It was religion to which the Roman Empire was to succumb
in the fourth
century A.D. This was ultimately the legacy of a people whose language
was virtually identical to that of the Phoenicians.
The founding figure, Jesus of Nazareth, was a Jewish
popular preacher
and miracle worker. He told his followers that the kingdom of heaven
was at hand(Matthew 4:17) and urged them to adopt a touchingly
altruistic morality (Luke 6:27-35). For largely political reasons he
was subjected to the cruel, but not unusual, Roman punishment of
crucifixion. This meant that he died like a common criminal alongside a
couple of robbers, unable to save himself—so bystanders taunted—let
alone others (Matthew 27:42). Yet this disaster proved to be the
beginning rather than the end of a new religion. The followers of Jesus
claimed that despite appearances he had been the Son of God, or God
incarnate, and that he had willingly died on the cross to redeem
mankind. Most of those who initially responded to this message were
naturally local Jews, but the existence of a widely scattered Jewish
diaspora meant that word spread quickly all over the Roman Empire. At
the same time the early church was astute enough to customize the new
faith for Gentiles by allowing them to join without taking upon
themselves the irksome burdens of the traditional Jewish religious law
(Acts 15:19-20). The outcome was that gradually the movement became
overwhelmingly Gentile.
Like the Buddhists, the early Christians argued among
themselves, and
in due course they split up into a number of irreconcilable sects,
despite (or because of) the deliberations of a series of councils. But
in organizational terms the Christians differed from the Buddhists in
significant ways. Whereas monks made up the core of the Buddhist
community from the outset, Christian monasticism did not appear until
some three centuries after the death of the founder. It then became a
standard feature of Christian life, albeit eventually rejected by the
Protestants; but it never took over. Instead, the core of the church
was and remained a set of lay congregations under the authority of
their priests, who in turn came to be subject to that of the local
bishop.
A further contrast with the Buddhists was the extent
of the overarching
hierarchy that developed in Christianity above this local level.
Buddhist sects in the early centuries had some kind of succession of
patriarchs; but these rather shadowy figures do not seem to have
matched the power of the handful of Christian patriarchs who came to
hold sway over the church from their seats in the major cities of the
empire. Of these, by far the most successful were the popes, who from
their base in Rome were able to consolidate their authority over the
western half of the empire. They thereby brought into being the
Catholic church. This remarkable institution, despite its heavy
penetration by the interests of rulers and others, has proved the most
impressive and durable nongovernmental organization in the history of
the world.
In the meantime the church's relations with the Roman
emperors and
their successors had changed drastically. The Christians had never
plotted to overthrow the pagan empire; they were not like the Jewish
Zealots, whose monotheist intransigence fed into a wildly imprudent
rebellion against Roman rule in A.D. 66-70. But the Christians
nevertheless picked a quarrel with the Roman state when, as part of
their monotheist rejection of other gods, they refused to participate
like loyal subjects in the standard rituals of emperor worship. Such
attitudes led to intermittent persecutions of a kind that the Buddhists
were usually spared, but not to a terminal catastrophe. Thus, by the
early fourth century, there were apparently enough Christians for it to
make sense for Constantine, a military claimant to the Imperial throne
locked in conflict with his rivals, to identify himself with the
Christian cause. He won his civil war, and by the end of the century
Christianity was firmly established as the state religion.
