If No Constantine, No Christianity for Past 2,000 Years?

[Kaylee]

I certainly agree. But I don't see Constantine's move to legitimise Christianity as some sort of masterstroke of leadership, so much as bowing to the inevitible. I think the Church certainly presented him that way, for obvious reasons.

I don't think anyone had said (at least in this thread) that Constantine's legitimizing Christianity was a masterstroke of leadership. Kirsch does contend that it was a pivotal moment in Christian history and without it Christianity might not have become one of the major world religions and that most of the world might not even have become monotheistic. (If there was no Christianity, Islam may not have come into existence.)

If my understanding is correct, by the 4th CE the pagen faith had lost its hold upon most of the Roman people and the majority of them now considered the myths to be just fanciful stories and not actual explanations of how the world came about and worked. While religious rites were still required, the underlying reason was to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the citizens to the state rather than for any theological reasons.

I think it was inevitable that the Roman pagen faith would be eventually be superceded by a more intellectually complex one that addressed moral concerns. I can see why Christianity was a good candidate. It not only did that but it also included familiar trappings of popular pagen ideas (Virgin mother, trinity, etc) but wasn't that demanding as say Judaism. * Judaism was similar to Christianity but it required circumcision and a special diet (no more Roman banquets with the neighbors), and other demanding rites of faith. But I still don't see that it was inevitable that it had to be Christianity and that this had to get jumped started in the 4th Century. I can see why Kirsch gives Constantine credit for that.

Most of what I know about the early Christian religion I learned in Kirsch's book. I can see why the Church is a big fan of Constantine. For example, despite the fact that Constantine wasn't a religious leader let alone even a Christian he was asked by Christian leaders to settle the Arianism controversy. ** Instead of doing so, he asked the Christian leaders to meet and settle the dispute themselves as well as some other theological ones. They did meet at the Council of Nicaea and while they didn't get much settled, I still think that this [ETA: act of delegation] went a long way towards building up the early church's power and structure, and helped put them firmly on the path towards becoming a world religion for over two millenniums.

* This was already mentioned by Loss Leader and Lukraak_Sisser upthread, I believe.

** Life certainly was different in the 4th CE. Can you imagine Christian Church Leaders asking a politician to settle a matter of theological dispute today?

Like I say, historians aren't even sure it was a true conversion so much as acknowledging he had always been a Christian.

And other historians believe that he personally preferred Sol Invictus and promoted Christianity for mostly political reasons. There are at least a few things he did that are inconsistent with the Christian faith such as consulting with pagen seers and erecting a victory arch honoring some of the pagen gods.

I don't know about specific percentages, but based solely on the interaction of various Roman Emperors around that time it clearly was neither small nor powerless. Christians held key positions of power, had wealth, and land.

I don't think thats really enough information to make that determination. Those Christians could simply have been exceptions. As already posted Constantine's parents and Licinius were born to the peasant class. But they were exceptions, most peasants had very little power.

 

[gumboot]

I don't think anyone had said (at least in this thread) that Constantine's legitimizing Christianity was a masterstroke of leadership. Kirsch does contend that it was a pivotal moment in Christian history and without it Christianity might not have become one of the major world religions and that most of the world might not even have become monotheistic. (If there was no Christianity, Islam may not have come into existence.)

It's true that without Christianity there might not have been any Islam, and you could make an argument that Constantine's actions accelerated the spread of Christianity in western Europe, but I think this writer is really stretching things to argue that Christianity wouldn't have existed without Constantine.

If my understanding is correct, by the 4th CE the pagen faith had lost its hold upon most of the Roman people and the majority of them now considered the myths to be just fanciful stories and not actual explanations of how the world came about and worked. While religious rites were still required, the underlying reason was to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the citizens to the state rather than for any theological reasons.

Pretty much. Christians, notably, were executed for treason not for religious crimes.

I think it was inevitable that the Roman pagen faith would be eventually be superceded by a more intellectually complex one that addressed moral concerns. I can see why Christianity was a good candidate. It not only did that but it also included familiar trappings of popular pagen ideas (Virgin mother, trinity, etc) but wasn't that demanding as say Judaism. * Judaism was similar to Christianity but it required circumcision and a special diet (no more Roman banquets with the neighbors), and other demanding rites of faith.

Perhaps more crucially, Judaism didn't actually want to spread itself particularly. They saw themselves as special and were fine with excluding others. Christianity was all about spreading itself and including everyone.

But I still don't see that it was inevitable that it had to be Christianity and that this had to get jumped started in the 4th Century. I can see why Kirsch gives Constantine credit for that.

That's not really my argument. I'm not saying that it was always inevitable it be Christianity. Rather I'm saying by the 4th Century Christianity was already so widespread that its take over was inevitable, and the "kick start" was nothing more than a mild acceleration of an already accelerating social mass.

Life certainly was different in the 4th CE. Can you imagine Christian Church Leaders asking a politician to settle a matter of theological dispute today?

A Roman Emperor wasn't just a politician though. He was also a highly-placed priest.

And other historians believe that he personally preferred Sol Invictus and promoted Christianity for mostly political reasons. There are at least a few things he did that are inconsistent with the Christian faith such as consulting with pagen seers and erecting a victory arch honoring some of the pagen gods.

