Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1160: Early Christians Were More Messed up Than You Think: Dr. Nadya Williams

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

In this podcast conversation, we take a deep dive into the Greco-Roman world and look at things like Rome's transition from a republic to an empire, the marriage laws of Caesar Augustus, the rise of Christianity and some of the struggles they had with the broader Roman environment, classism in the ancient world and how Christianity when against it, the background of 1 Cor 11 and what Paul was dealing with in his teaching on the Eucharist, the turbulent 3rd century AD, the conversation of Constantine, the sack of Rome in 410, Christians and military service, and many other things. Dr. Nadya Williams has a PhD in Classics from Princeton University and is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and the forthcoming Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024). She is Book Review Editor for Current, where she also edits The Arena blog. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Row. My guest today is Dr. Nadia Williams, who has a PhD in Classics from Princeton University. She's also the author of this excellent book that we talk about in this podcast episode called Cultural Christians in the Early Church. She's also just finished a book that's going to come out next fall called Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic, Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity. She's a book review editor for Current, where she also edits the Arena blog. I really enjoyed this conversation. As you will see very clearly, Nadia is incredibly brilliant and extremely well-versed in all

things related to Greco-Roman society, which is where we go in this conversation. We kind of go all over the map. So if you love history, if you love ancient history, if you love Greco-Roman history in particular, you will, I think, very much enjoy this fascinating conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Nadia Williams. Nadia, thanks so much for being on Theology and Raw. I'm very, very excited about this conversation. I get sent a lot of books.

Okay. People are like, you know, they want me to probably promote it on the podcast. Most of the time. I mean, I love to read. I wish I could read them all. Seriously. There's so many good books that come across my desk. But I'm just like, I just don't have time for that.

So yours came across probably a couple months ago. It's called Cultural Christians in the Early Church. And I, first of all all the cover killed it so i i was like oh this is interesting you got the chariot with the wwjd license plate on it it's brilliant i picked it up and i couldn't put it down and that that's usually i just like you know i might crack a book real quick and then like put it down this one i was like i think i sat there and read like two chapters straight i was like this is really interesting. So anyway, thank you for being on The Algeron, Nadia.

That was a long introduction. Thank you so much for having me. It's a thrill. So tell us about your background. You have a background in classics. How did you get interested in that? That's not something that every kid wakes up and says, I want to read Homer in the original language, you know?

Yeah. Well, I was that kid who loved up and says, I want to read Homer in the original language, you know? Yeah. Well, I was that kid who loved Greek and Roman mythology. So I remember reading surveys of mythology for kids when I was little. And then in high school, my family moved to the U.S. when I was right before starting 10th grade. And I wanted to pick up a new language because why not? Like new country, I already have to like operate in English, which I sort of knew, but not super well. But I figured like, why not add another new language? And the only class that had an open slot was Latin. So it was like, sure, Alice in Wonderland learned Latin.

So like, I can do this too. And it was so much fun. And I realized pretty soon after that, that I wanted to study classics in college. And then, you know, one thing led to another and here we are way too many decades later. Way too many decades later. Where'd you move from? You're from Russia, right? I was born in Russia. And then in 91, right before the Soviet Union collapsed, my family moved to Israel. So I grew up in a secular Jewish home. And then we moved to the US in 96. How long grew up in a secular Jewish home. And then we moved to the U.S. in 96.

How long were you in Israel for? Almost six years. So did you learn Hebrew as well? I did. So how many languages do you know? Well, with classics, you have to understand, like, you have to read a lot of languages. They will not allow you to get a PhD without that. So obviously, like, ancient Greek and Latin, everybody has to learn that. You have to know French and German reading knowledge, at least for research, highly recommend

Italian and Spanish again for research and so on. It's, well, you know, this like biblical studies, you have to jump the same hoops. I had to, German was a no doubter. Like that was like, you know, there's a lot, especially New Testament, a lot of German scholarship. no doubter. Like that was like, you know, there's a lot, especially New Testament, a lot of German scholarship. That was so hard. It is. It's the hardest. Well, and academic. I would give an academic German text to a native German speaker and they're like, I can hardly read this. Yeah. I had a professor who joked that before there were computers, there were Germans. And it's so true. who joked that before there were computers, there were Germans. And it's so true.

French was easier to, it's hard to speak in my opinion. My wife's from France, so she's fluent. I can never get the pronunciation stuff, but reading it, I didn't find too difficult. I took one year of French and I was able to slowly work my way through an article with German. I mean, I put hours and hours. And I remember that turning point to where I can get, I can just slug my way through an article with minimal dictionary. You know, it's like, oh, I can get the gist of what this person's saying, you know, but anyway, it's all gone. It's all behind me now. From Russia to Israel. I mean, that's right now two places of massive conflict. I mean, I didn't bring you on to talk about that, but that this, you must, I mean, yeah. What are your thoughts on all of that? I mean, it's heartbreaking. It's, um, and a lot of the same people, you know, you have the legacy of

the Holocaust and Ukraine and all of that, and realizing that a lot of the same people, um, are living through painful memories all over again in multiple places. Yeah. Where in Israel were you? The first couple of years we were in Tel Aviv and then in Rehovot. Okay. I don't know where that's at. It's, if you drew like a line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it would be like smack in the middle.

