At its Core, Christianity is a Gay Religion

[Metis]

Can read Medieval Greek! Check you out.

A book about Byzantine Christianity sounds interesting. I don’t know much about byzantine theology, but I know it was supplanted by Constantinople. They just killed everybody who disagreed with them.

Right now, I’m reading the works of Bart Ehrman, which talks about Apocalyptic Judaism and Gnosticism in early and medieval Christianity.  Is it possible that Byzantine theology was an offshoot of Apocalyptic Christianity one they realized the end was not as eminent as they’d thought it would be? In this you’re right that Christianity will not die anytime soon. They’re too much like a chameleon.

Are you in Asia?

Heh, well it's not as interesting as it sounds :p There's quite a lot of literature and poetry that has never found its way into English but most of what I read or have read is work related, so it's more often than not fairly dry theological works and histories like the Alexiad to give some historical background to the material.

Byzantium is just the old Greek name for the city that became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and Constantine renamed it to Constantinople when he shifted the united (eastern and western) government over there, and it later became an absolute theocratic monarchy (the motto of the Empire actually was "One People, One God, One Emperor") that lasted until 1453. It was renamed Istanbul in 1930 when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was replaced by the (supposedly) secular Turkish government. Funnily enough they never actually called themselves Byzantines and only ever rarely Greeks; to the very end and even afterwards they always self-identified as Romanoi, Romans!

Pretty much all modern Christianity is a development of Apocalyptic Judaism, since the early church had a very strong idea that the end was nigh and it would occur before the last of the first generation of Christian converts died. It was never quite as powerful or frequent as the apocalyptic movements in the west, since the Byzantine Emperor really was an autocrat and had far more power than the Pope ever did but there were apocalytic flare ups that resulted in violence every now and then(there's actually a few episodes in history where Popes were openly humiliated and quashed by the Emperors when they thought they were getting too big for their boots, such as Pope Martin I who was literally dragged from Rome to Constantinople and publicly tortured and executed on the orders of Emperor Constans). It's actually why the Germanic Holy Roman Empire was formed, the Pope picked out the strongest European leader he could to defend him from the Byzantine Emperor...But ended up underneath many of the earlier Holy Roman Emperors instead.

Byzantine Theology is unusual in that it lacks a strong apocalyptic bent despite agreeing one would happen, very different from all other forms of Christianity. Catholicism might seem similar with the role of a Pope but the Church and State even at during their strongest union had some barrier between them; the Byzantines had no such distinction. The Emperor literally was Gods chosen champion on Earth, lord of the material world and you only knew he no longer spoke for God when he was deposed or died of old age (interestingly their monarchy wasn't hereditary and many did in inherit the job from their parents or spouses but most were elected former Generals). Because they saw their kingdom as actually being part of the Kingdom of God (they saw Christendom as consisting of two parts, an Earthly Kingdom as well as a Heavenly one, the former led by the emperor and the latter by Jesus) the second coming wasn't something that came up much in their thinking, they never actually went so far to say it had already happened like the Jehovas Witnesses but it wasn't something that concerned them except in times of crisis like when they lost wars.

Naturally this all took a huge U-Turn when Byzantium was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks and the last Byzantine Emperor vanishing in battle led to Greek Orthodoxy taking a very different form today.

If the avatar of God vanishing from earth couldn't kill Greek Orthodoxy I don't think a change in something so minor as a few rules regarding sexual conduct will kill Christianity as a whole.

Gosh I've written too much already! And no, I'm not in Asia. I'm in Europe