Growing up with a lot of Mormons I was exposed to their culture a fair amount. Though Mormonism is really distinct as a culture, with folkways and mores (jello!), there are a lot of weird beliefs there too.
One of the arguments presented as supporting the validity of the religion is that the Book of Mormon is very extensive. How could we imagine that Joseph Smith, a relatively uneducated young man, could have written it by himself? It is such a long and detailed narrative. The scripture is then evidence of divine provenance and inspiration.
At the time I didn’t have much to say to that argument, though I was skeptical. Now I have something more to say to that. In the context of the time and place, the Second Great Awakening in greater New England, it is not surprising that some enterprising you man created a scripture that many would find convincing (at least convincing enough).* The Mormons were the most successful of the new religious movements to come out of the northern United States during this period, but it was an extremely culturally creative time and place. If a new scripture was going to be created in the USA, this is when conditions were most ripe.
In antiquity, some Christians asserted that the emergence of a unified Roman Empire was ordained by their God to serve as a vehicle for the rise of Christianity. Indeed, I have argued that something like Christianity was probably inevitable with the rise of Rome. There were broader historical-cultural forces at work. As I am not a believer in Christianity (or any religion), I don’t think that the unifying religion necessarily had to have all the particular features of Christianity, but Christianity clearly sufficed. The cultural victory of Christianity in the Roman Empire was unlikely in a specific sense, but someone was going to probably have a cultural victory.
Which brings me to Islam. Like Mormons, many Muslims assert the nature of the Koran is proof of Muhammad’s revelation. After all, he was an illiterate merchant. How could he have produced such work? Setting aside revisionism about the nature of the Koran (and Muhammad), there is a broader issue about the miraculous conquest of much of the Roman Empire, and all of the Persian Empire, in the 7th-century by the Arabs.
The magnitude and scale were clearly incredible.
But was it truly that great of a surprise? Historically peoples from the fringes and margins have been prominent in Near Eastern history in engaging in takeovers of older civilizations. Amorites, Kassites, Aramaeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians. Right before the rise of the Arabs, the Turks created a short-lived trans-Eurasians Empire, and after the decline of early Islam, the Mongols created another (and before the Mongols the Turks had become dominant within Islam after their adoption of the religion).
Scholars such as Peter Turchin, Christopher Beckwith, and Victor Lieberman have observed the relationship between the civilizational “marches” and “cores” over the past few thousand years (also see Ibn Khaldun). Over time the cores become inert, somnolescent, and they are conquered and revived by eruptions from the march. The Zhou, the first great Chinese dynasty which served as the cultural foundation for imperial China were semi-barbarized. The revival of the Chinese Empire under the Sui-Tang was spearheaded by semi-barbarized marchland elites as well. The Seleucid hegemony of the old Persian lands was wrested from their control by the Parthian Arsacids, who were of Central Asian origin (in contrast, the Sassanians came out of the old Persian heartland in the southwest). The Maurya focus of power was in Maghda, on the edge of Aryavarta.
The Arab conquest was not surprising in the grand scope then. It was not inevitable, but neither was it entirely unlikely. In later centuries the Arab hegemony gave way to a Persian revival (e.g., the Buyids and Samanids), which gave way to Turkic hegemony. The rare aspect of the Arabs is the creation of a new civilizational mythology and identity. That is, Islam.
Of the peoples listed above, the only analog I can see here is the Zhou, who seem to have fused their own particularities (e.g., emphasizing the worship of an impersonal Heaven as opposed to a more personal Lord on High) with the broader matrix of late Shang proto-Chinese culture, and therefore created the identity we later think of as quintessentially Chinese. Though the roots of Han Chinese civilization do go back to the Erlitou, 1,000 years before he Zhou, the broad outlines are Zhou.
xTo evaluate these unique, surprising, and novel events in history, one always has to keep in mind the broad scope. When seen across the patterns of history the individual perturbations are clearly part of the moving river of events, inexorable and directional.
