A selection of books about the end of paganism details the great struggle between a culture that had existed for thousands of years, and an upstart cult that borrowed what it needed from the pagans and then suppressed them with a totalitarian fury.
The Greco-Roman civilization had its faults, but it boasted great intellectual and religious diversity, usually--not always--protected by a form of freedom of speech. christianity deniaaed intellectual freedom and forced the Western world intoa theological strait jacket that could not be kept tight. civilization's struggle to escape Christian tyranny led to some of the worst violence ever.
After 1,400 years, Christianity lost, and the free spirit and diversity found in the great pagan civilizations has been slowly reviving. Several recent books offer portraits of what was lost, and how. Porphyry's Against the Christians--The Literary Remains edited and translated by R. Joseph Hoffman of Oxford University(180pp., Prometheus Books), is almost a synopsis in itself of pagans vs. Christians.
Porphyry was a 3rd century philosopher who wrote a critique of Christianity, one apparently so incisive that Christian apologists were never able to adequately answer it. So after Christians gained control of the Roman government in the 4th century, they destroyed all copies of Porphyry's book--plus all copies of the apologists who had quoted Porphyry extensively in trying to refute his arguments.
What survives is a manuscript by an anonymous apologist defending Christianity against an anonymous pagan critique. Hoffman explains why scholars generally agree these are fragments of Porphyry's work.
In the dialogue, the pagan becomes a Christian in the end. In real life, anyone who reads Porphyry Against the Christians will notice that the critiques at their best are devastating, and sometimes funny. Hoffman quotes, from a different work by Porphyry, this comment: 'These teachers in the contempt for this creation and this earth has been made for them into which they are to enter when they depart. Now this new earth is the Logos of our world. Why should they want to live in the archetype of a world which is abhorrent to them?' Sounds like a Groucho Marx satire of the Bible: 'I don't care to belong to any social organization that will accept me as a member.'
In another passage, Porphyry discusses 1 Thess. 4: 15-17, a Pauline letter which describes how Christians would be carried into the air on judgment day. "And there is more to Paul's lying. He very clearly says, 'We who are alive.' For it is not three hundred years since he said this and nobody--not Paul and not anyone else--has been caught up in the air. It is high time to let Paul's confusions rest in peace.' Modern skeptics will note some 1,950 years have passed since Paul wrote that, and we're still waiting or the end!
Porphyry routinely takes the Christian scriptures at their literal word, and skewers their nonsensical meanings and contradictions. His Christian apologist resorts to the typical vague, unsatisfactory answers heard from apologists today, that the texts really mean something other than what they say.
In a number of instances, Porphyry's critique is still fresh--and still unanswered. On the Christian idea of 'washing away' sins: 'It is indeed troubling and confusing to think that a man, once washed of so much pollution and rot, seems [all of a sudden] to be pure. [Is it not a little curious], this wiping away the stains foa lifetime of immorality--of sexual license, adultery, drukenness, thieving, perversions, self-abuse--and assorted disgusting things--siply by getting baptized, or gcalling on the name of Christ to get free of sin, as easily as a snake sloughs off its old skin? I ask, who wouldn't prefer a life of corruption...if he knew in advance that all would be forgiven him...Such promises encourage those who hear them to sin...' Sound like a prophecy of Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and a lot of child-abusing priests.
Hoffman provides extensive notes to the text, and pooints out instances where Porphyry misunderstood what Christinas said; where the apologist misunderstood Porphyry's criticism; and sometimes wehre the two just talk past each other.
Hoffman tops off the work witha lengthy epilogue outlining historical developements that led to the spread of Christianity and to Porphyry's attacks. The criticisms can sometimes be a little difficult for a modern reader to understand--Porphyry wrote as a neo-Platonist--but it's a good introduction for any freethinkers who want to know the pagan intellectual response to Christianity.
An excellent way to get an overall perspective on Porphyry and his Christian targets is to read Pagans and Christians by Robin Lane Fox (Knopf, 681pp.). Fox, an atheist, has written a massive, detailed, yet readable survey of what scholars know today about the relations between the average Roman and the Christian minority from the 2nd through 4th centuries C.E. Through general analysis and specific anecdotes, Fox destroys a number of Christian myths about events in this period.
Pagans and Christians is too rich in details to begin to cover in a short review. Fox critiques stories of persecution, why some were false, others were true, and more importantly, how the general populace in many places was extremely hostile to Christians in the 2nd century, but friendly, even protective in the 3rd century. The reasons had to do with changes in Roman society itself.
Contrary to claims of decline, Fox shows that paganism was clearly healthy and robust throughout the 3rd century and well into the 4th. A decline in pagan inscriptions, compared to earlier periods seems to have more to do with changes in attitudes towards inscriptions, rather than a decline in piety toward the Roman gods, Fox explains. Scattered evidence shows cities still hosting festivals and games for the gods; people still offering sacrifices and seeking out their oracles; and emperors still relying on the alleged aid of Zeus for victory in war.
Yet Christianity gained ground, even if it constituted at most one-fifth of the population of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Fox tries to sort out exactly how the Christians differed from their pagan neighbors, what appeal they had and to whom, and how their relations with pagans evolved.
