Transcript Chapter 6 Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Section 4
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 Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings and early Christianity
influenced the later Roman empire
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 Sect
 Messiah
 Disciple
 Martyr
 Bishop
 Patriarch
 Pope
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 Jesus
 Paul
 Peter
 Constantine
 Theodosius
 Augustine
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 Early Romans
worshipped natural
spirits, turned dieties
 Later, Romans adopted
Greek religion/gods
 Empire allowed to
worship freely, fostering
numerous religions
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 Christianity began to
emerge in eastern
Mediterranean
 Practice by Jews
 Thought to be sect of
Judaism at first
 Numbers of non-Jews
grew and Christianity
became a separate
religion
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 Trained as Rabbi,
believing Christianity
was dangerous to
Judaism, Paul
participated in early
Christian persecution.
Later, Paul converted
to Christianity and
became its leading
apostle
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 In A.D. 6, Emperor
Augustus turned the
kingdom of Judah into
the Roman province of
Judea
 Jews treated cruelly
 Held out hope for
messiah
 Long foretold by Jewish
prophets
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 In A.D. 66 some Jews
rebelled against the
Romans and
overpowered the small
Roman army in
Jerusalem; four years
later, the Romans retook
the city killing thousands
of Jews and destroying
the Temple
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 A.D. 132, after another unsuccessful rebellion, the
Romans banned the Jews from living in Jerusalem
 In their scattered communities, the Jews continued to
study their religion by reading the Torah, the body of
Jewish religious law and learning
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 Continued to study the Torah—entire Jewish law and
learning
 Set up academies called yeshivas
 Rabbis studied in yeshivas and wrote the Talmud, an
interpretation of the Torah and an important book of
Jewish law
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 A few decades after the
Jewish revolts, Jesus, a
Jew, grew up in the town
of Nazareth;
 Jesus traveled through
Galilee and Judea A.D. 30
to A.D. 33, preaching a
new message to his
fellow Jews and winning
disciples
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 He urged deeds of
kindness
 Said that God loving
and forgiving of all
repenters
 Often used parables
(symbolic stories) to
make his point
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 While Jesus’ disciples’
believed he was the
Messiah, other Jews
disputed his claim; Roman
officials believed that
Roman rule was threatened
by the growing controversy
and ordered that Jesus be
arrested and crucified as a
political rebel in A.D. 33
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 After Jesus death, his
disciples proclaimed that
he had risen from the
dead and appeared to
them; Jews and non-Jews
who accepted Jesus as
the way of salvation
became known as
Christians
 “Christos”—Greek for
“messiah”
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 Small groups of the
Hellenistic cities of the
eastern Mediterranean
accepted Jesus’ message
 Christians formed
churches
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 A convert named Paul
aided Christianity’s
spread, especially among
non-Jews
 Paul’s letters, along with
other writings of early
Christian leaders, form
the New Testament of
the Bible
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 His writings, the Gospels
and those of other earlier
Christian leaders formed
the New Testament of
the Bible
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 Christian missionary
 Leader of the Christians
 Came to Rome and
founded a church
 Other churches set up in
Greece, Asia minor,
Egypt, Gaul, and spain
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 The Romans feared
that Christian rejection
of their deities would
bring divine
punishment
 When local officials
thought Christians
were causing trouble,
they sometimes had
them killed
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 Christians would not
honor the emperor as a god
and would not serve in the
military
 Some Christian
“martyrs”—people who
chose to die rather than
give up their beliefs—were
brought to stadiums and
thrown in with wild beasts
to die
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 Such persecutions kept
many from Christianity
 Christians had to
compete with other
religions —Judaism and
polytheistic religions
 Christianity flourished
in the cities—this gave
Christianity influence far
beyond its size
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 A.D. Roman General
Constantine and the
flaming cross, A.D. 312
 “In hoc signo vinces”—
with this as your
standard you will have
victory
 Appeared across the sky
 Constantine ordered the
Christian symbol placed
on shields
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 Named emperor of Rome, A.D. 312
 Became a protector of Christianity and issued the
Edict of Milan, which decreed that all religious groups
in the empire were free to worship as they pleased
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 Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official
religion of the Roman Empire, banning the old
Hellenistic and Roman religions
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 Christians believed that people needed to understand
Christianity
 Christians turned to various scholars known as the
Church Fathers to explain Christian teachings
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 Wrote one of the world’s first great autobiographies—
”Confessions”
 Became a leading church official in North Africa
 Wrote “City of God”—the first history of humanity
from the Christian viewpoint
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 Christian leaders organized the Church into a
hierarchy of priest and “bishops” (interpreted
Christian beliefs); the bishops of the five leading
cities were called “patriarchs” (bishop of a leading
city). Eventually the bishop of Rome began to
claim authority over the other patriarchs and
became known as the pope; Greek-speaking
Christians in the east did not accept the authority
of the pope
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 In time, the Latin churches of the west became known
as the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek churches
as the Eastern Orthodox Church
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