Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Worries about fifth columnists have rarely been founded upon reality.
Why did the Romans prosecute the Christians?
- Thread starter Heart Break Kid
- Start date
Worries about fifth columnists have rarely been founded upon reality.
I don't find other answers in this thread entirely acceptable and I'd like to share my understanding, gathered from writings by Tacitus and Josephus.
By the mid first century AD, Rome had already been at odds with Jews' insurrections for some time, mostly in the form of minor skirmishes and assassinations perpetrated by Sicarii. At this point, say 41 or 42 AD, the term "christian" wasn't widely recognized, as "they" were basically just one of several "messianic" style Jewish sects. (the Jewish Jesus sect?) Most Jews didn't like "them" much though, and leaders like Agrippa I found it very easy to garner overall favor of the Jewish populace by persecuting this ill-favored sect. This is the period under which James the Greater was martyred and Peter and the rest of the apostles fled.
Now, Romans didn't know one sect from another, nor did they particularly care. Jews in the northern part of the empire were quite, understandably, fearful for their lives because of the developing animosity between Jews and Romans, which would eventually lead to massive-scale conflict that would results in the deaths of tens of thousands and the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple of Solomon.
Before those events would come to pass, though, following Agrippa I death in 44 AD, Judea had no Rome-appointed "king of the Jews" and it became more of a lesser-governed province. In this power vacuum, Jewish high priests like Annas II continued persecuting the now-abhored, proverbial "whipping boy", christians. This is the period under which James the Just was martyred.
So, when a great fire broke out in Rome in 64AD, Nero, who was looking for a scapegoat, found it very easy to politically blame the already unpopular Jewish sect, while other Jews were only happy to oblige, content in the fact they were not being blamed.
Were early christians persecuted by the Romans before this? Of course, as everyone who wasn't Roman was persecuted. But it was really the ill-favor between early christians and more-politically-dominant pharisee and sadducee Jews which made them the easy target, and they'd remain that way for well over 200 years, until Constantine de-criminalized practice of christian religion.
By the mid first century AD, Rome had already been at odds with Jews' insurrections for some time, mostly in the form of minor skirmishes and assassinations perpetrated by Sicarii. At this point, say 41 or 42 AD, the term "christian" wasn't widely recognized, as "they" were basically just one of several "messianic" style Jewish sects. (the Jewish Jesus sect?) Most Jews didn't like "them" much though, and leaders like Agrippa I found it very easy to garner overall favor of the Jewish populace by persecuting this ill-favored sect. This is the period under which James the Greater was martyred and Peter and the rest of the apostles fled.
Now, Romans didn't know one sect from another, nor did they particularly care. Jews in the northern part of the empire were quite, understandably, fearful for their lives because of the developing animosity between Jews and Romans, which would eventually lead to massive-scale conflict that would results in the deaths of tens of thousands and the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple of Solomon.
Before those events would come to pass, though, following Agrippa I death in 44 AD, Judea had no Rome-appointed "king of the Jews" and it became more of a lesser-governed province. In this power vacuum, Jewish high priests like Annas II continued persecuting the now-abhored, proverbial "whipping boy", christians. This is the period under which James the Just was martyred.
So, when a great fire broke out in Rome in 64AD, Nero, who was looking for a scapegoat, found it very easy to politically blame the already unpopular Jewish sect, while other Jews were only happy to oblige, content in the fact they were not being blamed.
Were early christians persecuted by the Romans before this? Of course, as everyone who wasn't Roman was persecuted. But it was really the ill-favor between early christians and more-politically-dominant pharisee and sadducee Jews which made them the easy target, and they'd remain that way for well over 200 years, until Constantine de-criminalized practice of christian religion.
Roman courts would have been very busy indeed with all this persecution business... In reality ofcourse nobody was being persecuted unless some trouble was at hand.
Unless all Jews lived in Jerusalem this would have been a very tiny and temporary diaspora. (That would conform with the Babylonian exile, which was limited to the Jewish elite, who after that ban was lifted, only partially returned.)
Claims about numbers in antiquity can rarely be supported. Its not as if anything like modern statistics were compiled. Early Judaism certainly did proselytize, but 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire (at what time?) seems like an overexaggerated claim.
