Veleda's speech or sermon has to be performed on screen. The part that we read concludes:
"'Hoofs in heaven heavily ring. Lightning leaps, blazing lances. All the earth resounds with anger. Seas in surge smite the shores. Now will Nerha naught more suffer. Wrathful she rides to bring down Rome, the war gods with her, the wolves and ravens.'" (p. 556)
Whose gods are stronger? Virgil prophesied eternal empire for Rome - which perhaps she still has in the spiritual realm. The Classical and Biblical traditions converged. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Fourth Gospel identifies the prophesied Christ with the philosophical Logos. Although Moses and the prophets displaced Homer and the poets as inspired authorities on theology and morality, the Greeks remained the genesis, as it were, of secular literature. This comprehensive synthesis leaves us Northerners with our Eddas on the periphery of Eurasian civilization where the Time Patrol labours to keep us.
18 comments:
Though the actual conversion of large numbers to Christianity didn't take place until the 3rd century crisis.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I would be a bit hesitant about minimizing too far how many early Catholics there were in the first two centuries AD. I think it's reasonable to think there were about 150,000 Christians in the Empire by Marcus Aurelius' time.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, 100-150K is reasonable. OTOH, note that the Roman Empire's population was around 70 million and that there were over a million Jews. Most early Christian converts were among those who'd been 'fellow-travelers' of the Jews, attracted to monotheism but not the complex religious laws of Judaism.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, the Jewish Diaspora helped to lay the foundations for the spread of Christianity. I get the impression Christians soon became fairly numerous in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. In the pars Occidens of the Empire Christians were most numerous in the larger cities, such as Rome and Carthage in those first two centuries.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, but you have to keep in mind that all large urban areas in the Roman Empire had negative population growth -- more deaths than births. It required a constant influx from the countryside just to maintain their population. So a religion confined to cities was in constant danger of extinction, because its adherents couldn't reproduce themselves.
Note that most pre-Christian religions were 'site-specific'; that is, they were limited to a particular ethnic and locational context. They traveled with the people who followed them, of course. Universalistic religions were a new development.
Buddhism and Zoroastrianism were potentially universalistic; Buddhism did spread by conversion, though it didn't -replace- previous faiths so much as interact with them. Note the mutual relations of Shinto and Buddhism in Japan, for example. The next wave of universalistic religions were more successful -- or less tolerant.
I think Harry's CROSSTIME TRAFFIC -- specifically the first book in the series, GUNPOWDER EMPIRE -- gives a likely outcome of the Roman Empire never falling and not having a 3rd-century crisis because 'Imperator Agrippa" (who lived longer, in that timeline) successfully incorporated Germania into the Empire. In it, various types of Christianity exist, but they never overwhelmed the other religions, which continue to exist as a melange.
NB: in that timeline, Europe and adjacent areas experiences roughly what China did -- periods of chaos, but mostly existing as a unitary state.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, inadequate medical knowledge and BAD hygiene made Roman cities death traps. Christianity survived in them not only because of natural reproduction but also because of converts from that influx of newcomers.
What interested me about you mentioning Zoroastrianism was recalling past comments by you of how Sassanid Persia was well on the way to becoming Christianized by the time of the Arab Muslim invasions. Albeit Zoroastrianism was still the faith of the aristocracy and many other Persians.
Turtledove's GUNPOWDER EMPIRE with the scenario you outlined is one book I would like to get. Agrippan Rome seems to have expanded at least as far as our current Poland.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: GUNPOWDER EMPIRE is well worth the price.
Christianity is less 'ethnic' than Judaism, which contributed to its spread.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
GUNPOWDER EMPIRE is now in the back of my mind to look out for.
I agree it helped a lot that Christianity is not "ethnic," limited to a single nation, and it helped enormously how Christ commanded His disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations in Matthew 28.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, although people have to be ready to buy what you're selling.
One thing to keep in mind is that early Christians expected the Second Coming of Christ -very soon-. Any time now...
That took a few centuries to become a non-mainstream opinion in Christian circles, and it keeps recurring even now.
Paul's insistence on an imminent Second Coming was a delusion.
Kaor, to Both!
And St. Paul should have remembered how Christ warned His disciples that no man knows the hour of His return.
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah, although the belief that Christ was coming back any day now did give urgency to conversion efforts; it also made early Christians less concerned with the affairs of 'this world'.
Basically, early Christians were weirdos, and they were usually people who didn't do too well in Classical society -- marginal in one way or another.
It wasn't until after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire that multitudes of ordinary people with ordinary concerns became Christians, and that had an immediate effect on the religion.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
No argument, what you said about that "urgency" on St. Paul's part. And some detachment from worldly matters is not always a bad thing.
Not sure about the "weirdos" part, however. The impression I get from the missionary efforts of Peter and Paul from the Acts of the Apostles and their letters was that most of their converts came from what we would call blue collar or lower middle class types, with a scattering from the upper middle class. Basically people of modest, even very modest means, but still reasonably solid, respectable persons. Including men like that Roman centurion, Cornelius, or even that governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, who befriended St. Paul. Iow, serious people who had good reasons for finding Christianity attractive.
But of course some of the earliest Christians would be truly weird.
Your last comment seems a bit odd--you commented at other times that it was during the Third Century Crisis of the Empire, during the half century after the assassination of Alexander Severus, that really large numbers converted to Christianity.
Btw, if we can trust the AUGUSTAN HISTORY, Alexander Severus (r. 222-235) was himself friendly to Christianity, or at least interested in it.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment