Irritating Words to Scratch your Eyeballs
Toxic Rome is the source for many of our self-defeating cultural obstacles. The post Toxic Rome appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Seven In the context of understanding the original ‘Christianity’, we modern people misunderstand the purpose of the Gospels, the position of the Hebrew scriptures in the Bible, and the very nature of Christianity itself. Originally, it was not Jesus worship, nor Christ worship, but an association of people who believe in the idea of Christ – that an imperial leader, a Caesar on Earth, would appear, anointed by the Caesar in the Heavens with the authority to rule over the world. In the context of beliefs about the righteousness of Roman culture and the inevitability of Roman global dominance, the beliefs of the fundamental truth of the Imperial Cult were self-evident. The Gospels were a product of the Imperial Cult under the Flavians, and they emphasized that the Flavian Caesar was the true Christ. The Gospels were the reminder of the might of Roman legions and the irresistible rightness of Roman culture. They were a reminder that the Judean peoples were not proper Roman citizens and were never going to be proper Roman citizens. These lessons were to be part of the cultural memory for all time, memorialized in some very clever books. The author of Mark had zero intention of creating a Jesus myth, but the Jesus myth was deliberately contrived by Church leadership, and that myth changed over time. Part of that change was a redirection of effort away from Roman political leadership (e.g. Christ Caesar) and towards a more abstract idea (e.g. Jesus Christ) that the Bishops could more easily manipulate. Other changes included integrations with cults popular during the peak of Empire, including the Great Mother cult, Mithraism, and gnostic wisdom cults, especially as the participation in those other cults gradually became criminalized. When the origins of Christianity get confused with the Jesus myth, people can become blinded to the degree to which the evils of Rome remain with us today. The Romans were the original fascists. They were a brutal people in an oppressive, violent culture that prioritized authoritarian and nationalist policies. Rape, torture, theft, and murder were tools commonly used for the enforcement of tradition. The poor led squalid lives; the rich surrounded themselves with walled gardens but were each in danger of being eaten by someone richer than themselves. Perhaps it is easy to have a romantic view of them today, but there is not a place within Roman society that any modern person today would want to live. In every part of the Empire, war, pestilence, famine, and disease would impoverish towns and destroy villages in a descending spiral. By the time of Constantine, the golden age was a distant memory centuries past, but the structure of empire on a social, military, and administrative level continued on to weigh down the development of Europe for centuries after the last Western emperor had grown cold. For all of their self-aggrandizement regarding the superiority of Roman culture, it was in many ways the archetypal evil empire, and the trauma it inflicted on the people of Europe left a scar unto the great grandchildren of the last Romans. The egotism, narcissism, and toxic masculinity of the Romans is rooted deeply into our culture, as Western Europeans repeatedly set new bars for hubris. Roman authoritarians set a habit for governance that has proven hard to avoid even in the modern age. Many of our worst cultural tendencies trace back to Roman traditions that have been repackaged as “Christian”. It is challenging to identify worse cultures throughout world history, and we are their descendants. We have to come to terms with being descendants of the bad guys, and recognize the degree to which it makes us the bad guys out of cultural conditioning. This starts by seeing that Christianity promulgates Roman culture. In order to move past the cultural barriers and boundaries that have limited us to the same self-defeating behaviors, we need to set aside Christianity entirely and move past it. We need to ask, are we doing something this way because it’s the best way, or because it’s the Roman way? Are we judging this with modern values, or Roman values? Remember: the Roman way was brutal, and Roman values were cruel. The way out from being “the bad guys” is to be less brutal and less cruel. We need less Toxic Rome in our culture. The post Toxic Rome appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
There were multiple Gospel characters named Jesus. The post Many Jesuses, One Christ appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Six The modern English children’s magazine “Highlights” has long featured a small two panel comic called “Goofus and Gallant”, in which two young boys were shown illustrating examples of good and bad behavior, with the emphasis for the reader on doing the good thing. Goofus would be rude and full of hubris, while Gallant would be kind and polite. While the range of lessons presented have changed over the years to recognize a heightened sensibility, the fundamental structure has remained. In a similar vein, the Gospels present different men named ‘Jesus’. One is gallant, the anointed Jesus the Nazarene; one is goofus, Jesus the Zealot rebel; and yet another Jesus is characterized as having magical abilities like Pan. The joke was that the Jews didn’t know the difference between them and would get confused. The anointed Jesus was a high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, and thus “promised to God”, or a Nazarene. Modeled after Jesus of Gamla, he was, like John the Baptist, accepting of Roman culture and a consistent advocate for it. “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” This is the Jesus we see in the baptismal scene at the beginning of Mark, and he is thus the anointed Christ. This Jesus teaches from the synagogue, and from his house in Capernaum, the “Good News” of Rome’s arrival as the Kingdom of “God”. He teaches the value of being part of the larger Roman family, and converts Jewish rebels into Roman citizens. He teaches primarily through aphorisms or parables (as did the great teacher Pythagoras), and instructs his students how to understand the hidden meanings within the stories. Rebel Jesus is not as well educated as Anointed Jesus, and he has to work