questions. At this point, Jesus is being called “king of the Jews,”
so they hand him over to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and
he asks the assembled crowd whether he should let Jesus, now a
prisoner, go because it is custom to sometimes do so during the
holidays. The crowd, thinking that Pontius Pilate really doesn’t
want to let him go and not wanting to upset the Romans, says that
Jesus should be crucifi ed. For later Christians, this act of crucifi xion completely replaces the
ritual sacrifi ce in the temple. Jesus was called the “lamb of God,”
and his self-sacrifi ce replaces the sacrifi ce of the scapegoat—but
it serves exactly the same function. People do bad things, and
someone has to be punished. In this case, Jesus gets punished for
everyone else’s sins.
All of the other laws of the Old Testament, including the bizarre
dietary laws, are now changed. Before, the Jews needed all of those
specifi c laws, but because they were now following the letter of the
law instead of its spirit, it is time to do away with them all. What
God wants is morality, not a kosher kitchen. Now, it’s okay to eat
anything, and all of the other laws are transformed, too.
This religion caught on like wildfi re in the Roman Empire.
Eventually, they had to fi gure out a way to organize these new
communities. They started in secret, and they were actively
persecuted, but they did begin to organize in physical buildings, or
ecclesia, overseen by a bishop, or episcopus.
This is the slow development of the institution of the church as
a religious authority, with priests acting as mediators between
ordinary people and God and, eventually, a father or pope—the
bishop of Rome—as the spiritual head of the church, at least in the
West. In the East, they had patriarchs. Persecutions became more
intense; often, people willingly accepted martyrdom. However,
more and more people joined despite the persecution.