Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "How Christianity Changed History" video.

  1. Re: "The Greeks were too agnostic to pull off a new religion" That's a paradoxical statement, since Christ is a Greek word and the Gospel is written in Greek. Re: "For the first few centuries most Christians were former Jews" That's impossible, since Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire in those same centuries. Yes, there were formerly Jewish Christians, but those sects went extinct. What conquered the world was Pauline version of Christianity, which spread mostly among the Gentiles. Even if we look chronologically at the Gospels, Mark and especially Mathew seem to be more connected to the Jewish traditions, while especially John does not seem like it at all. Later apocryphal Gospels diverge even further. So it's just not true. Not even majority of Christians were converted Jews, absolutely definitely not most of them.
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  2.  @catnappernellie1211  The reign of Constantine is 306-337 A.D. One would think that Christianity got to be fairly big already, if even the emperor was one of them. Anyway. by pure numbers it's likely that Christians were not the majority yet. Paganus means rural, the vast majority of people used to live in villages, but they were not the most influential people. As far as when exactly converted pagans started to outnumber converted Jews, I think it had to be quite early. By the year 49 A.D. they already had so many converted pagans, that the question of if they need to follow the exact letter of The Law needed to be answered. Also, while Paul tried to preach in Synagogues, he always faced very strong opposition there. It was simply dangerous to do so, while converting pagans was not associated with similar risks. Pagans were polytheists, after all. Supposedly in 57 A.D. Paul was so successful in Ephesus, that his teachings negatively influenced the sales of silver figurines of Artemis, which resulted is some protests. Whether it's true or not, it shows the difference between converting Jews and pagans. Pagans didn't care, until some very practical effects managed to irritate them.
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