a lot harder to build up his crowds. The model for this character was a rebel leader like Simon bar Giora. We see him loitering around the Sea of Galilee, gathering to him fishermen of the area, and preaching his message of rebellion, promising self-rule for the Jews – also the ‘Kingdom of God’. When challenged by Pharisees, he replies by recalling Hebrew scripture – often incorrectly – in his defense. His analysis of scripture is also shaky, at best. The third Jesus is a repeated victim of mistaken identity until he becomes just as popular as the other Jesuses as person after person looks to him to heal them and they find their maladies removed. Each time it happens, he tries to swear those involved to secrecy, but it never works that way for him. He speaks in plain prose and never tries to assume authority that would belong to the Temple. Huge crowds of people grew around each Jesus such that their own followers would find themselves following the wrong one. By paying attention to the context of the stories, one can begin to see the different Jesuses in the text. They live in different towns, have different friends, and speak in different ways. For example, after Mark’s story of Jesus’ baptism, we are told that he remained in Galilee for some time teaching the word of God. And then we’re told that Jesus arrived in Galilee. It’s really best to recognize that Jesus can’t enter the same province he’s already in and see the second Jesus as another character in the story who is also now in Galilee. You must pay attention to the context. Much of the context for why certain elements of the Gospel stories occur as they do comes from the book, The Jewish War. In Mark 1:17 Jesus tells Andrew and Simon that if they follow him they will become “fishers of men.” The Jewish War describes battles that took place between the Romans and the rebels on the Sea of Galilee that left the surface of the lake littered with corpses. Afterward, fishermen used their nets to drag the corpses out of the lake and onto their boats. They literally became fishers of men. Piscatores hominum. When Rebel Jesus does go back to his hometown, he complains that he can’t get the sort of adulation as he would get in other places. From The Jewish War, we learn that the towns many rebels had come from often capitulated to the Romans early, so this complaint in the Gospels may have been a reference to Rebel Jesus not getting a foothold in his hometown. Modern Christian theology wants to combine all of the stories of all the Jesuses into a single narrative, and as a result, often finds verses that make little to no sense. All the stories from the different Gospels are melted together in a similar way, discarding confusing texts, and resulting in a Jesus that looks and sounds more like the person who assembled the text than anything else. Our culture only wants one Jesus, and it’s the schizophrenic one that comes from an amalgamated character that says “love your neighbor” on one hand, but “I bring not peace but a sword” on the other. The post Many Jesuses, One Christ appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Exploring John the Baptist and the purpose of the Gospels The post Framing the Good News appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Five Flavius Josephus was a prolific writer, and his were the earliest independent mentions of the names “John the Baptist” and “Jesus the Nazarene” outside the Gospels. Due to his proximity to Caesar and the similarity in the narratives between The Jewish War and the Gospels, it is highly probable that Josephus was the source of Mark, Luke/Acts, and likely Matthew as well. With Josephus as the touchstone, the reader can see the events of his life and primarily the events detailed in The Jewish War reflected in the text of the Gospels. The character of John the Baptist appears to be modeled on John Hyrcanus II: an older, well-respected priest and sage who counseled for integration with the Romans and was killed by Herod. Understanding why he was ‘the Baptist’ requires some context. Prior to the arrival of John the Baptist in the Gospels, there is no one else in history who was referenced as a ‘baptist’ or ‘baptizer’, and there are no stories of rituals in Jewish, Roman, or Greek lore that compare to the modern rite of Baptism (in any of its forms) in its shape or intent. It turns out that the word is a very specific descriptor of John Hyrcanus II and his role in Jewish-Roman relations. Possibly the most famous and most valuable export from the Levant was a particularly rich dye that gave cloth and fur deep reds and purples, particularly the imperial purple that only the Caesars could wear. Part of the mechanical process that set that dye into the cloth was a repeated dunking and removing of the cloth from the dye: the Greek word for this action is where we get our word “baptism”. Hyrcanus was not a dyer, but a priest/king who worked to convert his people to Roman culture, and as he altered their allegiance, he metaphorically changed their colors. In the book of Mark, John the Baptist converted Judeans, Samaritans, Idumeans, and Galileans to Roman red in the Jordan: the river that ran red with the blood of the Judean rebels during the Jewish war. The point of discussing John (Hyrcanus) at the beginning of Mark is to set a point in time where Rome first came into a relationship with the Judeans, when the Hasmoneans had asked for Roman assistance and promised fealty. The subsequent inability or unwillingness of the Judeans to repress the Zealot rebellions on their own was seen by the Romans as a grave insult. To rebel against Caesar was to sin against God and the Holy Spirit of Rome. The Gospels showed Jesus the Nazarene voluntarily submitting to Roman culture and established as both the son of Caesar in heaven, but also the leader anointed by God. In the same text, both John and Jesus promised that a great man would follow them who was both worthy to lead and terrible to behold. That man’s name was Flavius. The synoptic Gospels were written to show that the Flavian family had been specifically appointed by Gaius Caesar Augustus to take over leadership of the Empire at that time. A secondary purpose of the Gospels was to be instructional for Roman citizens. The stories tell how to be a good Roman citizen and the consequences of failure, with the Jews being shown as the ‘bad example’ in most cases. The “good” Jesus was a