>> "The Angel Gabriel
was sent from God to a city of Galilee
named..." >> NARRATOR: Every Sunday,
in every corner of the world, people gather to hear a story. >> "...and the virgin's name
was Mary." >> NARRATOR: For more than 2,000
years, that story has been told
and retold. >> "...and to bear a son." >> NARRATOR: Along the way, each generation has found
in its telling its own meaning
and interpretation. >> "'...you shall call his name
Jesus...'" >> NARRATOR: That story, of
a man called Jesus of Nazareth, a man who became Jesus Christ, was originally told
by his first followers... >> "'...and be called the Son
of the Most High.'" >> NARRATOR: And then retold
in accounts by later believers
in the Gospels. >> "The Gospel according
to St. Luke." >> NARRATOR: So began
the building of a religion. In the first two parts, with the
help of scholars and historians, we tried to reconstruct
his times, and how, after his death, a small Jewish sect began
to spread the word. Tonight,
how that story was told, and how a faith overcame
an empire. >> NARRATOR: Jewish resistance
was not completely snuffed out after the sack of Jerusalem. Rebel fighters held out
for four more years. The Jewish historian Josephus,
who had taken part in the war, recounted the story: >> There was a fortress
of very great strength not far from Jerusalem, which had been built
by our ancient kings. It is called Masada. >> The rock of Masada, one of the most glorious places
in all Israel, became the major refuge point for some of the most extremist
elements opposing Rome. The Zealots and their most
ardent supporters fled right in the middle
of the war to Masada. >> (dramatized): Here had been
stored a mass of corn amply sufficient to last
for years, an abundance of wine and oil. There was also found a mass
of arms of every description hoarded up by the king
and sufficient for 10,000 men. >> NARRATOR: From the heights
of Masada, the defenders could see
the Roman army surrounding them. The outlines of their camps
and siege works are still visible from the air. >> If you were a Roman soldier
approaching Masada, I think your heart would sink, because you know
that you would have to, first, to spend
a lot of time building a lot of ramps,
massive ramps, to move the army up the sides
in order to breach the walls. But you would know
in the process that you were
on a suicide mission, because all the while, the fortifiers and guardians
of Masada would have been pelting you with
any number of lethal objects at, no doubt, great losses
to the army. >> NARRATOR: Josephus described
the siege and its aftermath. >> (dramatized): The Romans
expected to make an assault
upon the fortress, which they did. But they saw nobody but a terrible solitude
on every side, as well as a perfect silence. >> The irony, of course, is that when the soldiers breached
the wall, finally, it was not they who had been
subject to the suicide attack, it was those
who had been guarding Masada who had committed suicide. >> NARRATOR: According
to Josephus, the defenders
had killed themselves rather than submit
to the Romans. But modern archaeologists have
found little evidence of mass suicide among the ruins. What really happened there
remains a mystery. But Josephus' version
of the story turned Masada
into the powerful symbol of a noble failure. >> The failure of the first
revolt really was a traumatic event for everyone living
in the Jewish homeland, Jews and Christians alike. As a result, they had
to start rethinking some of their own assumptions. When Jerusalem was destroyed, a whole new series of questions
had to be asked. "What do we do
without the temple?" "Where is the source
of our faith and our authority?" "What does God want us to do?" >> This era was an age
of definition, not just for Christianity,
but also for Judaism. It marks the emergence,
for the first time, into the light of history of a new group
and a new culture, and a new literature and a new way
of thinking and writing. >> NARRATOR: Without the temple, the priesthood that had presided
over its rituals lost its power. There emerged new leaders,
the Pharisees, rabbis who would lead
the Jewish people in a new direction. >> And the rabbis represent
for us a new age of definition. It is the rabbis who now emerge
as a new kind of Judaism, and it is this Judaism
which will endure from the second century
of our era down to our own age. >> NARRATOR: The failure
of the first revolt also created a crisis
for early Christians, who were still a part
of Judaism. The kingdom had not come;
the Messiah had not arrived. The followers of Jesus coped
by telling stories about the man
they had expected would deliver the new kingdom
on Earth. >> We have to remember
that Jesus died around 30. For 40 years, there's no written
gospel of his life, until after the revolt. During that time, we have very little in the way
of written records within Christianity. Our first writer
in the New Testament is Paul, and his first letter is dated
around 50 to 52, so still a good 20 years
after Jesus himself. But it appears that in between
the death of Jesus and the writing
of the first gospel, Mark, that they clearly are
telling stories. They're passing on the tradition
of what happened to Jesus, what he stood for
and what he did-- orally, by telling it
and retelling it. >> NARRATOR: Meeting
in each others' homes, early Christians told stories of Jesus' parables and miracles, and of his suffering and death. These were not historical
accounts, but shared memories
shaped by a common past. >> Legend and myth and hymn and
prayer are the vehicles in which
oral traditions develop. One could, for example, imagine that the oldest way in which
the early Christians told about Jesus' suffering
and death was the hymn that Paul quotes
in Philippians 2. >> (dramatized): And being found
