Expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire
What was before Christianity?
- Roman Polytheism
- Mithraism
- Orphism
- Judaism
Roman Polytheism
- Jupiter
- Mars
- War, Agriculture, Revenge
- Apollo
- Mercury
- Trade, Merchant, Traveller
- Venus
- Neptune
Mithraism
Judaism
- Monotheism
- Covenant
- "This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you and they seed; Every man child among you shall be circumcised."
- Yahvé
- Has to be the only God worshipped
- Involved in History
- Destroyed Cities
- Caused Floods
- Asks for Moral and Social Justice
The Origin of christianity
-
Jesus
- Miracles
- Pontius Pilate
- Messiah
- Apostles
Jesus
"'He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we didn't respect him.
Isaiah, 53.3
The Spread of Christianity
Paul of Tarsus
Reasons for the spread of christianity
- Open to Everyone
- Difficult Period
- Judea under Herod and Romans
- Eternal Life After Death
- "It is easier for a camel to get into eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven"
- Born in an Empire of common language
- Empire was in decline in the 1st Century AD
- Bad conditions, for an average person
- Religion became popular after the conversion of Constantine
THE BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN PERSECUTIONS
- Conspiracy
- Local persecution
- Large-scale persecutions
Christian Persecution
- Aurelian (270-275)
- Valerian (257-260)
- Trajan (98-117)
- Domitian (90-96)
- Decius (249-251)
- Septimus Severus (202-211)
- Marcus Aurelius (161-181)
- Diocletian/Galerius
- Maximinus (235-251)
- Nero (58-68)
CHRISTIAN stuff
- martyrs
- triumph for them
- form of demonstration
- propaganda
- Speratus who asks emperor to die
- they are expendable
- establishments of text were crucial
- depend on writings
- books were found 200 after
- "If romans were really interested in suppresing Christianity, a much more effective strategy would have been to ignore individual Christians and instead to have seized and burned their books."
