# From small band of Jesus' followers to Christianity, how? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 16, 2016, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926 "2016-05-16T18:46:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/21 "2016-05-16T23:56:33Z")
> [@CC](#): > > Regarding the message, I imagine that the notion of an eternal life was quite attractive to some. Also, Paul was clearly a great promoter, but I’d guess that Jesus was a terrifically charismatic guy. With all the various cultists and preachers out there, he must have have had amazing powers to grab a crowd and move people. Some guys just have it. I presume he did. I’ll just note that, that falls under GD territory. I would argue that the presentation in the Gospels directly contradicts that view. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/22 "2016-05-16T23:59:10Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Required link to a demonstration of the exponential power of social networks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brC\_jK6stBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brC_jK6stBs) If you want a recent example of how fast a religion can grow, look at the Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons). Joseph Smith founded the Church in 1830. Less than two hundred years later, the membership is up around sixteen million. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/23 "2016-05-17T02:50:26Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The special status of Jews within the Roman Empire was one major aid. (Barring the times when there was a Jewish revolt going on.) > > All other religions within the Empire had to work within the Roman polytheistic system, including Emperor worship when requested. > > The Jewish people were exempted from this. There was a surprisingly broad tolerance of their “peculiar” practice. > > Some of this was inherited from the Greeks. Jewish religion was oftentimes left alone by the successor states of Alexander’s empire. This lead to the largest Jewish community being in Alexandria, Egypt of all places. When the Romans took over Egypt, they didn’t want to rock the boat so they continued the tolerance practices from there and elsewhere. > > As a result, Jews moved fairly easily around the Empire. With Rome having a good sized population. > > Without these “prepared” communities, Christianity would have had a tough time spreading thru the Empire. Jews may have been exempted from Emperor worship but Christians most certainly were not. See [Pliny the Younger’s reports to the Emperor Trajan on Christians he tried in Pontus in the early 2nd century.](http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/24 "2016-05-17T03:19:51Z")
I believe that **Cecil** ’s sidekick **C K Dexter Haven** (a.k.a. **Dex** ) did a lengthy article, or series of articles, about this. I’m sure someone will post a link(s) promptly. Or hang tight, I’ll see if I can dig it up . . . ETA: Okay, here is what I was thinking of: A five-article series on Who Wrote The Bible? by **Dex** et al. [Part One here](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1985/who-wrote-the-bible-part-1), which in turn contains links to the other parts. Not exactly on-topic for this thread, I supposed, but probably of related interest. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/25 "2016-05-17T03:27:48Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Jesus may have been a charismatic speaker. But he really didn’t convert a lot of people. Most estimates are that he only had a few hundred followers at most in his lifetime. The real growth of Christianity occurred after Jesus’s death. Yes. As the gospels present it, he initially attracted large crowds. But, the more they heard what he had to say, the less they liked it. And of course the whole thing ends squalidly, with Jesus being arrested and crucified, and his followers deserting him and/or going into hiding. Without getting into the historicity of the gospels, which is really G.D. country, in so far as Jesus is presented as successful (attracting large crowds) we might obviously take this with a grain of salt. But in so far as he is presented as unsuccessful, we might take that a bit more seriously, because his later followers (who produced the gospels) have less incentive to make that up. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/26 "2016-05-17T03:38:58Z")
There’s also the reality that Jesus didn’t have all that large a potential audience. Jerusalem was the biggest city in Judea and its population was somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 depending on which estimate you accept. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/27 "2016-05-17T03:51:19Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > 300 years later, there were a good number of Christians. It may not have been a majority religion anywhere, but it did have presence in a number of places. And, it seems, Constantine’s mother was a Christian and may have brought him up that way. > > He ended up being a general of the Roman army and, on one outing, ended up winning an amazing battle, which he decided was thanks to Jesus’ god of peace and neighborly love. Following this, he legalized Christianity, removed financial support from all of the Pagan religions, gave land to the Christian church, began to build a city just for Christians, and ordered the composition of the New Testament. Some say that he may not have reaaaally viewed himself as a Christian, but he certainly seems to have gone pretty gung-ho for it. > > In end effect, he took Christianity from a minor religion to a major one, throughout the Roman empire. One cynical possibility is that Constantine recognized the Christians as a good power base. The Senatorial class had traditionally been the group that filled political posts and administered the Empire. But the Senatorial class had a long history and its own power base independent of Constantine. Constantine had to consider the possibility that they might turn against him and seek to replace him with a new Emperor. Christianity had been an illegal religion with no power base of its own. Christians would work for Constantine and be loyal to him because all the power they had came through his patronage. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/28 "2016-05-17T04:34:40Z")
