THE BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY

THE BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY

Hugh Fogelman

How to start a new religion: First, you have to find people who are either fed up with their religion or have no religion at all and are looking for a religion that will fit their psychological needs. These people must be with the setting and the timing just right. Next, you show those disenchanted people a concept that is not too foreign to them.

Before Jesus was born, all these conditions were just right. In the known world, there were the Jews who believed in the One God of Israel and the 70 Gentile nations who believed in many gods. The Gentiles had gods for each season, gods for nature, and gods in heaven and gods which they could see in form of statues and animals.

The Roman Empire at the time of Jesus were not happy campers. The rich were living a life-style of kings while the majority of the Romans were hardly subsisting. According to historians, there was social unrest. The people of the Roman Empire were disenchanted with their pagan religion because their beliefs and gods did not relieve their sufferings.

When Rome conquered Jerusalem, the Romans saw how hard the Jews in Judah fought and marveled because the Jews were not fighting for territory, but to preserve their religious rights of their one God. The Romans had never heard of such a thing for they had always fought to expand their territory, never over religion. Apparently the Romans began thinking that maybe the one God of the Jews was better than the many gods they worshiped. However, the Roman authorities had another view on the subject. They hated the Jews for their constant revolts. It was expensive to finance fighting these uprisings and many Roman soldiers were being killed. All of this was digging into the Roman treasury, draining it, resulting in the rich having to pay higher taxes.

Lastly, the pagan Gentiles knew the only religion that believed in only one God was Judaism. So this became a very good time for Paul to present to the Roman people his proposal of a new religion also based on one God. Paul told the Gentiles just what they wanted to hear―a new religion based on Judaism, but different. To convert they did not have to follow the 613 commandments of the Jews and the males did not have to be circumcised. Picking ideas from old pagan mythology, the Gospel writers even told the pagan Gentiles that the one God of Christianity was born of a virgin who was impregnated, by none else, but a spirit from Heaven. Yes, this was very familiar to the Roman Gentiles because the major pagan religion of Rome at that time was Mithras. (See part I) Both the Romans and Greeks were brought up with the common beliefs that their pagan gods mated with human women producing sons that were called "Son of God"―demigods.

Paul’s new religion, when presented to the common people, was hard to turn down. For these Gentiles―this new religion with very few laws to follow, no circumcision and a virgin born god―they were sold! The old laws of Moses was replaced by the belief that Jesus was the "Son of God " and that you were saved only by "grace" not by good deeds, etc. Now all that was left was to get the authorities to accept this new religion. It was now up to the Gospel writers to show the Roman government that the Christians were, in no way, part of the rebel Jews of Jerusalem. By the tone of their blatant anti-semitic writings (John’s Gospel in particular), they separated Jesus and themselves from Judaism. This was a new religion, not based on the "old," with new ideas, concepts and the right touch of paganism.

And so masses of Gentiles joined the early Christian Church, pushing out the Jewish-Christians and forming their own religion of Gentile-Christians (Pauline Christology) and in less than four hundred years, in the blink of history’s eye, the entire pagan Roman Empire converted to Christianity, a million people were now Christians.

RETURN