Christianity from Judaism to Constantine: Crash Course World History #11

Hi there my name’s John Green; this is Crash Course World History and today we’re going to talk about Jesus.

So this is a Roman coin from around the time Jesus was born in the Roman Empire, and it

calls Augustus, the emperor, the son of God. So let’s just state at the outset that in

4 BCE, being the son of God, or at least being the son of a god was not such an unusual thing.

But a poor Jew being the son of God — that was news.

[Theme

Music]

Any understanding of Christianity has to start with Judaism, because Jesus was born a Jew,

and he grew up in the Jewish tradition. He was one of many teachers spreading his ideas

in the Roman province of Judea at the time, and he was part of a messianic tradition that

helps us understand why he was thought of not only teacher but something much, much more.

Let’s go straight to the Thought Bubble today.

The people who would become the Jews, were just one of many tribal peoples eking out

an existence in that not-very fertile crescent world of Mesopotamia after the agricultural revolution.

The Hebrews initially worshiped many gods, making sacrifices to them in order to bring

good weather and good fortune. But they eventually developed a religion centered around an idea

that would become key to the other great western religions.

This was monotheism, the idea that there is only one true god (or at least that if there

are other gods around, they are total lameoids). The Hebrews developed a second concept that

is key to their religion as well: the idea of the covenant, a deal with God.

The main man in this, the big macher was Abraham. Not to make this too much of a scripture lesson,

but it’s kind of hard to understand the Jews without understanding Abraham, or Abram

as he was known before he had his big conversation with God. Recorded in Genesis 17: "When Abram

was ninety years and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, 'I am the Almighty

God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.' " And I’m a make a covenant with you and

a bunch of cool things will happen like you’re gonna have kids and your descendants will

number the stars and you can have all the land of Canaan forever, it’s gonna be awesome.

I’m paraphrasing by the way, Thought Bubble.

So God promised that Abram would have kids with his wife even though the dude was already

like 99, but there was a catch: "This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me

and you and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised." Keep

it PG-13, Thought Bubble.

Now that is asking a lot from a guy, especially a 99-year-old geezer like Abram living in

a time before general anesthesia. But those were the terms of the deal, and in exchange

God had chosen Abraham and his descendants to be a great nation. From this we get the

expression that the Jews are the Chosen people.

Thanks for keeping it clean, Thought Bubble.

So, some important things about this god:

One, singularity. He — and I’m using the masculine pronoun because that’s what Hebrew

prayers use — does not want you to put any gods before Him.

He is also transcendent, having always existed and he is deeply personal – he chats with

prophets, sends locusts, etc. But he doesn’t take corporeal form like the Greek and Roman Gods do.

He is also involved in history, like he will destroy cities, and bring floods, and determine

the outcome of wars, and possibly football games. Stan, no! FOOTBALL games!

Probably most important to us today, and certainly most important to Jesus, this god demands

moral righteousness and social justice. So, this is the god of the Hebrews, Yahweh, and

despite many ups and downs, the Jewish people have stuck with him for- according to the

Hebrew calendar, at least- over 5700 years.

And He has stuck by them too, despite the Jews being, on occasion, something of a disappointment

to him. Which leads to various miseries, and also to a tradition of prophets who speak

for God and warn the people to get back on the right path lest there be more miseries.

Which brings us back to our friends, the Romans. By the time that Jesus was born, the land

of the Israelites had been absorbed into the Roman Empire as the province of Judea. At

the time of Jesus’s birth, Judea was under the control of Herod the Great, best known

for building the massive temple in Jerusalem, that the Romans would later destroy.

And by the time Jesus died, an expanded Judea was under the rule of Herod Antipater. Also,

unhelpfully, known as Herod. Both Herods ultimately took their orders from the Romans, and they

both show up on the list of rulers who are oppressive to the Jews, partly because there’s

never that much religious freedom in an empire.

Unless you are, wait for it... The Mongols [Mongoltage]

or the Persians. Also, they were Hellenizers, bringing in Greek theater and architecture,

and rationalism. And in response to those Hellenistic influences, there were a lot of

preachers trying to get the Jews to return to the traditions and the godly ways of the

past, including the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, and the Essenes, and the Zealots.

And one of those preachers, who didn’t fit comfortably into any of these four groups,

was Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a preacher who spread his message of peace, love and,

above all, justice, across Judea over the course of his actually average-length life for his time.

He was remarkably charismatic, attracting a small but incredibly loyal group of followers,

and he was said to perform miracles — although it’s worth noting that miracles weren’t

terribly uncommon at the time.

Jesus’s message was particularly resonant to the poor and downtrodden and pretty radical

in its anti-authoritarian stance. He said it was easier for a camel to get through the