The Christianization of the Roman Empire 2
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The Christianization of the Roman Empire From Jesus to Constantine Terje Stenberg Master thesis in history Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History Faculty of Humanities UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Autumn 2020 The Christianization of the Roman Empire From Jesus to Constantine © Terje Stenberg 2020 “The Christianization of the Roman Empire” – From Jesus to Constantine Terje Stenberg http://www.duo.uio.no/ Abstract The Christians started out as a marginalized Jewish sect and grew to be the dominant religion in the Roman empire in a relatively short time. From there, Christianity came to shape the societies and cultures in both Europe and the Americas, making the Christianization of the Roman Empire one of the most pivotal moments in world history. Historians have tried to explain the rise of Christianity since Eusebius wrote his Church History. In 1996 the sociologist Rodney Stark published his book The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History in which he tried to explain the Christian success using theories from sociology. This thesis will look into the validity of using these sociological theories on the Graeco-Roman world, Stark’s use of estimates and growth rates to illustrate Christianity’s rise and his belief that Christianity was the beneficiary of the two great plagues that struck the Graeco-Roman world in the second and third centuries AD. In addition, it will be made an attempt to offer alternative estimates for the number of Christians in the Graeco-Roman world. I II Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Knut Ødegård for helping me to narrow down the theme for this thesis into something manageable, reading my drafts, and making a number of helpful comments. I would also like to thank Einar Robert Petterson both for showing me some of the early Christian art in Rome and Ravenna and for teaching me how to interpret them. A special thank goes to my wonderful wife, Lin that encouraged me to write this thesis and managed to put up with a husband that had his head buried in books for most of the last two years. To my dear son Eirik, you have been an absolute joy for your first ten first months, and I promise that we will have a lot more playtime in the future. Terje Stenberg Oslo, November 2020 III IV Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………….………………………..….……… I Acknowledgements ……………………………………………..…………………….…… III Table of Contents………………………………………….…………………..…….……… V Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….……… 1 1. Methodology ………………………………………………….………………….……….. 4 Economic Theory of Conversion, Religions as ‘Firms’ …………………………….... 4 Economic Theory of Conversion, Consumers and Rational Choice …………………. 8 Social Control and Deviance ………………………………………………………... 10 The Universality of Sociological Theories …………………………………………. 13 Neurology and Psychology of Religion ………………………………….…………. 14 Natural Religion and Christianity ………………………………….……………….. 14 Psychology of Conversion ………………………………………..………………… 16 Problems with the Psychological Theories …………………………...…………….. 18 Conclusion ……………………………………………………...…………………… 19 2. Demography ………………………………………………...……...…………………… 20 What is Urban? …………………………………………....………………………… 20 The Urban Landscape in the Graeco-Roman World ……………………….……….. 23 Immigration and The Urban Graveyard effect ……………………………………… 24 The Disease Ecology of the Roman WorlD …………………………………………. 26 V Food and waterborne diseases ………………………………………………. 30 Tuberculosis …………………………………………...……………………. 32 Malaria ………………………………………………………………………. 35 Smallpox ………………………………………………………….…………. 37 The Plague of Cyprian ………………………………………………………. 38 Was There an Urban Graveyard Effect? ……………………………………………. 40 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………..………. 41 3. A Rural or Urban Church? ………………………………….…………………………. 42 The Historiography …………………………………………………………………………. 42 The Archaeological Sources …………………………..……………………………………. 44 The Upper Tembris Valley …………………………………………………………………. 46 The Literary Sources …………………………….……………….…………………………. 49 The Chorepiscopoi …………………………………….……………………………………. 51 Conversion in a rural setting ………………………….……………….……………………. 53 Conversion in an urban setting …………………….……………….………………………. 57 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….………………. 62 4. Health and Conversion …………………………………………………………………. 63 The Mortality Rate of the Plagues …………………………………….……………………. 63 Was the Christian Care for their Sick Unique? …………………..…………………………. 64 Christian Care for the Pagans …………………………………………………….…………. 69 VI The Effect of Basic Nursing ………………………………………………...………………. 70 Miracles and Religious Explanations ……………………………….………………………. 74 The Pagan Flight ……………………………………………………………………………. 77 Attachment Rates ……………………………………………………………...……………. 80 Christianity as a Healing Cult ………………………………………………………………. 