in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross. >> Paul quotes this hymn
in the early 50s of the first century. He quotes this as a hymn
that probably was sung in the Christian communities
ten or 20 years earlier. That is the way in which you
first tell the story, and that you tell the story
in the form of a hymn also shows that the telling
of the story is anchored in the worship life
of the community. So here is really the beginning
of the oral tradition. >> It seems that, over time, some of these stories came to be
written down, and... or what came to be thought of
as the gospel, the good news,
the story of Jesus. >> (dramatized): The beginning
of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written
in the Prophet Isaiah. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. >> NARRATOR: The Gospel of Mark is the oldest
in the New Testament. It was written soon after
the failure of the first revolt for a community
that was struggling to reconcile its expectations
of Jesus with the loss of the temple. >> We know a little bit
about Mark's community from some things
in the gospel itself. Mark's audience reads Greek,
and not Aramaic. Mark always has to explain the
Aramaic phrases that Jesus uses. >> (dramatized): Taking her
by the hand, he said to her, <i> "Talitha cumi,"</i> which means,
"little girl," "I say to you, arise." >> Mark is written for
a Jewish-Christian audience living somewhere
outside the homeland, and thus reflecting on the
events of the first revolt from that vantage point. >> NARRATOR: Mark's audience
may have watched Roman soldiers parading through the streets, bearing plunder
stolen from the temple. They would certainly have seen,
even been forced to use, the coins that depicted
the terrible defeat. >> Mark is clearly reflecting
on the destruction of the temple as part of his understanding
of the significance of the life and death of Jesus. >> NARRATOR: In Mark's story, Jesus predicts that the temple
will be destroyed because it has been desecrated. >> Jesus is standing against
the temple in Mark's gospel. And Mark wants us to understand
that that's significant to why he must die and why
Jerusalem will be destroyed. >> (dramatized): Do you see
these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here
upon another. All will be thrown down! >> The Gospel of Mark is
extraordinary and strange, the story, if you read it apart
from the others. It's a story of this country
teacher coming from nowhere, with incredible power descending
upon him, healing people,
exorcising people, speaking strange, bold,
astonishing things, and startling everyone. >> (dramatized): He said
to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" And they were filled with awe,
and they said to one another, "Who is this, then,
that the wind and sea obey him?" >> NARRATOR: Mark was the first to write the story of the life
of Jesus. He took disparate elements
of oral tradition and a few early written sources and wove them together
to create a new narrative. >> Mark seems to have
a knowledge of at least one and maybe two or three different
collections of miracle stories. The fact that Mark takes
these early sources of Jesus miracle stories suggests that, in fact,
one of the earliest ways of understanding Jesus is as a miracle worker. But miracle workers are a dime
a dozen in the ancient world. We hear about all sorts of
people who can perform miracles, so that doesn't really seem
to set him apart. >> NARRATOR: In Mark,
what does set Jesus apart is that he is a peculiar kind
of miracle worker. In one case, he has to attempt
the miracle twice to get it right, and at another time, he can't
perform miracles at all. >> It seems to be one of the
points of Mark's gospel to say, "He's not just a miracle worker,
he's more." >> NARRATOR: Jesus emerges
from Mark's gospel as a strange and somewhat
enigmatic figure. >> Jesus is mysterious. Jesus intentionally keeps people
from understanding who he really is at times. >> (dramatized): He said
to them, "For those outside,
everything comes in parables "in order that they may, indeed,
look but not perceive, and may, indeed, listen
but not understand." >> NARRATOR: The Jesus
in Mark's gospel both reveals and conceals
his true identity-- a paradox scholars call
the "messianic secret." >> It seems to me
that the messianic secret is indeed that
the true messiahship of Jesus cannot be recognized
in his miracles, and that the messianic secret
of Jesus is that he is the son of man
who has come to suffer, and not the messiah who is
going to do great miracles. And that that will become clear only at the very end
of the story of Jesus. The suffering and death of Jesus
reveals the secret. >> NARRATOR: Since
the destruction of the temple, Mark's community has come to see
the death of Jesus in a new light. Mark is challenging
the prewar image of Jesus as an apocalyptic figure. >> Mark, coming out
of the experience of the first great war
with Rome, after the destruction
of the temple, Mark sees Jesus,
like many of the Christians that Mark knew all about
in his own community, as God's persecuted one--
dying, almost feeling abandoned. It's a very unromantic Jesus. It's a terrifying image, because that's
what their experience was. >> (dramatized):
When it was noon, darkness came
over the whole land until 3:00 in the afternoon. At 3:00, Jesus cried out
with a loud voice, "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" >> Mark tells us that Jesus died
being mocked and in agony. And I think Mark is writing for the experience of people
in the 70s who are dying like that,
and who need the consolation that Jesus had died that way
before-- feeling abandoned by God. >> NARRATOR: In Mark's
original gospel, Jesus dies and his body
is placed in a tomb. When the tomb is discovered,
Jesus is gone. >> Mark ends with an empty tomb and a waiting for the return