model Roman citizen, while the “bad” Jesus was a Zealot and a rebel, and very naughty and stupid. As a bonus, the writers took the opportunity when writing the Gospels to mock the Judeans, their history, their culture, their militarism, and most especially their anti-Roman sentiment at every opportunity. They joke that there are only a handful of names between the lot of them, so all the men are named ‘James’, ‘Simon’, and ‘Jesus’, and all the women are named ‘Mary’. The Gospels continued the Roman apologia begun with The Jewish War: presenting the idea that it was okay that the Romans were so violent because the Judeans were so awful. The Gospels present Judeans as nearly feral, short tempered, and easily confused. They are shown behaving in anti-social ways and then complaining about Roman behavior. Their cultural traditions and dietary restrictions are repeatedly brought up for mockery. One can imagine Romans howling with laughter while reading the Gospels. The post Framing the Good News appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Creation and use of the Imperial Cult The post Imperial Cult appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Four The creation of the Roman Republic was a rebuke to tyrants. The Roman people rejected their Etruscan king in favor of a Senate, which was an extremely limited form of democracy among the heads of the wealthiest families. So great was their distaste for having kings, they put several processes in place to prevent a single man from ruling except in periods of calamity. Their executive office was held by two men chosen by the Senate for one year terms. Anything they couldn’t agree on would go to the Senate for a decision. Pressure on this system increased as Rome grew beyond the boundaries of what the Senate could effectively manage. The magic Roman cement of politics was the house system. Every house was a family headed by a single man who ruled as a tyrant within his realm, and all the members of that house – men, women, children, and slaves – would literally worship and praise the spirit of their paterfamilia – the father of the house. The houses were then related to each other hierarchically, such that every man who ruled a house had someone who ‘ruled’ them. This network of interconnecting control was the foundation upon which the republic and the empire were formed. Every Senator was at the peak of such hierarchies. Ultimately, the power of the Emperor came from his being atop this entire hierarchy of houses: everyone in the empire was subject to his house and expected to worship and praise his spirit. As a key part of the rise of Gaius Octavian to Augustus Caesar in 27 bce, his deceased adoptive father Julius Caesar was elevated by the Senate to the position of a god in the heavens, and the Senate directed Augustus to establish the Imperial Cult in all of the major cities of the empire dedicated to the celebration of the Holy Spirit of Rome; the Father, Caesar in the heavens; and the Son, Caesar in Rome. In this way, Julius Caesar became the chief and most holy deity in the Roman pantheon, and Augustus became the most powerful man in all of Rome. This cult had a dedicated priesthood that took orders directly from Caesar, they celebrated important days and major victories of Augustus, and served as a major propaganda arm for empire. The Imperial Cult was the institutionalization of Augustus Caesar’s position with respect to his citizenry at the head of the social hierarchy, and became the scaffold upon which future imperial families affixed their power. The Romans prayed to Caesar: “Our Father Caesar in the heavens, holy is thy name. Your will be done on earth and in the heavens. Give us today’s bread and forgive our errors. For thine is the kingdom, power, and glory.” They gathered in the Temple of Vesta or the imperial cult temple, offered incense to a bust of Caesar, and professed their creed: “I believe in God the Father almighty; and in His only Son, our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Spirit…” The Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is fundamental to Roman culture – this formula predates the Gospels by at least 50 years and shows most clearly that the origins of Christianity start with the Roman Imperial Cult. The political structure of the Roman Republic had prevented the rise of a tyrant for centuries, so Augustus’ Imperial Cult was extremely important for maintaining his position of power. Once his family was no longer able to take the position, technically, the power should have dissolved. Instead, generals fought for the right to lead the imperium until the Flavians took control. Once there, the Flavians needed a myth to tie their family into the Imperial Cult. The post Imperial Cult appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Summary of The Jewish War The post The Jewish War, Part Two appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Three After ham-fisted efforts by local Roman officials to collect taxes from the Judeans resulted in riots, Nero sent the governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, with an entire legion – 5,000 men – in 66 ce to ‘restore order’ in the region. The governor was ambushed on the way to Jerusalem by Simon bar Giora, losing some siege engines in the fray. On arrival, he tried to set a siege but due to the loss of equipment was unable to capture the inner city and was forced to retreat. As they marched back to the coast, Simon bar Giora led his forces to ambush and destroy Cestius Gallus and his remaining legion. This was the greatest humiliation inflicted on Rome since Hannibal and it greatly roused the nationalist impulses of the Judeans such that the poison of rebellion began to spread to neighboring provinces. Caesar Nero was desperate to quash the Judean rebellions and to bring the whole area under regular consular rule, so in 68 ce, he sent his top general, Flavius Vespasian, with four legions – 20,000 men – to Syria. From there, they marched south, stopping at every town and junction where they either took tribute (from the towns that ‘supported’ Rome) or laid siege on rebel holdings until they would slaughter the inhabitants and burn the buildings down. Along the way, Nero died and Vespasian was summoned to take his place, leaving his son Flavius Titus to take over the Judean operation and see it through to the bloody end. As they marched south, rebel groups