By the time the crises of the Third Century ended, there were only really Christianity and Mithraism left from earlier cults and Mithraism was too heavily defined with the enemy i.e Persia. It’s interesting one of the reasons that Christianity did not spread beyond the Tigris is due to Sassanid persecutions, they also clamped down heavily on the Buddhists enclaves in what is now Iran. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/29 "2016-05-17T06:58:02Z")
> [@justanothermike](#): > > I know that I could research here but it’s such a vast topic and I don’t want to just run into Christian perspectives and so many works have their own slant on things. Ah, well the slant is to say "its the religion that started then ". False. The christian religion started with Constantine, how did it succeed before then ? it didnt exist before then. The 2nd-century Church Father Tertullian wrote that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” implying that the martyrs’ willing sacrifice of their lives leads to the conversion of others. What existed before Constantine was a martydom cult, based on the same core texts, mostly,but a vastly different slant to the religion. The book of John, and Revelations, totally different to Mathew Mark and Luke… strongly indicating how a new slant was being pushed… whether it was the same time or not , the martydom cult was Mathew Mark and Luke based… the new church runs more with John… ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/30 "2016-05-17T07:05:02Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > Ah, well the slant is to say "its the religion that started then ". > > False. The christian religion started with Constantine, how did it succeed before then ? it didnt exist before then. > The 2nd-century Church Father Tertullian wrote that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” implying that the martyrs’ willing sacrifice of their lives leads to the conversion of others. > > What existed before Constantine was a martydom cult, based on the same core texts, mostly,but a vastly different slant to the religion. The book of John, and Revelations, totally different to Mathew Mark and Luke… strongly indicating how a new slant was being pushed… whether it was the same time or not , the martydom cult was Mathew Mark and Luke based… the new church runs more with John… Well, except that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Revelations all long predate Constantine. So any differences or tensions which you may detect between them are all pre-Constantinian. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the eventual dominance of _this_ perspective rather than _that_ is due to Constantine, both perspectives predate Constantine and each can claim to be a development of Original Christianity ™. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/31 "2016-05-17T13:12:28Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > By the time the crises of the Third Century ended, there were only really Christianity and Mithraism left from earlier cults and Mithraism was too heavily defined with the enemy i.e Persia. The Sol Invictus movement, which was essentially sun worship, was still pretty strong during this period. The Cult of Isis had a big revival in the third century although that may have been fading by Constantine’s time. The Sabians, which appear to have been an offshoot of Judaism involving astrological worship, hung around long enough that they were mentioned in the Islamic texts. And the Mandaeans, a dualistic religion that believes in an ongoing battle between good and evil, are still around. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/32 "2016-05-17T15:35:14Z")
[QUOTE=Isilder] Ah, well the slant is to say "its the religion that started then ". False. The christian religion started with Constantine, how did it succeed before then ? it didnt exist before then. [/QUOTE] But Constantine would not have adopted a religion if it didn’t exist in numbers large enough to be available for unifying the Empire. It is related to the notion that Jesus didn’t have much of a following. Certainly most of the growth in the faith happened after His crucifixion, rather than during the two to four years of His ministry. But it was growth of something already started. The narrative, as far as can be established, is that Jesus began to preach. He picked up a lot of followers from people like John the Baptist. He then appeared in Jerusalem in what the Synoptic Gospels present as Palm Sunday, and the religious establishment (referred to as “the scribes and the Pharisees”) saw Him as a threat to the current state of affairs, and connived to get Jesus crucified as a trouble maker. After that, His followers began preaching and spreading the faith in Jerusalem. Pentecost is the traditional day on which they began to preach, and Luke says that there were three thousand converts made. It is not possible to verify that figure, obviously. At that point, Christianity appears to have been a charismatic cult, where speaking in tongues was a prominent feature. The faith spread to the point where Saul of Tarsus was appointed to try to stamp out the cult. His persecution of the church caused believers to spread out of Jerusalem to the surrounding countryside, and they took the faith with them. Then Saul had his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, was healed by a Christian, and adopted the faith and spent the rest of his life spreading it. The book of The Acts of the Apostles, written by the same author as Luke, talks about multiple missionary trips across much of the known world at that point. The church had huge appeal among the poor, as mentioned above, as well as women and slaves and so forth. It also appealed very much to proselytes, who were people who admired Judaism but were not circumcized and didn’t keep kosher. Read Paul for lots of discussion on whether Gentiles had to accept circumcision and keep the Jewish law. You can dicker about how much Christianity spread, but at the very least it spread enough to be noticed, even to the point of Nero blaming them as scapegoats for burning Rome, and the later persecutions under Diocletian. Yet it continued to spread, to the point that Constantine could see the faith as a plausible unifying principle for Rome. