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“Good course covering an interesting period: there was basically a kind of Cambrian explosion of differing forms of Christianity, eventually culled down to an orthodox core. In spite of the title, it concentrates on the first couple of centuries: Constantine and the Council of Nicea aren't covered till the last lecture,.
TheophileEscargot wrote this review Friday, April 3 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The Burgess-Shale-like diversity is impressive. Among them were purely Jewish followers of Jesus, expecting an imminent apocalypse along the lines of other Jewish period cults. Ebionites thought that they should obey Jewish law, including circumcision, but that Gentiles should be converted. Marcionites thought there were two Gods: a wrathful, harsh and judgmental Old Testament God; and a kind and merciful God heralded by Jesus. Manicheans took the concept further, deciding that the Old Testament God was actively evil, not just a too strict and hasty. Plus of course there were the Christian Gnostics, who believed in secret knowledge and rituals to assure salvation.
The course presents Paul as hugely important, but not exactly the Creator of Christianity: apparently most of his ideas were already floating around in the plethora of groups.
The course also goes some way to explaining the relationship and emergence of hostility between Christians and Jews. The Romans tolerated Judaism mainly on account of its great age, having a great respect for antiquity. So to justify themselves, the Christians couldn't afford just abandon Judaism completely, even those who abandoned the Mosaic law: they needed its antiquity. But if Christians were the true successors, that had to mean the existing religion was false.
It seems that in the first century or so, persecutions of Christians were mostly bottom up affairs started by local mobs, who found them secretive and suspicious, with dark rumours about their rites. Because they refused to sacrifice to the civic pagan gods, Christians would become scapegoats if their was an earthquake or catastrophe. Later on as Christian numbers grew, higher levels of Roman officialdom started to get involved and put the persecution on an official level.
One interesting question is why the proto-Orthodox view came to dominate. Scholar Walter Bauer thought that it was because the Roman church happened to be of this school: as Christianity developed they became the richest and most politically influential group and came to dominate.
However, it could also be that this view represented the best compromise between extremes: for instance between those who thought that Jesus was fully human, and those who thought he was wholly divine. This would explain some of the more tortuous theology, such as the trinity, as a tough compromise.
The course is very well-presented, told in a chatty and informative matter. Seems to be reasonably objective. Would probably be equally annoying to Protestants and Catholic/Orthodox, since it doesn't have a lot of support for either the bible or apostolic succession being terribly reliable. Worth a listen if you're interested in the subject.”
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