You're mistaken. Rome was noted for abject cruelty toward a number of groups of people, not the least of which, the entire northern half of Europe. Maybe you're confusing "prosecution" with "persecution".
This is a nonsense statement, to imply the "hebrew population during exile" has some nullification value against the " Jewish population during Maccabee reign" and further the "Jewish population in 70AD", Titus vs the Jews in the first Jewish Roman War. A number of revivals, such as that led by Ezra among many others, happened during that PERIOD OF 500 YEARS.
Not really. Persecution should not be confused with war - which is what you seem to be doing.
From what I can gather you're not responding to anything stated. Who said anything about "nullification" or "revival"?
EDIT: short version - Christians were always persecuted on an unofficial level, because the Romans were deeply suspicious of alternative cults which challenged the state religion. The state religion, linked to the emperors, was a key means of supporting imperial authority, which could not be sustained through actual state employees. The state persecuted Christians because they maintained an organisation which challenged Rome, not because there was any clear and present danger, although the first persecutions were probably an act of scapegoating.
In the emperor's judgement, mind. Rome was notable, as an empire, for not persecuting people on religious grounds. In the provinces, particularly away from the towns, the authority of the state and the central government was often minimal. Rome did not have a large bureaucracy, nor the means to forcibly suppress a large proportion of its subjects: although it had the military force to utterly destroy a city or area if it chose to, as frequently occurred in Judea, it could not have sustained this over a large area or over a long period of time. So the survival of the empire rested, fundamentally, on the basic acquiescence of the provincials to Roman authority, which meant that heavy-handed religious purges were largely out of the question*.
However, this is not to say that the state religion was not important. In Rome, politics and religion were inseparable; emperors were deified so frequently that they could die exclaiming 'oh dear, I think I'm becoming a god', and the same men who spoke in the Senate and commanded the legions served in the key religious offices of the State. Caesar, in fact, held the post of Pontifex Maximus - the high priest, whose title is still that of the Pope - before reaching the peak of his political and military career. Indeed, the authority of the Roman state, much like that of the Chinese emperors, was based on the divine peace (pax deorum). If the state was governed by virtuous men who honoured and pleased the gods, then the gods would grant it prosperity, success and good fortune. The converse was also true, so natural disasters, military reversals or civil wars were seen as evidence that the state had broken with the will of heaven. This is the main reason why Augustus made a great show, after his victory in the Civil War, of restoring Rome's temples and shrines: by openly restoring the bond between the Romans and the gods of Rome, he asserted his right to rule.
In fact, there were only two religious groups that the empire persecuted on religious grounds: the druids and the Christians. The defining characteristic of these is clearly the fact that they maintained an organisation distinct from the empire. Good evidence of this can be found in Imperial policy towards the Jews. The Romans, on the whole, admired the Jewish religion: they saw a great deal of their own values in its discipline and respect for ancestors. Yet as long as Judaism maintained its structure and its unity, manifested in Jerusalem and the Temple, it remained a threat to the Roman state because it retained the means of collective action. After the great Jewish revolt of 65-70 AD, which proved the second part of this, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, replacing the city with a legionary camp and the Temple with a temple of Jupiter, proving the first. After this, the Roman state tolerated the Jews, and their religion flourished in the empire.
Christians, though, did not depend on the Temple for their unity. Their religion lent itself naturally to insurrection against the Roman ideological state - which, as the first paragraph ought to imply, was absolutely crucial for the maintenance of its physical power - as it asserted one indivisible god whose authority came above that of all earthly rulers. At the time of Trajan's edict, discussed immediately below, even Pliny had noticed the Christians and suspected that they might be threatening. Given that Christians were not especially numerous in his province, and he was hardly an imperialist zealot or a particularly incisive mind, this surely means that most other provincial governors had come to the same conclusion. That said, Trajan was keen to make clear that Christians were not to be sought out (Christiani conquirendi non sunt), but should only be prosecuted if accused by somebody else and should be allowed to go free if they denied being Christians and paid homage to the emperor's divinity. In other words, Christianity itself was only a crime in a technical sense: what mattered was proposing an alternative to the ideological framework which maintained the emperor's largely illusory power in the provinces.
