Christianity By Bernard Green: The Beauty Of Christianity

Bernard Green writes about the beauty of Christianity and when it was striving in the city of Rome. Christianity started in Jerusalem but then reached Rome a decade after the crucifixion of Christ. The Jews reached Rome and began to preach the word of God. Bernard writes about how throughout the three centuries of Rome, the Jews, along with Christianity brought peace, war, and hate to the community. Bernard makes this book interesting as well as informing. This changed how I viewed not only Christianity but other religions as well. He separates the book in five different interest involving the origins of the Jews, how the community effected the city, the misleading persecutions of the Jews, along with the transition to catacombs, and lastly

Many people, as well as leaders thought of the religion as something they can blame tragic events on. For example, in 64 BC Nero blamed Christianity for the cause of the great fires, and persecuted a huge amount Christians. This devastated the Christian community Bernard states. Incidents like this is what held back the religion from spreading so quickly. This held the religion back along with other causes as well. As time went on the Christian community in Rome began to grow and become stronger and develop a position in the world. In the second Century BC Rome really developed a strong Jewish community. This strong community started when Pompey conquered Jerusalem and brought back large numbers of Jewish slaves. Originally there were few roman Christians in the area, but now with slaves coming over from Jerusalem the practice started to grow steadily. With numbers growing historians estimated between forty and fifty thousand Jews were in Rome in the second century. We know this because of two pieces of information. Bernard states that, “On the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, about eight thousand Roman Jews turned out to support a delegation from Judaea calling for an end to the rule of his dynasty. In 19 AD, four thousand were conscripted for military service in Sardinia.” The second century was when questions were asked about church, monotheism, and the scripture. Many leaders started to devote their time into it, developing a wide spread of religion change. For

Bernard explains that this was the period of catacombs which are basically a burial site. Rather than cremating the bodies the Roman community started to develop cemeteries which means sleeping chamber. Bernard states that, “Perhaps three quarters of a million people were buried in them from the start of the third century”. This statement proves the growth of Christianity was so fast during the first two centuries. The Christian belief was to be buried together, which also showed how the community acted as one. The third century is where the thought of after life was questioned and thought of. The attitude of death during the third century was oddly attractive to people outside of the Roman Empire. People came to the city and transitioned to Christianity because of the faith and the hope it gave to the dead. The fact that no matter how rich or poor you were, each kid, or adult gets buried properly. Even slaves were put into cemeteries to represent peace. A statement that Bernard makes really shows how the Christians thought and what they practiced, as well as truly showing love to everyone. He states