Oh, I lived outside of, yeah, that's highway one, right? From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Yeah. So I lived 15 miles, it'd be west of Jerusalem off Highway 1 just for like four or five months. It was on a moshav out there. So, okay. So then you pursue a classics degree at Princeton University. That's pretty like not easy to get into. So what was that program like? I mean, was that pretty intense? I mean, you ate it up. I loved it. It's, I mean, in graduate school, a lot of it is just kind of like self-directing. They throw a lot of books at you and just tell you to like go read. And it was wonderful. And I had a superb cohort, like fellow students. We would just meet once a week to read Greek and

Latin together, just like extra, extra nerdy things. It was a great program. And when did you finish? Is this like- 2008. Oh, it's been a while. Okay. Yes. Okay. And what was, tell us about your dissertation. You mentioned it offline a little bit. I found it pretty fascinating, so. Yeah. So I came to graduate school thinking I

wanted to study Greek and Roman military history. And my dissertation was kind of combining the literary and the historical aspects of that. So I looked at soldiers speaking out against their commanders in Greek and Roman literature, just kind of, and thinking, what does it tell us about societal attitudes towards soldiers challenging authority? Because we think of the Roman literature, just kind of, and thinking, what does it tell us about societal attitudes towards soldiers challenging authority? Because we think of the Roman world, like, you will not challenge authority, right? And yet, there were moments where soldiers could do that, and sometimes even got away with it, which is fascinating. They did. So, they weren't reprimanded immediately, head cut off the second they

opened their mouth against their commander necessarily? Sometimes, yes. But it's fascinating that we see the fear of military revolts kind of going through Roman history. And you think, for instance, AD 69, the year of the four emperors, where you have soldiers proclaiming their commanders emperors, and suddenly you have soldiers kind of like governing the political structure of the empire without really knowing what they're doing. And the Roman historian Tacitus tells us that that was the year that everybody discovered the secret of power. And the secret of power is soldiers have it. Really? So prior to the year of the four emperors, the secret of power wasn't quite as discovered or how would you?

Well, it was the first time soldiers proclaimed somebody emperor and he became emperor. So that was just kind of the idea that soldiers can actually make or break somebody's career in that way. So my knowledge of kind of Greco-Roman history is extremely spotty. Like I've done deep dives in various areas, but nothing close to what you've done. So I might be asking a lot of random questions along the way. Because I'm fat. I'm just... What am I... Like if I could do it over again...

Well, I've lived a good life. I live the... No regrets. But looking back, I'm like, ah, having a classics degree, even an undergrad or master's would have been very helpful for the work that I find myself constantly doing. I feel like I'm constantly in the Greco-Roman background and having to play catch up or having to say, okay, I'm going to read this chunk of Roman history or this Roman writer or whatever. But I can't spend hours and hours and hours just reading, you know, Roman history. Can you give us, I mean, I mean, this may be so basic for you, but for some, somebody that just, when you sit, when they hear Greco-Roman, they just have this blurry, like some ancient people back then,

not even sure, like what's the timeframe, you know, how does this relate to the New Testament? Can you give us a, you know, a one-on-one kind of like just broad sweep of, let's just say Roman history in particular? Absolutely. So in the middle of the eighth century BC, there's this tiny village on the Tiber, more mosquitoes than people. And for some reason they like keep building and next thing you know, well, not next thing you know, it's more like three centuries later, they slowly start expanding. And once they start expanding, they really take off. And a lot of this, we don't quite know exactly why and how they did it. Perhaps a lot of it was defensive because they were surrounded by much more powerful city-states around, including the Etruscans.

But anyway, once the Romans start expanding, they keep going. And there are various military reforms that make their army stronger. Really, by the time we get to the late 3rd century, they are taking on Carthage. And that's probably the moment when everybody in the Mediterranean world is really paying attention. Like these guys are really like somebody to watch out for. And at that point, there's still, the government is a republic. So you have new political leaders elected every year and they're very much military commanders. Elected, like democratically elected, or just elected by elites at the top? So the American election system, where you have the electoral college, is very much akin to that Roman idea where everybody in the citizen body is divided into these electoral units,

and each unit equals one voice. The trick is the system is rigged to allow the aristocracy the preferred vote. So a lot of times elections would actually be completed before the lower classes got to vote. And so that's interesting. That's fascinating. Okay. Yeah. And obviously, only Roman citizens could vote. Oh, yeah.

And most people weren't, right? Percentage-wise? Yeah. Although the story of the Roman Republic is both a story of expansion, so Roman expansion, but also the story of the expansion of Roman citizenship. Originally, it was only if you lived in the city of Rome, but over time, different people gained citizenship. And so by the time we get to kind of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic in the first century BC, like when you think assassination of Julius Caesar, I guess everybody probably thinks of Shakespeare at that point.

But I mean, you know, but you get to that moment and you realize, okay, this is not quite the Roman Republic that we started out with. And at some point, and historians debate, when exactly did the Republic fully die and the empire begin? But at some point, let's say late first century, we're really really in the empire and you have an emperor in charge of it all. And that's when Jesus is born. Octavian turned Augustus. Yes. So he's the first emperor, really. So it's around, what, 30-ish BC when we go from Republic to empire? Yeah. I mean, the assassination of Julius Caesar is 44, Ides of March. Octavian rules for quite a significant chunk of time. He doesn't die until 14 AD. And then you have kind of the question of, like, how do you pass power when you don't officially have a title? But he does. And that's the moment when some historians say, like, that's the moment that marks, like like no going back to a republic. And that's a major transition, right?

Because now you have one person with loads of power, whereas before they, I mean, they deliberately were against that, right? Like the republic was very intentional, right? And they wanted a balance of power and they were really fearful of having a consolidated one person. And now they have that very thing. Was there a lot of debates about whether, like, what are we doing? We're changing our government structure in a way that we didn't think was going to be a good thing. Well, it was so gradual. The last century of the Roman Republic was just round after round of civil war by generals who were amassing all kinds of unprecedented power. Like one general who bragged, I will stomp my foot and an army will spring up.