fled toward Jerusalem until the town was over-packed with rebels and Passover celebrants. By the time the legions had arrived at Jerusalem, there had already been a series of battles, a fire, and the deliberate destruction of supplies: Titus delayed attacking the walls presuming the Judeans would kill each other in due time. In Jerusalem, the people suffered greatly over eight months of starvation and disease before the city was finally taken. The survivors were either sold into slavery or crucified. Then the temple was looted, burned and pushed into the valley below. This was memorialized in stone: Titus’ Arch in Rome shows Romans carrying away temple goods and pushing Judean slaves before them. Many thousands of Judeans were killed over the eighteen months of the Judean operation. Miles of roads around Jerusalem and the centers of rebellion in Galilee were decorated with crucified corpses. The Jordan River ran red on more than one occasion, and the Sea of Galilee at one point had so many floating bodies that it was said one could ‘walk on water’. The violent destruction of Jerusalem, which even the Romans considered to be ancient, was severe enough to seem disrespectful to the gods. There was concern that history might judge them poorly for what today we would easily label ‘genocide’. So Caesar directed the writing of a history of the Jewish peoples to show they had always been warlike and deserving of their fate, and so around 70-75 ce, Flavius Josephus Mattathias penned The Jewish War which recounts the history I’ve summarized here. The post The Jewish War, Part Two appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Introducing: John the Baptist, Jesus the Nazarene from Galilee, and Simon Peter
Three remarkable biographies The post Introducing: John the Baptist, Jesus the Nazarene from Galilee, and Simon Peter appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode Two John Hyrcanus II was a great-grandson of Simon Maccabeus. His mother, Queen Salome Alexandra, established him as High Priest in 73 bce. He then became Ethnarch of Judea in 67 bce when she died. Hyrcanus’ brother Aristobulus had originally planned a coup against his mother, but turned it against his brother instead once she died and took the throne. Hyrcanus remained as High Priest, and was backed by the Nabateans in his ill-fated attempts to regain the throne. His restoration finally came when Pompey decided he just liked Hyrcanus better and laid siege to Jerusalem in 63 bce, ultimately capturing Aristobulus and setting Hyrcanus as Ethnarch. This lasted until Aristobulus’ son Antigonus arrived in 40 bce at the head of a Parthian army, capturing Hyrcanus, and claiming rulership. The Parthians treated the exiled Hyrcanus as an honored spiritual teacher and special guest, and as he had been high priest of the Jerusalem temple for such a Very Long Time, his teachings had became legendary. As part of a cache of documents discovered at Qumran in 1949 ce, there was one particular scroll filled with aphorisms and parables attributed to a “Teacher of Righteousness”. Because of who he was and with his intermittent periods of temporal power, John Hyrcanus II may have been this Teacher of Righteousness. It’s also been suggested that due to similar themes and use of language, the Teacher of Righteousness was John the Baptist. I suspect that Hyrcanus II was both the Teacher of Righteousness and the model for John the Baptist in the Gospels. In 37 bce, the Romans returned to Judea and replaced Antigonus with Herod, who had married Hyrcanus’ daughter, Mariamne, thus ending the Hasmonean dynasty. Later, after Herod had been killing off all the other Hasmoneans “just in case” (including Mariamne: he was something of a completist), he called Hyrcanus back from exile in 30 bce and executed him as well. Unsurprisingly, once the Judeans had tasted sovereignty and independence, they didn’t like paying Roman taxes any more than they did Ptolemean or Seleucid. Had they been able to decide among themselves whose rules to follow, they might have presented a more united front and retained their sovereignty. But as rebellion had become the national pastime, every village seemed to have its own guerrilla militia to spar with. One key rebel stronghold was a Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights called ‘Gamla’. There, in 6 ce, Judas of Gamla founded the Zealots: theocratic nationalists who resisted foreign rule and Roman taxes in particular. Forty years later, the “Sons of Judas”, James and Simon, were executed due to leading a revolt against Rome. From this hotbed of rebellion also sprang Jesus of Gamla, who married a wealthy widow who got him the job of High Priest under Herod Agrippa II. As High Priest from Gamla, Jesus was a Nazarene from Galilee. Jesus found himself positioned as one of the men in authority in Jerusalem when the rebels captured the city in 68 ce. Although Jesus of Gamla advised staying on good terms with Rome and rejecting the Zealots, he was executed by Idumean (Jewish) rebels who had infiltrated Jerusalem just prior to the Roman siege. Simon bar Giora was a rebellion leader, military strategist, and populist who attracted fishermen and working classes of the towns around Galilee into a militia that fought for self-rule and keeping tax money local (at Jerusalem). He was very opposed to the Romans in general, Roman legions stomping around in particular, and subsequently, anyone who didn’t absolutely hate the Romans. Simon led brigades that would loot and burn the farms and houses of the families that supported Rome. In their turn, the upper class aristocracy, the nobles, and especially the Romans hated Simon. When he was finally captured, the Romans paraded him through Rome in chains and threw him to his death off a high rock. The Gospels explain that the nickname given disciple Simon was “Peter”, meaning rock or cliff. Now you know which Simon they were talking about. The post Introducing: John the Baptist, Jesus the Nazarene from Galilee, and Simon Peter appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