of Jesus. He ends, almost, with an absent
Jesus, because that's what
his community has experienced in persecution, an absent Jesus. Now, nobody after Mark is going
to accept that. Matthew will change it. Luke will change it. John will change it. The scribes will even change
the Gospel of Mark to put other endings there. Mark creates the empty tomb,
as far as I can see, as his way
of ending the story. >> And the last words
of the original gospel are, "And they were terrified." It would be very bad news if it weren't that underneath
this rather dark story is an enormous hope that this very unpromising
story and its terrible,
anguished ending is, nevertheless,
not the ending; that there's a mystery in it, a divine mystery
of God's revelation that will happen yet. And I think it's that sense of
hope that is deeply appealing. >> NARRATOR: Mark began
the gospel tradition with his dramatic story
of the life and death of Jesus. The later gospel writers
would continue the tradition by drawing on the story
told by Mark. >> Matthew and Luke both
used Mark as the core, sort of the basic storyline
that they tell, because Mark is completely
incorporated, 16 chapters, into both Matthew and Luke. >> Matthew and Luke
depend on Mark, which is why
those three gospels-- Matthew, Mark, and Luke-- are called
the "synoptic gospels," because they can be
understood together. >> Once scholars had decided that Mark's gospel was used
by Matthew and Luke, it was possible to compare them and to realize
that there was also material with a common sequence
and a common content that wasn't in Mark. >> Scholars observed that there's a part
of the sayings in Matthew that are exactly identical
with sayings in Luke. In fact, they're identical
in Greek, sayings of Jesus. Now, think: Jesus spoke Aramaic. So if you were translating
Aramaic and if I were translating
Aramaic, they'd come out different,
these translations. So you would only have
identical... You would only have Jesus speaking identical sayings
in Greek if you had a written translation
in Greek of his sayings. And so scholars suggested
that there must have been, besides Mark, something else
written down that would have been a list
of the sayings of Jesus translated into Greek. And they called that quelle,
which means "source" in German, and they call it,
for short, "Q." Nobody ever has found
this source written. We can reconstruct it because we guess that
there was such a written source. >> NARRATOR: "Q" was composed
before the war. It would have presented Jesus
as an apocalyptic figure, the very image of the messiah that Mark felt compelled
to change. >> (dramatized): There will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and all the prophets
in the Kingdom of God, and you yourself thrown out. >> NARRATOR: But this is also
a complex Jesus who sometimes speaks words
of wisdom. >> (dramatized): Consider
the lilies and how they grow. They neither toil nor spin,
yet I tell you even Solomon... >> NARRATOR: "Q" does not tell
the stories of the life and death of Jesus. It contains only his sayings, so it reveals a different way
of understanding Jesus. >> Whoever collected
the sayings of "Q" wasn't interested
in the death of Jesus, wasn't interested
in the resurrection of Jesus, thought the importance of Jesus was what he said,
what he preached. Now, other people thought,
it's not enough to have the sayings of Jesus. You have to tell about his...
about his death, and his crucifixion,
and his resurrection. That's the important thing. Now, somebody put that
all together, and we call it Matthew,
and we call it Luke. >> (dramatized): Blessed
are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now,
for you shall be satisfied. >> NARRATOR: "Q" was probably
composed in the Jewish homeland
of Palestine. Scholars do not agree
on the location of Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. They were separated not only
by geography, but also by time. Writing decades apart,
they composed their gospels for tiny communities that were developing
their own ideas about Jesus, independently of each other. >> (dramatized): Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth. >> NARRATOR: About 15 years
after Mark, Matthew wrote his gospel
for a community caught up in the transformation
of Judaism after the fall of the temple. >> Matthew's gospel is clearly
written for a Jewish-Christian audience living within
the immediate proximity of the homeland itself. Matthew's is the most Jewish
of all the gospels. >> NARRATOR: Matthew's community
lived in villages in the upper Galilee,
or lower Syria. After the war, many who had been
forced out of Jerusalem moved north and settled
in these villages. New leadership was evolving here
with the Pharisees, the rabbis who gave fresh
interpretation to the ancient Jewish
traditions. Matthew's community felt
threatened by these changes. >> The followers of Jesus
were certainly very much on the fringe
of the Jewish community. Obviously, the early preachers
had hoped that they would convert the
whole majority of their people. But they were bitterly
disappointed to find that only a very few accepted
their rather improbable stories. And they remained very much on the fringe
of the Jewish communities. >> (dramatized): The Gospel
of Matthew is concerned with the position of these early
Christian churches within Israel. And it's very important
that Jesus, for Matthew, is fully a man from Israel. Therefore, Matthew begins his
gospel by taking, probably, all the genealogy of Jesus and now traces this back
to Abraham. For Matthew, Jesus is a son
of Abraham. That is, he is truly a man
from Israel. >> The way Matthew then tells
the story of Jesus draws on a lot of symbols
from Jewish tradition. Jesus goes up onto a mountain
to teach and there talks about the law. He looks like Moses. >> (dramatized): When Jesus
saw the crowds, he went up to the mountain