81 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….………………. 85 5. Counting the Christians ……………………………………………..…………………. 87 Stark and the Christian Growth Rate ………………………….……………………………. 87 Stark and the Total Number of Christians …………………….……………………………. 90 Alternative Calculations and Numbers …………………………………..…………………. 91 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………….……. 96 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………. 97 Bibliography ……………………………………………………….………………..……. 101 VII VIII Introduction Around the year 30, during Pontius Pilate’s time as a procurator of the province of Judaea, the Galilean leader of a small Jewish sect was executed by crucifixion as a criminal in Jerusalem. Joshua bar Joseph had been one of the many wandering preachers and miracle workers in Judea at the time, and initially, it would seem to be little that distinguished him from the other apocalyptic preachers at the time. However, within a short period of time after his death, his followers, probably only a handful of people, would become convinced that Joshua, or Jesus as we call him, had been resurrected and that he, in fact, was the Messiah. What followed was a frenzied missionary activity as the members of the sect tried to convert as many as possible, both Jews and Gentiles, before the expected apocalypse. When the expected apocalypse failed to materialize, the sect adapted and survived both the failed apocalyptical expectations and persecutions. Within a few decades after the death of its founder, the sect would break with its Jewish origins and become a distinctive cult on its own, and despite its humble and inauspicious beginnings, it would, in time, end up converting an emperor and becoming the dominant religion in the Graeco-Roman world. In 391, Emperor Theodosius enacted a law forbidding the worship of the genius of lares, penates, and pater familias.1 This made, for all practical purposes, the pagan religions illegal. From that year on, Christianity was no longer just the favored religion, a status it had acquired when Constantine came to power. It had become the official, and with the exception of Judaism, the only legal religion of the Roman Empire. It is probable that around 50% of the population of the Roman Empire were Christians at this time.2 If that is the case, it means that there were at least 30 million Christians at this time. From here, Christianity came to spread throughout Europe, and it played a leading role in Europe's history and culture for the next 1600 years. In fact, it is not easy to think of any historical factors that have influenced the development of the western world as much as the rise of Christianity has, both in regard to cultural and political developments. How had this happened? How could a religion based on an executed criminal with only a handful of followers grow so large that it came to dominate the Roman Empire in less than 400 years? What were the mechanisms that drove this development? Attempts to explain the 1 Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (London: Oneworld Publications, 2018), p. 252. 2 Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, p. 105.; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire: (A. D. 100-400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 83. 1 growth have been many, but they have all had a long way to go in explaining how a group can go from a few dozen people to 30 million in less than 400 years. In 1996 the sociologist Rodney Stark published the book The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History where he tried to explain the success of Christianity by using theories from his own field. In the book, he covers a wide range of topics related to early Christianity, and because of the limitations of this thesis, there will only be possible to look at a few of them. The focus will, therefore, be on three distinct topics. Firstly, the thesis will examine the use of sociological theories as tools in the study of history and try to establish the possible weaknesses and strengths of them. Secondly, it will be an attempt to look at Stark’s claim that Christianity was the beneficiary of the great plagues in the second and third centuries.3 Finally, the thesis will look at the mathematical calculations that Stark makes to establish a growth rate for Christianity and make estimates at various points during the first centuries. This paper intends to demonstrate that Stark is too confident in his sociological theories and that they, for the most part, cannot be used in the field of history if they are divorced from the source materials. It will also be a goal to demonstrate that Stark’s mathematical calculations of growth rates are too inaccurate to be of any value and that the estimates of the number of Christians around Constantine’s time are impossible given his assumptions that the Christians predominantly