It's like, well, this is not a very democratic thing to say, you know? Octavian Augustine, Augustus, in the research I've done, he strikes me as socially fairly conservative, right? Like his daughter was kind of a wild woman and he was just not, he was like the opposite of that. It was, it's a classic, like Baptist pastor, conservative dad, and the daughter kind of goes crazy and, you know, shames the dad, you know, and that was around the time of Ovid, right? Who was, you talk about social upheaval. So yeah, he, didn't he institute some marriage reforms? He did. He saw that when the family unit was getting out of control, when people weren't getting married, they weren't settling down, they're going to sleep

it around. Like that wasn't good for the structure of society. So didn't he like give like tax, tax benefits or something for people who got married and had kids or something? It sounds almost modern day, like some of these marriage reforms. It does. Is that? Yeah. So the law of three children. So if you were in the – and he really only cared about the aristocracy kind of senatorial rank or equestrian rank.

So like upper crust. We want the good babies. We want more of those good babies. upper crust. We want the good babies. We want more of those good babies. And if you had three kids, you were able to, yeah, like breaks on inheritance taxes, but also just to be eligible for political promotion, you had to have three kids at least. But what's fascinating is that it didn't quite work out the way he wanted. It seems like keratin. You know, people, and that's something very modern indeed, the conversations. Like, how do you incentivize people to have more babies?

So it didn't work out. So people weren't, they weren't having three babies or they did and it didn't, the benefits weren't there? Well, it seems like some of the people who really wanted to have at least three babies were not having at least three babies. Okay. Well, then you had the problem with the death rate, right? I mean, isn't something- Yeah. And that wasn't factored in. Like if you had, like say you had three babies and all three died, which by the way could happen in the Roman world, you still, like you were not penalized for that so the new testament i mean jesus comes on the scene right in the middle of all kinds of cataclysmic upheaval you know i mean there's the whole my main areas in jewish history so even there you're coming off the kind of off the tail end of well

the the maccabean revolt and you know 80 years of quasi-independence and then Pompey what 63 takes over Israel and and so that was just on the Jewish side there was a lot and the factions between Sadducees and uh Essenes and Pharisees and so on um and then you introduce this whole Roman side I mean this this is tumultuous uh time I mean do you think this isn't God? This is intentional. It seems like, I don't know. Absolutely. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. So, uh, it's in a lot of ways you think about, um, the birth of Christ and it's really like the worst possible moment for somebody to be born, you know, in that place and time. All right. Let's, I want to jump into, so your book, uh, cultural Christians in Christians in the Early Church, a historical and practical introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman world. One of the things you, you know, you set up the book kind of confronting this idealized portrait of these early Christians, you know, they just, all they did was serve the poor all day. They gave away all their stuff. They, peacemakers. They didn't believe in violence.

And I have some of that. I think like, if we can just go back to the early church, they're all just martyrs and they just like put the sword on my neck. I don't care. But your book unveils like a very real, maybe more balanced picture of Christianity. What led you to want to write this book? And then I would love for you to kind of summarize what are some themes you look at in it? Well, initially it started as a book of recognizing that a lot of early churches were filled with sinners. And that's something that like a lot of my students over the years, up until recently, I taught at a school in the Bible Belt. So a lot of my students

were churched, but also having conversations with people at my church and realizing that so many of them had those idealistic expectations. And so initially it started as kind of a book about, yeah, the early churches were filled with sinners. And a few months into the project, it clicked in my mind that specifically it wasn't just that the churches were filled with sinners. They were filled with cultural sinners. And then I realized, like, you know, there's a much closer connection to us than I had expected. So that was the element that kind of made the whole project kind of click in my mind. Give us one or two examples of what kind of cultural center do you explore in your book?

So, for example, food. Paul talks a lot to the Corinthians about their assumptions about food, like what kind of things can you eat or can't eat, but also how they treat, for example, the Lord's Supper or their attitudes to drunkenness. And so you realize, and I get into that in the book, the cultural baggage that they brought with them, where in the Roman world, banquets met a certain thing. And so they took that very idea of the banquet and imported it into the Lord's Supper. And as a result, suddenly you had something that was definitely not what Jesus intended. And the parallel I make to the modern world, the changing attitudes of the church, for instance, towards drinking. Like just 20,

25 years ago, alcohol was taboo in a lot of churches where it isn't now. And so the question is like, is it, did we just realize something was a sin and it isn't now? Or is it more of a cultural kind of construct around like, what do we consider problematic? But also just a kind of modern attitudes towards like Chick-fil-A. I talk about that. All the jokes about Chick-fil-A is the Lord's chicken, the Lord's calories, they don't count. So like, what are we doing with this kind of language and line of thinking? We really try to, it's difficult not to be a theologian in everything you do, but sometimes you don't realize that you're being a really bad theologian in things that you're doing.

So that's just kind of the slowly absorption of cultural norms without like a rigorous, maybe theological evaluation of whether this is actually aligning with the Christian worldview. You mentioned the Roman banquet. Can you describe to us what would be a typical Roman banquet? Because when you said that, it just, I mean, 1 Corinthians 11 flashed up in my mind. I'm like, oh, wait a minute.