Before this, Nero had apparently persecuted Christians, blaming them for the Great Fire of Rome, but without any evidence of a legal basis. Indeed, he also punished those selling cooked food in pubs, over-boisterous chariot drivers and pantomime actors, the latter of whom were seen as a degenerate profession. So it's not out of the question to argue that he was simply finding scapegoats who represented challenges to the conventional morality of Rome, and punishing them to restore the pax deorum and so avoid the charge that the Great Fire was the result of divine displeasure in him. Christians were hardly popular people anyway, as minority radical sects rarely are. You need only look at how the original Mormons were treated to understand why mobs in Lyon stoned Christians, for example. A Roman governor had the duty to maintain law and order, and so it's likely that early persecutions were simply done to keep the government in line with popular anger and ensure that it stayed on the right side of it.
Maybe so, but Judaism eventually became a large religion in the Mediterranean. By AD 300 there were probably three million Jews in the empire, although missionary work had been banned a century earlier. The population of the city of Rome was probably around one million, while the entire Empire had a population shortly below sixty million. So we're dealing with about 5%, but in areas such as the Nile Delta (before 166, which saw a Jewish revolt and the near-annihilation of the Jews of Egypt) and the surroundings of Carthage, Genua and Rome it would have been much larger. Bear in mind that Jews were almost absent from North Africa (apart from Egypt and Carthage), the Balkans and Northern Spain, so they would have been denser, where they did actually live, than the numbers suggest. In these areas, one in ten people on the street may well have been Jewish.
EDIT 2: I may be wrong about this; my overall population estimates are based on the reign of Augustus, while the population overall seems to have declined by 300 AD by perhaps an eighth. So 3 million Jews for a population of perhaps 51 million.
Rome was not always at war with "exterior people" they by-and-large mistreated. I feel you have some romanticized understanding of what, exactly, Roman "culture" was.
Well, your comment to Dach's was silly and unwieldy anyway, and to me, nonsense, but what are we to make of this...
"That would conform..." What would? Your invalid opinion of the population of Jews in this era?
"...with the Babylonian exile," What about it? It was 500 years prior. read: Five. Hundred. Years.
"which was limited to the Jewish elite," so... what? What do you think you're saying here?
"who after that ban was lifted, only partially returned." Partially returned to Ezra's revival of the religion, bringing people back to the covenant, effectively returning many of those who had remained in the Levant, back into the fold.
And Ezra's wasn't the only revival, over 500 years. As a matter of fact, by 164 bc specifically, Jews had "enough to fight the Seleucid Empire"...
... and win.
So apparently, by whatever your measurement is, whatever profound effect on the population of Jews you seem to think the Babylonian exile had, in whatever imaginary portrayal of middle eastern geopolitical population dispersal of that era you subscribe, you're categorically mistaken.
Interesting assumption. I have no idea what you are basing this on. Rome did not "by-and-large mistreat" its neighbours; that would have been counterproductive. What it did do was try and neutralize any potential threat to the empire. None of this amounts to persecution.
The following unfounded remark:
is merely confirming my statement.
It's not being invalidated by you in any case.
I'm reading 500 years. What is your point?
It seems to me the question is more what you think you're reading.
Ezra's 'revival', as you call it, coincided with that partial return of Jews from Babylon.
Which leads to... what conclusion?
I'm categorically mistaken... about what exactly?
I'm not sure what you are trying to argue, but - as mentioned - it doesn't appear to respond to anything stated.
Rome practiced slavery. Rome used young people from neighboring tribes as melee fodder on front lines so their more-valued, citizen military could more effectively maneuver. People who were not citizens (and in many instances in history even people who were citizens) forfeited property and had no voice in government.
I can't imagine what leg you have to stand on, when you say, "Rome didn't persecute".
I can by telling you there were other substantial populations of Jews in the world. Judaism in this era was perfectly alive and well in Ethiopia, for example, among other places.
It's a long period of time. Comparing your (mistaken) estimation in 460bc to your (mistaken) estimation in 70AD is stupid.
