Christianity and the Roman Empire

Christianity and the Roman Empire
Author: Ralph Martin Novak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2001-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567018407

The rise of Christianity during the first four centuries of the common era was the pivotal development in Western history and profoundly influenced the later direction of all world history. Yet, for all that has been written on early Christian history, the primary sources for this history are widely scattered, difficult to find, and generally unknown to lay persons and to historians not specially trained in the field. In Christianity and the Roman Empire Ralph Novak interweaves these primary sources with a narrative text and constructs a single continuous account of these crucial centuries. The primary sources are selected to emphasize the manner in which the government and the people of the Roman Empire perceived Christians socially and politically; the ways in which these perceptions influenced the treatment of Christians within the Roman Empire; and the manner in which Christians established their political and religious dominance of the Roman Empire after Constantine the Great came to power in the early fourth century CE. Ralph Martin Novak holds a Masters Degree in Roman History from the University of Chicago. For: Undergraduates; seminarians; general audiences

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire

Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire
Author: Marianne Sághy
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9633862566

Do the terms 'pagan' and 'Christian,' 'transition from paganism to Christianity' still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting 'pagans' and 'Christians' in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between 'pagans' and 'Christians' replaced the old 'conflict model' with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christian relations over a broad territory and time-span, the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century. A set of papers argues that if 'paganism' had never been fully extirpated or denied by the multiethnic educated elite that managed the Roman Empire, 'Christianity' came to be presented by the same elite as providing a way for a wider group of people to combine true philosophy and right religion. The speed with which this happened is just as remarkable as the long persistence of paganism after the sea-change of the fourth century that made Christianity the official religion of the State. For a long time afterwards, 'pagans' and 'Christians' lived 'in between' polytheistic and monotheist traditions and disputed Classical and non-Classical legacies.

The Christians and the Roman Empire

The Christians and the Roman Empire
Author: Marta Sordi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 215
Release: 1994
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780806126371

The Christians and the Roman Empire overturns the myth of an unrelenting persecution of the subversive, Christian "outlaw." Using contemporary sources and authentic documents --including imperial edicts and records of the deeds of non-legendary martyrs--Marta Sordi shows that the conflict was primarily religious and almost never political. The Christians actually continued to profess their loyalty to the Roman Empire during the periods of persecution, and the Empire, which almost never thought of the Christians as a threat to security, often found itself acting simply as the secular arm of religious authorities during these periods of social and cultural intolerance.

Christianizing the Roman Empire

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Author: Ramsay MacMullen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1984-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300036428

Offers a secular perspective on the growth of the Christian Church in ancient Rome, identifies nonreligious factors in conversion, and examines the influence of Constantine

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity
Author: Karl Galinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198744765

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies.

Creating Christ

Creating Christ
Author: James S. Valliant
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2016-09-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Exhaustively annotated and illustrated, this explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world’s great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the 1st Century. The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered. After 30 years of research, authors James S. Valliant and C.W. Fahy present irrefutable archeological and textual evidence that proves Christianity was created by Roman Caesars in this book that breaks new ground in Christian scholarship and is destined to change the way the world looks at ancient religions forever. Inherited from a long-past era of tyranny, war and deliberate religious fraud, could Christianity have been created for an entirely different purpose than we have been lead to believe? Praised by scholars like Dead Sea Scrolls translator Robert Eisenman (James the Brother of Jesus), this exhaustive synthesis of historical detective work integrates all of the ancient sources about the earliest Christians and reveals new archeological evidence for the first time. And, despite the fable presented in current bestsellers like Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, the evidence presented in Creating Christ is irrefutable: Christianity was invented by Roman Emperors. I have rarely encountered a book so original, exciting, accessible and informed on subjects that are of obvious importance to the world and to which I have myself devoted such a large part of my scholarly career studying. In this book they have rendered a startling new understanding of Christianity with a controversial theory of its Roman provenance that is accessible to the layman in a very powerful way. In the process, they present new and comprehensive archeological and iconographic evidence, as well as utilizing the widest and most cutting edge work of other recent scholars, including myself. This is a work of outstanding and original scholarship. Its arguments are a brilliant, profound and thorough integration of the relevant evidence. When they are done, the conclusion is inescapable and obviously profound. Robert Eisenman, Author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code "A fascinating and provocative investigative history of ideas, boldly exploring a problem that previous scholarship has not clearly or credibly addressed: how (and why!) the Flavian dynasty wove Christianity into the very fabric of Western civilization." -Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler

Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire

Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire
Author: Niko Huttunen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004428240

In Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire: Mutual Recognition Niko Huttunen challenges the interpretation of early Christian texts as anti-imperial documents. He presents examples of the positive relationship between early Christians and the Roman society. With the concept of “recognition” Huttunen describes a situation in which the parties can come to terms with each other without full agreement. Huttunen provides examples of non-Christian philosophers recognizing early Christians. He claims that recognition was a response to Christians who presented themselves as philosophers. Huttunen reads Romans 13 as a part of the ancient tradition of the law of the stronger. His pioneering study on early Christian soldiers uncovers the practical dimension of recognizing the empire.

Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire

Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire
Author: Tertullian
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2001-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813210216

In this volume, Robert D. Sider undertakes a judicious pruning of the original texts and brings a fresh accessibility to the important writings of Tertullian.

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them
Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300098396

This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.