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/33 "2016-05-17T19:17:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The church had huge appeal among the poor, as mentioned above, as well as women and slaves and so forth. It also appealed very much to proselytes, who were people who admired Judaism but were not circumcized and didn’t keep kosher. Read Paul for lots of discussion on whether Gentiles had to accept circumcision and keep the Jewish law. I seem to keep drifting back to the peculiar status of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. Quite a few ancient writers had some interest in it. Not always positive, of course. It spread quite well in Egypt as noted. It provoked a lot of philosophical discussion among gentiles. While it gained some coverts, it seems that there were many people who generally liked the idea but weren’t happy about a lot of the rules, esp. the circumcision part. One of the great effects Paul had on the spread of Christianity was the “join us and keep your foreskins” pragmatism. OTOH, of the huge number of cults/religions of the time, it was likely that one would win out and the believers would naturally assume that their religion was special in some way. I assume that there’s a Latin term for that kind of logic. Such “victories” are a sequence of many very small wins. Any one of which going wrong would have changed the outcome. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/34 "2016-05-17T19:49:43Z")
OK, I don’t have any religious history background, but. . . Didn’t Christianity also have the added benefit of eternal life (assuming you followed the rules)? The Old Testament is pretty silent on an afterlife, but I don’t know whether Jews at the time believed that there was something to expect on ‘the other side’. Personally, I find the idea of eternal life pretty :eek:. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/35 "2016-05-17T20:18:16Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > I seem to keep drifting back to the peculiar status of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. Quite a few ancient writers had some interest in it. Not always positive, of course. It spread quite well in Egypt as noted. It provoked a lot of philosophical discussion among gentiles. > > While it gained some coverts, it seems that there were many people who generally liked the idea but weren’t happy about a lot of the rules, esp. the circumcision part. > > One of the great effects Paul had on the spread of Christianity was the “join us and keep your foreskins” pragmatism. Agreed - this was a major step from Christianity being a cult among Jews (although there were a lot of Jews all over the Roman Empire) to a movement among Gentiles. Another factor was the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Christianity had spread at that point far enough beyond Judaism to survive, and even to thrive (apart from the persecutions). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/36 "2016-05-17T20:20:11Z")
While Paul was primarily responsible for the spread of the gospel after Jesus’ crucifixion, people shouldn’t forget the apostle [Peter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter), who is commonly referred to as the 1st pope. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/37 "2016-05-17T20:26:06Z")
Traditionally Peter was assigned the job of bringing the Gospel to the Jews, and Paul to the Gentiles. So Paul had more to work with. Plus there was no one to write Peter’s biography, as Luke did (more or less) for Paul, up to the time of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. Paul mentions meeting with Peter and the other apostles early after his conversion, so his teachings about Jesus were not exactly _de novo_. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/38 "2016-05-17T20:39:43Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > It’s interesting one of the reasons that Christianity did not spread beyond the Tigris is due to Sassanid persecutions, they also clamped down heavily on the Buddhists enclaves in what is now Iran. The Nestorians spread widely to the east across much of Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2016, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/39 "2016-05-17T22:57:39Z")
Part of the reason the Nestorians were able to spread east was because, knowing the Nestorians were persecuted by the Romans, the Sassinids didn’t persecute them. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926/40 "2016-05-18T01:51:19Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Another factor was the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Christianity had spread at that point far enough beyond Judaism to survive, and even to thrive (apart from the persecutions). Yup. And in the second century CE it became distinctly disadvantageous in the Roman world to be perceived as Jewish. And here was Christianity, by now recognised as a distinct movement from Judaism, still containing much that would be familiar to Jews. So - though this is speculative - quite a number of Jews throughout the Roman world might have decided that it was preferable to be seen as a Christian rather than as a Jew, leading to a signficant uptick in the membership numbers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-small-band-of-jesus-followers-to-christianity-how/754926.md?page=3)