A brief overview of the early history of the Judean people. The post The Jewish War, Part One appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Episode One There was a book written contemporary to the beginning of Christianity called The Jewish War, and it describes the very events that led up to the creation of synoptic Gospels – Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The Jewish War was written in ancient Greek by Flavius Josephus, a man known to have been a member of the imperial family at the center of things in and around Judea for the events in the book. But it isn’t a book people talk about, and it’s not usually mentioned in history class or Sunday school. Most of us have never heard of it. Unlike the vast majority of Roman literature, this book still exists and you can still read it. The Jewish War centered on a place called the Levant – that hilly bit of geography between the Eastern Mediterranean shore and the Jordan River long called ‘Palestine’ and now occupied by the states of Syria and Israel. From times ancient even to the Romans, the Levant had been a prize long coveted by empires and royal families. It was captured from the Babylonians by the Persians in the mid 6th century bce, who built the temple in Jerusalem in 516. It was captured again by the Greeks in 332, and the Ptolemies and Seleucids bickered over it for centuries until it had been captured and recaptured so many times that its neighborhoods were interwoven with political conflicts several generations deep. The peoples in this area who followed Hebrew scripture were legendary for their dietary prohibitions and strict rules for conduct. Yet even among these were those called ‘Nazarenes’ who took on additional rules and restrictions as an act of worshipful service. This was done in order to be bonded by a promise to their god through their acts of service in thanks for a boon, in exchange for aid to the living or in memory of the dead. Nazarenes were forbidden to drink alcohol, cut their hair, or be present near the dead for the period of their binding: at release, they were blessed at the temple, their hair was shorn and burned at the temple fire. The stories of Sampson in the book of Judges were of a man who had been promised at birth, a Nazarene, who had been given great strength for as long as he didn’t cut his hair. Lifetime bonds for Nazarenes were the exception: generally adults promised themselves and only for a few months or a year. When becoming a high priest of the temple, candidates would first undertake the Nazarene commitment for the duration of their service to the temple. After the destruction of the temple, however, no promise could be redeemed; since that time, all Nazarenes have been lifetime Nazarenes. A variation of the Nazarene tradition was that of the ‘Messiah’, a political and military leader anointed by the high priest of the temple, and this combined with the unflinching use of violence and a cultural memory of political self-determination drove military efforts toward political independence from the dueling Greek states. An attempt to civilize the rebellious Judean populace by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes ended the practice of circumcision, and placed an altar to Zeus in the Jerusalem temple upon which pigs were slaughtered. Riots ensued, and it was a Messiah, Judas Maccabeus, who drove the Seleucids from Judea beginning in 167 bce. His brother Simon (“the wise”) became the first High Priest and Ethnarch of Judea in 141 bce, establishing Judean self-rule under their Hasmonean Dynasty. Once Rome had completely absorbed the Greek Seleucid Empire, they found themselves in direct proximity to the Hasmonean province of Judea. Had it just been a peaceful nation of shepherds and olive farmers, that would have been pretty great for Rome, but it was also a wasp nest of internal squabbles and political intrigue that repeatedly spilled over into Roman territory. Centuries of near continuous conflict had left deep scars in the population, and the reaction to every political action was a new opposition group forming, some more violent than others. Finally, the Hasmonean civil war ensnared Rome, who took on the area as a client state and stationed legions in and around it as they took sides and established John Hyrcanus II as the Roman-backed ‘Ethnarch’, or ‘King of the Jews’. The post The Jewish War, Part One appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
I'm starting my first podcast project. The post Leap of Faith appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
I have batted around the idea of doing podcasts and videos for several years. I’ve threatened my wife and several friends that they would someday be witness to my genius, but to date they have all remained blissfully safe as I have produced nothing. Unless you want to count anxiety about not finishing projects — I produce massive quantities of this. It is not for lack of ideas that I have not completed a project, I am filthy with ideas. The problem is that production takes time and I get hung up in the weeds and loose sight of my projects. By the time I get free time again, it is snapped away by my latest novelty. But I am not beaten! I have a couple of short projects that lend themselves to a podcast format. To that end, I have enjoyed some technical exploration with a fancy microphone and different production software options. I decided that Audacity was the best choice for what I was trying to do. I learned about the ‘podcasting’ mode for my microphone. I experimented with recording the first episode, doing several takes and working with the editing feature to clean up the result. And thus have I manifest my seven part series called ‘Toxic Romans’. This is a very naive, first attempt at a product. There’s no music, there are no sound effects. When I get the whole set built, I’ll make a page — possibly on substack — to host them all. But for the time being, I’m looking for feedback on this as a podcast, and what elements are missing or are expected to be better. Is the volume good? Is my diction comprehensible? Too fast? Too slow? Post your opinions as a comment. Originally, these were video ideas, and they could still be videos. It would be nice to show maps and familly trees and the text being discussed. But all of that is more production work, so this is an achievable ‘next step’ instead. Just having one set of podcasts done might be the incentive I needed to build more. I hope that’s the case, anyway. The post Leap of Faith appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Explorations in the creation of a chart of the ideological development of early Christianity. The post Charting History appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.
