Christianity And Paganism In 4-8 Cent. :: essays research papers

     The consensus among many historians has been that the transition from pagan religion to Christianity in the Mediterranean world was effortlessly accomplished by the end of the fourthly century. In Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, Ramsay MacMullen sets out to negate the consensus, which he maintains is an understandable misinterpretation considering the "corrupt foundation" of diachronic figures it rest upon. He makes his case by covering a wide vomit up of material to show that Christianity did non destroy paganism as oftentimes as merge with it. Through his brilliant and original display of patriarchal and secondary source material it becomes evident that paganism remained alive and deep-rooted long after Constantine. Many factors appear to have caused this, most conspicuously the vast extent of the empire and consequent diversity of tribal and local anesthetic customs, which met peoples daily needs. Christianit y replaced paganism only when the people believed it could do more for them what paganism had done (1). This was especi bothy true of protection and of healing, primarily physical save also psychological. People flocked to the shrines of Asclepius and others Could the Christian god, or more likely, the Christian saints, direct those shoes?     Most scholars of religious history probably accept, if they are in effect(p) to themselves, that religious history is a notoriously slippery business. Therefore, it is to the benefit of all historians to be aware of the great variety of interpretations that are available. History is an current discourse, in which many different interpretations can and should be written on the same history, each striking at least one agree that supporters of an opposing or different view can find significant. The stiffness of an interpretation of a particular history is fundamentally dependent on the existence of a sufficient amount of quality narratives or records of historical events to provide a skeletal structure to assist in pinpointing relationships between people, time and space (2). MacMullen maintains that the historical records of late antiquity are not only insufficient, but also distorted. The Late Antique historical record seems to falsely suggest that paganism was not only defeated by the end of the fourth century, but had in fact successfully reborn all of the pagans. In addition to the fact that the majority of historical records involving a conflict tend to focus on the winner, he asserts that the reason the historical records of Late Antiquity are unintelligible is because ecclesiastical and secular administration destroyed or distorted them.