The Triumph of Christianity (2 page)

P
ART I
Christmas Eve

Chapter One
The Religious Context

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE, ALMOST EVERYWHERE
on earth the gods were thought to be many and undependable. Aside from having some magical powers, and perhaps the gift of immortality, the gods had normal human concerns and shortcomings. They ate, drank, loved, envied, fornicated, cheated, lied, and otherwise set morally “unedifying examples.”
¹
They took offense if humans failed to properly propitiate them, but otherwise took little interest in human affairs. The Jews in the West and the Zoroastrians in the East rejected these ideas about the gods, opting instead for a morally demanding monotheism. But aside from these two marginal faiths, it was a pagan world.

However, this pagan world was far from static. Travel and trade applied not only to people and commerce, but to the gods as well. As a result, Rome acquired an extremely complex religious makeup that brought about considerable competition and often inspired bitter conflicts and repression.

Pagan Temple Societies

D
ESPITE WORSHIPPING MANY GODS,
aside from Rome, most societies were not religiously diverse. Even when gods had their own individual temples, they were part of a unified system, fully funded and often closely regulated by the state. Consequently, the primary mission of pagan temples was to ensure that the gods favored the state and its ruling elite—often to such an extent that only the privileged few could gain admission to the temples. Some temples did provide an area accessible to the public, but it usually was located so that it was not possible to catch even a glimpse of the temple’s image of god—the idol.

In most societies, pagan temples were served by an
exclusive priesthood
—either based on an hereditary religious caste or recruited from the elite—and they served a
clientele
rather than a membership. Clients came to the temples for various festivals and sometimes in pursuit of personal spiritual or material benefits, but most often the temples served as eating clubs. From time to time, someone would donate an animal to be sacrificed, after which the donor and the donor’s friends would have a feast on the meat (temples employed skilled chefs). For many of those involved in the temples, these banquets were the sum of their participation.

Of course, such tepid temple activities were relatively incidental to the lives and activities of those involved: people only
went
to temples, they did not
belong
to them. Those who favored a particular god did not identify themselves in those terms—no one claimed to be a Zeusian or a Jovian. In fact, most people patronized several temples and various gods, depending on their tastes and needs. There was no congregational life, because there were no congregations, in the sense of regular gatherings of groups having a common religious focus and a sense of belonging. Nor did the pagan priests need (or want) the support of congregations. They charged substantial fees for all their services and were, in any event, usually well funded by the state.

And what of the gods? For all their faults they were very appealing because they were so human! Compared with the distant, mysterious, awesome, demanding, and difficult to comprehend God presented by monotheists,
²
people often seemed more comfortable with gods that were less awe-inspiring and more human, less demanding and more permissive—gods who were easily propitiated with sacrifices. These preferences help explain the very frequent “backsliding” from monotheism and into “idolatry” that took place repeatedly in both ancient Israel and Persia. There is something reassuring and attractive about nearby, tangible, very “human” gods.

Zoroastrians and the Magi

W
HETHER THE
J
EWS OR
the Zoroastrians were the first major group of monotheists cannot be determined, but it is clear that they influenced one another, especially during the captivity of the Jewish elite in Babylon at the time when Zoroastrianism was in its early and most energetic days.
³
Most historians now accept that Zoroaster grew up in what is today eastern Iran during the sixth century
BCE
.
⁴
He was initiated into the local pagan priesthood when he was about fifteen and five years later took up a wandering life devoted to intense spiritual reflection and searching. Then, when he was about thirty, he had a revelation that Ahura Mazdā was the One True God.

