Why were the Romans against Christianity but tolerant towards Judaism?

Similar questions: Romans Christianity tolerant Judaism.

Ancient vs New The primary reason the Romans were tolerant toward Judaism is the fact that it was a very old, traditional religion. To really understand this, you have to understand a couple of other things. First: There are some basic types of religions.

One is traditional religion, and it is usually associated with a group of people, an "ethne" as the Greeks would call it. Judaism, in its original form, was an ethnic religion. It did develop, even early on, a system by which an individual could "convert" but that was not its primary function.

You see this in the way the Hebrews thought of themselves and the way that God is referenced in the earliest scriptures. "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" is that primary reference. Yahweh, in this early stage, is not typically represented as the "one" God, but as the God of this people.

Second: Evangelical Religions. This is, as I am using it, a technical term. It is also referred to as "founder" religions, but that may not always apply.

Typically, they begin with a single founder, or group of founders, and they often spread a message of salvation by some means and usually extend beyond the borders of a particular ethnicity or group. There is usually a certain "universality" of the message that allows it to grow beyond those borders. Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism can all be classified this way.

Now the thing about Judaism is that it is kind of between a true traditional religion and a "founder" religion. It has a lawgiver, Moses, and to a degree allows conversion. What it doesn't do is actively seek converts.In fact, even in modern Judaism, a potential convert is asked "why would you want to join..." as though it's quite unusual.

The way the ancients thought about religion was quite foreign to what we think of today. If you moved to a new area, you started worshiping the local gods. When in Rome do as the Romans do, so to speak.

Religion was also, for the Romans and Greeks anyway, much less personal, and more political. The key here is twofold. First, Judaism was an ethnicity.

Jews took their ethnicity wherever they went. They kept their Law and typically weren't much of a bother to anyone else. The Romans thought they were strange, but so was everyone who wasn't Roman.

Second, Judaism was ancient. While the Romans didn't typically like strange things, they had great respect for what was old and thereby time-tested.As long as the Jews were willing to make sacrifices to Yahweh to ask benefit for the Romans, the Romans (especially the Emperors) were satisfied. They knew that to demand more would incite rebellion and the Romans, despite their military prowess, didn't want that.

Judea and Palestine were border states with a rival Empire. Enter Christianity. This started out as a Jewish sect.

It wasn't until the council of Jamnia in 90 CE that Christianity was officially separated by Jews from Judaism. Persecution before that, despite Christian writings was actually quite opportunistic and very limited even after that time, and moreso before then. Once Christians were segregated from Jews in the minds of the Romans, Christianity becomes something new.

It's at this stage it typically gets listed as a "Mystery" religion. These were not new, there were many, the most famous of the time was the Eleusinian Mysteries, involving Demeter. However, Eleusis had the same advantage of Judaism...its antiquity.

This is also the period in which Christians most earnestly asserted their own inheritance of the Jewish religion. Christians were trying to present their faith as ancient to accord respect of the Romans. Christians had other problems as well.

First, the earliest of them refused to eat meat (most meat available was the result of sacrificial offerings that Christians refused to support), which hurt businesses as Christian numbers grew. They refused to participate in Civic rituals (which mainly dealt with civic religion and the gods) which also made them suspect. Most of the early charges against Christians were atheism, sedition, and treason.

The reason was that they refused to participate in the Civic Religion, thus potentially angering the gods and thereby attempting to overthrow the government by inciting the wrath of Zeus, Jupiter, Hera, Hestia, or whomever. Their greatest "sin" in the eyes of the Roman government was their abject refusal to make any kind of sacrifice for the "genius" of the Emperor. The genius being the life essence of the Emperor, they were seen as seeking to overthrow him, which he could not allow.

So the short answer, which doesn't make sense without the long answer, is that Judaism was protected by its ancientness and the willingness to find a compromise to placate the Emperor without offending Yahweh; and Christian "newness" and their refusal to partake or support any part of the civic religion, which contrary to many modern believers, they were quite serious about. Sources: 10 years of undergraduate and graduate education in Ancient Religion, and Biblical Studies entilza's Recommendations The Christians as the Romans Saw Them Amazon List Price: $15.95 Used from: $10.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 18 reviews) .

For one thing Judaism was a fairly static religion based heavily on race. That being the case the Jews were pretty much all located in one small area and the religion wasn? T spreading.

The Romans often tolerated local religion as long as it remained a local affair and didn? T spread. Christianity was a dynamic religion that was taking in converts all over the Empire including in Rome itself.

Jesus had after all charged his Apostles with taking his message to all of the nations of the world. Christianity was a direct threat to the position of the Emperor in a way that Judaism never could have been and once the new religion got a foothold in Rome the authorities decided that they had to put a stop to it. Sources: my opinion .

