Rudradev tried to correct your "history" which is basically a complete acceptance of obvious Christian propaganda.abhischekcc wrote:Again, wrong way of reading history.Rudradev wrote:What economic-military and demographic weight did the early Christians have against the Roman Empire? Yet, by this one expedient of targeting influential people and seizing authority over prevailing self-narrative, they conquered the Roman Empire during the reign of one monarch, Constantine. Then they consolidated their grasp by recasting the entire way in which the Roman Empire saw itself, the world, its past history, and by projection its future destiny. JohneeG ji has written of the disastrous results for all of Europe in his new thread.
Xtians were highly persecuted by the Roman empire. After many centuries, it was made a partner along with two other religions - European Sun worship and Persian religion of Mithraism.
Much later, due to Constantine getting a sun stroke, seeing a cross in his delirium, and then winning the next battle - he became convinced of the power of the 'cross'.
Then Xtian religion was made official religion of Roman empire, and then using it as pretext - Rome attacked everything not Xtian. This is how Xtian religion became the sole religion of Europe - when a military power decided to use Xtian religion for political purposes.
Otherwise the CHurch fathers' were nothing more than Sunday lunch for lions at the circus.
Only after this was the Church able to indulge in inquisitions, witch hunts, and other such happy activities.
Remember even in this sequence, it was the Roman military power that subsumed Xtian Church to its own purpose, and not the other way round.
Most "persecution" of Xtians was totally made up or even well deserved because Xtians would vandalize temples etc. The same behavior they exhibit in India.
Armenia became Christianized before Rome did and you know how, forcible conversion. There was no Rome there but Xtians exhibited the same behavior they have always done.
There was even a Hindu colony in Armenia which put up stubborn resistance:
http://vajrin.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/ ... f-armenia/
So contrary to your theory, Christians were exhibiting their fanaticism long before they ever became the official religion of the Roman empire and imposed their religion on Armenia by force after converting a section of the elite.
The truth of the matter is:
So it should be obvious where Xtians got their fanaticism from.During the Second Temple Era, Judaism did not stop at mere proselytization, as we can see in these two passages concerning Simon Maccabaeus and his son John Hyrcanus, who reigned as rulers of Judea for almost four decades (142-104 BC):
Soon after his accession Simon sent an army against Jaffa, under the command of Jonathan ben Absolom, with orders to expel the foreigners and secure the port as part of Judea. The fraternal wars in the Seleucid Kingdom provided him with an opportunity to remove the last serious threat to Judea by conquering Gezer, which controlled the road to the coast, and the Acra, which since the time of Antiochus Epiphanes had endangered the security of Jewish Jerusalem. The conquest of these places was made possible by the rapid progress of the Jewish Army in seige techniques. Gezer was invested according to all the rules of that art and attacked with the sophisticated siege engines that were in use in the hellenistic armies. The population was expelled, pagan cults abolished and the city resettled with Jews faithful to their religion. Simon also built himself a palace in Gezer, which became one of the administrative centres of Judea. John Hyrcanus, Simon's son, was appointed governor of the city. An even greater impression on contemporaries was made by the conquest of the Acra, for as long as the citadel was inhabited by hellenists and garrisoned by gentiles Judea's independence could not be assured. On the 23rd of Iyyar in the year 141, Simon's forces entered the Acra .... The day of the citadel's conquest was made a permanent feast day ....
[A History of the Jewish People, Ben-Sasson & Malamat, p. 215]
John Hyrcanus' wars were essentially a continuation of those begun by his father and uncles, but were pursued on a larger scale and, to some extent, by different means. In principle, John's position was the same as that previously formulated by Simon in his reply to the envoys of Antiochus Sidetes -- that the whole of Palestine was the ancestral heritage of the Jewish nation. In that heritage there was no room for foreign cults, as evidenced by the conversion of Idumea and the destruction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. Under John Hyrcanus territorial expansion proceeded in various directions -- south, north and east -- with decisive consequences for the history of the people and the land ....
