Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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A historical discussion of how Christianity managed to take over the Roman Empire in such a short time? Try out Miro's infinite white board: miro.pxf.io/c/5922091/1391984/16613

We begin by asking the Why's of the situation behind the rise of Christianity. Why did it appeal to the masses? Why did it survive suppression? Why did the Emperors embrace it? Finding answers is difficult as we actually have little concrete evidence to go on for the history of early Christianity and especially the on-the-ground details of how things happened.

In this video we seek to provide answers in several steps. In the first step we look at the high level milestones of the spread of Christianity. We then review some of the leading hypotheses which seek to explain why Christianity was successful. However these are all gross over simplifications based on a limited set of data. We therefore spend the bulk of the video discussing with a historian about what the complex transition was like from the ground level.

Sources:
"Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman
"The Rise of Western Christendom" by Peter Brown
"Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion" by Peter Heather
"A New History of Early Christianity" by Charles Freeman

Suggested readings from Kimble (reddit.com/user/tinyblondeduckling/):
My first recommendation is Peter Brown’s The Rise of Western Christendom, 200-1000. First published in 1996, revised (and nearly doubled in page count) and republished in 2003 and then revised again in 2013, this broad level history of early Christianity is a classic for a reason. Over the course of his career, Brown has published widely on Late Antiquity and early Christianity - he was one of the first scholars to bring attention to Late Antiquity as a discrete period to begin with - and this book brings that expertise to bear. Brown’s writing is accessible to all audiences and covers an incredible range of material on the growth of early Christianity, including following it into the Medieval world.

While Brown’s book is a bit more traditional in its coverage, I would also like to highlight in my second recommendation a totally different approach to thinking about the history of religion. Virginia Burrus’ Late Ancient Christianity works within a lived religion approach, telling the history of early Christians not from the perspective of top-level governments and institutions but rather takes as its starting point Christians’ beliefs and practices themselves. By exploring how early Christians thought about and defined themselves and went about their practice, Burrus gives a helpful complement to Brown’s narrative.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
04:09 Key Dates
07:00 Major Hypotheses
10:58 Historical Interview
12:25 Religious Marketplace
24:52 Roman Religion
32:02 Mithraism
37:19 Judaism
40:08 Sol Invictus
43:16 Manichaeism
47:17 Christianity on the Local Level
50:24 What is the appeal?
59:04 Spread across the Empire
01:10:18 Material culture
01:19:13 Daily practices
01:27:06 Major Heresies
01:32:43 Christianity on the High Level
01:59:00 Conclusion

#history
#documentary
#rome