Rick Riordan's Reviews > Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years

This was a fascinating, accessible read about the first five hundred years of Christianity, or as the author says, Christianities, plural, because the main takeaway is how very diverse, fractured, contentious, and fluid the religion was during its formative centuries. One might argue, indeed, that this has never changed. As much as Christians like to think of a universal faith with literally true scripture that has not changed (and I was raised a Christian), the history of the church and the history of its texts tells a very different story -- one that is, I think, more interesting and colorful!

Fredricksen considers the development of these Christianities in thematic chapters, rather than using a chronological approach, and this makes for good reading. As someone who has made a career writing about ancient mythologies, I was especially interested in the interplay between early Christian beliefs and those of other religions -- Judaism, of course, but also the polytheism that was a foundational part of the Roman Empire. How did such a vast, syncretic society become solely Christian, or did it?

Fredicksen makes some interesting points. She argues that non-Christian people who lived during those five centuries would not have recognized themselves as 'pagan,' nor did they identify as such. Pagans "pagani" was a term later applied to them by Christians, in an effort to distinguish believers from non-believers. The term originally just meant the people of a particular place, like the Italian 'paeasani,' especially a rural area, as opposed to Christians who tended to be urban dwellers.

The "pagans" of Ancient Rome made no distinction between religion and politics. Religion was an important part of keeping the state healthy and functioning with the blessing of the gods. The only question was how to make sure religious rites were done in a way that supported society -- religio, versus superstitio.

Fredicksen similarly argues that many Christians of that time saw no contradiction between making offerings to the emperor's cult / following the laws of Rome and their Christian beliefs, as much as these practices made the bishops and church fathers want to pull their hair out.

The book offers a good reminder that the early writings of Christianity that have come down to us were written, read and studied by a very small, highly educated elite. Most Christians had neither the time nor the education to follow all the esoteric arguments about how divine Christ was, or the exact nature of the Trinity, or whether the resurrection would be in a spiritual body or a fleshly body. Most Christians, like most other Romans, were too busy just trying to feed themselves and their families. Christianity might appeal to them because it promised salvation in the long term, and community and charitable support in the short term, but the finer points of heresy/orthodoxy were too esoteric for them to care much about.

I was particularly struck by the chapter on magic. Frediksen suggests that many Christians didn't see any problem with using magic amulets, spells, charms, etc. They simply used established polytheistic formulas for such things while substituting names of saints, and of course Christ, for other gods. Magic was a neutral concept -- a form of communication with the forces of the supernatural world -- that was widely accepted and considered effective, even essential, to living in harmony with the world. The church fathers did not approve, but the church fathers were mostly writing for each other, vying with other bishops for power and influence, and especially the patronage of the emperor, after Constantine. Their arguments and battles about schisms and orthodoxy were acted out on a 'high register,' while the vast majority of Christians lived and believed on a 'low register.' If magic charms could heal -- and almost all Romans believed they could -- why not created a magic charm in the name of Jesus?

Another good reminder for me was the nature of scripture itself, and how many difficulties there are when we talk about scripture as the "literal word of God" in the Christian faith.

Here's one example Fredricksen uses to illustrate the point. One passage in Paul's letter to the Romans 9.5, rendered in English, could read (Fredricksen's translation):

“of their people [meaning Paul’s fellow Jews] according to the flesh is the Christ. God, who is over all, be blessed forever!”

Or it could read:

“of their people according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever!”

As Fredricksen says: "The English translation depends on how the sentence is punctuated, with or without a full stop after 'Christ.' On this issue, there are several things to bear in mind. The first is that Paul’s original letter had neither punctuation nor even space between the letters. Modern readers are the ones whose punctuation shapes Paul’s sentences."

A small thing? Perhaps, but it is the difference between saying that Christ is a man of flesh, or saying that Christ's flesh is a fully divine part of God. All because of punctuation that did not exist in the original text. Religious wars have been fought over less, and *were* fought over less.

The book did not really change my admiration for the teachings of Jesus, as far as we know them in the ways they have come down to us. I have always considered the spirit of his message to be noble, good and worthy of emulation. But it did help me appreciate how woefully short human beings have always been in living up to those ideals, how quickly we turn to squabbling and battling and putting each other into factions of 'us' versus 'them' while professing to be the 'true' Christians, and how much space there is between the Christian philosophers who try to insist on orthodox doctrine and the vast majority of people in Christianity, who are just trying to survive the challenges of human life without worrying about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.