
It Began in a Manger - diodorus
https://literaryreview.co.uk/it-began-in-a-manger
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gimmeThaBeet
I have thought about this quite a bit recently, sort of the "how?" of
christianity. I can never shake that jesus' lifespan coincided with the
formation of the empire. Augustus was in power for his childhood, and tiberius
for the remainder. You had this seismic shift in social and political policy
of the continent's dominant power that rippled out over the following
centuries.

It's a topic that I've always been curious about, how the backdrop late-
republic and early empire created conditions for christianity to take root?
Were there, dare I say it, other people like jesus that didn't have the same
impact because the conditions weren't conducive?

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lcall
Late to this, but I have written why I believe in Christ, in some detail, at:
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854587400.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854587400.html)
.

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viklove
> ‘To dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a
> revolution’, writes Holland, ‘is nothing exclusively modern. Rather, it is
> to dream as medieval visionaries dreamed: to dream in the manner of a
> Christian.’

Is the author seriously trying to assert that the process of societal
improvement and the longing to live in a more just and fair world started with
Christianity? That's a rather naive world view to carry...

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bitwize
In pre-Christian antiquity, the gods ruled all men absolutely, and the high
ruled the low. It was simply not the place of commoners to dream of a better
world. That was the purview of lords, of patricians, _maybe_ of scholars. The
notion of equality is very much rooted in Christian thought. Pre-Christian
peasants might've thought that having very little was perfectly just and fair,
because they would never question that they were born lesser than their lord
or king. The insight the Christians contributed was that all are created equal
before God, and that all had moral authority and responsibility for their own
actions. The example, as the article says, is Jesus, an ostracized and
dangerous radical of ignoble birth taking on a mighty empire and winning the
war for hearts and minds. This was heady, revolutionary stuff to an ancient
European.

~~~
viklove
This is still a very Europe-centric analysis though. There are many non-
European civilizations that precede Christianity though, are you talking about
all of those as well?

