Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Were christians statistically insignificant in the first 200 years? By Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth I return now to roman historian Keith Hopkins fascinating and influential article, christian number and its implications. As I pointed out for the sake of his article and after checking it out for plausibility, Hopkins accepts the calculations of Rodney Stark that if Christianity started with 1000 believers in the year 40 cedar and ended up being 10% of the empire, 6 million believers by the time of the emperor Constantine, you would need a growth rate of about 40% per decade, or as Hopkins prefers putting it, 3.4% per year. Obviously, as I've stated, but need to stress again, we cannot be and are not really thinking that there was a steady rate of growth, that every year there was the same percentage of increase. We're talking big numbers over a long range of time. So the average rate of growth is just that, an average. Some years there may have been a loss in numbers, other years a huge spike. So take that as given. But if we were talking about a steady rate, there would be very interesting implications. If in the year 40 there were 1000 christians in the year 50, there would be 1400. In the year 100 there would be 7400. In the year 150, 40,000.
[00:01:26] In the year 200, 210,000. In the year 251.1 million, and then in the year 306 million.
[00:01:36] So even though we aren't imagining these are actual numbers, but just rough projections, they are nonetheless intriguing and probably significant.
[00:01:45] If they are anywhere near being right, and I think, as does Hopkins, that they must be near, then Hopkins thinks we should consider the implications.
[00:01:54] If the empire comprised 6 million inhabitants, then by the year 100 CE, Christians made up barely 0.01% of the empire. That's one 100th of 1%.
[00:02:07] Even more striking, by the year 200 CE, Christians were only 0.35%. That is just a bit more than one third of 1%.
[00:02:18] Hopkins concludes that if these numbers are anywhere near close, then they imply that, practically speaking, for the whole of this period, christians were statistically insignificant.
[00:02:31] Even if in 200 all the christians were in major cities, they still made up only one 30th of the cities. And Hopkins thinks that, in fact, all christians were definitely not just in major cities. So those who were in cities made up much less than one 30th of the city's populations. That seems amazing, at least for most of us who reflect on the rise of Christianity in the empire. Most of us think that christians were a very large minority by the time of Tertullian, around 200 CE.
[00:03:02] Not at all. Lots of people. The majority of people had never even heard of christians, let alone thought much about them. But weren't christians growing by leaps and bounds? What about claims of Tertullian that there were more christians than pagans in the empire?
[00:03:18] Hopkins points out that christians themselves may have seen their growth as staggering and fast, since they saw conversions all the time. But in Hopkins words, from an official upper class roman point of view, christians did not matter except as occasional individual or local nuisances.
[00:03:39] Page 196.
[00:03:41] He points out that the third century author Herodian, who wrote a political history of the Roman Empire in which he covered all the important political events of the years 180 through 238 CE, never even mentions christians. That's how unimportant christians were to the roman ruling classes. But what about all those persecutions? Didn't the empire see Christianity as a threat and try to stamp it out?
[00:04:06] Hopkins argues that christian accounts of their own persecution do not reflect some kind of broad based reality. Naturally, the christians themselves felt like an oppressed minority, and for them, any opposition from roman officials was a huge deal. But it wasn't a huge deal for roman officials.
[00:04:24] Occasionally, in rare instances here or there in the empire, there would be accusations that a christian group was causing trouble, and officials might take some action. But for the most part, the tales of massive roman opposition to the christian movement are simply ways christians talked about themselves and to themselves. We are so persecuted. They do not represent, in Hopkins words, an objective description of reality.
[00:04:51] When christians were persecuted on these rare occasions, it was because of their idiosyncrasies, such as refusing to participate in the traditional festivals of a city, which involved pagan religious practices and holding secret meetings at night. For Hopkins, it was this combination of ostentatious difference and successful proselytism that provoked occasional outbursts of hostility.
[00:05:16] Page 198. There were not systematic attempts to wipe out Christianity in the first two centuries of the church's existence simply because the numbers of Christians were far too small for anyone to worry about or even think much about. That changed once you start getting into the third century, even with just the steady state of growth, Hopkins is 3.4%. You move from, and these are very rough calculations, 200,000 Christians to 6 million. Now we're talking significant numbers.
[00:05:48] The growth is not because of massive evangelistic campaigns or huge missionary efforts. It is simply by Christians converting their families, friends, neighbors, and other acquaintances at a rate of increase of about 40% per decade. And so it is in the middle of the third century, when the growth is becoming significant, that you start having roman imperial authorities pay attention to Christians. It's not surprising that this is when you start finding state sponsored persecution of the Christians, starting with the emperor Decius, who ruled 249 to 51 CE, and his successor Valerian in 257 CE, and then the great persecution under Diocletian in 303 CE.
[00:06:30] By that time Christians were a threat, but not before 200 cedar.