Ooh, I think there's something here because that passage, we read it as, like we read one side of the telephone, like in the sense we're listening to one side of the conversation. We just hear Paul's words, but we don't really have a good picture

of kind of what is it that he might be addressing. So yeah, what are some features of a good, solid Roman banquet back in the first century? Yeah. So we think of all the good food and some people got all the good food, but the way it worked, Roman society was so stratified, hierarchical, very rigid. And so in a good Roman banquet, yes, you can invite everybody, including wealthy people, not as wealthy, even women, but you would seat people. They would be seated according to rank. So everybody knew when they had a place at the table, they knew exactly where they belonged in

Roman society. And then the quality and quantity of the food and drink they would be served would correspond to their place in society. So you might have some really fancy food, but you're not going to serve it to the lowest of the low at your banquet table. They should be grateful they made it to the table to begin with, so that's great. And so Paul is outraged that the Christians would take this idea and bring it to the Lord's table, where of course, like all of us are equally precious in God's eyes. And you can't just take this Roman construct and impose it on the Lord's Supper. So, 1 Corinthians 11, the famous Lord's Supper passage, what the main thing Paul's addressing is this kind of absorption of Greco-Roman social classification, this kind of social hierarchy?

Is that the main thing that's going on there? I don't know if it's necessarily the main thing, but it is definitely an important thing that is going on there. Yes, that these churches, even as they're welcoming everybody as they should, are still imposing Roman expectations. So the idea that some of you go hungry while others are eating way too much, that's the Roman banquet right there. I read somewhere, and see if this is true or not, I'll have the expert on the other line here,

that the wealthier would basically not be working or they would work minimal or whatever like they can get off work at two three or whatever like they they can go start the banquet early whereas the lower classes would be working in long hours and and they you know if if they even were able to come to the banquet they would come much later and somebody said that that's kind of the backdrop here is you had because paul says, wait for one another. And again, according to this perspective, it was the wealthier people who were getting started early on the banquet. Maybe they had a few glasses of wine already. They start to get a little tipsy, maybe drunk, and they're eating all the great meat and stuff before the poorer people could show up. And he's telling the wealthier people, wait for everybody to show up. In your opinion, does that fit the context there, what you're talking

about? I think it does. Keep in mind that the idea of the Sabbath, having a day off, is something new that the Christians brought to the proverbial table. I mean, most of the ancient world, other than the Jews, did not have the idea of weeks as we think of it. So for the Romans, the idea of like a day off, it doesn't exist. But also the idea of work in our modern sense isn't quite the same. So for the aristocracy, if you're really wealthy, depending on your kind of, if you're senatorial rank, you're not supposed to be doing any sort of trading. You're only governing farms, which means somebody else is doing all the work for you while you live in the city. For people of kind of the equestrian census ranking, meaning like you're wealthy and probably do something related to trade.

Again, other than kind of like making key decisions, you're not, and networking, a lot of networking, you're not doing a whole lot else. Mind you, for these people as well, by bypassing pagan sacrifice rituals, they were sacrificing something, but they still had the kind of leisure to take a day off fully that perhaps a lot of the poorer members of congregations wouldn't have had. And keep in mind that early churches had, they enslaved in them too. I mean, slaves don't get days off. That's crazy. No days off. So one day off was like a big deal. Typically we take two days off of, you know, most people work, don't work weekends. So that, that's, I mean, just historically, that's pretty unprecedented, right?

To have you work five days a week and two days off is kind of the norm. What is that? So is that from the Industrial Revolution or I don't know? I'm guessing that's a lot more, yeah, a lot more recent. But even with the Industrial Revolution, I mean, factories worked a whole lot more than 40 hours a week. But keep in mind, the Roman, I mean, Romans did have days off. It just wasn't on the schedule

of weeks. It was more like religious rituals for various gods. So the Roman calendar had plenty of days off. It's just that they weren't predictable. It wasn't like one day out of seven. And it was always a pagan god who was being honored that day. Yeah, yeah. So the thought of a typical Roman high class citizen walking by, peering in on this Christian gathering and seeing slaves eating next to people of equestrian or senatorial class, like the high class, eating the same portion, same food, sitting next to each other, would that have been just abhorrent or shocking or just like, what is going on? Yeah. And disruptive, right? Like, that's like, the Roman gods aren't going to look favorably upon this, right? Exactly.

Yeah. The whole idea of that rigid structure in Roman society, they certainly thought this was part of preserving order, not just here on earth, but kind of the divinely ordained order, that gods did not create everybody to be equal. So, the idea of like the imago dei, these are all things completely incomprehensible. There's no language for that in Roman religion because that's just impossible. the New Testament or after the New Testament, where do we see tearing down of the social stratification within the Christian community causing consternation among Roman elites? Is that something that we face quite often? Yeah.

One good example that I talk about in my book is Perpetua. She was martyred in the early 3rd century AD in Carthage with her slave woman, Felicity. So the idea of two women, a noble woman, Perpetua, and her slave coming to Christ together and then being martyred together, like being held in the same jail and kind of receiving the same treatment and ultimately martyred together in the arena, that would have been seen as very revolutionary. And of course, the fact that they're women to begin with, that's subversive too, in a society where all the heroes were men. Well, talk to me about that. So I've heard that the Roman elites would only kill people who had some kind of prestigious leadership kind of position. And isn't this an argument for,

at least this example? I always call it a perpetuity. How'd you pronounce her name? Perpetua. Perpetua. I'm going to follow your lead on that perpetua. My knowledge after 70 AD starts to get a little vague. So I've barely heard of perpetua. Does this show the fact that she was targeted to be killed, that she had some kind of – and leadership, I don't want to read in modern debates about egalitarian-complementarian necessarily, but what can we draw historically from the fact that she and her slave – why does she have a slave too? So yeah, I guess there's two questions there. What does this tell us about who this woman, Perpetua, was? It's really hard to know because all we have is her little diary and then the notes that somebody added to it before publishing, which is fascinating also. Just the fact that a document by a woman was published.

