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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.