In a way Constantine's relationship to religion really reinforces my point. He was playing it safe by appeasing every religion. Or, perhaps more importantly, every religion that mattered. The mere fact that Constantine promoted Christianity alongside the official Roman state religions suggests Christianity was already a force to be reckoned with. Bear in mind that the citizens of Rome had never been afraid of letting their Emperors know, in no uncertain terms, when they'd act in inappropriate ways. If Christianity had really been a tiny unpopular minority religion in Constantine's time his attempt to promote it would have caused riots.

I don't think thats really enough information to make that determination. Those Christians could simply have been exceptions.

They could have, but they weren't. By the end of the 3rd Century Christianity was a very powerful institution in Rome, powerful enough to operate in public. And this is really when the harsh persecution began because it was realised that Christianity was actually a serious threat to the Roman state religion. If anything, the "jump start" of Christianity occurred in the 3rd Century, not the 4th. The persecutions of the early 4th Century were really a desperate rear-guard action by Galerius and a futile attempt to revive the old religions.

Bear in mind that Christianity's early spread was underground, via the various cults. Many of these cults already had a monotheistic approach to them by elevating a single deity at the virtual exclusion of all others, and the Cults of Mithras and Dionysus in particular had very strong parallels to the Christian religion. Those cults were underground but their popularity was immense. You could make an argument that they had already totally undermined the state Religion long before Christianity arrived. The entire society consisted of adherents to secret cults who mimed adherence to a defunct state religion in public.

The only really difference that exposed Christians to persecution was that when an Emperor like Decius ordered all Romans to sacrifice to the state Gods to prove their loyalty to the state, most Roman non-believers could do this because their cults allowed them to do it. The Christians couldn't and so got punished for treason.

Notably, the general population were opposed to Decius' harsh measures and the dedication of Christians in the face of his persecution actually impressed the public and resulted in higher rates of conversion. Under public pressure, his policy was abandoned shortly before his death.

Going back to the cults, the Cult of Mithras in particular was vastly popular amongst the legions who spread it to every corner of the Empire, and it had a very strong current of monotheism in it as well as the principle of a son being sent by a deity to earth to save mankind (sound familiar?). I don't think you can underestimate the level of influence the Cult of Mithras had in spreading Christianity.

And of course, because these cults were all underground, it spread vastly through Roman society before it ever became a public religion. By the time that happened it was game over for the old religions because Christianity by then had infested the entire society. Thus by the time Christianity was officially adopted it had already claimed the religions Romans actually believed in, so its eventually seizure of the state religion (which was all noise and no substance) was inevitable.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

If my understanding is correct, by the 4th CE the pagen faith had lost its hold upon most of the Roman people and the majority of them now considered the myths to be just fanciful stories and not actual explanations of how the world came about and worked. While religious rites were still required, the underlying reason was to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the citizens to the state rather than for any theological reasons.

That makes it sound like they were die-hard skeptics, perhaps unintentionally, but I think we better clear that up anyway. Truth is, they gobbled up new religions just as fast as they lost faith in the old ones.

Probably a more descriptive way to put it is that they had become increasingly disillusioned with their old gods.

Additionally, one factor Gumboot brought up in another thread is millennialism. People have this fear and fascination with calendar rollovers. E.g., the Y2K scare being blown out of any reasonable proportions, doomsday dates based on a number of whole millennia from some supposed event, or even the 2012 BS which is actually based on a supposed (but actually false) rollover of the first Mayan piktun (base-20 millennium.) People fear dates with three zeroes at the end.

Rome's AUC callendar rolled over in 248 AD. Starting around 149 or so, they had entered the last century of that millennium, and the clock was ticking increasingly closer to that scary rollover. It's probably no coincidence that all sorts of doomsday woowoo, Christianity included, exploded in that century.

The Antonine Plague which lasted from 165 to 180 AD, and all sorts of other problems, also probably didn't help. Especially in that century. And oh looky, just as it looked like they're over that rollover, the Plague of Cyprian hit, which lasted from 251 AD or so and was still raging some 20 freaking years later. In a row. At its peak killing 5000 people a day in Rome alone, and it killed even an Emperor. Two bloody decades in a row. There were already adult people who hadn't even known any other life than in a deadly epidemic. If that doesn't sound like millennium doomsday starting 2-3 years late, I don't know what does.

And they already had some philosophical and religious crises starting from the 1st century BC, which basically still weren't resolved in any way that's compatible with the old system.

It's that kind of a combined charge of things which, taken separately, maybe wouldn't have been too bad, but happening together they must have gotten people in quite the tizzy to find any religious comfort they can find.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

However, I think there's an additional reason (to the ones that you listed above) why more nations are less willing to go to war. It's because Democracies/Republics would rather trade with each other and perhaps figure how to make some other nations go into debt to them vs. going to war.

Sort of.

We always traded with each other. We just didn't see a dichotomy between that and war. In fact we saw war as a perfectly good way to secure resources or markets, all the way and well into the 20'th century.

I mean, sure, Britain would rather have sold opium to China than go to war with China, but actually that phrasing is a dichotomy they didn't see. Going to war with China _to_ make them buy the opium was a perfectly good way to do business.

So, as I was saying, what really changed is really that most of us don't want war any more. It's not that we prefer to trade _instead_ of war, it's that we always liked to trade, but now we just don't want to get in a stabbing contest over it any more.