But what we see is, in my view anyway, we see the local nature of it all. So we don't necessarily see these kinds of things from every part of the empire. And it seems like a local authority would make the decisions. Like, to what extent do we want to persecute? And just how thoroughly do we want to do it? Are we trying to scare off the local church altogether? Is this a matter of concern? Because we have other documents like the famous letter of Pliny, the governor of Bithynia in the early second century, where he writes to the emperor Trajan and says, there are these Christians in my province. What do I do with

them? They seem like really bad news. And Trajan writes back and says, you've got bigger fish to fry. Whereas in this case, a century century later in a different province of the empire, clearly the local authorities are very concerned. So we don't get a full like empire wide persecution until the middle of the third century. So later than Perpetua. And local attitudes just would have differed. It's really very much up to local leaders. What's fascinating is Perpetua and Felicity were both, they're identified as

catechumens. They're still like Christians in training. They were still going through the process of conversion, but they say they were being watched. Perpetua knew that somebody was following her around for weeks before her arrest. And yeah, it's really difficult to know exactly what happened. she lead her slave woman to Christ or did Felicity convert first or start, get connected with a local church first and led Perpetua to Christ? Either one is possible. It's also possible that somebody else led both of them to Christ. It's, we just don't get that answer. So they were catechumens. Okay. So does that mean she couldn't have been like a leader, like a capital L leader? No. She was in her early stages of conversion. Yes.

But probably influential, maybe. Why target her of all the different Christians in the area? You know, like what was, we just don't know. I guess it's kind of speculation, right? I mean. Well, she wasn't alone. It seems like there was, there were other't know. I guess it's kind of speculation, right? I mean. Well, she wasn't alone. It seems like there was, there were other people who were being targeted. So when she and Felicity are martyred, there are other people who are martyred with them.

It's a pretty large group that day. So it's just that Perpetua is the one who left us a journal so we can get her side of the story. Oh, so the fact that she stands out as a martyr is due partly just to the fact that we, it's her journal we still have and we don't have anybody else's journal from that mass martyrdom that happened. There's one other person who left some notes and his journal is kind of combined with Perpetua's

and they're all published together with the notes from an unidentified person who edited this whole thing together. It's really, again, like so many mysteries. It's like layer after layer, you peel back, more questions emerge. But they're not leaders is what's clear is they're just regular converts. And it seems like they were targeted simply for being in the process of conversion. This episode is sponsored by Dwell, a creative and highly engaging Bible app that reads scripture in dramatic ways. So there's lots of different Bible apps out there and each one serves a certain purpose. What I love about Dwell is that you can listen to the Bible in over 20 different voices,

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So check out the Dwell app. Go to dwellbible.com forward slash T-I-T-R and receive your 25% off discount today. That's dwellbible.com forward slash T-I-T-R. Check it out. So this sparked, this is kind of a side, side question, but something that I've often thought about, and I have seen a couple, maybe one, maybe one classicist talk about this, that it's more of like a methodological historical question. Our knowledge of ancient Greco-Roman society comes from the literature that we have access to, largely. I

mean, there's archaeology and stuff too, but mostly from the literature. But who's writing the literature? Well, almost all men. This is one rare example. And people who are literate, people who are elite. We don't have a lot of literature from like people lower class literate people writing stuff because that just was extremely rare maybe it didn't even exist so what does that do to us as we're trying to get our our historical knowledge of ancient greco-roman society it's always going to be skewed right um it would be like if if somebody studied 21st century america and they're relying on literature left behind by like elite politicians or something it's like well did they really you know even today you hear people that just have lived in you know they've

been in politics for 50 years and they lived you know in washington dc their entire life and it's like you have no clue you start talking about people and it's like you've never been to iowa you never worked at a farm in kansas or something and or been at some sports bar in downtown cleveland or something you don't know the common person you know like what's going on and sometimes they they talk and it's like yeah you're clearly out you've been in politics way too long, you know, is that at all? I mean, what does that mean? Does that mean that our knowledge is really going to be kind of skewed? It's through the lens of the elite or what do we do with that? Well, I think that's an excellent question. And that's one that classicists and did wrestle with, but here's what's so striking

for those of us who look at the world of the new Testament in the context of the Roman empire, guess which text has come, the largest text, you know where I'm going, that has come to us from people who are not the elites, from people who used to be fishermen, farmers, whatever else. It's the New Testament. You have this massive, massive document or set of documents written by people who were not the elites, telling experiences of people who were not the elites. And that's what makes it so valuable and beautiful, where Greco-Roman literature very much is from the perspective of the elites, because they're the ones who had leisure, time to write. And by the way, usually if they were writing something, it was for self-glorification. Julius Caesar didn't do anything without calculating what he was doing and why he was doing it and what

he was going to get out of it. But here you have a document that was written by people who believed something was important, and that is why they wrote it. And even before you get into the conversations about the divine inspiration of those texts, you already have something that is clearly very different from anything else in the Greco-Roman world. I think I said that somewhere in one of my books. I was writing on sexuality. We often read the New Testament against the backdrop of the Greco-Roman world. yeah, we read the New Testament against the backdrop of the Greco-Roman world. And I think I said, and I got this from a classicist that was primarily a classicist who kind of went into studying the New Testament. So he's coming at it from a different direction. And, you know, I'm blinking on his name, the guy I'm thinking of, but, you know, he said, we need to read the

