How Did The Existence Of The Roman Empire Help The Spread Of Christianity

Patheos ^ | 2016 | Jack Wellman

[AdmSmith]

The empire didn’t intentionally spread Christianity

or perhaps they did http://www.christiani-nazorean.info/book.pdf

[Cronos]

did Christianity spread so quickly? The answer is yes, considering it was the religion of the non-elite and was persecuted for a good part of the 300 years*

Now the reasons WHY are multiple:

good communication infrastructure enabling the fast spread across the Roman, Ethiopian, Parthian and Armenian world.
a written corpus in Aramaic, Koine Greek and Latin - all being a lingua franca in various regions of the world (the Sassanid, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Mediterranean)
competing religions/philosophies that were
not spiritually satisfying - the Greek, Canaanite, Egyptian pantheons were of various gods and goddesses who were capricious, not role-models and didn’t provide any personal god
focused on give and take - sacrifices - so stuck in the Bronze age model (like 2nd temple Judaism)
too esoteric - Cynicism, Stoicism
too secretive - Mithraism, Isis etc.
was:
Spiritually satisfying
offered a personal god
offered a vision of a glorious afterlife
offered a sense of community for all - including the poor
Was based on an ancient religion - 1st and 2nd temple Judaism
Was so special that people were willing to be persecuted, suffer horrible tortures rather than give it up.

Christianity spread in 4 waves before 378 AD:

As a sect of 2nd temple Judaism (before 70 AD): the Jesus-movement, along with the Pharisees competed in synagogues inside Judaea and among the Jewish community as far as Spain and India.
This spread heavily among Jews who followed this sect (note that they were such a threat they were persecuted by the other Jewish sects like the Sadducees and especially the Pharisees).
We may wonder why “Christianity wasn’t popular among Jews” - but it WAS, and large numbers of 2nd temple Jews did become Jesus-movement Jews. but note that this wasn’t converting - it was becoming a different sect of Jew.
In addition the Jesus-movement attracted many gentiles - but they were not the majority until after 70 AD.
They were large enough to be a threat to the pharisees that they were persecuted in synagogues (“Christians” still went to synagogues)
Nero saw them as a perfect scapegoat so persecuted them
This nearly destroyed Christianity (the combination of Pharisee and Roman persecution was the great tribulation written about in Matthew 23/24 and the book of Revelations)
From the destruction of the temple (70 AD) to the troubles of the 3rd century (circa 220 AD):
With the destruction of the temple, only two sects of Judaism survived - the Jesus-movement and the pharisees. The Jesus-movement became “Christians” and the pharisees took the name “Jews” exclusively for themselves.
This destruction of the temple ended a lot of Judaizing (or specifically Pharisee-ising and enabled this religion to grow among gentiles
This spread heavily among the non-elite of the empire due to the reasons given above (a personal God, equality for all, and a special afterlife and the fact that it wasn’t elitist like Stoicism)
It heavily spread among the Egyptians and Armenians and Syriacs during this time. Still a minority, but a significant one.
It underwent periodic persecution, which only seemed to increase the number of new converts
3rd century troubles to Constantine (313 AD) - during this period the Christians were blamed for the troubles as they were a-theists - against the “natural gods”. Yet this brought out more converts. The total number of Christians is estimated as between 10% to 40% of the population before Constantine legalized it (note: Constantine did not make Christianity as state religion, he just made it not illegal)
Constantine to Theodosius - after Constantine legalized it, the spread of Christianity continued until it was a clear majority by the time it was made state religion in 378 AD. Why?
There was no longer a pain of death if you admitted openly you were Christian
It still retained the advantages above - but this time it was a religion that also brought in the elite to be equal to the poor
Most important - Christianity changed culture and society as a whole. The blood-thirstiness, the inhuman treatment of slaves etc. as we seen in HBO’s “Rome” series, slowly faded until like today no-one can imagine going back to what life and society was like before…

[Cronos]

I would also note that the Ancient Church of the East - the Assyrian Church, spread all the way from Parthia to Mongolia and that was OUTSIDE the rOman Empire.

Ditto for the Marthomite Church of Kerala - it spread in south india to the St Thomas Christians