While non-sin moral wrongs are grounded in the idea that it is wrong to cause harm to others, sin takes its prohibitions from the displeasure of god.

Aaron Ross Powell

Origins of Christianity 2

The Christianity of the first century was, and yet was not, the Christianity of the fourth century. The Christianity of fourth century was, and yet was not, the Christianity of the feudal Europe. The Christianity of feudal Europe died at the Reformation, and was born again in Protestant Christianity.
Prof J A Froude, Short Studies: Origen and Celsus

New Scriptures
Rome and Christians
Religion in Rome
Persecution

Abstract

Christians believe that Jesus was an ethical teacher, a reformer of Judaism, who was cruelly treated and slain by the old guard, jealous of their tradition. Ethically there was little in it that did not exist in classical philosophy but it brought with it the features of the oriental mysteries that were already popular in the empire and in particular the Jewish scriptures which impressed the Greeks with the sense of purpose shown by the oriental God over an apparently long period of time.

New Scriptures

The Christian community preceded its canon and its literature was selected from works which were often conflicting, but the criteria of inclusion were not truth and accuracy but whether they favoured orthodoxy or heresy, and control or expression. Probably the correct translation of the beginning of Luke is that it is a narrative of what is “most surely believed among us” rather than “fulfilled among us”, the “us” being, like Theophilus, the Christian converts. In this translation, the author of Luke frankly declares that the narrative is not history but what the first Christians believed. It was considered too dangerous to allow people to choose on merit the books they would like to read.

Mark was constructed as a series of pericopes or incidents which have been put together to form a narrative. The pericopes are not necessarily in the right order and their meaning has been deliberately changed. Renan remarks on the terrible nature of the miracles in Mark's gospel, surely a reference to them being only thinly veiled in their violence. But it is not necessary to interpret every pericope correctly for the truth to be revealed. The weight of evidence is not a chain of logic but accumulative.

The pericopes were partially, at least, mixed up, some must be missing and some could be spurious insertions. One can attempt to explain them all but if one goes too far in one instance it does not invalidate the rest as a false link in a chain of argument would. The explanation of the death of John the Baptist could be pure fairy tale but it has features which could be Essene so it is included. If it should prove to be pure fairy tale, the general interpretaion is not thereby invalidated.

A parallel between the despair of the Nazarenes followed by their elation at their realization that the missing body meant the general resurrection had begun with its first fruits occurs in Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus. At the hero's death, his mother, Alcmena, at first sorrows but when she realizes that her son had become a god equal to his father, Jupiter, and had ascended to heaven, she is triumphant.

Rome and Christians

Not for the first time men were abandoning hard won democratic rights for authoritarian regimes over which they had little control. The political form of civilization of the West, democracy, had evolved differently from the absolutism and priestly cultures of the east. The Greek city states had developed a rational and humanistic form of government compared with the rigidly hierarchical, religious based systems of the east. There was interplay and overlap but the systems developed differently.

The Roman Republic had furthered the original ideal based on fifth century BC Athens but the statesmen of these later times saw that the system was in decline and tried to delay its end. It was impossible, of course, and men chose the Caesars rather than the Republic which was considered anarchic. And the first form of anarchy the tyrant rids himself of is opposition leaving the worse anarchy of the petulance of power.

Under the early empire the Roman Senate retained some powers, limiting the absolutist tendencies of the Caesars, but Julius Caesar with his typical flair sought to have himself made Pontifex Maximus to utilize religious as well as secular power. Julius Caesar, though thought of as noble, could not tolerate opposition, and his successors were often worse.

Christianity arose shortly after the Roman republic had been overthrown in favour of the emperors. Romans were proud people and could often be relied upon to respond to patriotic calls in the name of the Republic to defend Roman liberty. Under the emperors this liberty was lost for the bulk of the people as emperors became more capricious and civic life and justice fell apart. Though sick of despots, they had no will to return to democracy. Christianity took advantage of this political weariness and ultimately it survived the Caesars and the Roman empire.

Through suspicion of political parties, rather than demanding liberty, Romans condemned themselves to the dual tyranny of the Chi and the Kappa, the absolutism of religion and monarchy, no doubt feeling in their ignorance and superstition that somehow God would curb the excesses of the emperors. Out of Kappa, Chi expresses the modelling of Christ's institution on that of the Kaisar (Caesar). Christianity's reflexion of the organization of the empire in its own set up encouraged the idea and the perpetuity of the “divine right of kings”. Its ethos supported authority against freedom. The Caesars were respected against those who would defy them.