New Testament. We need to read Paul as Greco-Roman literature, not just simply against the backdrop of it. It's exactly what you said. It's here as a bunch of documents left behind, very well preserved, that give us the perspective of the non-elite. And that's a unique contribution to our general knowledge of Greco-Roman society. Which is, this is why when people correct Paul based on what we know about Greco-Roman society, that's when I'm like, well, wait a minute, that's a little backwards, you know? Like, maybe we need to correct the elite perspective of Greco-Roman society by looking at the lens of Paul. Maybe Paul has a more accurate understanding of what's going on in the first century than, you know, Livy or somebody. I don't even know if that

when Livy lived. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And Paul is fascinating. You know, we were talking earlier before recording started about code switching, and Paul is really good at that because he's like, he's got one foot in every world. The Jewish tradition, educated Greco-Roman world, but also he's hanging out with people who are not necessarily educated. He's a tent leather worker. So he's very much in tune with multiple audiences and worlds and systems of knowledge. Yeah, he does. I mean, he's a Roman citizen. He's Jewish, but he's raised, you know, Tarsus, he's raised in kind of Greco-Roman world. He's obviously in his letters dealing with people who are coming out of that world or in the world.

I mean, being converted out of, you know, paganism. Okay. So you, you have, uh, the chapter I just read this morning. Um, I have to read this title cause your titles are awesome. The, this is chapter eight, the altar and the cross Christian nationalism and the twilight of the empire. So you, uh, and again, just for my audience, one of the underlying themes is, you know, just showing how some of our modern day challenges to Christianity were very much experienced in the early church. And we obviously, you know, a big topic today, as you lay out clearly in your book is Christian nationalism. And what that, the challenge that Christian nationalism brings both to our, you know, American society, but also just the church in general. And you go back and say the early church was dealing with a lot of the same stuff.

So could you summarize your chapter there? And what kind of Christian nationalism did the early church wrestle with? And how did they wrestle with that? So we have to keep in mind that for the first several centuries, the church had always existed in the context of the first several centuries, the church had always existed in the context of the Roman Empire. So it was very easy to say, like, clearly God ordained the church to, like, flourish and grow in the context of the Roman Empire. And that is indeed what a lot of believers thought. So you get to 410 AD, the most traumatic event in, centuries of Roman history. Rome is sacked by the Goths and Augustine

across, you know, the sea in North Africa writes his kind of magnum opus, the city of God in response to that event, because Christians are kind of devastated. Like how could God let this happen to us? How could God withdraw his favor from the Roman Empire? What did we do? Like, what is going on here? Whereas the pagans around, the few, the proud who still are left, are thinking, like, how could the Christians violate the peace with the gods that was originally in Roman religion and allow this to happen to us? So Augustine is responding to both groups in the city of God and is saying, well, God is in control. And by the way, the Roman empire

and the city of Rome, that is not the city that you should be focused on. It's really, as Christians, we should be looking to the city of God. It's okay to mourn for the loss of this like city, earthly city. You can grieve with those who suffered because there's real suffering involved, but you should not idolize it. And so that's what Augustine is really concerned with is idols. It's okay to be patriotic. It is a good thing to love your country, but it's an even better thing to love God and

place God first. And that's where Augustine wants to make sure people don't create an idol out of something here on earth that's not permanent. And the fact that he had to write that shows that was a good chunk of the church. Were they falling into that kind of political idolatry or nationalistic idolatry? Again, it's difficult to, like, we can't just run a poll and see, like, what percentage of people believe this. But for Augustine to be saying this, it seems like it was pretty prevalent. And a lot of the first book of the City of God really reads as a response to actual conversations that he had with people, because a lot of refugees ended up in North Africa from Rome. Oh, really? Why is that? of refugees ended up in North Africa from Rome. Oh, really? Why is that? Well, so the Goths sacked the city and that meant a disruption in food supplies. Rome was over a million residents at that point. And the city simply could not survive without regular food

supply. So the sack of the city unleashed this whole consequence of pretty awful things, including famine. And so at that point, a lot of people left. From a historical standpoint, how did the city get sacked? Was Rome kind of weak at that point? Was the military not that strong? Were the Goths just way stronger than people realize? And then that's my first question. How, from a historical

standpoint what happened and then what i i you know i always hear about 410 sack in a sack of rome but what about 411 like did did did the goss occupy it or what happened in the wake of when they after they sacked it like because they still rome still continued right after that i mean i mean it's a kind of aacked, weaker shell of a city. But the answer to the factors, it's sort of like all of the above. Keep in mind that Constantine had moved the capital to Constantinople a couple of generations earlier. So Rome is not even the capital of the empire anymore. It doesn't have – I mean, it has some structures.

It still has a senate house, but a lot of it is more for show. At this point, it's more a symbolic center than a real political one. And the Goths just kind of go on a rampage, sacking city after city. They kind of just march all the way through Italy. 410 was just not a good year. But it seems it's really fascinating. So it seems like they're essentially after money. Like Augustine emphasizes just how greedy they were. They saw this as a war of

building wealth. But what's fascinating is also they were Christians. The Goths were? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Whoa. So talk to me about, can you expand on that? Well, Augustine talks about that because one thing that everybody later after the sack considers a miracle is that the Goths spared anybody who hid in churches in the city of Rome. So Augustine talks about that as this wonderful way that God preserved at least some people from the cruelty. What kind of, what branch of, what kind of Christian were there? Were they like,

because I know there was like Nestorians. They're not Nicene. They're not Nicene. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, but they're still, they were at that point, they were technically at least you could. Okay. They were Christian enough to respect churches. Okay. Maybe not super well to respect churches. Okay. Maybe not super well acquainted with the Sermon on the Mount, but they were. Yeah.