Because of my interest in history and in communicating the story of the past to others, I’m always on the lookout for the different ways folks make sense of things. Maps are my go-to: so much makes sense when you can see how nations align geographically, how trade routes and physical obstacles actually guide cultural development. My next favorite and related format is the time chart. Instead of a map with two dimensions of space, it has one of space and one of time, so the changing relationships can be charted. <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="250" height="250" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/World_History_mid_res_v2.2_thumb.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1380" style="width:296px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/World_History_mid_res_v2.2_thumb.jpg 250w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/World_History_mid_res_v2.2_thumb-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" /> Time Chart of World History, Wikipedia Some folks have made their careers out of creatively displaying information. There is a lot of room for variation, and a lot of information to show. One form of chart attempts to show the development of ideology as a kind of waterfall, from one idea down to another, such as this one titled “The History of the Church from Judaism to the Protestant Reformation.” I was excited to see such a chart pop up in my social feeds. Not because I think it’s accurate or a good representation of the development of the church, but because it shows what most people today seem to think is the truth. Its simple, naïve perspective on the development of modern theology is so obvious. To be clear, this is intended to be a highly simplified diagram of a pretty narrow window of history, so I’m not going to get bent out of shape arguing that important things may have been left out. There is still a lot here to consider and question. A Protestant History <img decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" data-wp-class--hide="state.isContentHidden" data-wp-class--show="state.isContentVisible" data-wp-init="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--click="actions.showLightbox" data-wp-on--load="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--pointerdown="actions.preloadImage" data-wp-on--pointerenter="actions.preloadImageWithDelay" data-wp-on--pointerleave="actions.cancelPreload" data-wp-on-window--resize="callbacks.setButtonStyles" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1366" style="width:417px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-300x300.jpg 300w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-150x150.jpg 150w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-768x768.jpg 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/simplified_history_of_church.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> <path fill="#fff" d="M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z" /> The Protestant bias in the structure of the diagram is particularly worth reviewing: it presents a series of doctrinal splits, with the group accepting the doctrine proceeding to the left, while those rejecting the doctrine stalled out to the right. For the Council of Ephesus, for example, the chart shows Nicean Christianity continuing down the left, while the Nestorians rejected the doctrine of Ephesus, and later formed as the Assyrian Church of the East. In a very general sense, the ‘truth’ of this chart shows how modern Protestant churches continue holding the ‘correct’ doctrinal position, rejected by the Catholics, the Monophysites, the Arians, and the Jews. In a more specific sense, this chart condemns the Jews for rejecting Jesus, and this condemnation is shown through the mechanism of the doctrinal filter: Christians to the left continuing on until eternity, Jews to the right into the chasm of irrelevance. The Protestant bias asserts itself again with the explicit naming of Jesus without mention of Christ. My favorite part is how the Roman Catholic Church seems to appear as an afterthought after the Great Schism, and not, you know, at the very top. Let’s put some dates on this thing and get a sense for the scale being presented. Judaism reportedly goes back to the 10th century BC, and the range of dates usually given for Jesus is around 5 BC to 33 AD. The First Council of Nicaea was in 325. The First Council of Ephesus was in 431 with the Council of Chalcedon only twenty years later. The ‘Great Schism’ between eastern and western churches occurred in 1054. Martin Luther nailed his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ to the church door in 1517, helping to launch the Protestant Reformation. In a more specific sense, this chart condemns the Jews for rejecting Jesus. The Assyrian Church of the East was established in 1553, but there was a ‘Church of the East’ that broke away from the Catholic (‘Western’) church in 410. The Eastern Orthodox churches were separated from Catholic communion in 518, but there were many sub-schisms and rejoinings, so the arrangement between Catholic and Orthodox is very confusing. Lutheranism was condemned by the Pope in 1521, and the Church of England was established in 1534. <img decoding="async" width="719" height="1024" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees-719x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1391" style="width:289px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees-719x1024.jpg 719w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees-211x300.jpg 211w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees-768x1094.jpg 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees-1078x1536.jpg 1078w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Palestine-under-the-Maccabees.jpg 1202w" sizes="(max-width: 719px) 100vw, 719px" /> The Levant Note how the top of the chart starts with Judaism, and after encountering Jesus the Jews then continue on in their ignorance with Judaism. The first mistake here is to confuse the Temple Judaism prior to Jesus with Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is vital to recognize that the faith of the peoples who lived in the lands between Egypt and Persia along the Jordan River was strongly localized around several politically important temples run by several politically important families. Their primary cultural conflicts rose up around how ‘Greek’ or ‘Persian’ they were. Only after the Romans destroyed those temples and drove those people away did their descendants create the faith-in-exile we call Rabbinic Judaism. Temple Judaism did not exist as some sort of monolithic entity. It was a highly fractious and divisive society composed of generations of prior ruling families with cultural links to Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Syria. Their (biblical) history of near continuous inter-tribal warfare was only broken by a series of invasions from Syria, and later Persia, who both used a policy of exile to keep rebellious families in line. After the kingdoms left by Alexander faded, this region regained both sovereignty and combativeness, where each king excelled in cruelty, and rebellions boiled in every town. It was this constant warfare that Rome was originally invited to settle in the second century BC. Hagia Sophia At the potential danger of complicating this simple diagram, it’s important to point out that modern theologians usually connect Jesus not with the mainstream or dominant schools of Judaism, but to an outcast branch. The implication of this diagram that Jesus came from Judaism, especially when we freely admit he wasn’t representative of the faith of his own time and place, is problematic. But the biggest problem with the assertion that Christianity came from Judaism is that they share nothing culturally. They have different calendars, different holidays, different rituals, different traditions. The presence of the Jewish holy scriptures in the Christian holy book has long been one source of the misunderstanding that Christianity started as a Judaic offshoot. But Judea wasn’t the origin of Christianity: Rome was. Christianity was specifically forbidden to Jews. They could only be Jewish. Only Romans could be Christians because Christians were the best Romans. First revision <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="798" height="728" data-wp-class--hide="state.isContentHidden" data-wp-class--show="state.isContentVisible" data-wp-init="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--click="actions.showLightbox" data-wp-on--load="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--pointerdown="actions.preloadImage" data-wp-on--pointerenter="actions.preloadImageWithDelay" data-wp-on--pointerleave="actions.cancelPreload" data-wp-on-window--resize="callbacks.setButtonStyles" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Protestant_History_of_Church_cropped.