The Triumph of Christianity - How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (Bart D. Ehrman, 2018)

(294 pages)

I wouldn't say I loved the book, but I definitely would recommend it.  Author gives some ideas on how to think about the period between Jesus's ascension to heaven and the late Roman empire.

Interesting discussion about what it meant to be a "pagan" to those who were pagans.  The term didn't exist.  Religion wasn't organized with any hierarchy (though priests or temple officials had varying degrees of authority and/or respect).  There wasn't really any contrasting religious approach (except a few Jews who didn't fit the prevailing narrative) - everyone just knew that it was appropriate and helpful (or at least not harmful) to observe the various rituals, mostly sacrifices.  Multiple gods - generally with supra-human characteristics - and always room to accommodate more gods.  Religion didn't really involve ethics - mostly cult sacrifices - ethics were thought of separately.

Which helps explain why Christianity was so disruptive.  Its adherents rejected all the other gods and were willing to be martyrs - this level of intensity was unusual, and attention-grabbing.  And conversion was a zero-sum game for the first time - one more Christian meant one less "pagan".  A future of religious wars lay ahead - so much more at stake in this new religious construct.

Author talks at length about how early Christianity - mostly lacking any hierarchy - a religion for losers, mostly populated by losers (though always some upper class devotees) - managed to get traction.  St. Paul was absolutely critical to the process - hard to imagine how the religion would have spread without him.  The miracle stories were compelling.  But Jesus of course had written down nothing - so many details to sort out - so much disagreement - including basic things like the relationship between the Father and the Son.  How to determine which interpreters of Jesus's life were correct?  How to determine which fill-in-the-blanks for things not addressed by Jesus were correct, and authored by whom?  Amazing that anything coherent was finalized.  Reminiscent of the discussion in this book about how the Koran and related writings evolved.

Lots of discussion of Constantine - no matter how one interprets his conversion in 312, the consequences were huge.  Including the council at Nicea in 325 (to this day we use the Nicene creed), where Constantine learned that getting theologians on the same page was even more difficult than ordering around soldiers or administrators.

But now the wheels are in motion for a hierarchical structure for the church that significantly echoes the Roman imperial structure - yuck.  Bishops gaining temporal power . . . one can see the trajectory to behaviors that led to the Reformation.

Author also plays with some numbers - assuming x Christians 10 years after Jesus and growth rate of  y%, how many by 312?  Growth rate thereafter?  Again, it's interesting to think about going from a few hundred to millions over say three centuries.

He alludes to Gibbon's famous discussion about the effect of Christianity on Rome, which I happened to be reading at the same time.

Walls - A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick (David Frye, 2018)

(248 pages)

Book club selection (via me; session held 13 January 2019).

I felt like the author could have done more with the topic - but it was sufficiently interesting that I made our book club members read it.  And the discussion was quite good, perhaps because the current government "shutdown" - in significant part over DJT's proposed border wall (or so they claim) - helped focus attention.

Author's main thesis is that one way to look at history is to divide folks into just two camps - those who built walls, and those who lived outside them.  Simplistic?  Yes.  But helpful, and interesting.  Without walls, not much would have ever been built - the marauders were out there and all too ready to destroy.  So civilization depended on walls.  Yet a funny thing happened to the wall builders - they often became weak, timid - to the point where they often had to hire outside-the-wall types to serve as a defense force.  Author walks through examples, including Rome.

He talks about "fear" driving the wall-builder decisions, but that seems over-wrought - sure there was an element of fear, but putting up walls and outsourcing defense seems rational; comparative advantage!

Lots of discussion in the book about the steppe hordes, China, Persia.  Tough folks on the steppes, they never would have built a wall.  Sparta similarly wired.  Reviews the Constantinople walls.  Rome with no internal walls for centuries - the legions were the walls - that changed as conditions deteriorated.  Hadrian's wall.

Walls no longer all that effective for military purposes - but remain relevant, and pretty effective, for border control purposes.  More walls going up in recent times than have been constructed in a long-long time - because they work, if imperfectly.  Often demonized, but deep down how many folks truly believe in open borders?

We lock up our homes, fence our properties - what does that tell us?

Also discusses Berlin wall, though that was a "keep them in" situation. 

Reminder:  civilization is fragile.  Destroying is easy relative to building.