This is the text of a talk I've given on many occasions, sometimes (despite their knowledge of my atheism) even in front of church groups. The full title is...
The 13th Apostle: Constantine the Great and the Marriage of Church and State
Even when monotheism appeared, things didn’t change at first. The Hebrew God, though he claimed superiority over all others, cared only about his chosen people. As far as other folks were concerned, they served as victims when he favored his chosen people and instruments of His wrath when they or their leaders strayed from Him. The Old Testament is full of examples of the Hebrews getting their butts kicked for pissing God off.
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Possibly earlier than Hebrew monotheism, was the Egyptian experiment with it. Here, in the 14th century BC, the Pharaoh Akhenaten set up the obscure sun god Aten as the supreme deity and himself as his high priest. Neither Akhenaten nor his god could stand rivals so he suppressed the worship of the rest of the Egyptian pantheon. Still, he didn’t push his god on anyone but Egyptians and the experiment did not last past his lifetime.
There was one exception to the rule. Once in a while you had to pay at least lip service to the Imperial cult. Even here, the idea came, not from Rome, but from the eastern provinces where there were long traditions of equating temporal power with divinity. These provinces petitioned the Romans for permission to set up temples to the genius of Rome and her emperors. As used here, the word “genius” refers to the immortal spirit of Rome rather than it’s intelligence.
For most of the 5,000 or so years of recorded history, religion was a national thing: the Babylonians had their gods, the Assyrians theirs, the Egyptians theirs and so on. These were often rather tolerant gods. They had to be. The world was seen to be too big and too complicated for just one god to handle. So they had many; each with his or her own duties and/or territories. And as I mentioned, they were national in character. The king or the Pharoah was usually the representative, if not the incarnation, of a god on Earth. And now while, say, the Egyptians knew their gods were better than, say, the gods of the Assyrians, they never claimed the Assyrians needed to worship Egyptian gods. If they beat the Assyrians in battle, they said the Egyptian gods were stronger. If the Assyrians beat them, well, they had an excuse for that too. And it wasn’t that the Assyrian gods were stronger either. Egyptian gods were superior to all other gods just as the Egyptians themselves were superior to all other people (in Egyptian eyes anyway!). No, it had to be something else. Maybe they just hadn’t had enough faith. Maybe they had done something to lose the gods’ favor. And They usually could put their finger on just what it was too ...after the fact. Everyone did this. If you’ve ever read Homer‘s Iliad, then you know the ancient Greeks were particularly good at these ex post facto excuses. Whatever. But no nation ever sought to convince a neighbor to believe in their gods- at least not until they’d conquered them first. This made perfect sense. After all, if your neighbors were also protected by your gods, how would you be able to conquer them?
Even when monotheism appeared, things didn’t change at first. The Hebrew God, though he claimed superiority over all others, cared only about his chosen people. As far as other folks were concerned, they served as victims when he favored his chosen people and instruments of His wrath when they or their leaders strayed from Him. The Old Testament is full of examples of the Hebrews getting their butts kicked for pissing God off.Apparently they were very slow learners.
Possibly earlier than Hebrew monotheism, was the Egyptian experiment with it. Here, in the 14th century BC, the Pharaoh Akhenaten set up the obscure sun god Aten as the supreme deity and himself as his high priest. Neither Akhenaten nor his god could stand rivals so he suppressed the worship of the rest of the Egyptian pantheon. Still, he didn’t push his god on anyone but Egyptians and the experiment did not last past his lifetime.Let’s move up 1,400 years to the first century of the current era and the role of religion in the Roman Empire. In the interval, things hadn’t changed much. The philosophy of science was developed in Greece and had a brief flourishing there before philosophers started turning more mystical in their thinking. The Gods were still mainly national in character even in Rome though the Romans adopted or adapted many of the Gods and religious ideas they came across in their conquests.
In matters of religion, the Romans were as superstitious as any other people, but they were also essentially pragmatic about it. There’s a famous quotation by the historian Edward Gibbon that goes: "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." That observation, particularly the last part, illustrates the Roman genius for rule. The Romans did as little as possible to interfere with the local customs and religious practices of conquered nations. As long as folks paid their taxes and did nothing seditious, they were pretty much free to do whatever else they wanted and that included religious freedom and even a measure of local autonomy.
There was one exception to the rule. Once in a while you had to pay at least lip service to the Imperial cult. Even here, the idea came, not from Rome, but from the eastern provinces where there were long traditions of equating temporal power with divinity. These provinces petitioned the Romans for permission to set up temples to the genius of Rome and her emperors. As used here, the word “genius” refers to the immortal spirit of Rome rather than it’s intelligence.Anyway, once the idea was broached, it caught on, with temples and priesthoods of Rome and her emperors springing up everywhere. About the last place to get one was Rome itself because the idea of god-kings went against the traditions the Romans had inherited from the days they were a republic. The typical attitude is illustrated by the first century emperor Vespasian (AD 69-79) who, upon hearing that two miraculous healings in Alexandria were attributed to his godhood, said “The slave who attends to my chamber-pot is not conscious of my divinity!” Despite his cynicism, Vespasian, like other Roman emperors, was well aware of the political value of a state-associated religion and did nothing to discourage it. In later times, in fact, the more stressed the empire became, the more emphasis was placed on adherence to the state cult. And this is where the conflict with the Christians started.
Next: Part 3, the Christian Atheists!
(Part 1 appears here)
Photo Credits:
1) An angry god (Source: Monty Python)
2) Pharoah Akhnaten
3) Emperor Vespasian
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Comments
Just a quick note to let you know I'm really enjoying this series!
Thanks, Shannon. It's too bad you can't see this talk when I give it live. Not only do I use a lot more illustrations, but I close with a Broadway show tune, tap-dancing and a 4-minute fireworks display.
:^)
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