Palestine gave birth to religious groups of breathtaking originality. One coalesced
around Jesus. After his death, under the impetus of the Jew-turned-Christian Paul
(d.c.67), a new and radical brand of monotheism under Jesus’ name was actively
preached to Gentiles (non-Jews), not only in Palestine, but also beyond. Its core
belief was that men and women were saved—redeemed and accorded eternal life in
heaven—by their faith in Jesus Christ.
At first Christianity was of nearly perfect indifference to elite Romans, who were
devoted to the gods who had served them so well over years of conquest and
prosperity. Nor did it attract many of the lower classes, who were still firmly rooted
in old local religious traditions. The Romans had never insisted that the provincials
whom they conquered give up their beliefs; they simply added official Roman gods
into local pantheons. For most people, both rich and poor, the rich texture of religious
life at the local level was both comfortable and satisfying. In dreams they
encountered their personal gods, who served them as guardians and friends. At home
they found their household gods, evoking family ancestors. Outside, on the street,
they visited temples and monuments to local gods, reminders of home-town pride.
Here and there could be seen monuments to the “divine emperor,” put up by rich
town benefactors. Everyone engaged in the festivals of the public cults, whose
ceremonies gave rhythm to the year. Paganism was thus at one and the same time
personal, familial, local, and imperial.
But Christianity had its attractions, too. Romans and other city-dwellers of the
middle class could never hope to become part of the educated upper crust.
Christianity gave them dignity by substituting “the elect” for the elite. Education, long
and expensive, was the ticket into Roman high society. Christians had their own solid,
less expensive knowledge. It was the key to an even “higher” society.
In the provinces, Christianity attracted men and women who had never been
given the chance to feel truly Roman. (Citizenship was not granted to all provincials
until 212.) The new religion was confident, hopeful, and universal. As the Empire
settled into an era of peaceful complacency in the second century, its hinterlands
opened up to the influence of the center, and vice versa. Men and women whose
horizons in earlier times would have stretched no farther than their village now took
to the roads as traders—or confronted a new cosmopolitanism right at their
doorsteps. Uprooted from old traditions, they found comfort in small assemblies—
churches—where they were welcomed as equals and where God was the same, no
matter what region the members of the church hailed from.
The Romans persecuted Christians, but at first only locally, sporadically, and