and began to speak and taught them, saying, "You are the light
of the world." >> Jesus delivers five different
sermons of this sort, just like the five books
of Torah. >> (dramatized): Think not
that I have come to abolish the law
and the prophets. I have come not to abolish,
but to fulfill. >> In Matthew, Jesus is
a proponent of Torah piety, just like the Pharisees. >> (dramatized): Whoever
breaks one of these commandments will be called least
in the kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you,
unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and the Pharisees, you will never enter
the kingdom of Heaven. >> NARRATOR: The Jesus
of Matthew singles out the Pharisees
for a bitter attack. >> (dramatized): Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are
like whitewashed tombs which on the outside
look beautiful, but inside, they are full
of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth. >> Now, in Jesus' own times, the Pharisees weren't
that prominent a group. Why does Matthew tell the story
this way, so that a group
that was less consequential during Jesus' own lifetime now becomes the main opponent? It's precisely
because that's what's going on in the life
of Matthew's community after the war. The Pharisees are becoming their
opponents, and we're watching
two Jewish groups-- Matthew's Christian-Jewish group
and the local pharisaic groups-- in tension over what would be
the future of Judaism. >> NARRATOR: In Matthew,
we see a debate between two Jewish groups. Tensions created by this debate
will eventually fracture Judaism and lead to the split
with Christianity. >> Most of the gospels reflect
a period of disagreement, of theological disagreement. And the new narrative history that evolves in the form of,
of the New Testament tells a story of a broken
relationship, and that's part of the sad story that evolves
between Jews and Christians, because it is a story that
had such awful repercussions in later times. >> NARRATOR: By the time
Matthew was writing, the trauma of the war
was receding. Now his followers
and the Pharisees were competing for the hearts and minds
of the Jewish villagers over the future direction
of Judaism. This may be one of the reasons Matthew's account of the death
of Jesus is so different from Mark's. >> Matthew was saying
to himself, "I have to conclude
this gospel." I'm talking about something that
happened, say, in the year 30, but I have to bring my gospel up
to the year 85. Now, what's the last climactic
statement of Jesus? Where do I locate it and what
does he say, and to whom? Matthew is reading Mark. There's a massive consensus
of scholarship on that. He finds that Mark ends with the women fleeing
and telling nobody. Is that the way
Matthew tells it? No. He has Jesus meet the women. And now the women, then,
go and tell, because Jesus sort of corrects
Mark's gospel. And the last scene in Matthew,
of course, is Jesus, who meets the disciples
on a mountain in Galilee, where the story began,
at the Sermon on the Mount, and they're told to go out
and preach to the world. >> The gospels are very peculiar
types of literature. They're not biographies. I mean, there are all sorts
of details about Jesus that they simply are not
interested in giving us. They are a kind
of religious advertisement. What they do is proclaim their individual author's
interpretation of the Christian message through the device
of using Jesus of Nazareth as a spokesperson
for the evangelist's position. >> For somebody who thinks
that the four gospels are like four witnesses
in a court trying to tell exactly how
the accident happened, as it were, this is extremely troubling. It is not at all troubling
to me, because they told me,
quite honestly, that they were gospels. And a gospel is good news--
"good" and "news"-- updated interpretation, so I did not expect journalism. >> There are several different
portraits of Jesus enshrined in the shape
of the traditions about him, and that these seem to go back
to very early times. >> The major issue, for me, is whether the people
who told us the stories in the ancient world took them all literally, and now we're so smart that we know to take them
symbolically, or they all intended them
symbolically and we're so dumb that we've
been taking them literally. And I really am
with the second option. I think we have been
misinterpreting these stories, because the people
who write them don't seem the least bit worried
about their diversity. We see the problem, and then we want to insist
that they're literal. I think we have misread
the scriptures, not they have miswritten them. >> (dramatized): Since many
have undertaken to set down the events that have
been fulfilled among us, I, too, decided, after investigating everything
carefully, to write an orderly account. >> NARRATOR: Luke's gospel takes
the separation from Judaism one step further, because Luke was almost
certainly a Gentile, writing for a mainly
Gentile audience. And the story he has to tell
is how word of Jesus reached the rest of the world. >> The Jesus of Luke is
an enormously powerful figure. I mean, he comes on the scene as a prophet straight out
of the Hebrew Bible. I mean, at his first appearance
in his hometown synagogue, he quotes the Prophet Isaiah. >> (dramatized): The spirit
of the Lord is upon me. He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight
to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. >> Jesus goes
into the synagogue. He takes the scroll of Isaiah. He is literate-- of course he
can read-- and he is a scholar. He can find his way around
an unpointed Hebrew scroll and find exactly the place
he wants, and reads it and comments on it. Jesus is a scholar. Jesus is rather like Luke,
actually. >> NARRATOR: Tradition claims
that the author of Luke was a traveling companion of the