 

[Kaylee]

It's true that without Christianity there might not have been any Islam, and you could make an argument that Constantine's actions accelerated the spread of Christianity in western Europe, but I think this writer is really stretching things to argue that Christianity wouldn't have existed without Constantine.

<snip>

Perhaps more crucially, Judaism didn't actually want to spread itself particularly. They saw themselves as special and were fine with excluding others. Christianity was all about spreading itself and including everyone.

I'm going to go with aggle-rithm's take on this (back in post #2)

Another factor in the spread of Christianity is that prosletism has always been one of the most important principles of the faith. I could be wrong, but I think this was a very new phenomenon back in the beginning of the Common Era. Most religions were about tribal affiliations, not something to spread like a virus among different cultures.

My understanding is that Christianity's focus on proselytizing was a new idea and it had a big impact. I don't think Judaism was about exclusion -- just that like other religions before Christianity it didn't encompass the idea of proselytizing, The Jewish leaders had no reason to. They believed that all good people were rewarded regardless if they were Jews or not. They also believed that non-Jews were only obligated to follow the 7 Laws of Noah while Jews were obligated to follow 613 commandments. That being the case, there was no reason to encourage someone to convert when the only thing they would gain was the obligation to observe a more stringent set of 613 commandments.

And I do believe that set of 613 laws which included strict dietary laws, circumcision for males, and many other strict and difficult to observe rules stopped many pagans from converting to Judaism.

ETA: Also, there are Jews in every race and ethnic group -- you can’t ask for better proof that Judaism is not about exclusivity.

That's not really my argument. I'm not saying that it was always inevitable it be Christianity. Rather I'm saying by the 4th Century Christianity was already so widespread that its take over was inevitable, and the "kick start" was nothing more than a mild acceleration of an already accelerating social mass.

I did some more googling to try to get more info on Christianity's growth 0 CE - 400 CE and I did find two web sites that supported the theory that Christianity had rapidly expanded in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd Centuries.

Then I also looked for reviews on Kirsch's book and could only find positive ones. (Well, I found 1 negative one. However, aside from the review dismissing the book with the catchy phrase of “Gods for Clods” I wasn't impressed; it didn't have anything to contribute to the discussion. If it is so well known that Christianity had already grown so much before the 4th CE, where are all the book reviews panning Kirsch's idea that Constantine is responsible for Christianity becoming a world religion for two millennium? Yeah, I know that's an argument from incredulity. I recognize that's not a good argument, but I'm still curious as to why I can' t find any critical reviews on this book -- outside of the the JREF that is.

A Roman Emperor wasn't just a politician though. He was also a highly-placed priest.

True, but for the pagan religion -- not Christianity.

In a way Constantine's relationship to religion really reinforces my point. He was playing it safe by appeasing every religion. Or, perhaps more importantly, every religion that mattered.

I agree that Constantine was a pragmatic politician.

The mere fact that Constantine promoted Christianity alongside the official Roman state religions suggests Christianity was already a force to be reckoned with. Bear in mind that the citizens of Rome had never been afraid of letting their Emperors know, in no uncertain terms, when they'd act in inappropriate ways. If Christianity had really been a tiny unpopular minority religion in Constantine's time his attempt to promote it would have caused riots.

I know from other threads that you are very well read in history, including this period. But I'm doubtful about this. Yes, Rome had some famous riots but none between 59 CE and 390 CE per this wiki article.

By late antiquity Roman was a totalitarian state. A popular army commander could be promoted to caesar by his troops like Constantine was -- but aside from that how much influence did most of the population have on government? In late antiquity the caesars and augustuses had gained power at the expense of the senate which lost power, and much of the middle class was financially ruined..

<snip>

The only really difference that exposed Christians to persecution was that when an Emperor like Decius ordered all Romans to sacrifice to the state Gods to prove their loyalty to the state, most Roman non-believers could do this because their cults allowed them to do it. The Christians couldn't and so got punished for treason.

I wondered about this. Kirsch says in his book that under most of the Roman rulers the Jews and Romans were able to come to a compromise. The Jews were allowed to pray for the welfare of the Augustus instead of to him. I don't understand why the Christians didn't have the same understanding, esp. since for a long time the Jews and Christians were considered to be members of the same faith. It does make me wonder if there were some Christians that were looking for opportunities to be martyrs.

Of course, Kirsch may be talking out of his hat. I went to a Jewish yeshiva (high school) and this is the first time I've heard of this compromise.

<snip>
Thus by the time Christianity was officially adopted it had already claimed the religions Romans actually believed in, so its eventually seizure of the state religion (which was all noise and no substance) was inevitable.

What if Julian, Constantine's successor and a pagan, had been in power for say 30 years instead of only 2 or 3, what do you think his influence on history would have been? He wanted to reverse the political gains the Christian Church made under Constantine's rule. Do you think he could have been successful? Or do you still think that it was inevitable that Christianity would become a world religion despite the efforts of a powerful emperor?

 

[Kaylee]

That makes it sound like they were die-hard skeptics, perhaps unintentionally, but I think we better clear that up anyway. Truth is, they gobbled up new religions just as fast as they lost faith in the old ones.

Probably a more descriptive way to put it is that they had become increasingly disillusioned with their old gods.

