By Bart D. Ehrman, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
One of the most vexed questions in trying to understand the Christianization of the Roman Empire involves determining how quickly it happened. How many people converted to the new faith and when? The ancient sources provide us with very little specific information, and the information they do provide is highly problematic.
How Reliable Are the Ancient Sources?
The exaggerated claims we often hear today about Christianity are relatively minor in comparison with what comes down to us from the ancient world. One clear example comes to us from the 1st century BCE Roman historian Livy, who describes the threat to Rome by one of the few religious groups that the authorities decided to crack down on.
As we’ve seen, normally, Roman authorities had a ‘live and let live’ policy when it came to religious cults, even new ones. One major exception that we know of involved a group called the Bacchanals, worshippers of the god of ecstasy and wine, Bacchus.
The Bacchanals
According to Livy, in 186 BCE, the Bacchanals were a large group in the city of Rome that engaged in nefarious rituals that were socially dangerous and threatening to the well-being of the state.
In particular, they held secret meetings at night that involved random and reckless sexual acts, and far worse, ritual murder, secret conspiracies, night orgies of eating and drinking and wanton behavior, ritualized rape, ritual murder.
Livy is quite plain that this was an enormous threat to the well-being of the Roman society, an expanding group growing at an alarming rate, a major civic threat that infected the masses of Rome, in his words, like an epidemic, affecting not only the lower classes but also men and women of rank.
When the Roman senate realized what a terrifying threat the movement was, it stepped in and took action to put the festivities to a halt and ordered many of its devotees to be executed.
When Livy actually gives the numbers of those involved, it adds up to seven-tenths of 1% of the population of the city, and even that is probably exaggerated. This goes on to show that it wasn’t much of an epidemic.
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Contradictory Estimates of Christians
The problem involved with estimating the numbers of Christians is equally problematic, if not more so. The very few Roman authors of the 2nd century, for example, who mentioned the Christians make out that they, like Livy’s Bacchanals, were a big threat. But if so, it’s very hard indeed to understand why they are never at all by the vast majority of authors of the time.
Moreover, a number of Christian authors of the 2nd century and early 3rd centuries, such as the well-connected and well-traveled intellectual Origen of Alexandria, themselves are quite forthright that there simply weren’t many Christians in the world. Origen admits that many people throughout the empire had not even heard of the Christian faith.
Tall Claims of Christian Author, Tertullian
It is, in fact, very clear that other Christian authors are hugely exaggerating when they want to brag about the success of the Christian evangelistic efforts. No one is more culpable than the apologist and moralist Tertullian, who, in about the year 200, claimed that there were more Christians in the world than pagans.
His most famous statement absolutely revels in the sheer dominance of the Christian religion: “We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you, cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods.”
Inadequacy of the Literary Sources
The standard view among experts for over a century, based on detailed analyses of all our literary evidence, is that by the year 300, about a century after Tertullian, something like 7% to 10% of the Roman Empire was Christian. This brings the figure to about four to six million people.
Recent studies have shown that these numbers are probably exaggerated. They do not take adequately into account the fact that most of our evidence comes from literary sources whose authors lived in major cities and were explaining the situations in the places they lived.
The problem is that 85% to 90% of the Roman population didn’t live in cities but in small towns and rural areas where Christianity had greater trouble reaching at first.
What Does the Archaeological Evidence Say?
Moreover, archaeological records suggest the numbers are inflated. The Roman social historian Ramsay MacMullen has shown that even in the 4th century, there’s no record of enough actual churches or big enough churches to accommodate anywhere near these kinds of numbers. And so possibly the numbers are too high.
But there are very good reasons for thinking that they are not fantastically too high, given all the other evidence at our disposal. Maybe it’s best just to keep the estimates fairly general at this point and cut the widely accepted percentages in half.
So, let’s say that something like 4% to 5% of the Roman Empire was Christian at the time.
Common Questions about Ancient Literary Sources on Christianity Versus Reality
The apologist and moralist Tertullian, in about the year 200, claimed that there were more Christians in the world than pagans. His most famous statement, revels in the sheer dominance of the Christian religion. “We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you, cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods.”
Most of our evidence comes from literary sources whose authors lived in major cities and were explaining the situations in the places they lived. The problem is that 85% to 90% of the Roman population didn’t live in cities but in small towns and rural areas where Christianity had greater trouble reaching at first.
The archaeological records on Christi suggest that the numbers are inflated. The Roman social historian Ramsay MacMullen has shown that even in the 4th century, there’s no record of enough actual churches or big enough churches to accommodate anywhere near these kinds of numbers.