Apostle Paul, and probably lived
in one of the cities where Paul founded
a Christian community. Luke wrote a story about Jesus, but he also wrote
the Book of Acts, the story of the growth
of the early church and its spread
throughout the empire. >> It's very important
to remember that the Gospel of Luke is only one-half
of a major work. And we make a mistake
by reading the Gospel of Luke just as the story of Jesus. What Luke wrote was a story
that began with John the Baptist and ends with the arrival
of Paul in Rome. >> So the author of Luke/Acts-- and that's what we call them
now, that's a two-volume work-- is telling us a bigger story,
a grander story. >> In fact,
it's such a good story that many scholars
have compared it to the novelistic literature
of the time, and have interpreted Luke/Acts as, really, a Christian,
early-Christian romance, with all the ingredients
of romance, down to shipwrecks
and exotic animals and exotic vegetation,
cannibalistic natives-- all kinds of embellishments
that one finds in the romance literature
of the time. >> (dramatized): We were
being pounded by the storm so violently that, on the next day, they began to throw the cargo
overboard. And on the third day,
with their own hands, they threw the ship's tackle
overboard. When neither sun nor stars
appeared for many days, and no small tempest raged, all hope of our being saved
was at last abandoned. >> The style of Luke's gospel is probably the highest
literary quality of anything
in the New Testament. So it's very different
than Mark on that score, which has a much cruder quality
to the grammar. So anyone from the literary
culture of the Greco-Roman world who might have picked up
Luke's gospel would have felt
much more comfortable with it. It's much more like reading
a Greek novel. >> NARRATOR: Tradition holds
that Luke was a physician. He clearly possessed
a fine command of Greek. And his composition addresses
a dilemma faced by Christian communities
across the empire. >> One of the major concerns that the composite work
of Luke/Acts addresses is whether Christians
can be good citizens of the Roman Empire. After all, their founder
was executed as a political criminal, and some people would have
thought of them as incendiaries, as revolutionaries. Luke, in his portrait, wants
to show that Jesus himself taught
an ethic that was entirely compatible with good citizenship
of the empire, and that, despite the fact
that Paul was himself executed, all of that was
a serious mistake and had nothing to do
with a political program that was in any way dangerous. >> NARRATOR: In fact, in Luke's
version of history, the Book of Acts, Paul is treated kindly
by his Roman guards. >> The death of Paul
is not told. It ends on a triumphant note,
in a way, that Paul is speaking, preaching freely the Gospel,
unhindered. >> The counterpart
to the realization that Luke is telling the story
for a Greco-Roman audience with a kind of political agenda is what happens
to Luke's treatment of the Jewish tradition. Luke is much more antagonistic
towards Judaism. >> NARRATOR: When Luke describes
Paul's visit to a synagogue, he shows the Jews
in a hostile light. >> (dramatized):
Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish synagogue, but the unbelieving Jews
stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds
against the brothers. >> NARRATOR: Luke/Acts
is also the first time we see the followers of Jesus
explicitly called "Christians." >> This ethnic
self-consciousness that's being reflected
by Luke/Acts is beginning to say
that we, the Christians, the ones who are telling
this story, are no longer
in quite the same way just Jews. Luke is reflecting the development
of the Christian movement more away from the Jewish roots and, in fact, developing more toward the Roman political
and social arena. >> As you read the story
in the Acts of the Apostles, you get the impression that
everything moves westward-- from Jerusalem to Rome. That's where the story ends,
when Paul gets to Rome. You wouldn't know, for example,
really, that there was
an Egyptian church. You wouldn't know
there was a Syriac church. Everything would be
a Roman church. And that's the story
that Luke wants to tell. When the Gospel gets to Rome,
the capital of the empire, that's the end of the story. >> (dramatized): In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God, and the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us. >> NARRATOR: The
fourth and last gospel now contained
in the New Testament is the Gospel of John, written about 70 years
after the death of Jesus. It is the story of a community where the relationship
between Christians and Jews has become more virulent, almost to the point
of breakdown. >> (dramatized): I am
the light of the world. He who follows me
will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. >> In the fourth gospel, Jesus is a very serene figure who can speak at length
about matters divine. A very different kind of speech from the speech which we hear
in the synoptic gospels, which is usually
much more pithy, much more directed,
much more witty. In John, it's reflective
and revelatory. >> John's gospel is different from the other three
in the New Testament. That fact has been recognized
since the early church itself. Already, by the year 200,
John's gospel was called
the "spiritual gospel" precisely because it told
the story of Jesus in symbolic ways
that differ sharply, at times, from the other three. >> Let me compare Mark with John to explain how two gospels
do it differently. In... we call it
"the agony in the garden." Now, there is no agony in John,
and there is no garden in Mark; but we call it
the "agony in the garden" because we put them together. Mark tells the story
in which Jesus, the night before he dies, is prostrate on the ground,
begging God, "If this all could pass...
