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.
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