Synopses & Reviews
Chapter 1Jesus and the Varieties of Early Christianity
We take the existence of Christianity for granted today, but early in the first century it did not exist at all, and, after its inception, it long suffered the ridicule of both Jewish and pagan detractors that it was founded by a bunch of low-class types with bad grammar and bad accents. Yet it eventually won out over the richest and most powerful religious establishment in the world, with the best temple architecture, schools, and all the public money it could want. Why did it do so?
Christianity instead centers on a person, and the core of its message is a kind of biography of that person. So what in the culture of the ancient world and this biography of Jesus motivated people to choose to be eaten by lions in the local amphitheater? The point here is to understand what the draw was, what attracted people to the movement and message of Christianity in the first place. What could inspire such a high level of loyalty and commitment in the face of such dire threats and possible penalties?
It is not at all evident that the message would have the same appeal today. Our worldview and scientific understanding have evolved, expectations for life have changed, and models for behavior and ideals have been nearly reversed. It is no longer obvious that a message claiming that some foreign teacher was crucified in the middle of his life and then resurrected would capture the imagination of an entire civilization. It was not admirable to be either foreign or crucified in the minds of most Romans. Yet if we can understand the original appeal in its original context, we may begin to see why it had (and may still have for us) such a powerful ability to draw to itself not only the poor and disenfranchised, but also some of the most highly educated and highly placed members of ancient society.
Christianity wasimmensely successful. Eventually, this "superstition," as it was called by the Roman aristocracy, invaded the broad spectrum of society, including those upper classes who used their power to fight against it. Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia (on the north coast of modern Turkey), wrote to emperor Trajan (r. 98--117) about a.d. 110, a mere eighty years or so after the crucifixion of Jesus, describing the official trials he was conducting to find and execute Christians: The matter seems to me worthy of your consultation, especially on account of the numbers of defendants. For many of every age, of every social class, even of both sexes, are being called to trial and will be called. Nor cities alone, but villages and even rural areas have been invaded by the infection of this superstition. ("Epistulae" 10.96, gjr)
Pliny was in a rather distant and out-of-the-way province, and he shows us that just a few generations after its beginning, Christianity had "invaded" every level of society. Another ninety years later, around a.d. 200, Tertullian, a Roman lawyer turned Christian, in his defiant open letter to the Roman magistrates defending Christianity against persecution, could boast proudly that "nearly all the citizens of all the cities are Christians" ("Apologeticus" 37.8, gjr).
This last statement, we suspect, is something of an exaggeration made for rhetorical effect, but both authors agree on at least two matters: the number of Christians was considerable, even alarming, and persecution was an important aspect of the "problem." For Tertullian and other members of the new faith, persecution was the height of injustice and barbarism. For Pliny and otherRoman governors, it was a large part of the solution. Persecutions worked'they turned great numbers of Christians back to the traditional gods. Pliny continues in his letter that, because of his official trials, "the temples, up to now almost desolate, have begun to be crowded, and the solemn rites, long discontinued, are again being performed." Roman officials found that while they watched and did nothing, the whole world was turning away from the gods on which the empire was based to the new god Jesus. They also discovered that if they arrested the "guilty" and required them to denounce the Christian faith, then tortured and killed the obstinate, they could turn many back.
So the growth of Christianity was apparently quite uneven: it expanded rapidly in times of...
Synopsis
In
One Jesus, Many Christs Gregory Riley reveals that there was not just one true Christianity, but many different Christianities from the very beginning. United by passionate allegiance to Jesus as hero, these early, doctinally diverse Christianities have led to the development of many different kinds of Christian churches among us today. Riley shows that early Christianity harbored major doctrinal differences about all aspects of Jesus' life, death, resurrection and divinity.
An expert on the historical context in which Christianity arose, Riley illuminates the Greco-Roman world of the early Christians, a world steeped in heroic ideals. Jesus was embraced as a new and compelling hero that one could follow into a whole new life of caring community and transcendant hope. Riley boldly asserts that it was only as Christianity became the religion of the empire that the myth of the Apostles' Creed was created, thereby promulgating the illusion that the Apostles had gathered together and agreed upon a core set of doctrines essential to the Christian faith. But the reality is that doctrinal orthodoxy was not an issue for the early Christians. Rather, they focused, in quite varied ways, on following Jesus as a model for living.
This book not only provides a whole new understanding of the nature of earliest Christianity, but it also conveys a vital message for today about what Christian faith is really about. Riley reveals the authentic character of Christianity as inherently pluralistic and tolerant of diverse ideas while passionately centered in Jesus.
About the Author
Gregory Riley, Ph.D., educated at Harvard University, is professor of NewTestament and Early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in California and the author of the acclaimed
One Jesus, Many Christs.