How Did Christianity Take Over the Roman World?

Episode Outline:
0:00 How did Christianity take over the Roman Empire?
0:56 Bart and Megan on England, teaching, and summer rhythms
4:22 Why Christian exclusivity was so unusual in the pagan world
5:26 Henotheism: one supreme god among many
8:02 Why Christian missionary activity stood out from pagan religion
10:58 How exclusivity helped Christianity grow
14:32 Did Christian exclusivity also repel potential converts?
15:59 The actual mechanics of conversion: not rallies, but networks
18:27 How whole households converted together
20:53 Why Christianity was attractive to pagans
25:28 Bad explanations for Christian growth, and why they fail
27:49 The most persuasive explanation: divine power and miracle stories
31:05 Did beliefs about heaven and hell help Christianity spread?
33:21 How many actual conversion accounts do we have from antiquity?
35:25 Weekly Update: free Gospel authorship webinar
37:32 New Insights conference spotlight: Dale Allison and Robyn Walsh
42:18 Bart’s Soapbox: why people get his deconversion story wrong
47:17 Final summary: exclusivity, evangelism, and the triumph of Christianity

Episode Description
Christianity started out with a handful of followers in 30 CE - Jesus' remaining disciples and a few female supporters. But within 300 years there were some 2-3 million Christians in the world, including the Emperor of Rome. How did that happen? How did an offshoot of Judaism come to take over the world, to the extent that it eventually became the religion of the West for centuries, down to the modern age? The answers are not actually what most people would suspect, and in this episode we lay them out.

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Does Biblical Scholarship Destroy Faith?
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