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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 40, The Early Christians:
September 29, 2003:
In speaking of the early Christians who acted to deify Jesus, it is important to understand that they were not Christians in the sense that we understand Christianity now. They were Jews who happened to believe that Jesus was the promise Messiah. They were first and foremost Jews with all of the cultural and religious baggage of the Jewish community at that time. In addition to monotheism they also exhibited the two key behavioral patterns of that community. These behavioral patterns are typical of all closed inbred primitive religious cultures. These are the ghetto mentality and the courting of persecution. These two, of course, beget each other. It was these key behaviors that the early Christians took with them from the Hebrew culture.
These early Christians had no intention of discarding the faith of their fathers. They thought of themselves as Jews first. Their purpose was to weld their new faith in Jesus as the messiah to their existing belief in God as expressed by Judaism. Monotheism was the concept they had to maintain while at the same time deifying Jesus. That was a difficult task which they resolved by making Christ not only the son of God, but one with God through the magic of the trinity. These three are one. That bit of mumbo jumbo has been the stumbling block and cause of more than one heated debate in the ongoing church.
Another concept which beset the Jews and these early Christians was the notion of the Jews as the chosen people. Monotheism is the idea that there is only one God of all people. It is the idea of a universal God. That kind of undermines the Hebrew's insistence on being God's chosen people. Here the Christians did depart from the Jewish community by insisting that the Law of Moses applied to all people, not just Jews. This eventually had the effect of making Christianity a universal religious movement. However, most of the old Hebrew notions were still embedded in the faith and practice.
There were many other doctrinaire differences within the Jewish community of that time. Different sects had different understandings of what constituted truth and law. Some only accepted the Pentateuch or five books of Moses as law. Others accepted religious tomes of other origins. Some believed in angels and resurrection. Others considered that to be nonsense. Some followed different forms of worship and actually used a different religious calendar.
Some of these Jews were called Zealots and they managed to provoke revolutions against Rome. That was pretty dumb and it led to the destruction of Judaea. Rome was not about to tolerate insurrection of any kind. After that, the Jews who were dedicated to the preservation of the law of Moses turned to the Pharisees. Thus the strict Jewish tradition was carried on. This left the Christians to preach their Jewish faith as a religion for all of mankind. They laid the foundation of a worldwide religion. To do that they had to give up their exclusive Jewishness.
Again I must point out the difficulty of separating truth from myth in this study. Pretty much all of the religious documents from those early days were written by people with a vested interest in propagating their doctrine. This is certainly true of the gospels. This uncertainty leaves many major question in limbo. One such is we do not know and will probably never know if Jesus intended his teachings for Jews only, or for all of mankind. Since Jesus was a Jewish lad steeped in the traditions of his community and faith I seriously doubt any universal intent on his part. I think that notion is an after market add on if you will. His followers contrived it for political reasons.
Being of Jewish background, these early Christians had a solid ethical stance. Piety, humility, and patience were the basis of that. Thus, they were little threat to the established authority. In addition they were prone to follow the teachings of the master as regards caring for others, turning the other cheek , and so on. Their strongest marketing tool was the offer of salvation and eternal life in exchange for piety and faith. In these ways they became an asset to the powers by mitigation despair and unrest as they gained converts.
One of the problems these Christians created for themselves came from their ghetto mentality. They tended to isolate themselves from the community at large. They would not do business with non Christians. Except for evangelizing they would not associate themselves with non believers. This put them at odds with traditional Roman religion which was very public. They also frowned on offering sacrifice to the emperor as a symbolic act of loyalty. Their refusal to participate in those public activities put them under suspicion.
To be sure, their refusal to participate eventually lead to some persecution of Christians by the Romans. One thing we should notice here is that at first, particularly before Nero, the only ones who could tell the difference between Christians and Jews were the Christians and Jews. Behaviorally from an observers perspective they were identical. So, when the Romans persecuted them, they often thought they were persecuting Jews. Nero apparently knew the difference when he blamed the Christians for the conflagration in Rome. That led to some random persecutions.
At first these persecutions were unofficial and sporadic. Under the Roman emperor Decius the persecutions became definitely official. In 250 he ordered all citizens to perform a religious sacrifice. Many Christians who refused to comply were arrested and three Bishops were executed. That was heavy handed and it backfired for Decius. He suffered heavy public criticism and the Christian community got stronger. The persecutions were called of a few months later.
Later on in 303 the Emperor Diocletian instituted the last major persecution of the Christians under Roman rule. This marred an otherwise outstanding example of the best in Roman leadership. There are theories as to why he did this. The causes are probably many. For sure, the Christians were rabble rousing at the time due to internal squabbles. Also, the leaders of the traditional Roman religions felt threatened. They saw Christianity as a foreign cult and a threat to the empire. How prophetic that turned out to be!
Whatever the total cause, Diocletian issued some edits which resulted in the violent persecution of the Christians throughout the empire. Though it is doubtful that Diocletian intended it there was a concerted effort to annihilate the Christians. Again, this only served to create martyrs and strengthen the faith.
Christian persecution finally ended with the Edict of Milan
put together by the emperors Constantine I and Licinius in 313.
This established religious tolerance for all Christians within
the Empire. It was only a short time later that the shoe was moved
to the other foot and the church began its rise to power.
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