but I will do what you want," and the disciples all flee. Now, that's an awful picture. That makes sense to me
because Mark is writing to a persecuted community
who knows, who know what it's like to die. That's how you die,
feeling abandoned by God. Over to John. Jesus is not on the ground
in John. The whole cohort of the
Jerusalem forces come out, 600 troops come out
to capture Jesus, and they end up with their faces
on the ground in John. And Jesus says, "Of course I
will do what the Father wants." And Jesus tells them to,
"Let my disciples go." He's in command
of the whole operation. You have a Jesus out of control,
almost, in Mark, a Jesus totally in control
in John-- both gospels. Neither of them are historical. I don't think either of them
know exactly what happened. >> Jesus dies on a different day
in John's gospel than in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the three synoptic gospels, Jesus actually eats
a Passover meal before he dies. In John's gospel, he doesn't. The Last Supper
is actually eaten before the beginning
of Passover. So here's the scene in John's
gospel: The day leading up to Passover is the day when all
the lambs are slaughtered, and everyone goes to the temple to get their lamb
for the Passover meal. In Jerusalem,
this would have meant thousands of lambs being
slaughtered all at one time. And in John's gospel, that's the
day on which Jesus is crucified. So that, quite literally, the dramatic scene
in John's gospel has Jesus hanging on the cross while the lambs are being
slaughtered for Passover. >> (dramatized): Here is
the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins
of the world. >> Jesus doesn't eat
a Passover meal, Jesus is the Passover meal. >> (dramatized): My flesh
is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my mortal flesh
and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. >> But the idea of drinking
blood is absolutely abhorrent
to Jewish dietary regulations. So the very language
and the symbolism that is so rich
within John's gospel also has a decidedly
political tone to it in terms of the evolving
relationship between Jews and Christians. >> NARRATOR: Throughout
the Roman Empire, Judaism itself was evolving. The role of the synagogue
was changing from a meeting place
to a place of worship. Worship in the synagogue increasingly centered on Torah
as the word of God. But John's community saw Jesus
as the word of God, and for this conviction, they would be forced out
of the synagogue. >> (dramatized): The Jews
had agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus
to be the messiah would be expelled
from the synagogue. >> As I read John, I come
to two conclusions. One is that this
is a Jewish group. If you want to call them
Christians, they're Jewish Christians. They're one group
within Judaism. The second conclusion is that they are being
more and more marginalized. That is, their appeal
to lead all of Judaism is becoming
less and less likely. They're becoming smaller and
smaller and smaller. And they can refer to their
other, their fellow Jews as "the Jews." They are feeling
profoundly alienated from their own Judaism. In plain language,
they're losing, and that means the language
of invective gets nastier and nastier. >> (dramatized):
The Jews answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If God were your father,
you would love me. You are from your father,
the devil." >> So Mark talks about the crowd
being against Jesus. But by Matthew-- 15 years
later, say, in the year 85-- it's all the people. And by the time you get
to John, in the 90s, it is the Jews
who are against Jesus. >> NARRATOR: The conflict
between Jews and Christians that John described
in his story of Jesus was still a local experience. But it soon would be swept up
in the rising political conflict between Jews and Romans
over Roman rule in Jerusalem. >> The relationship between
Judaism and Christianity after the turn
of the second century would become more and more
hostile as time went on, partly because
of other political forces that continued to develop. >> NARRATOR: In the year 132
of the common era, Jerusalem bristled with rumors
that the emperor Hadrian planned to rebuild the city
and the temple, dedicating it to Jupiter, the patron god of the city
of Rome. For many Jews, this was
an abomination worthy of divine vengeance. >> The political expectations
of apocalyptic did not simply die out
after the first revolt. Some people, both within Christian tradition
and within Jewish tradition, still expected
a cataclysmic event to bring a new kingdom on Earth
soon. >> (dramatized): Behold,
the days are coming, and it will happen when the time
of the world has ripened and the harvest of the seed of the evil ones
and the good ones has come. >> Within 60 years
after the first revolt, there would arise
a new rebellion. We typically call this the "second Jewish revolt
against Rome," or the Bar Kokhba revolt. And it's named
after a famous rebel leader who really becomes
the central figure of this new political period. He's called Bar Kokhba. >> Bar Kokhba was
a pseudo messiah, supported by large segments
of the population. He claimed to be a descendant
of King David. He claimed to be
the messiah himself, and was supported
by none other than one of the major figures
of the day, Rabbi Akiba. So this war was very different. It was a millennial revolt. It was a messianic revolt. And it touched chords that were
not touched in the first revolt. >> (dramatized): The Earth's
