The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> what was Constantine thinking?

what was Constantine thinking?
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, March 24 2013, 15:29:21 (UTC)
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At his time Rome consisted of about 100 nations yoked together into an empire...each of those nations and peoples had their own gods, not one but several....taken altogether, if each nation had three gods only that would be around 300 gods being worshipped and serviced and bowed to. It is true that pagans are far more tolerant of other peoples religions because they knew first-hand that there is no such thing as one god...but when you rope a bunch of different gods together, all represented by temples and processions etc, under one roof, so to speak, the whole thing becomes sort of silly..what makes any fifteen gods more "real" than any other fifty-five?

Plus which you have festivals and holy days and prohibitions at different times of the calendar....parades bumping into each other, workers not showing up on various holy days etc....the whole thing becomes a mess and appears more arbitrary and obvious to all that religions, all of them, are man-made...that men make gods in their image, not the other way around...and so the whole concept risks collapse...and indeed people probably began believing all this nonsense less and less.

What to do?

Wipe them all out and begin again by imposing one religion on them all...with a set of rituals and holy days and obligations that won't clash and battle but make it appear that there can only be one way to worship one god....and which religion would be best suited for an empire but one that tells you to turn the other cheek, to give Caesar what is due to him (which is everything) and the rest to god...and, your reward comes after you die, not now

While Pagans were marvelously tolerant..too many Pagans living too closely to each others gods loosened the whole concept of god....intolerance, to achieve uniformity, is what was needed...and Christianity provided that in aces.

Only Christians would burn you, and each other, for believing in the "wrong" god...



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