The Faith Instinct by Wade Nicholas

The Faith Instinct by Wade Nicholas

Author:Wade, Nicholas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00


The Rise of Christianity

Judaism, both before and for some time after the Babylonian exile, was not just a religion but a system of belief constructed around a specific political goal, the restoration of a Davidic kingdom centered on the temple at Jerusalem. In general form it resembled most other religions of settled societies of the period, which were essentially tribal religions shaped so as to reinforce the authority of the ruler.

These tribal religions had been successfully adapted to the social cohesion problems faced by archaic states. They were less suitable for large, polyglot polities such as the Roman empire. Roman emperors were well aware of the cohesive properties of religion and insisted that subject peoples acknowledge Roman gods and engage in emperor worship, though they were free to have whatever other religion they wished. But Roman religion was largely one of outward observance and was not a compelling faith for many people. Many competing sects, originating from the Romans’ subject peoples, spread into this creedal void. The worship of the goddess Isis spread from Egypt to all corners of the Roman empire. The wild priests of Cybele, with their public self-castrations, amazed and shocked the Roman public. Gnosticism was popular among sophisticated urban elites of the first century A.D. The strange mystery cult of Mithras took hold among Roman soldiers but quickly disappeared after a peak of popularity in the third century A.D. “The Darwinian image is appropriate: the central and eastern Mediterranean in the first and second centuries AD swarmed with an infinite multitude of religious ideas, struggling to propagate themselves,” writes the historian Paul Johnson.174

The most successful of these competing sects was a new version of Judaism. Well before the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, Jews had set up thriving communities in the major cities of the Roman empire. In Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, Alexandria and Rome, Jews had synagogues, and freedom of association, and were accorded considerable privileges. They were exempted from the official emperor worship and allowed to make sacrifices instead.

These expatriate Jewish communities were influenced not only by Judaism but also by the powerful ideas of ancient Greek literature and philosophy. They spoke Greek, which had become the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean in the fourth century B.C., and were so Hellenized that many no longer spoke Hebrew. They used a special translation into Greek of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, which differed frequently from its original.

These Hellenized Jews of the first century B.C. were unlike their counterparts in Judaea in several ways. They were a sophisticated urban elite, whereas the Jews in Judaea were a more rural population, centered on the Jerusalem temple’s main activity, that of serving as a vast sacred abattoir for sacrificial cattle. The Jews of the Septuagint were more interested in spreading their religion than were the Jews of the Hebrew Bible. And the population of expatriate Jews seems to have been around 4 million, far outnumbering the 1 million Jews in Judaea.

This vibrant network of



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