HOW CHRISTIANITY BECAME A GREAT RELIGION As the founder of a new religion, let alone the greatest the world has ever known, Jesus of Nazareth was a disadvantage. He was Galilean. His base was a small fishing village on the northern shore of a sixty-four square mile lake. There was a Roman city of some importance less than a day’s walk away, and the metropolis of Jerusalem to the south. But if we rely on the evidence of the synoptic gospels, it’s evident Jesus proclaimed his message to an exclusively Jewish audience in a backwater province of the Roman empire. Jews were a not much admired minority and among them those who gathered to witness the exorcisms and healings Jesus was famous for were scarcely the most distinguished or important residents of the Empire. Their standing in the wider community was such that they seemed ill suited to proselytize successfully Worse yet, Jesus saw no need to found an enduring new religion. Rather, in company with other apocalyptic Jews of the time (John and Paul among them), he was consumed by a vision of an approaching kingdom (Mark 1:15) that would sweep away all the detritus and misery of this world and replace it by the rule of agents of God himself come to earth to create a new world. His message implied that at any moment now the need for religion--for humans grasping as best they can what God requires of us--would cease as God’s agents (Jesus and his disciples eminent among them) themselves separated the sheep from the goats and made direct provision for and ordered the lives of those who heeded the gospel Jesus proclaimed, The religion of Jesus was scarcely suited to become a world religion. Its social base was marginalized and deficient in resources, and its message had but a short shelf life. Without friends who took up his cause and reinvented it, Jesus’s religion was doomed. If it was to survive at all, let alone continue on to greatness, it needed a lucky break or two.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:23:02 +0000
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