If by skeptics you mean atheists I agree with you that most Romans were not interested in atheism. In my next paragraph I wrote about how most of them seemed ready for a more intellectually challenging religion. So, we don't disagree on this point.

Additionally, one factor Gumboot brought up in another thread is millennialism. People have this fear and fascination with calendar rollovers. E.g., the Y2K scare being blown out of any reasonable proportions, doomsday dates based on a number of whole millennia from some supposed event, or even the 2012 BS which is actually based on a supposed (but actually false) rollover of the first Mayan piktun (base-20 millennium.) People fear dates with three zeroes at the end.

I missed that thread. FWIW, I think the only concern most Americans had (can't speak for what was happening around most of the world ) about Y2K was this: Did most American businesses do an adequate debugging all the computer programs that needed to be revised because of Y2K? As a computer programmer at the time, I was curious about that also quite frankly.

As for the rags, well I don't think even most of their customers take them seriously. They are probably the grown up version of comic books for people who unfortunately just don't realize how many better reading options are available.

Rome's AUC callendar rolled over in 248 AD.

You lost me. I thought AUC stood for Anno Urbis Condita or from the founding of the city (Rome). And that AUC was one of the numbering systems used in Rome, but not the one most frequently used per wiki.

Why would they have to roll over for any more reason than we have to roll over with the CE notation? With the CE notation, we can just keep going -- incrementing by 1 until the sun blows up.

Starting around 149 or so, they had entered the last century of that millennium, and the clock was ticking increasingly closer to that scary rollover. It's probably no coincidence that all sorts of doomsday woowoo, Christianity included, exploded in that century.

The Antonine Plague which lasted from 165 to 180 AD, and all sorts of other problems, also probably didn't help. Especially in that century. And oh looky, just as it looked like they're over that rollover, the Plague of Cyprian hit, which lasted from 251 AD or so and was still raging some 20 freaking years later. In a row. At its peak killing 5000 people a day in Rome alone, and it killed even an Emperor. Two bloody decades in a row. There were already adult people who hadn't even known any other life than in a deadly epidemic. If that doesn't sound like millennium doomsday starting 2-3 years late, I don't know what does.

And they already had some philosophical and religious crises starting from the 1st century BC, which basically still weren't resolved in any way that's compatible with the old system.

It's that kind of a combined charge of things which, taken separately, maybe wouldn't have been too bad, but happening together they must have gotten people in quite the tizzy to find any religious comfort they can find.

I've read some web pages that theorized that the wars and epidemics made some people think that the "end times" were coming.

I can see that if people at the time believed that, they may have been more likely to want to convert to a religion that talked about end times.

However, we are limited to histories that have been written, translated and filtered by many people. Were there really more epidemics, famines and wars during the 3rd CE than during other earlier centuries?

I don't know if we can ever really know.

 

[Kaylee]

Sort of.

We always traded with each other. We just didn't see a dichotomy between that and war. In fact we saw war as a perfectly good way to secure resources or markets, all the way and well into the 20'th century.

I mean, sure, Britain would rather have sold opium to China than go to war with China, but actually that phrasing is a dichotomy they didn't see. Going to war with China _to_ make them buy the opium was a perfectly good way to do business.

It's interesting that you used that example. China was perfectly happy to trade with Great Britain as long as they paid in silver. GB wanted the option to pay in opium but the Chinese govt didn't want to flood their country with drugs. GB at the time was simply being a bully and a drug pusher. It's another good example of how morality has changed over the centuries -- I don't think the British government would ever endorse using opium as barter now.

So, as I was saying, what really changed is really that most of us don't want war any more. It's not that we prefer to trade _instead_ of war, it's that we always liked to trade, but now we just don't want to get in a stabbing contest over it any more.

Upthread you had said how the fact that more people got the vote helped make it more difficult for countries to go to war. I googled a bit and there's quite a few wiki articles on the rate of desertion in various wars and about the draft riots in America (northern states) during the Civil War.

Looks like a lot of men were never enthusiastic about going to war, but that many of them weren't in a position where they could refuse to go.

I think we may sometimes be left with the impression that many of them felt otherwise because the history we have access to is probably heavily edited.

In the past there was really no other option. However, I think it would be interesting if in the future more original pieces of writing could be scanned and made available on the internet for anyone who cares to read it instead of just a few researchers and writers.


==

ETA: I probably won't be able to contribute to this thread again until this weekend. Again -- I really appreciated all of the posts. I got much more out of the book and I have a much better understanding of the 2 - 4th CE centuries than I would have otherwise because of this thread. My thanks to everyone who posted so far.

 

[gumboot]

My understanding is that Christianity's focus on proselytizing was a new idea and it had a big impact.

I'd definitely agree that this played a big part in it. But I don't think you can really argue that it was unheard of prior to Christianity. The Roman state religion, itself, was all about proselytizing, if you think about it.

Then I also looked for reviews on Kirsch's book and could only find positive ones.

You're right that this isn't a particularly meaningful argument.

I know from other threads that you are very well read in history, including this period. But I'm doubtful about this. Yes, Rome had some famous riots but none between 59 CE and 390 CE per this wiki article.

I wouldn't really put too much stock in that list. You'll note that it only lists four riots in Rome. According to Professor Gregory Aldrete of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities:

The inhabitants of ancient Rome appear to have been a riotous lot with at least 154 known episodes of unruly collective behavior between 200 BC and AD 375.