All monotheisms face the need to account for the existence of evil. If God is responsible for everything, including the existence of evil, he would appear to be an utterly incomprehensible and terrible being. To avoid that conclusion, monotheisms either posit a God so remote and inactive as to be, in effect, responsible for nothing, or they pose the existence of an inferior evil creature, a sort of godling, whom God allows to cause evil for a variety of reasons, many of them involving “free will.” Judaism, and subsequently Christianity, postulates the existence of Satan. Zoroaster revealed that Ahura Mazdā is engaged in a battle with the inferior Angra Mianyu, the “Fiendish Spirit.” He also taught that each human is required to choose between good and evil, and the outcome of the battle “rests on mankind: the support which each man lends to the side he has chosen will add permanent strength to it; in the long run, therefore, the acts of man will weight the scales in favor of one side or the other.”
⁵
No more powerful doctrine of “free will” and its implications has ever been stated. In keeping with his explanation of evil, Zoroaster taught that the souls of the virtuous will ascend to an attractive heaven, while evildoers will plummet into hell.

Zoroastrianism spread rapidly and soon became the official religion of the kingdom of Chorasmia (in modern Uzbekistan). In the sixth century
BCE
, when Cyrus the Great submerged Chorasmia into his newly established Persian Empire, Zoroastrianism initially lost its official standing. But Cyrus’s son Darius became a convert, and when he gained the throne, Zoroastrianism regained power.
⁶
As the years passed and new Persian emperors followed one another to the throne, and especially as new societies committed to the old religions were made part of the empire, the influence of Zoroastrianism began to wane. Long before Christmas Eve, Persia was once again a pagan temple society—except for the Magi.

The Magi were a guild of professional Persian priests who served any and all pagan religions in the Persian Empire. They also were famous astrologers who taught that practice to the Greeks (who referred to them as the Chaldeans). At some point they began to serve as priests of Zoroastrianism too, and eventually they converted.
⁷
Through the centuries the Magi served as the primary proponents of Zoroastrianism and preservers of its scriptures. They also were widely acknowledged throughout the classical world, even by such famous authors as Plato and Pliny,
⁸
as able to decipher omens and forecast the future, as related in the account of their arrival in Bethlehem.

Religions in Rome

T
HE
R
OMANS WERE FAR
more religious than the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, or other pagans of their era. “Every public act began with a religious ceremony, just as the agenda of every meeting of the senate was headed by religious business.”
⁹
Nothing of any significance was done in Rome without the performance of the proper rituals. The senate did not meet, armies did not march, and decisions, both major and minor, were postponed if the signs and portents were not favorable. Such importance was placed on divination that, for example, if lightning were observed during the meeting of some public body, “the assembly would be dismissed, and even after the vote had been taken the college of augurs might declare it void.”
¹⁰

The ubiquity of very public rituals and the constant rescheduling of public life, including festivals and holidays, in response to the “temper of the gods,” made religion an unusually prominent part of the everyday life, not only of the Roman elite, but of the general public.
¹¹
In contrast to other pagan societies, the temples were not closed to ordinary Romans, nor were the idols hidden from public view. Everyone was welcome and their patronage was solicited. Consequently, even many poor people and slaves contributed funds to the construction of temples—as is attested by temple inscriptions listing donors.
¹²

By Christmas Eve, Rome was ruled by a tyrant emperor, but religiously Rome sustained the first relatively free marketplace. Granted that there was an official Roman paganism, but it was mainly supported by voluntary contributions, as were an extraordinary array of other faiths, not only across the empire, but within the city of Rome itself. Many of these were “Oriental” faiths that had come to Rome from Egypt and the Middle East. There also was a large Jewish enclave in Rome and in many major Roman cities.