So, absolutism returned first, as monarchy, with the Caesars and then, as theocracy, with the triumph of Christianity. Not that theocracy had been eliminated in the west for the Celtic kings and chiefs had been supported by the powerful theocracy of the Druids, but a thoughtful and generally logical system had mainly prevailed before giving way to the forces of absolutism radiating from the east.

The frightful tyranny of Domitian stimulated in the Senate a revival of interest in the Republic and the principles of liberty and the emperors of the second century temporarily reverted to republican ideals. Marcus Aurelius repudiated Caesarism and a vision of a monarchy, republican in spirit, prevailed into the third century AD. Thus, most emperors were not absolute rulers in the eastern sense, having to work according to the law and the common good.

Curiously the liberal emperors' only real blot was their treatment of the Christians even though Christians were the most sycophantically obsequious to the Roman authorities in all respects except worship. Despite the persecutions of the emperors, philosophic opinion remained critical of it and even when Julian later attempted to revive Paganism he forbade violence from Pagans or Christians.

Religion in Rome

In religion, the Roman idea was to try to absorb foreign cults into the framework of the existing civic religion. Human sacrifices had been abolished and as long as a foreign cult was otherwise respectable it was allowed to practise, though many educated Romans considered them as superstitions. Such practically minded men knew the predilection of the common people for fanaticism and religious frenzy.

Civic religion had been tamed and brought within the confines of the state system. Pageants and parades were controlled and served to release tension and enhance a life that would otherwise be dull and empty for many. State officials would have been suspicious of eastern cults, one of which was Christianity, and would try initially to suppress them, and then to control them.

When Tacitus, writing about 120 AD, describes the Christians murdered by Nero after the great fire of 64 AD, he accuses them of “hatred of the human race” which should be sufficient to show that these were not Christians at all but messianic Jews, probably Essenes. Tacitus knew the Christians of his own time and their own explanation of their origin in the crucifixion of a holy man in the time of Pontius Pilate the cruel prefect of Judaea. He was not confirming the truth of it but merely stating it by way of explanation of who this sect were.

Tacitus might have disliked them but could hardly have described them as hating the human race. The Essenes however regarded it as virtuous to remain apart from gentiles except for necessary commerce which they undertook only according to strict rules and under the eye of a mebaqqer, or guardian. Since Essenes felt that even their fellow Jews were sinners and backsliders, let alone the gentile races, they could fairly be described as hating the human race.

Since Christianity stemmed from Essenism and the early Christians would have sought friendship in their mother sect, there is a vestige of truth in Tacitus. But the word Christian was used about the Essenes because they were messianists, and Christ is simply the Greek for messiah. If the troubles which led to Nero's excessive reaction were disputes between messianic Jews, Essenes, and other Jews then it would be easy to suppose the instigator had been a man called messiah or Christ.

This is the error made by Suetonius wrting about messianic disturbances in the time of Claudius which led to the expulsion of Jews from Rome which is found in the New Testament. Tacitus makes essentially the same mistake writing about the events of twenty years later. For messianic Jews like the Essenes, the arrival of the messiah and purging of the world was imminent. Plainly they were excitable and would react to rumours that the messiah had arisen, rumours that were not infrequent as we know from the Acts of the Apostles.

Rome was a large city with a majority of foreigners in its population, many of whom were Jews, some skeptical of and some believers in the messiah. In the seething tenaments of the Roman slums rumours were rife and trouble could flare up easily. Thus, the persecution of Christians meaning followers of Jesus, by Nero is almost entirely false, the bulk of the people suffering being Jews. Indeed from Juvenal, Nero used the opportunity to rid himself of enemies whatever their religious or national origins.

The one characteristic of the Christians of the time which was certainly true was that they were not interested in social or political opposition. They were disliked for their exclusive stand on religious worship but always took to heart the rule of rendering to Caesar what was his, though it was a call to defy Caesar when Jesus first uttered it in Palestine.

