Jesus is Caesar: How Paul's Christianity was the Trojan Horse for the Roman Empire
Jesus is Caesar: How Paul's Christianity was the Trojan Horse for the Roman Empire Christianity did not conquer the Roman Empire by force. It was absorbed, and that absorption was possible because Paul’s Gentile mission had already translated Israel’s Messiah into forms the Greco-Roman world could recognize, debate, and eventually repurpose. This was not betrayal but translation, and translation always carries risk. By the first century, the Roman world was far from culturally naïve. It was already steeped in universal moral philosophies such as Stoicism, familiar with the language of cosmic reason through the concept of the logos, and comfortable with virtue ethics detached from ethnic identity. Roman society was structured around voluntary associations, household-based communities, and long-standing patron-client relationships, and it had a deep tradition of religious syncretism that allowed new ideas to be absorbed rather than rejected. Divine men, hero cults, and imperial bene...