One instance; pagans were ofte4n more concerned with the rituals of worship. If they felt a god was angry, they assumed that the act of sacrifice was sufficient to appease the divine wrath. Christians, however, would argue that conduct and even thoughts or feelings were the key to their relationship with their god. Thus, a devout Christian could not taste sacrificial meat or offer even the mildest prayer to any other god withouth stirring divine anger. But a pagan regarded this attitude as a stubborn contempt toward the Roman gods.
Also, as Fox shows, the bishops exercised an authority over the church radically different froma apagan priest's hold over his worshippers. And a pagan and Christian might use the same language about their ideals, but the philosophical bases behind their views were completely alien.
Even in seemingly minor matters, Christian concepts varied. For instance, the pagans had myths to explain the volcanic landscape of 'Burnt Lydia' in Anatolia; a prominent Christian explained it as the result of 'sin', and compared other natural disasters to god's punishment for sins.
Other incidentsdemonstrate how Roman law held an individual accountable for crimes, whereas Christians believed that divine punishment could fall on the innocent as well as the guilty.
Fox describes how Christian views on what wasx acceptable doctrine mutated and narrowed over the centuries, while the punishment of many minor 'sins', even adultery, became less harsh. Thus, 'if the history of forgiveness was one of the falling barriers, the history of heresy was one of closing paths.'
Through many such details and incidents, Fox suggests reasons why Christianity could have become the dominant force in the Roman Empire after the accide4ntal ascension of a pro- Christian emperor. Fox makes it clear from evidence that, contra Christian apologists, the appearance of Constantine was unexpected. Even the Christians were not ready ofr their sudden new power, he argues:'These rulings (Fox notes church statements after Constantine's conversion) are those of a Church still caught unawares by its sudden promotion, not of one which had grown accustomed to a rising swell in the tide of conversion.'
Skeptics will get occasional chuckles. Romans routinely referred to Christians as 'atheists' for denying the gods. Pagans even developed a saying: 'No rain today, thanks to the Christians,' blaming natural disasters on Christian atheism, which offended the gods.
The records of Christian coucils furnish this juicy tidbit: 'At Ancyra (Ankara, Turkey), the intriguing class of Christians who either had enjoyed or still enjoyed sex with animals was broken down by age groups and allotted long period of penance. Married offenders, if aged over 50, were to recieve communion only at death. When the canon was translated into Latin, ti was taken to be a ruling against homosexuals, and in the early medieval kingdoms, it was presistently cited as an aughority against them.'
Fox describes Christian relations with Jews--they fourished in this period, drawing Christian converts during persecutions; with slaves--Christians could kill slaves (as pagans were allowed) and suffered only a mild penalty; and with the poor--Christian alms toward their own needy likely drew converts.
A friend who borrowed my Pagans and Christians loved it and promptly bought her own copy. It would be the first book I would recommend to anyone who wants a good, in-depth study of the Christian takeover of the ancient world.
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans(Harvard University Press, 150pp.) by Pierre Chuvin, originally published in French, is a bit of light dessert compared to Fox's book, but I enjoyed it as a survey of a dying culture. It summarizes the evidence for the decline of paganism and its lingering survival in scattered places for centuries after Christianity appeared.
Chronicle lacks the scope of Fox's work, but provides a useful outline of the gradual decline of avowed paganism in the 4th and 5th centuries under relentless pressure from Christians. Chuvin suggests that paganism is best understood as adherence to traditional beliefs and practices; pagans were 'people of the place.' Christians were people who abandoned traditional local practices.
Chuvin recouhnts the initial indifference of many pagans to the Christian takeoever, and Christians' initial ambivalence (understandable, given how outnumbered they were) to public paganism. But a combination of events increased Christian intolerance, and damaged pagan morale, notably through defeats in battle, such as at the River Frigidus, which seemed to show that the Christian god was stronger.
Christian outbursts led to the burning of pagan libraries (such as at Antioch in 371-372 C.E.) and the execution of philosophers, such as Maxximus of Ephesus, and Simonides, burned alive. Chuvin suggests the murder of the philospher Hypatia by St. Cyril's thugs in 415 C.E. owed as much to local politics as to her paganism; but her paganism increased her vulnerability.
Paganism depended strongly on public rituals, and by suppressing these, Christianity struck a heavy blow at paganism. Even a suspicion of paganism could lead to massacres, such as in the 580s C.E., when Christian mobs slaughtered suspects in Constantinople, and an army burned and tortured its way across the still-pagan Bekaa valley.
Yet, isolated pockets of pagan rituals and beliefs survived. Fox notes a tree cult continuing today in Anatolia; Chuvin notes other instances. Regions between the Byzantine and Persian empires held to the ancient ways. The biblically prominent city of Carrhae remained pagan, while a native of Harran declared in the 9th century that his city 'had never been sullied by the error of Nazareth.'
Finally, Chuvin recounts how one Greek philosophy student, influenced by a surviving pagan in the court of the Ottomans, helped pass the legacy of paganism on to the West during the Renaissance.
Chronicle could be richer. As a survey, however, it provides a student of history with an outline and a list of sources to consult for more information.