Anthology of Ideas

Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do.

The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Yes, for a portion of its history the Roman Empire was Christian, but for most of its history Rome itself (including the period of the Republic and the Empire) followed a mythopoeic religion that was closely related the classical Greek religion.

During the Age of Enlightenment, western society examined itself through religious texts; it found that the religious doctrines of the past lacked unchanging principles and most of them hearkened to a more mystical mindset and flew in the face of scientific thinking. For some, this demonstrated that the religious texts themselves were flawed: it was in this mindset that the concepts of deism — a religious belief that if there is a god, he is not involved in the day-to-day affairs of human lives, and any human attempts to create rules and rituals concerning this god are corrupted by human nature — were first accepted as, partially, acceptable in mainstream thought. ((It was never accepted by the majority, but in certain intellectual circles it was.)) In Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason he advocates deism because its concepts allow for religious thought and morals based on the belief in a god and afterlife while still allowing society to not be “hemmed in” by religious doctrine.

Friday, Osama bin Laden released his first video in three years, and it has been posted, in full, online. Unlike his fire and brimstone videos in the past, this one is more relaxed and he talks in a calm, definite manner as if he was trying to teach people his beliefs rather than indoctrinate them by force. Bin Laden doesn’t directly attack America as a whole—as he is prone to do—but instead attacks certain aspects of American culture and history that he disagrees with and which demonstrate the faults he believes America has.

( At the end of the post there are two videos: the first video is of a newscast from Al Jazeera English and the second is the actual full 26 minute speech which is rather hard to find and isn’t being distributed by the major video networks.

The City Of God was written around 420 A.D. in response to the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D . Many Romans believed that the sacking of Rome occurred because the pagan Roman gods were angry with Romans for abandoning them in favor of Christianity. Saint Augustine combated this by effectively saying that Rome, because it is an earthly city, does not matter; only the city of God matters. According to Saint Augustine the “city of God” is filled with believers while the earthly city is filled with nonbelievers. This division allows Saint Augustine to argue that the church is part of the city of God, but the city of Rome is earthly and thus expendable, and because the city of God (the church) is intangible it is indestructible.

Saint Augustine argues this idea by stating the difference between the two cities is in the goals of its inhabitants.

The mythopoeic religions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece all shared similar characteristics: the concept of Cyclical time, an animate universe, and large pantheons of human-like — as in flawed — gods. In contrast, the ancient Israelites believed that time was linear, the universe was inanimate, and that there was one perfect god who was omnipotent, omnipresent and all-seeing. Judaism was revolutionary because it affected all aspects of life including history, food through dietary laws, marital and and societal laws. It also was the first major religion to promote monotheism — or henotheisism depending on how you read it. While anyone can follow the Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions, Judaism was as much a culture and descent as it was a religion.

Cyclical time is based on the idea that for everything there is a season, and that every outcome happens repeatedly.

The spread of early Christianity in throughout the Roman empire was based on what it wasn’t rather than what it was. At the time Christianity began spreading through the Roman Empire, religion had fractured into the main Roman religion which was comprised of the Parthenon of Roman Gods and mystery cults. The mystery cults were based on myths that focused on the cycle of death and renewal and promised a better afterlife. The major mystery cults were the cult of Isis and Osiris, of Dionysus and Bacchus, Cybill and Adonis, and Demeter and Orpheus. These cults were not exclusionary — you could join them all and still follow the main religion — however each of these cults required sizable offerings from their participants so only the wealthy could afford to join them.