At the time of John Hyrcanus' death, in 104, the Jews were expanding their borders everywhere in Palestine. His son and heir Judah Aristobulus I, and the latter's younger brother, Antigonus, had been among the chief implementers of their father's policy during his lifetime. Now they completed the conquest of Galilee and defeated the Itureans, who seem to have ruled over part of the Upper Galilee. Like the Idumeans before them and in line with the policy developed by John Hyrcanus, they were converted ....
The conquests of John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus increased Judea to several times its former size. Not only had virtually the entire population outside the territory of the hellenistic cities come under Jewish rule and become part of the Jewish nation ....
[pp. 218-9]
Aristobulus was succeeded by Alexander Jannai, whose reign was "a succession of conquests and wars", and under whom "Hasmonean Judea reached its largest territorial size." [p. 220] Jannai ruled from 103 to 76 BC, and was succeeded by his wife Shelomziyyon (Salome) Alexandra. But when Alexandra died in 67 Judea plunged into literally fratricidal civil war, and within a few years the Kingdom was reduced to an "autonomous" vassal state of the Roman Empire:
The conquest of Judea by the Romans [64 BC] resulted in decisive political changes. Syria became a Roman province, but Judea was granted autonomy, though its territory was reduced and its ruler's authority was dependent on the provincial administration of Syria. The autonomous state of Judea was shorn of all Jannai's conquests and part of those of Simon and John Hyrcanus. It was forced to surrender the entire coastal plain from the Carmel to Raphia including Jaffa; this deprived it of any outlet to the sea, and in that respect the situation reverted to what it had been before the Hasmonean Revolt. In addition, part of Idumea (Marissa) and the bulk of Samaria were detached. As a result, the Jewish population of Palestine was no longer territorially continuous, and contact between Jerusalem and the Jewish centre in Galilee could be maintained only through the Joran Valley. The fact that Pompey freed the large hellenistic cities in Trans-Jordan and Scythopolis from Judean rule was only to be expected; they formed themselves into the Decapolis of Union of the Ten Cities and resumed their life as independent cities. The Greek cities on the coast were also freed. What remained to Hyrcanus II was Judea (including southern Samaria, which had been annexed under Jonathan), most of Idumea, the parts of the Trans-Jordan closely settled by Jews (the Peraea), and Galilee.
The tendency of Pompey and his successors, the first proconsuls of Syria, was to rehabilitate the Greek urban settlements at the expense of the Jewish population, which had so remarkably gained in strength during the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom. But the hands of the clock could be set back entirely, and for many years to come the Jewish population of Palestine was to exceed the gentiles in strength and numbers. The absorption of the gentile population, excluding the hellenized cities and the Samaritan concentration around Mount Gerizim, as a result of the proselytizing policy of John Hyrcanus and his successors, was irreversible.
[pp. 223 - 224]
The point of this is that well before Jesus, let alone Constantine, Judaism had already adopted not only persuasion (proselytism) but also coercion as a mode to be employed in spreading the religion of the One True God. However, the use of coercion was limited to Palestine and its immediate environs, while proselytism went on throughout the Diaspora (especially in urban centers with large well establish Jewish communities).
One interesting wrinkle that is introduced by the reality of Jewish proselytism (and, more generally, the idea of "spreading" Judaism) is that the Apostle Paul is seen in a new light. Usually he is proclaimed as the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and it is claimed, by those who know little about the actual history of the period (and especially about Jewish history), that his eagerness to preach to the Gentiles was Paul's distinctive contribution to early Church history. But the truth is that Jewish proselytism had always been aimed at Gentiles (although there was also internal proselytism on behalf of competing Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees), and this proselytism had, as already noted, roots going back many centuries prior to Paul's arrival on the scene...
http://egregores.blogspot.ca/2009/09/co ... ry-of.html
This business of blaming Rome & portraying Xtianity as some hippy peace cult before Constantine is pure propaganda.
BTW your "persecuted" poor innocent Christians attacked and beat up Porphyry in public at Caesarea, did you know that?
but seriously, a consolidation internally....?