Off the top of my head, one glaring omission from that wikipedia list is a riot in June 190AD when a mob gathered at the Circus Maximus after Marcus Aurelius Cleander (commander of the Praetorian Guard) copped the blame for a grain shortage. He brought in the Praetorians to suppress the riot, but the Prefect of Rome summoned the Vigiles Urbani (police and firemen) to protect the mob, and Cleander retreated to the safety of Commodus' palace. When the riot continued on to the palace and the crowd demanded Cleander's head, Commodus famously complied, decapitating his previously most devoted supporter and throwing it to the crowd.

As Gibbon relates:

The people... demanded with angry clamors the head of the public enemy. Cleander, who commanded the Praetorian Guards, ordered a body of cavalry to sally forth and disperse the seditious multitude. The multitude fled with precipitation towards the city; several were slain, and many more were trampled to death; but when the cavalry entered the streets their pursuit was checked by a shower of stones and darts from the roofs and windows of the houses. The foot guards, who had long been jealous of the prerogatives and insolence of the Praetorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people. The tumult became a regular engagement and threatened a general massacre. The Praetorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where Commodus lay dissolved in luxury and alone unconscious of the civil war... Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle instantly appeased the tumult...

By late antiquity Roman was a totalitarian state. A popular army commander could be promoted to caesar by his troops like Constantine was -- but aside from that how much influence did most of the population have on government? In late antiquity the caesars and augustuses had gained power at the expense of the senate which lost power, and much of the middle class was financially ruined..

Actually I think by the late Empire Rome was ruled by the mob/army. The rulers were virtually incapable of doing anything with the support of the masses, because the position itself held no awe. They were little more than figureheads, ruling (and too often being disposed) at the whim of their supporters. Remember this is at a time when the Praetorian Guard auctioned the empire to the highest bidder. Any illusions of the power and status of ruler were long gone.

I wondered about this. Kirsch says in his book that under most of the Roman rulers the Jews and Romans were able to come to a compromise. The Jews were allowed to pray for the welfare of the Augustus instead of to him. I don't understand why the Christians didn't have the same understanding, esp. since for a long time the Jews and Christians were considered to be members of the same faith. It does make me wonder if there were some Christians that were looking for opportunities to be martyrs.

Jews were pretty heavily persecuted in Ancient Rome as well. As you mentioned above, for much of Christianity's early history, Christians were just thought of as Jews anyway, and the earlier public executions of "Christians" could have been Jews or Christians, or both, as the records make no distinction.

For most of history, of course, the Christians were mostly tolerated, just like the Jews. Serious systematic persecution of Christians didn't really begin until they had a big enough power base to threaten the Roman state religion. The Jews never achieved this.

What if Julian, Constantine's successor and a pagan, had been in power for say 30 years instead of only 2 or 3, what do you think his influence on history would have been? He wanted to reverse the political gains the Christian Church made under Constantine's rule. Do you think he could have been successful?

Julian didn't succeed Constantine I, he succeeded Vetranio (in the West) and Constantius II.

I'll refer you again to Decius who only ruled for 2 years, but during that time was forced to abandon a renewed persecution of the Christians due to public pressure. Any given ruler may have had some limited success in stemming the spread of Christianity, but I doubt any could have reversed progress in any meaningful way at that point. The movement had far too much momentum. Julian was incredibly unpopular, and his efforts against the Christians were a big part of this.

Or do you still think that it was inevitable that Christianity would become a world religion despite the efforts of a powerful emperor?

Essentially, yes. I think history makes a good case that no individual ruler, now matter how powerful and influential, is able to single-handedly dictate social reform. Social reform functions over long periods of time with enormous momentum. I think you'll find in most cases where a given individual is credited with introducing revolutionary change, they were as much a product of "right time right place" as anything else. There's ample cases of individuals who tried to instigate dramatic change, and their efforts seldom last beyond their own lifetime.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

It's interesting that you used that example. China was perfectly happy to trade with Great Britain as long as they paid in silver. GB wanted the option to pay in opium but the Chinese govt didn't want to flood their country with drugs. GB at the time was simply being a bully and a drug pusher. It's another good example of how morality has changed over the centuries -- I don't think the British government would ever endorse using opium as barter now.

Sort of. They didn't really try to use opium as a currency per se, and the Chinese markets didn't really work by barter. Although as a metaphor it's not a bad one.

It's just that the English wanted lots of things from China, while the Chinese didn't want much from England. This created a massive trade deficit. There were countless tons of silver that went from England to China, but not much silver coming back from China to England.

Opium was just something to balance that trade. One of the few things that the Chinese were buying from England was opium. It was dirt cheap for England to bring it to China too, since they grew it next door, in India.

The trade would still be done in silver coins, but now Britain would also have something to sell for silver, instead of just buying stuff for silver.

But, as I was saying, as a metaphor, treating it as barter isn't a particularly bad one.

Upthread you had said how the fact that more people got the vote helped make it more difficult for countries to go to war. I googled a bit and there's quite a few wiki articles on the rate of desertion in various wars and about the draft riots in America (northern states) during the Civil War.

Looks like a lot of men were never enthusiastic about going to war, but that many of them weren't in a position where they could refuse to go.

Pretty much.

