A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

forward an alternative tradition of a messiah who suffered (Isaiah 53), and this
provided a much more appropriate model. Less happily, the adoption of the
Septuagint meant that Christians had to justify their appropriation of the sacred
texts of the Jewish religion, which they claimed to have superseded. Some
Christians, such as the writer of the epistle of ‘Barnabas’ (Barnabas was the
companion of Paul, but this work dates probably from the early second century),
were virulent in their denunciation of the Jews. The author of the epistle even
claimed that the Tanakh had never been a Jewish scripture in the first place.
More moderate Christians argued that it had been but that the Jews had proved
themselves unworthy of it through their complicity in the death of Jesus. The
long and difficult relationship between Christianity and Judaism was rooted in
these early tensions.
By the third century, a loosely organised Church, whose bishops based their
authority on succession from the apostles and their faith on a large and varied
collection of sacred writings (far wider than the present New Testament
suggests), was in place. It was becoming increasingly visible. By 200 the fiery
Christian writer Tertullian from Carthage was able to proclaim to the pagans that
Christians ‘live together with you in this world, including the forum, including
the meat market, baths, shops, workrooms, inns, fairs, and the rest of commercial
intercourse, and we sail along with you and serve in the army and are active in
agriculture and trade’, although his own version of Christianity was austere and
deeply misogynist. 8 The bishops were also enhancing their status. Cyprian,
Bishop of Carthage (248—258), showed how fully integrated into Roman
society the institution was when he described the authority of the bishop in very
similar terms to that of a Roman provincial governor. ‘Does anyone who acts
against the bishops of Christ think that he is with Christ ... he carries arms
against the Church ... he fights against the will of God ... he is an enemy of the
altar, a rebel against Christ’s sacrifice’, as Cyprian wrote in his On the Unity of
the Church. 9 Yet it was just this uncompromising position that brought the
bishops into increasing danger in a society whose gods they openly rejected.
Christians had always been vulnerable to persecution - the crucifixion of Christ
by Roman soldiers provided, after all, a paradigm for the faith—and some seem
to have seen martyrdom as a mark of their commitment. ‘Allow me to be bread
for the wild beasts; through them I am able to attain to God. I am the wheat of
God and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found to be the
pure bread of Christ’ was how Ignatius of Antioch put it when he was taken off