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1367" style="width:404px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Protestant_History_of_Church_cropped.png 798w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Protestant_History_of_Church_cropped-300x274.png 300w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Protestant_History_of_Church_cropped-768x701.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 798px) 100vw, 798px" /> <path fill="#fff" d="M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z" /> chart by author There is a connection between Christianity and Judaism: it was the Roman destruction of Judea in 70. That’s where Rome intersected Judaism. The Jews didn’t reject Christianity, the Jews rejected Rome. They rejected having a Caesar or Emperor categorically. The Jews violently rejected Roman culture, and so Roman legions rejected the Jews. The narrative of the Gospels reflect the chaos of the time, with some Jews embracing Roman culture, many others rejecting it, and one man warning that Rome should be accepted and embraced or doom would fall upon them. As these books were written after 70, this wasn’t intended as a prophecy, but as a warning that everyone needed to be “good Romans”. Christianity was born as a celebration of the destruction of Judean culture through the superiority of Roman culture. It seems to require a branch of Temple Judaism had existed so much like Roman culture that Romans just moved right in. As such the top icon on this chart should not be ‘Judaism’ but should be ‘Roman culture.’ The destruction of the Temple by the Flavian Caesars would be the sieve that separated the Jews from Roman Church. The next step in the chart is the Council of Nicea, and while this did serve to separate the Arians from the Trinitarians (here ‘Niceans’), putting this here right after ‘Jesus’ implies that the whole of the development of the Early Church happened without conflict or event as momentous as the ones that are presented in the chart. It seems to require a branch of Temple Judaism had existed so much like Roman culture that Romans just moved right in. This kind of hand waving over the very critical details of the development of the Church is infuriating. Without those details, this range of this chart is not from Judaism to Protestantism, but instead is only the history of the Church from Martin Luther back only as far as Constantine (4th century). A Catholic History By measure of comparison, this also very simple chart below from Wikipedia shows a more Catholic-biased descent chart, indicating dated events and the ‘branching off’ of different denominations. Note here that the Protestant sects are shown as being further off center than the Catholic ones. Again, this chart waves its hand at ‘Early Christianity’, whatever that was, and doesn’t really start paying attention until the Ecumenical Councils of the 5th century. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="752" height="332" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Major-Families-of-Christianity.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1368" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Major-Families-of-Christianity.png 752w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Major-Families-of-Christianity-300x132.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 752px) 100vw, 752px" /> chart from Wikipedia If we could look at a chart that showed what came before the Nicean Council, one might be able to see how Christianity developed. According to many sources, those early years looked something like this: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="628" height="655" data-wp-class--hide="state.isContentHidden" data-wp-class--show="state.isContentVisible" data-wp-init="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--click="actions.showLightbox" data-wp-on--load="callbacks.setButtonStyles" data-wp-on--pointerdown="actions.preloadImage" data-wp-on--pointerenter="actions.preloadImageWithDelay" data-wp-on--pointerleave="actions.cancelPreload" data-wp-on-window--resize="callbacks.setButtonStyles" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Traditional-Early-Church_cropped.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1369" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Traditional-Early-Church_cropped.png 628w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Traditional-Early-Church_cropped-288x300.png 288w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px" /> <path fill="#fff" d="M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z" /> chart by author Here we see how Jesus, a Jew, spread his word to his apostles, who then formed the churches that formed Christianity. No names or dates needed! Certainly no Romans involved! While this chart is laughable, it represents the sum total of what most Christians seem to believe about the Early Church. What I wanted to see was a chart that showed how the various cultural elements that formed into Christianity developed and wove themselves into the larger culture. I had long harbored the sense that there was a single source of Christianity, but it turns out that this is very far from the case. Christianity is a syncretic religion, meaning that it contains elements of many different faiths. The Romans did this out of a sense of cultural unitarianism, always seeking ways to weave the elements of the cultures they subjected into the imperial culture. What this means here is that there wasn’t just one ‘source’ of Christianity, but many. I was able to make a chart for it, but it’s not simple. Christianity is the political merger of the Roman Imperial Cult and the Great Mother Cult. Cultural Development of the Church <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="791" height="1024" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Early-Christianity_version4.3-791x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1370" style="border-width:15px;width:432px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Early-Christianity_version4.3-791x1024.png 791w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Early-Christianity_version4.3-232x300.png 232w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Early-Christianity_version4.3-768x994.png 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Early-Christianity_version4.3.png 816w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px" /> chart by author For as crowded as this chart is with boxes and arrows, I’m leaving a lot of important context out. The boxes are roughly arranged in terms of location and time, but there’s no information about ancestral cultures, motivating causes or other related minor cults. Also, several of the boxes are historical references unfamiliar to many people. The top two rows of boxes roughly corresponds to Neolithic cultures. The third row begins with the Iron Age. The bottom two boxes reference the 4th century, for a rough scale. Each box represents a culture (in italics) or an organization (in plain text). The relevance of each item to Christianity is shown at the bottom. The relationship between the boxes is shown with the lines with arrow heads at the destination. A dashed line indicates the influence was unintentional. Note that lines can cross and flow behind boxes without meaning anything. Organizations primary to the creation of Christianity are shown with the thick red border. Rabbinic Judaism, for example, is shown here to be a product of Second Temple Judaism, which is shown to be a product of Canaanite, Greek and Persian culture, while Canaanite culture has roots in Egyptian and Syrian culture. The concept of ‘Messiah’ from Temple Judaism contributed to the Flavian Cult’s creation of ‘Christ’ as an object of worship. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="709" height="1024" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/960px-Unknown_-_Statue_of_a_Seated_Cybele_with_the_Portrait_Head_of_her_Priestess_-_57.AA_.19-709x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1393" style="width:309px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/960px-Unknown_-_Statue_of_a_Seated_Cybele_with_the_Portrait_Head_of_her_Priestess_-_57.AA_.19-709x1024.jpg 709w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/960px-Unknown_-_Statue_of_a_Seated_Cybele_with_the_Portrait_Head_of_her_Priestess_-_57.AA_.19-208x300.jpg 208w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/960px-Unknown_-_Statue_of_a_Seated_Cybele_with_the_Portrait_Head_of_her_Priestess_-_57.AA_.19-768x1109.jpg 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/960px-Unknown_-_Statue_of_a_Seated_Cybele_with_the_Portrait_Head_of_her_Priestess_-_57.AA_.19.jpg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px" /> Cybele If you were to put together a case based on the causal elements of the story, you might say the story is that Christianity is the political merger of the Roman Imperial Cult and the Great Mother Cult. But there was never any intention at any time before the 3rd century for anyone to create Christianity. It’s just what happened over time, organically, within the context of a repressive, brutal culture. Further, there was a lot of mixing between cultures at every step. There wasn’t a single source of Christianity, but many. The Great Mother Cult started long ago, and has had many names: we’ll start with Cybele. Cybele worship traveled around the Mediterranean and took form in Greek and Egyptian cities as an Isis cult. In Roman areas, it became the Magna Mater cult, but repeated the same mystery school plays, and told similar stories. Magna Mater informed Mithraism, but also the Neo-Flavian cult, where the stories and statues of Isis and Horus are lightly revised for Mary and Jesus. Many of the seasonal and family rites performed by the Church today derived from Great Mother worship activities. For many Christians, especially those who venerate the Mother Mary, the source of much of what they practice comes from the Great Mother cult. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="776" height="1024" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-776x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1394" style="width:338px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-776x1024.jpg 776w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-227x300.jpg 227w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-768x1014.jpg 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-1164x1536.jpg 1164w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016-1552x2048.jpg 1552w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1636px-Marcus_Aurelius_showing_sacrifice_-_Arch_of_Marcus_Aurelius_-_Musei_Capitolini_-_Rome_2016.jpg 1636w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px" /> Marcus Aurelius as pontifex offers sacrifice to Jupiter Capitolinus in gratitude for victory. Once part of the Arch of Marcus Aurelius. Capitoline Museum, Rome. The Imperial Cult was started after Gaius Octavian became Caesar Augustus and the chief priest of all religions in the world. He had the Senate raise his father, Gaius Julius Caesar, to the position of a god in the heavens. Augustus then announced that he was the Son of God and had temples built in all the major cities with great statues and priests to lead good citizens in the worship of Caesar and Augustus while keeping the regular observances of Imperial holy days, like Caesar’s birthday. The cult celebrated Latin culture and the principles of the Roman Republic in the form of the ‘Spirit of Rome’. The elements of the cult were recited, as a creed. Later during periods of conflict between various claimants to the title Caesar, slightly differing creeds were used to recognize supporters for each side. The Flavian Cult was created because the new family holding the title Caesar didn’t come from the Julio-Claudio line, and the new cult fashioned the rationale for their rule. It celebrated the military victories of Titus in Judea, where he crushed the endlessly violent and rebellious Judeans, and set a new level of authority – Titus was Christ, he had been anointed: a Messiah or Christ is given the right to rule from God. Proof was the fact that they now controlled Jerusalem, or whatever was left of it. A series of Emperors widely considered to be the best were all in the line of the Flavians. The golden age of the empire was reached during the Flavians when the empire attained its maximum size. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="975" src="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2-1024x975.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1395" style="width:308px;height:auto" srcset="https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2-1024x975.jpg 1024w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2-300x286.jpg 300w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2-768x731.jpg 768w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2-1536x1462.jpg 1536w, https://pokeyfinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2.jpg 1660w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons When the Severan family took power, they too established a new Imperial Cult, this time exalting Caesar as the Invincible Sun. The Flavian Cult fell out of power but retained a loyal following of ‘Believers in Christ’, who dreamed that a Flavian would come to rule the Empire again. They would hold to this belief even to the point of persecution and write letters to each other to keep their spirits up. This dream came true when Flavius Constantine usurped control over Empire, by leveraging widespread anger over Diocletian’s Imperial Cult reforms. He brought together the Severan cults and the Magna Mater cultists with the Believers in Christ into a new Flavian Cult that divided the resources of his enemies within the Empire. At his moment of triumph, he solidified the formation of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Nicaea where Trinitarianism was established as the critical creedal element. So there you have the creation of Christianity as a product of Imperial family posturing and nationalist propaganda manifest in the form of a celebration of Roman culture and traditions. And, we’re well positioned at the 4th century to link this chart to the others above, talking about how the Orthodox and Protestant churches originally formed. The post Charting History appeared first on The Pokey Finger of God.