Christianity was a threat to their "emperor as god" philosophy, because Jesus was talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. Under the Roman empire, the emperor was considered to be a god, and citizens were expected to indicate their loyalty to Caesar annually by saying "Caesar is Lord. " This Roman emperor-worship religion was directly challenged by the Christian teaching that only Christ is Lord.So that is the main reason why Christianity was not tolerated by the Romans.

There were instances of individual Romans accepting Christianity (such as the centurion who stood by the cross of Christ and, after watching how He died, said "Truly this was the Son of God. ") And even the apostle Paul was treated fairly well by his Roman guards while he was in prison, and some of them became Christians, but on the whole there was a lot of persecution of Christians by the Roman empire.It wasn’t until Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire that the persecution stopped altogether. In my understanding, Judaism may have been tolerated, but the Jews didn’t exactly like being under the Roman empire.

They were hoping for a Messiah who would free them from the tyranny of the emperor. The Romans set up Herod as a puppet king in charge of the Jews, and he was horrible to them -- he ordered all babies under 2 years old to be killed because he was trying to stamp out the potential rival to his kingdom (the promised Messiah who was a baby born in Bethlehem). For more on the Roman cult of emperor worship and how Christianity was a threat to that, see this three-part article "Messiahs!

Rulers and the Role of Religion" published in Vision magazine over the course of three issues in 2005: http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=334 http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=156 http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=155 .

The Romans had already conquered Israel whereas Christianity was a rising threat I don't think it's correct to say Rome was ever tolerant toward Judaism. But established religions like Judaism tended to be less of a threat to the authoritarian rule of governments, as compared to some of the emerging religions of the time which could be viewed as subversive of authoritarian rule. Here's a little history:About 61 B.C., Roman troops under Pompei invaded Judea and sacked Jerusalem in support of King Herod.

Judea had become a client state of Rome. Initially it was ruled by the client Herodian dynasty. The land was divided into districts of Judea, Galilee, Peraea and a small trans-Jordanian section, each of which eventually came under direct Roman control.

The Romans called the large central area of the land, which included Jerusalem, Judea. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, Judea, in the early years of Roman rule. Roman rulers put down Jewish revolts in about A.D. 70 and A.D. 132.In A.D. 135, the Romans drove the Jews out of Jerusalem.

The Romans named the area Palaestina, at about this time. The name Palaestina, which became Palestine in English, is derived from Herodotus, who used the term Palaistine Syria to refer to the entire southern part of Syria, meaning "Philistine Syria." Most of the Jews who continued to practice their religion fled or were forcibly exiled from Palestine, eventually forming a second Jewish Diaspora.

However, Jewish communities continued to exist in Galilee, the northernmost part of Palestine. Palestine was governed by the Roman Empire until the fourth century A.D. (300's) and then by the Byzantine Empire.In time, Christianity spread to most of Palestine. The population consisted of Jewish converts to Christianity and paganism, peoples imported by the Romans, and others who had probably inhabited Palestine continuously.

During the period of the Roman Empire, Christianity, along with several other new religions, emerged. These new religions were collectively known as "Mystery religions" — they stressed the emotion bond between an individual and god, the necessity of faith, and the promise of happiness in an afterlife. Mystery cults were generally far more egalitarian than traditional religions, which generally tended to support the state and reinforce social hierarchies.

Sources: http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm#From%20Roman%20to%20Ottoman%20Rule .

For a long time Christianity was considered a Jewish sect Now my answer summary doesn’t really explain it but it is part of the reason. The Romans were generally fairly pragmatic (somewhat Maccavellianly so, but still) and they had lots of Jews who didn’t like the Christians and fewer Christians who were a new religion that the Romans didn’t know or understand much about and whose perceived beliefs (whether or not they were what the early Christians actually believed). Of course, the Jews then had some uprisings (approximately 70 AD) that made them rather unpopular with Rome and it was at about that time that the Christians really started to say that they were not a Jewish sect, though I think it took the Romans some time to accept.

The position of Christians in the Roman Empire ebbed and flowed as far as the amount of their persecutions with some Emperors being more tolerant than others until Constantine made Christianity an official state religion in the 4th century. Sources: Personal knowledge and fact checking athttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04295c.htm and wikipedia .

See below. " "Does the story of Jacob and Esau illustrate the relationship between Judaism and Christianity?" "Why do you think Christianity is bad? " "Has there ever been a dispute over Christianity being a monotheistic religion?

" "is evolution fact or just a religion? If so then why is evolution tought in schools but not christianity? " "Why do the major patriarchal religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) frown upon the spiritual leadership of women?

" "Are there ANY Atheists here? What are your thoughts about organized religion, especially Christianity? " "What's the relationship between Christianity and Messianic Judaism?

Do Christians and Messianic Jews ever interact?" "Is there any other religion besides Christianity that routinely asks what denomination people are? On official forms .." "Spiritually speaking, there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity in the Religion & Spirituality section, does there?

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.