But it's not just the civil war. Desertion was a major drain on medieval armies too, even among paid mercenaries, not just levies. Even Romans were occasionally known to desert even in ages where they'd forfeit wages and a huge retirement bonus in doing so.

Before that, we have cases like after the siege of Leontini in the second punic war, when they found (and executed) about 2000 Roman deserters in the city. Bear in mind that these were relatively well-off people who could afford their equipment, and typically were at least farmers who owned their farms, merchants or craftsmen. Also that they forfeited all that by deserting. Still happened.

It seems to me like in all ages there were plenty of cases of people who could just take it no more, and took huge personal penalties and risks to not take it any more. They were just traditionally handwaved off as cowards.

I think we may sometimes be left with the impression that many of them felt otherwise because the history we have access to is probably heavily edited.

I wouldn't necessarily say edited after the fact. They were just written off as atypical cowards right from the start.

It was a whole groupthink culture based on repeating ad nauseam that every proper man has balls of steel like a pinball machine and can't even possibly imagine a greater honour than dying for his country, and would _never_ break down just by having to stab a dozen guys just like him. Everyone who did otherwise, would be some subhuman anomaly, surely not the norm.

It persisted very late too. In WW1 when it became obvious that soldiers _do_ break down left, right and centre, they looked for other explanations first. Like at first they thought it's some kind of chronic poisoning by cordite fumes or something. Because surely it can't be normal for a human to break down just because he's been shelled all night and then had to shoot at waves of attackers, some of them already point blank, then bayonet a couple more. Real Men don't get stressed by that, right?

In the past there was really no other option. However, I think it would be interesting if in the future more original pieces of writing could be scanned and made available on the internet for anyone who cares to read it instead of just a few researchers and writers.

As I was saying, I don't think it's been redacted later, but written as the version where heroism is the normal state from the start. Especially in ancient and medieval times. Bear in mind that you could be booted out of a Greek town or even suffer the fate of Socrates, for just saying subversive stuff. Or in Rome you could be anywhere between proscribed and just assassinated even for just ticking off the wrong people. I don't think many would want to go on record as saying "wth? who makes this heroic crap up? and why does one have to be dying to be a hero to be a proper Roman?"

But even so, there is some very weak evidence of it, say, in Homer's work. Odysseus tries to pretend he's insane to avoid going to war for his ally, and Achilles's mom dresses him as a girl to avoid his getting drafted. (Incidentally, the Romans vilified Odysseus no end for such dishonourable conduct.)

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I missed that thread. FWIW, I think the only concern most Americans had (can't speak for what was happening around most of the world ) about Y2K was this: Did most American businesses do an adequate debugging all the computer programs that needed to be revised because of Y2K? As a computer programmer at the time, I was curious about that also quite frankly.

Sadly, though, it wasn't just computer programs. There were even network cables, speakers and remote controls that were sold as Y2K compatible. (And, really, even if some remotes do have a CPU inside, it has no reason to know they year at all.) And generally the hype went _far_ beyond any reasonable expectations from a few computers crashing. A civilization that had survived the plagues, invasions, the great depression, etc, was going to be reduced to stone age by a few computer crashing and some streetlights not working, at least if you listened to some doomsday preachers.

That's why I use it as an example of millennialism. There was a bunch of expecting it to go to hell, just because it's Y2K.

You lost me. I thought AUC stood for Anno Urbis Condita or from the founding of the city (Rome). And that AUC was one of the numbering systems used in Rome, but not the one most frequently used per wiki.

Why would they have to roll over for any more reason than we have to roll over with the CE notation? With the CE notation, we can just keep going -- incrementing by 1 until the sun blows up.

It wasn't very used during Republic times, when they preferred to just identify a year by the two consuls. It grew a lot more used during imperial times, especially since Claudius made it the official date system and held a grandious celebration of year 800 AUC in 48 AD. And especially during that critical century I was talking about, it was the only date system in use. That last century of the AUC millennium again started with a grandious celebration in 148 AD of the year 900 AUC. So anyone who still didn't know that they've entered the last century of the millennium, now knew.

And at any point it was the only way to put a number on a year.

But, at any rate, well, "rollover" was probably the wrong word on my part. It's simply that someone would look at the calendar and see, basically "oh, we're in year 995 AUC, only 5 more years until 1000 AUC." Of course, they could still add 1 after 1000 too, and they actually did. We actually have coins which have the year 1001 on them. But the millennium was nigh, and it's a big round number. Any millennialist nutcases could start to get more alarmed the closer it got.

And in the department of believing in apocalypse based on some numbers (other than millennialism), they had had genuine scares before. E.g.,:

634 BC: The year 120 AUC. They had a myth that 12 eagles had revealed some mystical number to Romulus, and each eagle represented a decade. So they basically expected Rome to last exactly 120 years. As the year 120 AUC approached, a lot of people expected Rome to be destroyed on that year.

389 BC: This one is funny. That's year 365 AUC. There are 365 days in a year, after which the year is over. Coincidence? They thought not. They actually expected doomsday or at least the utter destruction of Rome in that year.

(And just so you don't think just the Romans were dumb about 365 years, the early Christians _also_ had at least one prophecy where they expected the doomsday to be in year 365 AD. Which might also help understand what kind of mentality drove them during Constantine's time.)

