The cross is easily the most recognized religious symbol in all of history. For centuries, it stood for hope of life after death at the heads of graves, of mercy for the sick and wounded on medics tents, of faith worn on gold chains around necks or on church steeples.

But 2,000 years ago, it meant something very, very different. It was a symbol of the

gnawing terror of Roman might. The worst and most humiliating death a person could die reminded

every subject of the world's greatest empire that the earth belonged to the strong, and that the

strong lived by the sword. So what on earth changed? Welcome to the Breakpoint podcast. I'm Shane Morris, and today

I'm joined by someone who's attempted a truly deep and thorough answer to that very question. Tom Holland

is author of the new book, Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. He's an award-winning

historian and broadcaster and prolific author who's written on the Roman Republic,

the ancient Greeks, the rise of Islam, and now tackles Christianity.

Tom is not a believer, but recognizes in Christianity one of, if not the most, influential ideas in history.

Tom, it's good to have you on the Breakpoint podcast.

Welcome.

Thanks very much for having me.

The idea that God died on an instrument of torture and therefore dignified suffering and weakness and victimhood and things like this is the revolution that you mention in the title of your book.

And you argue throughout that this momentous idea gradually reshaped everything about the pagan world. What is it that's so

revolutionary about the idea of God dying on a cross? Well, famously, if we want to answer that

question, we should look at the earliest written source to mention it, which is the letters of

Paul. And Paul is in no doubt that what he is preaching, this idea that a criminal torture to death

is in some way, and Paul is clearly not entirely sure exactly how, but in some way a part

of the God of Israel, who is also the God who has created the entire cosmos and everything

in it, is possibly the strangest idea that anyone has had to persuade

people of. And he says that it's a stumbling block to the Jews, and it's likely to seem absolute

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