inhabitants and its rulers will hate one another
and provoke one another to war. >> Apparently, he did take
Jerusalem for some time. And coins are found now
that say, "The year one of the
redemption of Israel." They really think they have
established the new kingdom. >> You might think that there
would never be another war like the first war. But the second war with Rome,
the Bar Kokhba war, was probably even worse
than the first war. Even though Jerusalem
wasn't destroyed, the devastation might have even
been greater. >> Some people
in the second revolt tried to press other Jews,
including Christians, into the revolt, saying, "Come join us
to fight against the Romans. "You believe God is going to
restore the kingdom to Israel, "don't you? Join us." But the Christians,
by this time, are starting to say,
"No, he can't be the messiah. We already have one." >> NARRATOR: Not long ago,
in these inaccessible cliffs only a few miles
from the fortress of Masada, archaeologists hit
on a discovery that has finally revealed
the ultimate fate of Bar Kokhba and his followers. >> Apparently, the rebels
that followed Bar Kokhba hid in these caves during
the last stages of the war. But we know that the Romans
knew where they were and simply camped up
on top of the hill, waiting for them to starve
to death or come out and give up. >> NARRATOR: Rubble
from the Roman lookout post is still there,
blocking the only escape route. >> One of the caves is called
the "Cave of Horrors," and it contains
over 40 skeletons of men, women and children
who preferred to die rather than give in
to the Romans. Another cave is called
the "Cave of Letters," and in it were found
caches of pottery and coins and other things of daily life. Now, among the letters found
in the Cave of Letters is at least one
from Bar Kokhba himself. And it's a very interesting
letter, because it asks his
friends and followers to bring certain things
to the caves. So they're expecting to hold out
for quite some time. >> NARRATOR: 60 years
after Masada became a symbol of failed expectations, the Cave of Horrors now stood for the final failure
of Jewish resistance to Rome. With the death of Bar Kokhba, Jewish expectations
of a coming messiah receded, and Christians now looked
to the distant future for the return of their messiah. The Kingdom of God was becoming
less an apocalyptic vision than a spiritual abstraction. >> The self-consciously apocalyptic and messianic
identity of Bar Kokhba forces the issue
for the Christian tradition. And at that point, we really see
the full-fledged separation of Jewish tradition
and Christian tradition becoming clear. >> NARRATOR: It is a defining
moment in history. The two heirs
of an ancient faith, rabbinic Judaism
and upstart Christianity, would now follow separate paths. (crowd chanting and cheering
in background) >> NARRATOR: In the Roman
Coliseum, death became mass entertainment. Amphitheaters demonstrated
the power of the emperor. Convicted criminals
were sent here to be devoured by wild beasts. In time, those "criminals" would
include Christians. Ever since the time
of Caesar Augustus, all religions were tolerated
by Rome, provided that their worshippers
performed their civic duty and sacrificed to the cult
of the emperor. It was this that eventually
brought Christians into conflict
with Roman authority. But at the end
of the first century, Christianity was still
the religion of a few. The Roman empire
was overwhelmingly pagan, and it seemed impossible
to imagine that the teachings
of an obscure sect could challenge its influence. >> Religion in the ancient world is very much a part
of public life. They had no idea of a separation
of religion and state. >> Paganism is the rich, native,
religious stew of traditional society
in the Mediterranean. It's a spiritual universe that's
thickly populated with gods and spirits. When you look up into the stars
at night, you see the souls of heroes. >> NARRATOR: Paganism was very
tolerant of other religions. The Olympian gods were revered, but this did not prevent their
devotees worshipping other gods. >> You have low-tech religions,
like magic. People routinely go
to magicians. If you have a sinus infection, if you need somebody to fall
in love with you, if you are betting on a horse and you've lost
the past three races, you go to a professional. >> NARRATOR: At the same time, more and more people
were seeking solace in more spiritual and personal
forms of religion. A fresco in Pompeii
shows worshippers celebrating the solemn rites of the ancient Dionysian
mystery cult. And newer cults,
often from foreign parts, were taking hold
around the empire. >> (dramatized): Greatest
of the gods, first of names, thou rulest over the mid-air
and the immeasurable space. Thou art the lady of light
and flame. >> One would have found, in the major cities
of the Mediterranean basin, a cult of the Egyptian gods. Egyptian cults would have
included, probably, Isis as the ascendant deity. Isis was perceived
by her devotees as being remarkably attentive. Isis would respond to you
when you were in trouble. She would answer your prayers. She had that reputation. One of the most important
representations of Isis is what we call
the "Isis lactans." That's Isis suckling
her offspring at her breast. This is a kind of iconography that appears to have been
terribly determinative in the early iconography
of Mary and Jesus. >> NARRATOR: Worshippers of the
age-old Persian god Mithras gathered in secret chapels