I've read some web pages that theorized that the wars and epidemics made some people think that the "end times" were coming.

I can see that if people at the time believed that, they may have been more likely to want to convert to a religion that talked about end times.

Yup.

However, we are limited to histories that have been written, translated and filtered by many people. Were there really more epidemics, famines and wars during the 3rd CE than during other earlier centuries?

I don't know if we can ever really know.

1. Technically you don't even need it to actually be the worst times. You also can just look around and notice that people lack perspective even in this age of mass literacy, teaching history in school, and having unprecedented access to information on the Internet. People always believe that their current problems are worse than any age in the past.

And I mean anything from "noble savage" pipe-dreams, to ren-faire nerds thinking that that crap time of bigotry and plague was so much better than the present, to doomsday prophets arguing that the end times are nigh because a swine flu scare and a couple of wars in the Middle East are more disease and war than ever before. (Or at least bad enough to be a sign of the apocalypse.)

Some illiterate slave in the 2'nd century AD would have even less perspective. Heck, even if he were literate, he couldn't afford manuscripts. He wouldn't even have access to information about how bad it was at various times before. A crap-hole present was all the reality he ever knew, and living in a horribly deadly plague for 20 years was bad enough to look like the end of the world, regardless of what has or hasn't happened before.

2. At any rate, we don't have evidence for a plague that lasted 20 years in Rome in BCE times. You'd think they'd write about it. Mind you, absence of evidence is not evidence or absence, so, yes, we'll never really be sure. But it's still at least a weak indication that it wasn't very common before.

3. The Romans _had_ been a very superstitious lot before, especially in times of crisis.

They actually impeached a consul for not heeding the omens of the sacred chickens before a naval battle. Actually, not just impeached him. They actually asked him to name a successor first, only to make a point that they're not even considering the guy he named. And may have made him commit suicide later.

Or see the aforementioned doomsday prophecies they had had before.

 

[Ryokan]

Pure polytheism doesn't seem to survive to well when faced with montheism and a sophisticated enough culture.

Tell that to the one billion Hindus.

Or the Japanese, for that matter.

 

[gumboot]

Tell that to the one billion Hindus.

Hinduism is monotheistic. The "deities" are actually just representations or manifestations of the supreme being.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Tell that to the one billion Hindus.

Or the Japanese, for that matter.

The Japanese were actually starting to get Christianized as long as they stayed tolerant of other religions, like ancient polytheistic societies. What stopped Christianity was the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunate) nipping it in the bud with a horrible repression of Christianity, and mostly out of paranoia that the Portuguese missionaries and their congregations are acting in the interests of Portugal against Japan. (Which they totally were, too. Sometimes being paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong.)

And the Japanese weren't nice guys like the Romans either. They took that kinda thing seriously, when the Shogun wanted it taken seriously.

But, anyway, basically Japan did well in the face of an exclusivist monotheistic religion, only by... turning into something just as exclusivist as that monotheistic religion.

 

[Ryokan]

The Japanese were actually starting to get Christianized as long as they stayed tolerant of other religions, like ancient polytheistic societies. What stopped Christianity was the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunate) nipping it in the bud with a horrible repression of Christianity, and mostly out of paranoia that the Portuguese missionaries and their congregations are acting in the interests of Portugal against Japan. (Which they totally were, too. Sometimes being paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong.)

And the Japanese weren't nice guys like the Romans either. They took that kinda thing seriously, when the Shogun wanted it taken seriously.

But, anyway, basically Japan did well in the face of an exclusivist monotheistic religion, only by... turning into something just as exclusivist as that monotheistic religion.

The Tokugawa Shogunate is long gone, as are the laws against non-Japanese religions. There's plenty of Christian missionary activity in Japan, yet the Japanese are still non-monotheistic.

Look at the original claim: "Pure polytheism doesn't seem to survive to well when faced with montheism and a sophisticated enough culture."

I'm not sure how you'd define 'a sophisticated enough culture', but surely Japan would fit? And despite being faced with monotheism, it never stuck.

Hinduism is monotheistic. The "deities" are actually just representations or manifestations of the supreme being.

Hinduism is not a monolithic entity. I'm sure there are plenty of Hindus who view it like that, but it's not a given fact. Go read the Wikipedia article on Hinduism.

But if you want to disregard Hinduism, there are still plenty of areas and countries in Asia that has been faced with monotheism, and could be said to have a 'sophisticated enough culture', where monotheism never stuck. China, Southeast Asia, Korea, etc..

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The Tokugawa Shogunate is long gone, as are the laws against non-Japanese religions. There's plenty of Christian missionary activity in Japan, yet the Japanese are still non-monotheistic.

Look at the original claim: "Pure polytheism doesn't seem to survive to well when faced with montheism and a sophisticated enough culture."

Well, for a start, it took... what? Over 250 years from Paul to the Edict Of Milan for Christianity in the Roman empire? I'm pretty sure it's not been that long since 1868 for Christianity in Japan

Second, essentially some _are_ incorporating elements of it, such as a supreme Kami Sama which is pretty much the Christian God, into their own beliefs. Which largely is what happened to Christianity in the Roman Empire too. The final product is more of a result of fitting it to local traditions and philosophy than an exact copy of what Paul was preaching. So don't be too surprised if in Japan too ends up with its own flavour, eventually.

