, who had come to earth to save all humans who were basically sinners as a result of Adam's original sin of disobedience against God. By his death, Christ had atoned for the sins of all humans and made possible a new beginning for all men and women, with the potential for individual salvation. By accepting Christ as their savior, they too could be saved.

At first, Christianity spread slowly. Although it was disseminated mostly by the preaching of convinced Christians, written materials also appeared. Among them were series of letters or epistles written by Paul outlining Christian beliefs for different Christian communities. Some of Christ's disciples may also have preserved some of the sayings of the master in writing and would have passed on personal memories that became the basis of the written gospels—the "good news" concerning Christ— which attempted to give a record of Christ's life and teachings and formed the core of the New Testament. Although Jerusalem was the first center of Christianity, its destruction by the Romans in 70 C.E. dispersed the Christians and left individual Christian churches with considerable independence. By 100, Christian churches had been established in most of the major cities of the east and in some places in the western part of the empire. Many early Christians came from the ranks of Hellenized Jews and the Greek-speaking populations of the east. But in the second and third centuries, an increasing number of followers came from Latin-speaking people. A Latin translation of the Greek New Testament that appeared soon after 200 aided this process.

Although some of the fundamental values of Chris­tianity differed markedly from those of the Greco-Roman world, the Romans initially did not pay much attention to the Christians, whom they regarded at first as simply another sect of Judaism. The structure of the Roman Empire itself aided the growth of Christianity. Christian mis­sionaries, including some of Christ's original twelve disci­ples or apostles, used Roman roads to travel throughout the empire spreading their "good news."

As time passed, however, the Roman attitude toward Christianity began to change. The Romans were tolerant of other religions except when they threatened public order or public morals. Many Romans came to view Christians as harmful to the order of the Roman state. Since Christians held their meetings in secret and seemed to be connected to Christian groups in other areas, the government could view them as potentially dangerous to the state.

Some Romans felt that Christians were overly exclu­sive and hence harmful to the community and public or­der. The refusal of Christians to recognize other gods meant that they abstained from public festivals that honored these divinities. Finally, Christians refused to partic­ipate in the worship of the state gods and imperial cult. Since the Romans regarded these as important to the state, the Christians' refusal undermined the security of the state and hence constituted an act of treason, punishable by death. But to the Christians, who believed there was only one real god, the worship of state gods and the emperors was idolatry and would endanger their own salvation. Nevertheless, Roman persecution of Christians in the first and second centuries was only sporadic and local, never systematic. Persecution began during the reign of Nero. After the fire that destroyed much of Rome, the emperor used the Christians as scapegoats, accusing them of arson and hatred of the human race and subjecting them to cruel deaths in Rome. In the second century, Christians were largely ignored as harmless. By the end of the reigns of the five good emperors, Christians still rep­resented a small minority, but one of considerable strength.