Tacitus records that, before the fall of Jerusalem, a supernatural voice was heard in the temple proclaiming the departure of the gods (not God)! Few found this alarming because it was widely believed that the scriptures prophesied that the east would be strong and men from Judaea would possess the world. Jews in the diaspora continued to believe this, only slightly discouraged by the events of the Jewish War, and continued to proselytize in the empire for many more years through two further Jewish revolutions until the third, that of Bar Kosiba, led to such severe reprisals that Jews withdrew into that social exclusiveness from which they have yet to return.

Juvenal writing before this did not mention Christians at all implying only Judaism to have been prolselytized. Later it was only the Christians. So, for about half a century after the Jewish war, Jews remained optimistic that their destiny was to possess the world. Among the expatriot Jews were those of the Essene sect who were ever excitable about the prospect of a messiah emerging.

The Christians had an almost identical view, the difference only being that they were expecting the return or parousia of their messiah to cleanse and judge the world. As an explanation of the scriptural references to a suffering messiah, it perhaps offered advantages to many messianic Jews and the godfearers who admired them. There was nothing unbelievable in Pilate crucifying a man, he was remembered as cruel, and yet it was not difficult in gullible times to dissociate Jesus from the true stories about him which some travellers brought back with them. For over a normal lifetime the Romans had crucified many Jewish rebels, none of whom had any but the most incidental success, and the gentile bishops became masters at denying and distorting the true accounts of Jesus's unsuccessful revolution when it suited them, or blaming explicit outrages on other messianic failures. The Acts of the Apostles even mentions some of these.

Fraternities for the sharing of certain mysteries were widely accepted in the empire. Even the Jews joined in fraternities to celebrate the Seder in Jerusalem, just as the apostles were reported to have done, and variant sects like the Essenes habitually met to share a sacred meal. Such collegia were common among the devotees of the eastern religions like those of Dionysos and they could become politically powerful. The Roman authorities were therefore suspicious of such circles as being bands of conspirators and demanded that they be registered. Those that were were collegia licita, legal gatherings, and those that were not remained illegal—collegia illicita.

Curiously at this time the Romans were so tolerant of sectarianism that, once they had discovered and investigated an illegal gathering, provided that it was not involved in clandestine activity, it was tolerated even though it was illicit. Though the collegia were supposed to be authorized, if innocent they were not treated as illegal, even if they did not register. The Jewish religion was licit.

Even Christian collegia were never declared explicitly and solely illicit though they were sometimes persecuted under more general rules. Each new college had to obtain authorization by proving to the authorities that it had no political objectives. Only in its earliest days would the church have been able to do this. Once it had grown beyond a certain size, its administration and organisation declared it a reflexion of the Roman secular state. That could only be interpreted in political terms.

Persecution

At Antioch the converts to the new sect called themselves followers of “The Way” using the expression used by the Essenes of themselves in the scrolls. Legend has it that Peter was their first bishop, the word bishop being the Greek translation of the Aramaic word also used by the Essenes for their community leaders. Keen to gain respectibility the new sect promoted its ethical monotheism and the purity of its morals as conducive to the obedience of Roman law.

The fable that Tiberius wanted to deify Jesus officially but was stopped by the Senate was typical of the Christians' appeal to the absolute authority above the democratic one. It labels the Senate as the enemy of Christianity while the despot was its friend. The Christians buttress tyrants with the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and eventually, in the Middle Ages, both the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor could be called “God on Earth”.

Opposition to Christianity was based on Romans educated in the free schools, the last bastions against Christian totalitarianism in Greece in the sixth century AD, as was the Senate earlier in Rome. The fairness of the second century emperors is shown by Marcus Aurelius who was philosophically a Stoic but who endowed chairs in all the schools of philosophy without favour to those he preferred himself.

The repression of Christianity is largely Christian myth and, to the extent that it occurred at all, its basis remains unclear. Cases described as Christian persecution seem to be simply punishment of illegal acts. The justice of the punishment can be argued but mostly Christians were not persecuted for being Christian but for breaking the law. Significantly such persecution as did occur tempered as the absolutism of the emperors increased—from the time of Commodus on.

Gibbon showed conclusively that Christians experienced no serious persecution before Diocletian and this was a last splutter of a weak candle. The Chi of Christ was ultimately victorious with the Kappa of the emperor Constantine and the oriental court favoured by Diocletian was permanently adopted by the latter. Absolutism was on the march even in its birthplace, the east. The Greek influenced dynasty of the Parthian Arsacids gave way to the intolerant despotism of the Sassanids.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.