Five reasons why early Christianity was a success. Edward Gibbon's thoughts in Decline and Fall.
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2024
- Edward Gibbon the historian and author of 'Decline and fall of the Roman Empire' laid out his five main reasons for the success and spread of Christianity and the fall of paganism in Chapter 15 of his book. Well thought out and written, Gibbon gets to the heart of the problem on why the new religion gradually destroyed the Greco-Roman culture and belief and changed Europe entirely.
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CHAPTERS
01:17 Reason 1 - Intolerant Zeal
05:08 Reason 2 - A hankering for an eternal life after death
09:10 Reason 3 - A Belief in miracles
11:43 Reason 4 - Seizing the moral high ground
13:02 Reason 5 - The cohesion of the community
16:04 Summing up
IMAGES USED
Image of Edward Gibbon
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Henry Walton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Image of book
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Image extracted from page 001 of volume 1 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ... , in Twelfe Volumes . A new edition, by GIBBON, Edward. Original held and digitised by the British Library.
"Pride under the guise of devotion"
Gibbon nailed it.
Thx for watching!
People who want to read Gibbon without the eye strain will be glad to know that the whole book is on audio for free thanks to our good friends at Librivox.
Appreciate you flagging that up :)
"That old saying by Cato is quite well known; he said he was surprised that one haruspex did not burst out laughing when he saw another one."
- Cicero (De Divinatione)
It's a good one!
Christianity built on the pagan model of worship,the Roman official language ( latin) and used the Jewish "bible" as its intellectual basis. It's a very clever scheme .
Annexing pagan festivals and important religious days (like 25th Dec!) into the Christian calendar certainly helped as a 'carrot' for the rural general masses who had no time or inclination for delving into deeper philosophy
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 I disagree. The rural masses' philosophy was deep with its manifestations in the natural world.
@@mns8732 Perhaps. My meaning was that the rural masses were largely illiterate. Their faith was less based on the finer points of philosophy and more culture and ritual based. However if someone had access to education that changed the equation
Thank you for this. Greatly enjoying your videos.
Thx! Appreciate the watch!
Good to see you again.
Cheers Jerry! Thanks for taking time to watch!
You say our modern morals are complex which is rather laughable, however our estrangement with deep philosophical dialogue because of christianity is truly shameful.
Hi I think I said our morals are more sophisticated and include the rejection of slavery, the equal rights of women, rejection of all sorts of discrimination against our fellow humans etc - or certainly that was what I was trying to get at. Absolutely agree regarding our estrangement with deep philosophical dialogue
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 your modern morals came due to Christianity
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 It was the Christians that got rid of slavery. It was the Christians that brought the rights of men and equality. Because God does not care for money or skills. But good deeds. lol! You wouldn't know about these things without the Bible. And Rome was a show shall list dictatorship. It is just you show shall lists arrgh arrogant and think you are better than everyone. That is all it is. So much for that equality.
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 Most of those things have not yielded good fruit, the end of slavery is good if you repatriate the slaves, women should be constrained to a degree lest they undermine pillars of virtue in society, and fellow humans is globalist speak for citizen of the world, deracinated and separated from ones tribe, bugmen basically.
To blame Christianity for silencing "deep philosophical dialogue" is, itself laughable.
First principle philosophical dialogue exploded 400 years before Christianity and upon its arrival, it usurped philosophical thought and was only revived through Scientific and Scholastic advances brought about BY the Church.
Not until St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Bacon...did we see that philosophy and Christianity were not mutually exclusive but shared many attributes that hinted at a synchronicity, unexplained by the dialectical.
Over 2000 years after the birth of Christ, Christianity, Philosophy and Science have never been so intertwined in the dialectic as they are today.
Back in Socrates day, philosophy WAS Science. Christianity (scholasticism) separated the two.
You'd think both Science and Philosophy going forward would eventually CANCEL out Christianity but the opposite happened.
Philosophy has taken a back seat to the Sovereignty of God and Science has done more to PROVE the existence of a higher "power" than to disprove one.
Brilliant!
Thanks!
Thanks to Constantine.
Definitely! Turned a minor religion into the state belief giving it a huge advantage
👍👍👍
Gibbon ya fue superado , usar un historiador del siglo XVIII.
Still arguably the best read on the fall of the Roman Empire despite its age
If Christianity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire how did the Eastern Roman Empire last over 1000s years after Constantine moved the capitol? There was something else, the most likely guess is why Constantine moved the capitol in the first place, economic geography.
“Unsocial” - That’s a terrible characterization of Hellenistic Judaism. The ethic of Jesus is the ethic of Jewish people and Judaism had many converts and was a major competing culture to Hellenism in the ancient world. Benzion Netanyahu does a great job outlining the real character of late Judean culture in the wider context of the ancient world. Far more nuanced than Gibbons’ crusty cliched understanding of ancient Jewish culture and religion.
NO, TACITUS WAS THE MOST FAMOUS AUTHORITY
Tacitus certainly is an important resource on 1st century Rome although a shame that he didn't cover Christianity (and other various cults) in greater depth.
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 thats because no one at the time took the idiotic cult seriously. But Gibbon is a hero of mine. He was right about Christianity.
@@FlaviusClaudiusJulianus361 Sadly he had no benefit of hindsight to know how important Christianity will get in the future.
@@Katherine-jl3eyHow was he right?
My man Mommsen is a pretty good roman history source as well