Of the religions that they, yeah. Clearly not Anabaptist leaning, you know. Where is, like, in the modern map, where are they from, the Goths? I know it's the North, right? Yeah. We're thinking, yes. So we're thinking people, keep in mind that the Romans have kind of conquered most of that section of the world. So what we're dealing with in a lot of cases are, when we talk about the Goths, are people who were familiar with the Roman world, with the Roman military. Some of them had fought in the roman military and then as the empire is kind of fragmenting and weakening they strike off on their own and so that's where uh it gets really muddy okay and it's it's modern day would it be like the goths from like

switzerland area or east of switzerland i'm just trying to i don't have a map in front of me but um yeah like just north of italy north northeast or yeah okay can you take us back so let's go pre-constantine um the church goes from a tiny little religious sect hardly noticed by rome to uh becoming big enough to face widespread persecution in the mid-third century right um to being you know going from what are the stats you gave 10 of the roman empire and 300 to 50 by 350 ad i'm just pulling i don't know i think it was i think that's the numbers and i'm getting these numbers from rodney stark who has probably done some of the best kind of estimates of this sociologically. Yeah.

Okay. So it's been years since I read him, but yeah, his book was fascinating. Blew my mind from a, just from a sociological historical perspective. Why did Christianity grow? It's been 15 years since I read it. If I remember correctly, well, let me just ask you the question. Let me just ask you the question. Just from a historical sociological perspective, why did Christianity grow from this persecuted minority to all of Twitter something like, the other countries in the world have safety networks. The U.S. has women. I think it was Jessica Larco.

And what I'm seeing and what I think Rodney Stark had noted is in the Roman Empire, people could have said, the rest of the world has no safety networks. The Roman Empire has Christians. So that's what it is. In a world that was very cruel, had no safety network. If you were suffering, you probably deserve it kind of attitude. And suddenly here are Christians in the age of persecution, in the age of a pandemic, because the third century, I mean, the third century crisis in the Roman Empire was a really awful, awful time where all kinds of things are happening. And the Christians in the middle of it all are ministering to other people. Are they doing it perfectly? No. I mean, we see their pastors, bishops, writing about how people in the

congregation had to be more loving and kind to their neighbors. But the point is they were much more likely to do it and do it lovingly than Romans. And as a result, people noticed. So when the average Roman person was suffering, down on their luck, hungry, maybe facing starvation, they knew that the Christians would care for them? In general, not perfectly, but... In general, yes. So this kind of idea, and especially this comes through in the mid-third century where we have a pandemic added to everything else. And it was a pretty horrifying, terrifying time where it was clear that it was highly contagious. And the idea that the

Christians would care for the sick and the dying when anybody else would not. This is mid, is this right around, is it the Diocletian persecution? Is that the? Earlier. So this is Dacian persecution and the Valerian persecution. So we're talking 250s. And one of the sources, the best sources we have for this is Cyprian of Carthage, after whom this plague was named, the Plague of Cyprian. Poor guy. Like, talk about the irony. But he wrote

so much about exhorting his congregation to care for the sick and the dying, and it seems like it really worked. They really listened. So this pastor who just really had a heart for caring for others. So that was, so Cyprian had a huge influential voice to motivate Christians at that time to really, really live out, I mean, what the New Testament says, right? Yeah. Is that where that, there's that famous quote, and I can't remember, I don't think it's Tacitus, it might be, I'm wondering if it's during this time when some Roman leader says they not only

care for their own poor, but they care for our poor as well or something like that. Ooh, that rings a bell. Yeah, I can't remember. I wonder if it was during this time because it seems to fit kind of what you were saying. We have versions of that in multiple sources. Really? Yeah, because it seems like that was a refrain. That's a constant refrain in the writings of early Christian bishops, because guess what? The church needs those reminders all the time. I mean, even Cyprian himself, like multiple times, he keeps coming back to this. He wrote a treatise on almsgiving. He wrote a treatise on the plague, caring for the poor and the dying and the sick and all of that.

So just all of those reminders, they keep coming up. Tertullian wrote on this. Obviously, Augustine wrote on this later. So it is a massive kind of emphasis. And it's striking because we have a lot of manuals and guidebooks in the ancient pagan world, but we never have a manual on like how to care for others. Whereas in the Christian tradition, you have versions of that and manual and almsgiving or how to care for single women in the church and so on. It's like you suddenly have all of these books or treatises on here's how to love others well. Like no Roman would ever have written a text like that. Really? Wow. So the Christian view of women too was, I think Rodney Stark, wasn't that one of his main points is that the church so valued women

alongside equal as men that that was one of the, in his perspective, why the church grew as well? Have you found that to be true as well? Yeah, that it was attractive to women just as much as men because of the place it afforded them. You look at the Roman world and from a formal perspective, women had no power. I mean, yeah, behind the scenes, sure. Some aristocratic women wielded plenty of power, but the point is from an official standpoint, yeah, you're not a citizen. Oh, wait. Women couldn't be citizens? Well, they're not. It's this nebulous status where you're a citizen, but you're not a voting kind of citizen because any sort of political power was connected to your potential to be in the military.

Oh, really? All through the ancient world, Greece and Rome, like any of those ancient Greek city-states down to the Roman world, citizenship and voting, at least, full citizenship rights were connected to your potential to be in the military. If you can't contribute to the army, sorry, too bad. So the military was kind of the thread that held the whole thing together. That was huge. So I remember doing some research on this a while back on kind of military service and the early church and how they really wrestled with, you know,

can Christians serve in the military? What if somebody in the military is converted? Can they remain in the military? How did the church deal with that from, let's just say, A.D. 100 to Constantine? Like, what were some of the conversations happening along those lines? I mean, it seems like a lot of it was individual decisions. Like, people had to figure out. I mean, look even in the New Testament. We keep seeing centurions. They keep, like, now you see them.

