Join a historically focused discussion of the dramatic interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and paganism presented by an award-winning teacher, classical scholar, and one of the most esteemed historians at The Great Courses.

1: Religious Conflict in the Roman World

• The Christianization of the Roman world is one of the most important turning points in Western civilization. This lecture introduces you to the issues you will consider and the scholars whose seminal theories serve as the gateways to the course's different lines of exploration....

2: Gods and Their Cities in the Roman Empire

• How were pagan gods worshiped in ancient Rome? Using evidence both literary and archaeological, grasp the diverse assortment of religious practices in an empire that ranged from Britain to Egypt and comprised a fifth of the world's population....

3: The Roman Imperial Cult

• Learn how Rome's first emperor, Augustus, established an institution to venerate an emperor's spirit, or genius, which would then reside as a god on Mount Olympus. See how emperors took pains to deify their predecessors so as to position themselves next among that honored line....

4: The Mystery Cults

• Mystery cults were believed to be the worship to a particular god and involved the choice to join and undergo an initiation rite. You examine specific cults and the controversial question of whether they did, in fact, form a bridge between paganism and Christianity, as some scholars maintain....

5: Platonism and Stoicism

• Understand the powerful influence of philosophy-particular Platonism and Stoicism-on the morality and conduct of Rome's ruling classes. It was an influence rarely matched in the Western tradition, with even Christian theologians employing the doctrines of these two philosophical schools in defining their own faith....

6: Jews in the Roman Empire

• What role did Judaism play in the Roman Empire? Learn how Rome's experience with this stalwart monotheistic faith-the first it had encountered-differed from the challenge of the Christian faith that would emerge from it....

7: Christian Challenge-First Conversions

• Experience the first years of efforts to convert people to Christianity. Begin with the early leadership by James of those who were often called Jewish Christians and continue with the career of Paul, from his own conversion after a vision to his work propagating the message of Jesus....

8: Pagan Response-First Persecutions

• Learn about early responses to Christianity, from the violent persecutions in Rome under Nero to the legalistic and easily avoided persecutions under later emperors. Grasp, too, the consequences of Roman ignorance of Christianity and the eventual momentum that ignorance would eventually give the new faith....

9: Christian Bishops and Apostolic Churches

• Nero's outlawing of a specific religion-unprecedented in Roman history-forced Christians to discover new ways to proselytize. Discover how the ideas of apostolic succession and a recognized canon shaped the voice with which Christianity could speak to the world....

10: Pagan Critics and Christian Apologists

• Explore how both Christianity's pagan critics and its apologists reveals not only an evolution in pagan understanding of the new faith but a corresponding increase in the sophistication of the writings set forth by those defending it....

11: First Christian Theologians

• Examine the work of Saint Clement, who established Christianity's claim to equality with the pagans as heirs to classical intellectual culture, and of Origen, whose ability to argue in Platonic terms and contributions to defining the canon make him one of the most important thinkers in Christian history....

12: Imperial Crisis and Spiritual Crisis

• The stability and peace of the Roman Empire was shattered with the assassination of Severus Alexander, and the ensuing political and military crisis transformed the Roman world. Many have maintained that this crisis paved the way for large-scale Christian conversion, but there are tantalizing arguments to the contrary....

13: The Great Persecutions

• Analyze two great periods of empire-wide persecution distinct from the largely localized ones examined earlier. Learn how Christian martyrdom was perceived very differently by the pagan and Christian communities, and that its ability to bring about conversions may have been minimal....

14: The Spirit of Late Paganism

• Explore how the spiritual life of paganism fared during the political and military crises examined in the preceding lectures. See how these had an impact on not only pagan worship but also the intellectual work of pagan philosophers like Plotinus and the emergence of an independent religion known as Manichaeism....

15: Imperial Recovery under the Tetrarchs

• The 20-year period known as the Tetrarchy-during which the emperor Diocletian shared imperial power with three colleagues--was critical to the Roman Empire, ending civil war and invasion, restoring order and prosperity, and giving Rome something it had never had: a principle of succession....

16: The Conversion of Constantine

• Analyze one of the most decisive turning points in Roman history and of Western civilization. Interpret the legendary story as it has come down to us in light of recent scholarship and what we now understand about Constantine's world and the forces that would have motivated him....

17: Constantine and the Bishops

• See how the same principle that had always steered Rome's efficient use of power-absorbing institutions rather than simply crushing them-was used to create a new hierarchy within the Roman imperial system from the existing network of apostolic churches....

18: Christianizing the Roman World

• How and why did Constantine set about making the Christian faith central to Roman life? See how his vision unfolded in multiple areas, including the reshaping of the urban landscape to claim public and religious space, economic changes, and the use of pilgrimages and Christian missionary activity....

19: The Birth of Christian Aesthetics and Letters

• Explore how Christians managed to alter the cultural heritage of their pagan past-including architecture and the visual and literary arts-in ways that made this heritage distinctly Christian while still preserving as much of it as possible....

20: The Emperor Julian and the Pagan Reaction

• Experience what happened when a Christianizing Roman world was told by their new emperor that decades of change would be undone and that Rome's religious and cultural history would again be reversed, this time turning back to paganism and a restoration of the old gods....

21: Struggle over Faith and Culture

• Grasp how the death of Julian the Apostate-and the end of his short-lived program to restore paganism's dominant role-forced the empire to grapple with two all-encompassing questions: Could the Constantinian revolution in fact be reversed? What religion would take charge in the Roman world?...

22: New Christian Warriors-Ascetics and Monks

• Take in the different perceptions of asceticism by pagans and Christians and how Christian ascetics and monks, in particular, proselytized and won conversions to Christianity with a power and influence that even the Roman Empire could not have matched....

23: Turning Point-Theodosius I

• Witness the crucial turning point in the spread of Christianity in the Roman world. Three new laws opened the floodgates for the destruction of pagan sanctuaries, a ban on public sacrifices, and the declaration of Nicene Christianity as the only legitimate faith and a requirement for citizenship....

24: Justinian and the Demise of Paganism

• Learn how Justinian, even in a Roman world still predominantly pagan, implemented a "persecuting society" that would ensure, by the time of his death, a Western world where being civilized was defined as being Christian, as were its notions of the divine and the ethical....

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