[source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. ROMANS CRUCIFIED 2,000 JEWS NOT LONG BEFORE BIRTH OF JESUS The Jewish historian Josephus says that not long before Jesus' birth, two thousand Jews had been crucified in his native Galilee for rebelling against Rome, leaving a forest of rotting corpses as a warning to others. Jesus himself, charged with treason against Rome, would one day suffer the same penalty. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 4] ESSENES REJECTED JEWISH TEMPLE ESTABLISHMENT, FAVORED SECLUDED COMMUNE INSTEAD The Essenes, for example, during the first century BCE, abandoned Jerusalem, denounced the Temple worship as polluted, and formed a "pure" community in the desert caves overlooking the Dead Sea. There they renounced private property to live in a monastic community; they observed the rules prescribed for holy war; and they avoided sexual contact and impure food, thoughts, and practices as they awaited the battle of Armageddon. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 4] JEWISH LAW, IF NO KIDS BORN, LET MEN DIVORCE THEIR WIFE, AND TAKE ANOTHER, TO HAVE CHILDREN Both polygamy and divorce, on the other hand, increased opportunities for reproduction - not for women, but for the men who wrote the laws and benefited from them. Jewish law even went so far as to require that a man bound for ten years in a childless marriage should either divorce his wife and marry another, or else keep his barrent wife and take a second to produce his children. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 11] ALTERNATIVELY, JEWISH LAW PERMITTED SECOND WIFE, TO PRODUCE CHILDREN, ALLOWING POLYGAMY Both polygamy and divorce, on the other hand, increased opportunities for reproduction - not for women, but for the men who wrote the laws and benefited from them. Jewish law even went so far as to require that a man bound for ten years in a childless marriage should either divorce his wife and marry another, or else keep his barrent wife and take a second to produce his children. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 11] PAUL: IGNORE YOUR OWN WIVES, LIVE AS THOUGH YOU WERE NOT MARRIED Yet Paul encourages even those who are married to live as if they, too, were unmarried: "Let those who have wives live as though they had none." (I Corinthians 7:29b) [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 17] DIVORCE YOUR WIVES, IF THEY ARE IMMORAL THIS ACCEPTABLE TO GOD Whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another, is guilty of adultery. (Matthew 19:9) [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 22] CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA TAUGHT SEX WITHIN MARRIAGE ONLY FOR PROCREATION "The gospel," as Clement read it, not only restricts sexuality to marriage, but even within marriage, limits it to specific acts intended for procreation. To engage in marital intercourse for any other reason is to "do injury to nature." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 29] TERTULLIAN: ROMANS ACCUSED CHRISTIANS OF EVERY HORRIBLE CRIME IMAGINABLE In an open letter addressed to "rulers of the Roman Empire," Tertullian acknowledges that pagan critics detest the movement: "You think that a Christian is a man of every crime, an enemy of the gods, of the emperor, of the law, of good morals, of all nature." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 32] EARLY CHRISTIANS ACCUSED OF CANNIBALSIM Justin the Philosopher, born c. 110 CE...says taht he, like Tertullian, was astonished and moved "when I saw Christians...fearless of death." Justin had heard rumors that Christians secretly indulged in cannibalism and promiscuity; but the superhuman courage they displayed in the ampitheater as they endured torture and execution convinced him they were possessed by an extraordinary power. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 36] FIRST CHRISTIANS SAID TO BE SEXUALLY PERMISCUOUS, ACCORDING TO ROMAN SOURCES Justin the Philosopher, born c. 110 CE...says taht he, like Tertullian, was astonished and moved "when I saw Christians...fearless of death." Justin had heard rumors that Christians secretly indulged in cannibalism and promiscuity; but the superhuman courage they displayed in the ampitheater as they endured torture and execution convinced him they were possessed by an extraordinary power. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 36] NO FEAR OF DEATH IN EARLY CHRISTIANS Justin the Philosopher, born c. 110 CE...says that he, like Tertullian, was astonished and moved "when I saw Christians...fearless of death." Justin had heard rumors that Christians secretly indulged in cannibalism and promiscuity; but the superhuman courage they displayed in the ampitheater as they endured torture and execution convinced him they were possessed by an extraordinary power. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 36] TERTULLIAN: BLOOD OF MARTYRED CHRISTIANS ONLY RECRUITS MORE FOR US Thirty years after Justin and his companions were beaten and beheaded, the rebellious North African convert Tertullian, who had chosen baptism after he saw Christians die in the arena, boasted to his Roman rulers that executions only accelerated Christian conversion: "The more we are mown down by you, the more we multiply: the blood of Christians is seed!" [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 50] TERTULLIAN: UNLIKE EMPERORS, WHO RULE BY FORCE, CHRISTIANS HELP POOR VOLUNTARILY The emperors rule by force and violence; but among the Christians, Tertullian said, "everything is voluntary." Instead of extracting taxes to pay for the emperors' luxuries, building projects, and wars, Christians voluntarily contributed "to support the destitute, and to pay for their burial expenses; to supply the needs of boys and girls lacking money and power, and of old people confined to the home....we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 50] TERTULLIAN: CHRISTIANS SHARE EVERYTHING BUT THEIR SPOUSES ...Tertullian boasted, "we hold everything in common but our spouses," exactly reversing the practice in outside society, where, he said sardonically, most people voluntarily share nothing else! [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 50] ROMAN EMPIRE WAS VERY DEFINED BY CLASS, FAMILY PRESTIGE, EDUCATION, SEX, ETC. For the Christian message could prove powerfully explosive in a society that ranked each person within a social hierarchy according to class, family, wealth, education, sex, and status - above all, the status that distinguished free persons from slaves. Within the capital city of Rome, three quarters of the population were either slaves - persons legally classified as property - or were descended from slaves. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 51] IN CAPITAL CITY OF ROME, 3/4 OF POPULATION WERE SLAVES OR DESCENDED FROM SLAVES For the Christian message could prove powerfully explosive in a society that ranked each person within a social hierarchy according to class, family, wealth, education, sex, and status - above all, the status that distinguished free persons from slaves. Within the capital city of Rome, three quarters of the population were either slaves - persons legally classified as property - or were descended from slaves. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 51] MANY EARLY CHRISTIANS WERE SLAVE OWNERS AND THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT Many Christians were themselves slave owners and took slavery for granted as unthinkingly as their pagan neighbors. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 52] SOME EARLY CHRISTIANS STARTED TO VIEW ALL PEOPLE AS EQUAL IN THE EYES OF GOD But others went among the hovels of the poor, the illiterate, slaves, women, and foreigners - the good news that class, education, sex, and status made no difference, that every human being is essentially equal to any other "before God," including the emperor himself, for all humankind was created in the image of the one God. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 52] TERTULLIAN: ROMAN POWER NOT PROOF OF GODLY FAVOR, JUST LUST FOR WAR Is "the progess of the empire," then, as Roman patriotic myth contends, "the reward the gods have paid to the Romans for their devotion"? On the contrary, says Tertullian, "if I am not mistaken, kingdoms are aquired by wars and expanded by victories. Moreover, you cannot have wars and victories without taking - and often destroying - cities." In their wars of conquest, he continues, the Romans have destroyed and despoiled temples indiscriminately with houses and palaces. The Romans succeeded, he concludes, by subordinating their purposed piety to their obsession for conquest. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 54] TERTULLIAN: NO RIGHT TO COERCION IN THE NAME OF RELIGION Tertullian even made the unprecedented claim that every human being has a right to religious liberty: "It should be considered absurd for one person to compel another to honor the gods, when he should voluntarily, and in the awareness of his own need, seek their favor IN THE LIBERTY WHICH IS HIS RIGHT." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 56] CHRISTIAN EMPEROR THEODOSIUS MADE "HERESY" A CRIME AGAINST ROME IN 381 In 381, the Christian emperor Theodosius made "heresy" a crime against the state. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 62] TERTULLIAN: EVERY WOMAN IS THE DEVIL'S GATEWAY Tertullian, for example, took Genesis 3 as an opportunity to warn his "sisters in Christ" that even the best of them were, in effect, Eve's co-conspirators: " You are the devil's gateway....you are she who persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack....Do you not know that every one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age: the guilt, of necessity, lives on too." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 63] AUGUSTINE ABANDONED HIS SON AND HIS MOTHER TO BECOME A CELIBATE CHRISTIAN Augustine later described his overwhelming relief when at last he gave up his career, his ambition, the woman who had lived with him and borne him a son, as well as his impending marriage to a wealthy heiress, for the freedom of celibacy and renunciation. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 79] YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN WHO REFUSED TO MARRY REGARDED AS INSANE OR INSUBORDINATE In classical Greek and Roman society, a young man or woman who hesitated or refused to marry the person chosen by his or her family would be considered insubordinate or possibly even insane. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 80] ARRANGED MARRIAGES SOMETIMES AS EARLY AS SIX OR SEVEN YEARS OLD Many parents expected their daughters to marry at about the age of puberty or soon after; in aristocratic circles, advantageous marriages sometimes were arranged when the children were as young as six or seven. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 80] MARRIAGE VIEWED AS SIGN OF BEING FULLY PRODUCTIVE IN SOCIETY Through marriage, as the historian Peter Brown says, "a girl was conscripted as a fully productive member by her society, as was her spouse." [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 80] ROMAN EMPIRE'S "GREAT PERSECUTION OF 303-304" DESTROYED COPIES OF SOME CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES Augustine...His opponents were Christians who had refused to acknowledge the episcopacy of Caecilian, elected bishop of Carthage in 311, on the grounds that Caecilian had allowed Roman government authorities to confiscate and destroy his church's own copies of the Scriptures during the Great Persecution of 303-304. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 124] AUGUSTINE'S IDEAS NOT WIDELY ACCEPTED (THOUGH DEBATED) UNTIL COUNCIL OF ORANGE 529 CE Augustine's ideas certainly did not win immediate or universal acceptance. Throughout the following century until the Council of Orange in 529, Augustine's views were ardently debated. Even in the centuries following that council, which endorsed Augustine's views, many theologians held - or were accused of holding - "semi-Pelagian" views. [source: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 125]