Like, they keep popping up in the story. Centurions who are observing Jesus and suddenly realizing like, wait a second, this is true. So from very early on, we see people in the Roman military coming to Christ or embracing the faith. The Romans didn't really pay serious, serious attention to it until Diocletian. The last major persecution under Diocletian is specifically targeting Christians in the military, which tells me that at that point, there were quite a few of them. Now, the big problem with serving in the Roman military from a Christian perspective is that you had to swear an oath of allegiance to the emperor that effectively recognized the emperor as a god. So that's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there were so many pagan rituals woven into military service, right? I mean, I think one scholar said that, a Roman military leader was a virtual pagan priest. Like there was, yeah.

So how did, I guess maybe that's what that is. Is that precisely what they were wrestling with? Like, is this compatible with the Christian faith? How much accommodation are we allowed to make before we just completely renounce our allegiance to Jesus based on how many pagan rituals we're a part of? Yeah, well, and Nijay Gupta has written about how Jews have wrestled with kind of related issue, not in the military necessarily, but in general, like how can you be

a citizen of the Roman Empire and still be a faithful Jew? And what he argued is that a lot of people would simply like praying for the welfare of the emperor rather than praying to the emperor. So there is that distinction. And my guess is that some Christians at least made that distinction in their own practice. But during a time of persecution, for instance, if somebody were examining these rituals very closely and asked, like, well, are you actually offering incense to the emperor as a god that he is supposed to be? Well, that's when you're going to run into problems and so that's the person the diocletian persecution and just for so we're like late third century now right 290s ish or 280s starting in the 280s yeah 280s so the persecution was

against christians in the military who were basically not giving their full allegiance to yeah the divine Caesar or pagan practices or yeah okay well that makes sense um okay and then so Constantine comes on the scene and this is the famous right he's quote-unquote converted ish do you have opinions on that I don't yeah is I mean it seems mean, it seems like a, it seems like a, it seems very, it seems like, you know, an American president to win votes is going to, you know, not, you know, tip his hat to whatever religion is going to get him the most votes from his base. You know, it's, it was actually like, I wouldn't take it. I, I think there's something genuine there because Christians at that point are only 10% of the empire. So if you're going to really try to win votes, you're not going to go with the 10%.

You're going to go with the 80 or 90. That's true. Yeah. So it seems like he genuinely had some curiosity about it. But as you noted, you were converted-ish. I think that's a good way to put it because he was not baptized until he was on his deathbed. So, he cared about the church. He clearly had some sort of, however, like partial conversion experience early on in his life. And he also meddled a lot in the church. He really wanted to be involved because, you know, Roman emperor, you care about religion in the

state. Yeah. Wasn't his mom a devout Christian? She was. Yeah. So she converted. And it's fascinating because she seems to have had a very genuine faith. And there have been some theories about when did she convert? Did she convert around the same time as Constantine? Was she a Christian all along? I saw one theory and I have no, like, I've seen zero shred of evidence for it that Constantine's father was a closet Christian. That seems more like a wishful thinking, but. So that's true. Yeah, going back to my stats, I mean, if in 300 AD, 10% of the empire, his conversion is what, 313? Is it right?

Yes. Right around the edict of Milan. And didn't he have like a vision of a cross or something? And then that helped him win a battle. So some kind of experience happened, right? Yeah. So it wasn't just like being a Christian is going to be politically advantageous. Statistically, it wasn't yet.

No. Just like being a Christian is going to be politically advantageous. Statistically, it wasn't yet. Well, and the fact that he made all of his soldiers put this cross on their shield, which, you know, surely some of them would have been kind of like, this guy has lost his mind. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, where he has this major victory that allows him to become emperor.

So then his life after that wasn't necessarily a Jesus-shaped cruciform life, necessarily, you're saying? I mean, so why do we question his conversion then? You know, it's, well, again, the fact that he wasn't baptized until he was on his deathbed, to me, that's kind of a red flag that perhaps he wasn't fully converted. Because back then, it's not like Baptists—I mean, if you're a convert, you get baptized. Like, that just goes hand in hand. Yeah. But there was also a popular belief, obviously theologically problematic, but the idea that you needed to wait until your deathbed to be baptized because then you were guaranteed heaven since baptism washes away all your sins.

I mean, in a certain way, it makes perfect sense, right? But— Pragmatic. Very pragmatic. Okay, okay. Yeah. Oh, man. Hedge your bets carefully.

hedge your bets carefully. Well, Nadia, I feel like I could, I should probably wrap things up, but I, I, um, I feel like I have my personal, uh, scholar here and I have so many other questions, but maybe, maybe I'll shoot you an email if I, if, if other questions come up, but your book, so I, I said offline, I mean, your book is extremely well-written. It's, it's a rare feat in incredible, incredibly thorough scholarship as anybody as anybody listening can probably assume by now. But it's written so well. It's so fun and engaging and funny and interesting. And it's a rare combination. So thank you for this book.

You're working on another one, right? Or did you already finish your next book? I just finished. Yeah, my next book is coming in October. So it's Mother's Children and the Body Politic, Early Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity. So that's coming from IVP Academic in October. So is that going to be more academic than this one or about the same kind of feel?

The same feel. The same feel. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you, Nadia, for your work. Thank you. Thank you for the interesting conversation. Really appreciate the work you put into this.

Thank you. This was fun. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.