* I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the witnesses were involved in the creation of the Book of Mormon.
I think it helped that he dictated it, rather than writing it himself – Smith apparently had a reputation as a good orator and storyteller already when it was written (and there’s been a bunch of changes in it since the original edition in the 1830s).
You can kind of see that in the work, too, if you read it. He repeats a lot of beginning phrases (“and it came to pass” is used so frequently that Mark Twain snarked about it), and there’s a lot of parts that feel like he’s jogging his memory to remember where he was in the story by repeating stuff.
I agree with “something like Christianity” having to become important in the Rome’s civilisation, not just from a systemic, but very personal perspective.
Whenever I discuess with people the success and character of Christianity, in the end we will have to evaluate the alternatives at hand at the time of this belief’s rising. And in my opinion, the old polytheistic Pantheon was no alternative.
Even if people talk about how ridiculous some aspects of the monotheistic, Mosaic religions might be and how much better the rules of pre-Christian, traditional Indo-European cults were in comparison for the practical life a of a cult, they were not more logical or attractive for a true believer. For someone more educated and knowledgeable of the world, the idea of personal gods being responsible for natural phenomenons in such a pity way, is hard to believe in. I think that the traditional polytheism was just, from a theological point of view, the view of someone searching for explanations and a greater narrative, becoming ridiculous and not authentic.
What these traditional heathen beliefs lacked, is a true Logos, an explanation of the world which, even at the time of Rome and for an educated, more intelligent Roman citizen, wouldn’t make you laugh when hearing the explanations of the world and wouldn’t be more strictly related to once ethnic background and moral narrative. They lacked a broader validity from an ethnic and philosophical point of view.
Christianity offered a complete philosophical explanation and world system, on many levels a wrong and impractical one, but more so than most alternatives of the crucial time in question.
Its actually not even about one god or many gods, higher beings so much, but how you think the real world and the transcendental interact. Christianity is a more abstract and logical approach to the real world which is harder to disprove, with simple means, than the heathen predecessors, which were really weak in this respect. Even when it preached false things, it did so in a way harder to prove or disprove. Believers were very hard to convince from the opposite, even if they were fairly educated and otherwise rational, because of a more limited vulnerability of its internal Logos.
Once you being confronted with the Christian Logos, its very hard to go back to the Heathen beliefs. I would make a simple comparison: If you question God and Christian beliefs, the alternative can hardly be to believe in Santa Claus of your childhood again.
And the heathen beliefs are more like a childish belief in Santa Claus than an alternative to Christian god belief to me in some of its respects. That’s why the less educated, not to say dumb, Christians needed such superstition and personal contacts. The cult of Mary, but even more so the Saints and the cults around them had a similar function as the heathen beliefs for many. Sacrifice something to a saint for a good journey, salvation from a disease or a good business and the like. That kind of primitive Christian beliefs is the direct continuation of heathen customs.
That’s not why Christanity became successful, but it made it easier to accept for the common people.
This shows that Christianity is on a higher level, even though it has philosophical limitations, these limitations were at least integrated into the belief system, whereas they were largely decoupled from down to earth heathen beliefs in the pagan philosophies. They had a much weaker connection between the high and the low belief system. Christianity managed to construct that much better, but with deficits on the high and the low end which are horrible. Yet, a bad interconnection of the two elements, the high and the low, is better than none and it really was one of the pioneers in this respect in a lot of Europe.
So I don’t wonder the more intelligent opponents of Christianity, like Julian the Apostate, tried to create something completely different, a new sect rather than a revival of the old Paganism, to confront Christianity. But the problem for the mob always is, they want their belief to be authentic, even if its heavily flawed. They don’t want to get corrected from above in these matters and when you try it, you have a hard time even as an emperor. Christianity was wrong and flawed on so many levels, but it offered something with an USP for its time. At least after the first phase of the doomsday cult sect was left behind and Greco-Roman style philosophically educated religious leaders transformed the new religious core into something attractive for the high and the low recipients.
