RE: Didn't Nero launch Christianity?
April 12, 2019 at 9:33 am
(This post was last modified: April 12, 2019 at 9:56 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Christianity appealed to pagan romans because they were poor and starving, and the christians were handing out cake. They were also suffering through a rising crescendo of epidemics, and alot of movements that posited a resurrection of the dead gained traction at the time.
The last pagan emperor of rome very handily identified this, and knew that the failure of the state to provide for the least among them was the main contributor to the rise of a parasitic religious order. He tried to turn things around..but it was too little, too late, and he was assassinated. His successor rose to power by demolishing the apparatus loyal to the previous regimes, the state cult, and appealing to a growing body of the populous in christians and more specifically their religious leaders who had long sought access to roman authority (a privilege they had once possessed but had lost in the interim) .
Nero may not have pinned the great fire on christians, most of what we know about nero comes from openly hostile biographers in later regimes and there is no corroboration of this incident, but supposing that he did..no, as far as emperors go, he didn;t do much if anything to help advance the christian cause.
Acro..christian matrydom is a myth, the majority of people ever "charged" with christianity recanted and made offerings at the temple. Magic book and later christian propagandists tell a story entirely different from the reality of christianities development or interaction with power. The reality of this is better compared to politics today than the story of the piously defiant and suffering martyrs to the cause. Ironically, the martyrdom myth was sold to christians in an era when christianity had uncontested power. As ever, the true origins of the faith were embarrassing to christians....which is perplexing, considering how upfront they were to begin with. The reason that we know, for example....how christianity grew it;s numbers in rome before it could wield the power of the state (to persecute other christians, lol)..is that this and many other accusations were laid at the feet of early evangelists, and they just flat out said "Yeah, you caught us, we're doing that...someone has to...."
The last pagan emperor of rome very handily identified this, and knew that the failure of the state to provide for the least among them was the main contributor to the rise of a parasitic religious order. He tried to turn things around..but it was too little, too late, and he was assassinated. His successor rose to power by demolishing the apparatus loyal to the previous regimes, the state cult, and appealing to a growing body of the populous in christians and more specifically their religious leaders who had long sought access to roman authority (a privilege they had once possessed but had lost in the interim) .
Nero may not have pinned the great fire on christians, most of what we know about nero comes from openly hostile biographers in later regimes and there is no corroboration of this incident, but supposing that he did..no, as far as emperors go, he didn;t do much if anything to help advance the christian cause.
Acro..christian matrydom is a myth, the majority of people ever "charged" with christianity recanted and made offerings at the temple. Magic book and later christian propagandists tell a story entirely different from the reality of christianities development or interaction with power. The reality of this is better compared to politics today than the story of the piously defiant and suffering martyrs to the cause. Ironically, the martyrdom myth was sold to christians in an era when christianity had uncontested power. As ever, the true origins of the faith were embarrassing to christians....which is perplexing, considering how upfront they were to begin with. The reason that we know, for example....how christianity grew it;s numbers in rome before it could wield the power of the state (to persecute other christians, lol)..is that this and many other accusations were laid at the feet of early evangelists, and they just flat out said "Yeah, you caught us, we're doing that...someone has to...."
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