A remarkable aspect of the absence of a subsidized state religion in Rome is found in the priesthood. Even the traditional Roman temples were not served by professional, full-time priests. Of course, priests showed up to conduct festivals or supervise a major sacrifice, but most of the time the Roman temples seem to have been served only by a few caretakers who lacked any religious duties or authority. In addition, except for a very small number of priests who were advisors to the senate and those who undertook divination, nearly all other priests were prominent citizens who served in the priestly role only part-time. Presumably these amateur Roman priests received some training for their duties, but it could only have been minor compared with the full-time, professional priests found in Greece, Egypt, or Persia.
¹³
It does not follow, however, that Roman priests were less sincere than were the full-time priests in other pagan societies. To the contrary, it is a closed, hereditary priestly elite that is most susceptible to cynicism and unbelief.
¹⁴
In addition, because Roman priests were amateurs for whom being a priest was not their primary role, “Roman temples were not independent centres of power, influence, or riches... they did not... have priestly personnel attached to them and they did not therefore provide a power base for the priests.”
¹⁵
Hence, Roman Temples were rather inexpensive to operate since support of a professional priesthood was the major cost involved in sustaining temples elsewhere.

If Roman paganism differed by needing to be financially self-reliant, it did not differ in the number, character, and specializations of its gods. Nor could it have done so given that nearly all of Rome’s gods were of Greek origins, they in turn having come from Egypt, whose gods originated in Sumer! As the gods migrated, only their names were changed.
¹⁶

Seven major gods were established prior to the founding of the Roman Republic, headed by Jupiter (also called Jove) who was regarded as the supreme father of the gods and eventually equated with Zeus. Once the Republic was established, the gods proliferated rapidly. But even when official paganism possessed an abundance of temples, both in Rome and in all the other cities of the empire, somehow they didn’t seem able to provide enough religion. New faiths continued to arrive from the East and Egypt—the so-called Oriental faiths.

Oriental Faiths

T
HE
O
RIENTAL FAITHS INSPIRED
remarkable levels of public enthusiasm. All were “pagan” faiths, but with some very significant differences. For one thing, they didn’t simply promote another temple to another god—each was intensely focused on one god, albeit they accepted the existence of other gods. This intense focus resulted in something else new to paganism: congregations.

One of these new faiths came from Greece where it had developed as a movement devoted to Dionysus, whom the Romans knew as Bacchus. The Bacchanalians were intense, proselytizing mystery religionists who aroused vicious persecution by the Roman Senate on what probably were spurious grounds that they engaged in drunken immorality.

Another of the Oriental faiths was devoted to the goddess Cybele, known to the Romans as Magna Mater (the Great Mother), and to an unusually handsome Phrygian shepherd named Attis (who, in some accounts, is of supernatural origins) with whom Cybele fell in love. Unfortunately, the young man became sexually involved with a nymph and Cybele found out. In a fit of extreme anger Cybele caused Attis to become insane, and in his mad frenzy he castrated himself, lay down under a pine tree and bled to death. Cybele sorrowed and caused Attis to be reborn, and he became her companion ever after. Attis never became a major figure, remaining only a member of his lover’s supporting cast. However, his self-castration became a major feature of Cybelene worship. For one thing, the most solemn ritual of Cybelene worship was the
taurobolium,
wherein a bull was slaughtered on a wooden platform under which lay new initiates who were then drenched in the bull’s blood—all in commemoration of Attis’s mutilation. It was believed that the blood washed away each initiate’s past, giving each a new life. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect linking the Attis story to Cybelene worship is that all “priests of Cybele were eunuchs; self-castration in ecstasy was part of the process of [their] initiation.”
¹⁷
This Cybelene mythology and the self-castration of her priests must have developed in Greece, because both were fully developed by the time that Magna Mater reached Rome.

The next Oriental faith to reach Rome brought the goddess Isis, who eventually became the focus of a serious pagan attempt to approximate monotheism. Isis began as an Egyptian nature goddess who was responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile and gained substantial followings throughout the Grecian world after Ptolemy I, a comrade of Alexander the Great and the first Greek ruler of Egypt, had her promoted to the savior goddess, “or more explicitly ‘saviour of the human race.’ ”
¹⁸
Isis also inspired
congregations
. Her followers set themselves apart and gathered regularly; they did not disparage the other gods and temples, but neither did they attend to them. The first temple of Isis in the West was built in Pompeii in about 100
BCE
. Soon after that came her first temple in Rome, and many more were to follow.