Its like a double selling strategy of the sects salesmen.
Coming back to the personal situation: The heathen ways look intellectually dull. So if you sought for personal salvation, an explanation of the world and its misfortunes, a bigger “philosophical truth”, I see a bad situation for people opposing Christianity at that time. In fact, the best chance would have been, from the start, an alternative, more practical, yet philosophically and intellectually as convincing sect. But to just defend the “old ways” was the wrong approach to counteract the spread of Christianity.
If an old system being confronted with a new challenge, an so far unknown USP of the opposing side, it has to instantly react and come up with a solution of its own for the challenger.
An example would be the counter-reformation especially in Central Europe, because it was more than just forcing people to the old confession, it was also a reform movement from within Catholicism. Without that, without that new self definition and correction, even the brutal force of the Catholic rulers wouldn’t have sufficed to bring the people back to the Catholic interpretation of the world.
Rome just bumbled about, they didn’t, in time, react to the new challenge and created a wholesome alternative. Its not enough to try to keep your opponent down by force and criticise it, you have to create and offer something which ruins the USP of your challenger. The pagans didn’t manage to do that at all. That’s a general problem with all kind of “conservative” approaches. You can’t conserve your position if a new opponent nags on your unprotected side. Its like an organism which has no immune response to a new threat. It doesn’t matter how healthy you might be otherwise, if you lack the very specific antigen you need against this kind of infection. If you don’t have it, you need to create it, not looking down on it because it starts small. Every infection starts small, but it can tear you down nevertheless. The more tolerant Romans were just short sighted, they didn’t saw what this belief was really about and how it questioned the very fundaments of their state and civilisation.
Animism – Polytheism – Monotheism – Philosophical principle.
That’s not the same level, but intellectually its a different stage of development. One more gods is not as important as one Logos, one philosophical approach to life and the world. But a still rather animistic Polytheism is just a lower level. And its hard to fight from the low ground.
What I forgot to make clear is that the Christian philosophers managed, even with the limitations Christianity imposed on them, to interconnect the high and low, the superstition and religiousness of the common and low class of people with the universalistic world explanation of the Christian confession.
The classic Greco-Roman Pagan philosophers reached higher levels, were more convincing in their logic, not limited by Christian irrationalities, but they lacked the connection to the folk tales and beliefs. They used allegories and tales in their philosophy, even spoke of the gods, but it didn’t penetrate their narratives – which were largely detached from traditional religiousness and devoid of superstition.
Christian philosophers on the other hand delivered narratives which showed a complete penetration of Christian beliefs, Christian Logos. They were able, with limitations on both ends though, to unite the high and the low world explanation of their religious ideology.
You’re presenting a caricature of classical paganism. Julian didn’t invent sonething new. It was neoplatonism.
Cicero also wrote of “all the parts of the universe held together by one divine and all-pervading spirit.”
And the Indo-European cult also produced the upanishads.
@Paulie: But thats what I was saying. What had Cicero in common with the pagan belief and customs of the peasants?
Augustinus or Gregor from Tours wrote for the same confession as the Christian priest doing his simple liturgy for the common people.
And the Upanishads had which relevance for Romans?
@Obs: I was responding to your first comment. The idea that the pagans failed to interconnect the high and low is interesting. Although I’m not sure why they necessarily need to be interconnected, as they appeal to different people.
The pagan folk customs had significant appeal to the “low.” The word “pagan” itself means rustic and the rural peasantry resisted christianization for a long time, and only really stopped once Christianity had co-opted much of it.
It’s true that resistance wasn’t the same as that of the philosophers and senatorial elite, but I’m not sure that’s the key factor. Christianity was accepted by the urban population of the eastern cities and then a faction of the army. It was pretty much imposed on the low by force.