That... there were categorically more jews 10 years after whatever you mistakenly felt was this diminutive figure at the end of the exile?
Everything you thought you were saying?
I still don't see from you what you think you were trying to say. All you're doing is refuting my understanding of it. Maybe were you actually saying "nothing"? Is that where I went wrong?
Persecution within the empire was limited to sporadic outburst aginst this Judeo-Christian sect. There's no such thing as persecution outside the empire, as the empire did not have jurisdiction.
The practice of slavery existed for millennia; it's not like Rome invented it. It was common throughout the ancient world and has been until the 19th century - in some areas even until the present day, despite legal abolition. Slavery, however, does not constitute persecution.
And how does that contradict anything I said?
On the contrary: I did not make any 'estimation'.
Once again, I did not mention any figure.
No, it seems your reading abilities need serious reconsidering. You seem to be commenting on nothing said by me. Yet insist that my 'opinions' are 'invalid' - whatever that means.
I think I see now.
When you say "this conforms with.." you're not saying, "this was a small group of people, descended from an already dwindled population".
You're actually saying, "I'm sure they got over it quickly even though tens of thousands of people were slaughtered, their temple "heart" was decimated, and they were forced to re-evaluate and restructure under rabbinical law, and further, my "New York Times understanding" of the whole affair dictates it was no big deal, because it happened before, and hey, they got through it."
Is this closer to what you meant?
When you say "this conforms with.." you're not saying, "this was a small group of people, descended from an already dwindled population".
You're actually saying, "I'm sure they got over it quickly even though tens of thousands of people were slaughtered, their temple "heart" was decimated, and they were forced to re-evaluate and restructure under rabbinical law, and further, my "New York Times understanding" of the whole affair dictates it was no big deal, because it happened before, and hey, they got through it."
Is this closer to what you meant?
Quite the opposite, actually. See my long post.
How many Christians did the Romans kill? Any estimates? I guess we shouldn't discuss how, or in what way, they persecuted them.
Romans were intolerant but only after the Christians had refused to recognize their emperors as Godlike Deities?
Did the Jews obey that law? Were they exempt from it? Wasn't aware Jewish priests also persecuted early Christians, not only Romans.
Accusing Byzantines of being intolerant just like Romans is nonsense to me, it's almost like saying the modern Islamic state, ISIS, is a religiously tolerant organization.
So Christians were so opposed to bowing down to (pagan-polytheistic) emperors but have since (Catholics) come up with their own Emperors (Popes), some of them known as saints, according to their religion. They built their Church's capital in the city where thousands of them died, in such horrible and inhumane manner, irony, or a deliberate plan?
Romans were intolerant but only after the Christians had refused to recognize their emperors as Godlike Deities?
Did the Jews obey that law? Were they exempt from it? Wasn't aware Jewish priests also persecuted early Christians, not only Romans.
Accusing Byzantines of being intolerant just like Romans is nonsense to me, it's almost like saying the modern Islamic state, ISIS, is a religiously tolerant organization.
So Christians were so opposed to bowing down to (pagan-polytheistic) emperors but have since (Catholics) come up with their own Emperors (Popes), some of them known as saints, according to their religion. They built their Church's capital in the city where thousands of them died, in such horrible and inhumane manner, irony, or a deliberate plan?
Not really - bear in mind also that a lot (again, precise or better-than-a-guess numbers are difficult to find) of the Christians killed were simply killed ad hoc by their neighbours in what we would today call sectarian riots rather than by the state. The popular myth of Christians being thrown to the lions didn't really happen, or was at least extremely rare.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Isn't the idea of being thrown to the Lions from the Book of Daniel. Presumably, the stories of being thrown to the lions mirrored that.
That being said, was "being thrown to the lions" a form of execution the Romans employed?
That being said, was "being thrown to the lions" a form of execution the Romans employed?
I thought that was something for the masses of bored Roman public dough receivers to watch as public 'entertainment' to pass their (all too much) free time...
On topic, I'd read that there were Christians who wanted to be martyrs for the cause, so they kept pushing the Roman state to do something to them too.
On topic, I'd read that there were Christians who wanted to be martyrs for the cause, so they kept pushing the Roman state to do something to them too.
