"Do Not Go Looking for Christians" by missoularedhead
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
After a couple of days of being flattered to be asked, a couple of days panicking that I had nothing to say, an a couple of days trying to figure out how to bow out gracefully, here’s my contribution to the Rome series, in which I talk about something I know and why it drives me crazy when movies and books get it wrong. Yeah, I’m going there. I’m gonna talk about one of those things you don’t discuss at cocktail parties. Oh yes, you know what it is… religion.
Remember back to when we were kiddies, and got introduced to the Greek and Roman gods. Remember how much FUN they were? How dysfunctional? Of course, we got the sanitized version; no good letting the kiddies read about incest, violence, and lots and lots of premarital sex! And we learned that the Roman gods were, if not exact, a damned fine replica of the Greek gods, only with longer names. And then Jesus came along, and everything changed.
In 312, on the eve of battle, Constantine was said to have seen a flaming neon cross in the sky and that was that; suddenly the Roman empire was Christian. In every single modern narrative I’ve read of this transition from Roman polytheism to Christianity (and by ‘modern’, I mean pretty much everything written in the last, oh, 4 centuries or so), there’s this bright, shining line – one day the Romans were pagans, the next they were all happy Christians.
Except it isn’t. It’s just as dirty and messy and ugly as Mel Gibson made it out to be in Passion of the Christ (or as I like to call it, Mad Max for the churchgoers). Christians got thrown to lions. And crucifixion wasn’t something dreamed up especially for Jesus. In fact, if historical accounts are to be believed, every crucifix is wrong; Jesus was charged with treason, and would have been hung heels high. But that’s a minor detail. No, what bugs me is that while we can read the nuances inherent in the ending of slavery (no one thinks that the slaves were freed and suddenly became equals of their former masters), or the messiness of colonialism (no one thinks India went back to what it had been before the British showed up), but we cannot see these shades of gray when it comes to Christianity in the Roman empire.
Early Roman Christians were into secrecy (a secret handshake, perhaps?) and their secretive ways caught the eye, or at least the ear, of the Powers That Be. Not only were they refusing to properly worship the emperor, but there were rumors that they were cannibals, practiced incest, and all sorts of other nasty things (nasty, of course, being a relative term with folks like Caligula around). Others, less threatened than intrigued by this new mystery cult – and make no mistake, there was a plethora of these groups running around – added Jesus to their panthenon. Caesar, Zeus, and Jesus – that’s the Holy Trinity, right? No? Damn.
Look, I’m not saying that Christianity didn’t take over the Empire – Constantine made sure it did, imprisoning people who violated Christian sexual mores, seizing land from senators who died without an heir and giving it to the church, and eventually closing the Roman temples. So yeah, Christianity got a leg up. But that doesn’t mean that the boys in the legions gave up Mithras (whose birthday the Christians co-opted). Or that pregnant women stopped offering up prayers to Juno. They just threw Jesus and Mary into the mix.
*From a letter of advice given to Pliny the Younger in 111 by the Emperor Trajan
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Missoularedhead is the internet pseudonym of Melissa Bruninga, a woman of almosts --- almost a PhD in Medieval History, almost full time faculty -- who maintains a somewhat ranty blog and spends far too much time arguing about American politics, books, and beer. We are extraordinarily pleased to have her contribute to Pornokitsch.