3.18 Christians Under the Roman Gaze

History in the Bible

Garry Stevens

History, Christianity, Judaism, Bible, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 693 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the second century, there were three groups of Jewish-leaning Jesus clubs: the Johhanines, the Nazoreans, and the Ebionities. These had either vanished or been absorbed into gentile Christanity by the year 200.
While that was happening, the Christian movement came to the attention of the imperial authorities. Writing in 110, governor Pliny only knew they seemed to be vaguely seditious, and had depraved practices, such as meeting before dawn. Forty years later, Christians had gained an appalling reputation. They refused to participate in any of the state rituals that bonded the emperor, the people, and the state to the gods. They were unpatriotic. Even worse, they were wicked sexual deviants with barbaric rituals. The Romans viewed them as witches.
I finish the episode by introducing the earliest Christian apologies, books written to defend the faith from the calumnies made against it.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Giday, I'm Gary Stevens.
0:09.9	And welcome to the third season of the History in the Bible podcast.
0:15.2	In this final season, I explore how the Jews and the Christians constructed new religions when they were sent
0:23.9	spinning into the void after the destruction of the temple. All of the history, about all of the books
0:31.7	beyond the Bible. Episode 3.18 Christians under the Roman gaze.
0:44.5	In previous episodes, I related the history of the final two revolts for the Judeans,
0:50.9	the Kittoswar and to the Baakosiva Revolt.
0:55.1	I also had a stab at exploring the origins of the rabbis and introduced the new survival manual
1:01.7	the Jews develop, the Mishnah.
1:04.6	As I discussed in those shows, our sources about Jewish history of the time are so meagre that there is not much
1:14.7	more to say. Most of the rest of this season will explore the history of the Christians
1:20.6	to the Year 200. In this episode, I investigate the state of the Christians in the early 2nd century,
1:29.8	when Jesus' disciples were long gone.
1:33.4	The successors of the Jerusalem Jesus Club seem to have been a community
1:37.8	that church fathers called the Nazareans.
1:41.4	They had their own book, the Gospel of the Hebrews.
1:45.0	The Gospel, according to the Hebrews, was probably written around the same time as our later
1:52.0	three Gospels. Call it the year 100.
1:56.0	The Gospel according to the Hebrews may be the same as another book called the Gospel of the Nazareans.
2:04.2	For many decades, the Gospel was a contender to join the New Testament canon.
2:10.5	According to the Church Fathers, Hebrews was very similar to our own Gospels.
2:17.0	It is just a little shorter than the Gospel of Matthew,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Garry Stevens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Garry Stevens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.