Third, well, the context isn't exactly identical. For a start the Japanese are a bit more nationalistic ever since 1868 and not exactly in a mood to convert to some foreign stuff, unlike the slaves in the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. And generally, Rome had a crisis of religion and philosophy going on, that Japan doesn't have AFAIK.

I realize that the last one does make the point against the generalization that "Pure polytheism doesn't seem to survive to well when faced with montheism and a sophisticated enough culture", but in the specific context of the Roman empire at the time, it's also not that horribly far off. IMHO.

 

[Kaylee]

I'd definitely agree that this played a big part in it. But I don't think you can really argue that it was unheard of prior to Christianity. The Roman state religion, itself, was all about proselytizing, if you think about it.

That's an interesting point, except I think they (and before them the Greeks) were really "proselytizing" their culture not just their belief in various gods. I don't think they were satisfied with just conquering people, they wanted to assimilate them also. When it came to gods it seems like the Romans attitude was to respect them all and to use sort of a god exchange as a means of assimilating the people they had conquered. Kirsch says that the Romans added the God of the Jews and Christians to their collection and named him Iao*; they worshiped him right along with all of the other gods they knew about -- Zeus, Apollo, Mithra, etc. As mentioned earlier, most of the emperors were willing to compromise with the Jews; they just had to agree to pray for the emperor instead of to him. So, that is why I think the Roman "proselytizing" was focused on their culture and not on their gods.

You're right that this isn't a particularly meaningful argument.

What I should have added, to make my thoughts on the topic clearer, is this:

I think there is room for opinion that montheism is more intolerant that polytheism. I agree with you and Hans that religion is usually just an excuse for wars and persecutions that would occur anyway. But they probably would have occurred under other excuses outside of religious reasons. So while I see your point that Kirsch's theory is not a very meaningful statement, I think there is room for a difference of opinion on this.

However, I don't think there's room for a difference in opinion as to when Christianity started becoming a powerful sociological force. And for that reason I'm disappointed at the lack of critical reviews of Kirsch's book. Kirsch portrays himself as a historian, he has been hired as an adjunct professor, he has gotten published through a well known publishing company not a vanity press. For these various reasons I had felt confident that I could rely on what he was telling me were facts but now I know that if I hadn't discussed this book in this thread I would have walked away with an erroneous idea or two of what had occurred when in history. My initial uncritical read of Kirsch's book is an example of the argument from authority fallacy.

I had also thought that I wasted my time reading his book, but if this reminds me that I'm susceptible to the argument from authority fallacy -- than perhaps not. It may help me avoid repeating that mistake.


* And of course, since I now believe that Kirsch got it wrong as to when Christianity became a powerful sociological force in history -- I'm less willing to believe anything he says unless I can find other credible sources that say the same thing. So far I found another source that says Iao is the Roman name for the Jewish God, but I haven't found any other reports that they worshiped Iao along with their other gods.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I don't think anyone was even supposed to pray to the Emperor before the Dominate, and even afterwards, by then even deifying an Emperor post-mortem was not really taken seriously by anyone. In fact, the term "divus" for deified Emperors had come to just mean "the late". Saying "divus Constantinus" meant basically just "the late Constantine" for most people.

And Romans were indeed willing to compromise plenty with the Jews, Christians or anyone else. They had no law or persecution against worshipping other gods(*). The only condition was to not deny the official Roman gods, because, you know, that makes people unhappy, and then they'll want to make the short rest of your life very unhappy.

(*) the exception was, of course, the army. If you wanted to join the Roman army, you had to be ok with being handed a list of deities you're allowed to worship. For most foreign people who were volunteering for the Auxilia, it wasn't really a problem, since any deity anyone had ever heard of had been assimilated as an aspect of some Roman deity. So if you were a Gaul who worshipped Taranis, as long as you didn't mind that the Romans called him Jupiter Taranis, you were good to go. Or if you were a Germanic who worshipped Tyr, if you didn't mind it that the Romans called him an aspect of Mars, hey, they even liked people who worshipped a war god. But outside thee army, even that didn't apply.

During the early persecutions of Christians you can see that in how the judicial proceedings went. You were just asked to prove that you don't deny the state gods, by making a symbolic offering to any official god of your choice. If you went "ok, let's go to the temple and watch me make a libation to Fortuna Primigenia for the good luck of my firstborn son", that was it, charges dropped, name clear, you're free to go.

Some nutcase Christians simply chose to let themselves be martyred instead of taking Peter's example and denying Jesus to save their lives. In fact, what got them persecuted in the first place was that some went and trolled the Romans to get themselves martyred. The early church doctrine was that if you get martyred for your faith, you're automatically a saint, and go straight to heavens. Some actually took that as an offer.

Later, a second condition was added to that proof of not being a Christian, because the well-off pagan Romans were royally ticked off at Christianity by now. Now you had to curse Jesus's name and make a libation to the Roman god of your choice, but otherwise, hey, you still had an instant get-out-of-jail card if you did that.

Really, the Romans were as permissive as it gets there. Which I suppose is why Christianity grew quite quickly in spite of all that.

So, basically, yeah, it seems to me you're quite right. The Romans were indeed very willing to "civilize" others to their culture, but when it came to religion, their "proselytizing" was quite the weak sauce compared to what that meant for the Christians.