Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Exaggerating the numbers of early christians by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth.
[00:00:08] I have started discussing the fascinating article by Keith Hopkins, christian number and its implications. See my last post. After discussing some of the problems with knowing how to count christians, that is, who counts as a Christian, he reflects for a bit on the problems presented to us by our sources of information.
[00:00:26] The basic problem is that our sources don't give us much information.
[00:00:31] No one from the early christian church was a statistician and no one kept records of how many people were being converted. And the comments we find that are of any relevance turn out to be so broad, generalized and suspicious as to be of no use to us at all. Sometimes a source will give numbers, but they clearly cannot be trusted. Take the book of acts. This is our first account of early Christianity and of course became the canonical account according to acts two. This and the following examples that I'm giving. They are not found in Hopkins. Just 50 days after Jesus death, on the day of Pentecost, the spirit came upon the disciples and they preached in foreign tongues in some kind of open air setting. And Jews from all around the world heard them and came to believe. How many Jews, 3000, became christians that day.
[00:01:24] A few days afterward, Peter and John are involved with a great miracle, and Peter uses the opportunity to preach to the crowd. And he is remarkably successful. 5000 more jews convert that day. Acts four four so here we are, less than two months after Jesus death, and 8000 non christian Jews have converted to believe in Jesus. In Jerusalem. Really? Can that be right?
[00:01:52] For starters, what was the population of Jerusalem at the time? Some scholars have argued that it was 80,000, but that seems too high. One fairly recent study argues that it could be as low as 20,000. See Hillel Geva, Jerusalems population in antiquity. A minimalist view in Tel Aviv. 41.
[00:02:11] Now it is true. In the account of acts two, we are talking about converts from Jews who are visiting Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. Not necessarily Jerusalem locals. But are we really to believe that 8000 Jews, either living in or visiting a city of 20,000 or even 50,000 convert to Christianity in under two months? And that there is no reference to this massive and cataclysmic change of religious commitments in any other source?
[00:02:40] That seems highly unlikely. Acts is inflating the numbers by how much? Were any converts being made? How would we know?
[00:02:51] The problem continues later in the Book of acts. In 21 20, Paul is told by the christian leaders in Jerusalem that there are many tens of thousands the literal translation of the Greek of Jews who have become converted. Again, that seems highly implausible.
[00:03:09] Hopkins points to other exaggerations in other accounts. For example, Paul, in his letter to the Romans earlier than acts, says that the gospel has been preached to all the world.
[00:03:21] That, of course, is completely implausible. By that time, it had not been preached to every province of the Roman Empire, let alone every city, let alone anywhere else.
[00:03:32] Non canonical christian authors follow this pattern of exaggeration. Around 200 CE, for example, the apologist Tertullian from North Africa indicates that there are more christians than pagans in the world. In his words, the christians were almost a majority in every city.
[00:03:52] Or here is a little piece of remarkable.
[00:03:56] We are but of yesterday, and and we have filled every place among youcities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you and betake themselves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with shame. You would be horror struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few, almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ.
[00:04:46] Tertullian apology, chapter 37.
[00:04:49] Historians, whether experts in roman history, in early Christianity, in anything else of relevance, do not think these statements can be credited for a second. If Tertullian were right, the vast majority of the empire was christian. Why do we so rarely hear of it in pagan sources? Why isn't Christianity seen as a threat that needs to be dealt with?
[00:05:11] When pagan sources do discuss christians, they are always maligned as a small, secretive, exclusive group with no power, prestige, or even intelligent members. They are not presented as a real and present danger, a threat to the religious or moral fabric of society.
[00:05:29] Christians are portrayed as weird outcasts completely on the margins of society, lower class, inferior, ignorant, and in a tiny minority.
[00:05:40] Even in other christian accounts. For example, there are a couple of accounts of real historical figures who were missionaries. Only a couple, as I'll point out, from the third and fourth christian centuries. Gregory Thaumaturgus, which is his nickname. It means wonder worker, because he was thought to have converted the masses by doing amazing miracles. And Martin of Tours, who work to convert the pagans of their regions. And these accounts are quite straightforward. There are hardly any christians around until these guys start doing their thing. Moreover, we know from unambiguous archaeological evidence that paganism continued to thrive with virtually no interruption from christians throughout the first and second and most of the third centuries.
[00:06:25] So the christian exaggerations acts Tertullian cannot be of much use in figuring out how many christians there were at any point, or how many people were converting.
[00:06:36] Scholars such as Hopkins who want to crunch the numbers have to do it in other ways, as we will see in subsequent posts.
