Christians and Romans

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Chris Huntley

Christianity, History, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 745 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christianity started out as a tiny sect of Jewish followers of Jesus, but within 400 years it was the dominant religion of the Roman world and a major political force. It had a rough start, however; Romans did not accept this new movement with open arms. But was Christianity an illegal religion? Did the followers of Jesus have to hide in the catacombs? Did the emperors consider it a threat to the social order? In this episode we talk about the early reception of Christianity, in particular the persecutions, in order to explode many of the myths one hears about the new faith in its early days.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman.
0:06.7	The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar,
0:12.8	uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament,
0:16.9	the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity.
0:20.2	I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
0:24.8	Hello everyone and welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about how Christianity went from
0:29.9	a minor cult that was regarded somewhat suspiciously by the general public to the essentially
0:34.8	official religion of the Roman Empire. But before then, we should check in with everyone's favorite Biblicist.
0:41.2	But how are you doing today?
0:42.5	I'm doing, yeah, I'm doing pretty well.
0:46.3	We're kind of moving into the term now, and it's a lot, but it's great.
0:50.9	The students of Chapel Hill are just so terrific.
0:53.5	And I really like this generation of students. I started teaching in the mid-80s and virtually everybody that I taught when I was teaching at Rutgers. Basically, they were taking classes so they can graduate and get a job. Most of them actually took five years to do it because they didn't want to get a job. But taking classes is a way to make a lot of money eventually. And now these students, I don't know why it is, but they're just seemed more invested to me. They're just like interested in these issues. It may because of the economy, maybe because of COVID. I don't know what it is. So that's great. I've noticed something similar. You're not in the classroom. Did you ever teach in the... No, I taught a couple of classes as a substitute for my advisor, but I've noticed a similar
1:32.8	shift, I think, in the high school generation. I have a 15, well, nearly 16 year old. They're
1:38.7	much, much more in tune and more engaged, just with life in general, I think, than I was when I was that kind of
1:45.0	age. They're very aware of what's going on in the world and really just more invested in
1:50.2	things, I think.
1:51.4	Yeah. I mean, it's great. And it's a good time for people to be invested in things because
1:55.6	things are less. Yes. Maybe that's part of it.
2:00.3	On that delightful semi-apocalyptic note, but not actually apocalyptic, because we're doing
2:05.4	that next week, we will move to the main event.
2:09.0	How did Christianity take over the Roman Empire?
	...

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