throughout the empire. They would eat sacred meals
together and celebrate their god's
birthday on December 25. >> The Egyptian cult
and Mithraism were two of the great religious
movements of the time, and certainly would have posed some of the most difficult
competition for Christianity. >> Most people who study
the origins of Christianity are curious about how
this unlikely movement would have succeeded in such a powerful
and dramatic way. And it's not an easy question
to answer, why this movement succeeded
when others did not. If you think about the gods
of the ancient world and you think about what they
looked like, they looked like the emperor
and his court. But this religion is saying
that every person-- man, woman, child, slave,
barbarian, no matter who-- is made in the image of God, and is therefore of enormous
value in the eyes of God. Now, in a society that's
three-quarters slave, that's an extraordinary message. >> NARRATOR: But the message
of Christianity was by no means uniform. In Egypt, an astonishing
discovery made in 1945 shed light on the enormous
diversity of early Christian thought. >> Other than the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the most important
archaeological find for much of the early Christian
period is the manuscript discovery
at Nag Hammadi on the Nile River in Egypt. There, in 1945, was discovered
a cache of manuscripts in clay jars buried in the
hillside beside the river. >> The discovery at Nag Hammadi
began with an Arab villager, whose name was Mohammed Ali, going with his brothers
on an ordinary errand. They took their camels
and rode up to a cliff which is honeycombed
with thousands of caves. They were digging under
the cliffs for fertilizer, that is, for bird droppings,
which fertilized the crops. And Mohammed Ali said his,
he struck something when he was digging underground. And curious, he kept digging, and he was startled to find
a six-foot jar, sealed, and next to it was buried
a corpse. Mohammed Ali said he hesitated
to break the jar, because he thought there might
be a jinn in it. But hope overcame fear. He said he picked up his mattock
and smashed the jar, and saw particles of gold
fly out of it, much to his delight. But a moment later, he realized
it was only pieces of, fragments of papyrus. Inside the jar were 13 volumes
bound in tooled gazelle leather. >> NARRATOR: What Mohammed Ali
had discovered were books written
in the ancient Egyptian language known as Coptic. Unable to read them,
Ali took them home. >> Later, his mother said
that she took some of them and threw them into the fire
for kindling when she was baking bread. What he didn't know until... What we didn't know
until much later is that these contained some of the most precious texts
of the 20th century, that they have uncovered for us
a whole new way of seeing the early Christian
world. >> NARRATOR: What the books
showed was that early Christianity
was even more diverse than scholars had suspected, with many different ways
of interpreting Jesus. >> There were 52 texts
altogether, apparently; unless some of them were burned
that we don't know about. And they contain secret gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas,
the Gospel of Philip. They also contain conversations
between Jesus and his disciples that claim to go back to Jesus
and his disciples-- all kinds of literature
from the early Christian era, a whole discovery of text
rather like the New Testament, but also very different. >> Christianity, or one would
rather say Christianities, of the second and third
centuries were, again, a highly variegated
phenomenon. We really can't imagine
Christianity as a unified, coherent
religious movement. >> We probably ought to think
of it as a kind of regional diversity. That is, the Christianity
of Rome was different than Christianity
in North Africa in certain ways, and that was different
from what we find in Egypt, and that different
from what we find in Syria or back in Palestine. >> NARRATOR: Some of the oldest
Christian communities were in western Turkey, where Paul and his followers
had established many of the earliest
congregations. At the end of the first century, Christians here found themselves
in a confrontation with Roman power and authority. >> About the year 112,
an important event takes place that brings us on the stage
in a new way in the history
of earliest Christianity. The scene is in the Roman
province of Bithynia, in modern-day Turkey. At that time, there is
a relatively new governor sent to take over. His name is Pliny the Younger. >> Pliny was a friend
of the emperor Trajan, and was an extremely respected
Roman official. >> NARRATOR: One of Pliny's
duties was to maintain order. In this capacity,
he was presented with a legal and ethical problem which he described in a letter
to the emperor Trajan. >> (dramatized): Having never
been present at any trials of the Christians, I am unacquainted
with the methods or limits to be observed either
in examining or punishing them. >> So we have to imagine Pliny
seated in the form
of a Roman administrator, a Roman magistrate,
all decked out in his finery, enthroned in the tribunal with his guards and his bailiffs
and his courtiers around him. And before him stand
these Christians, and Pliny can't figure out who
they are or why they're there. Apparently, they've done
something that get their neighbors
mad at them. The neighbors have complained
that the temples are empty, and no one is buying certain
things for the gods, and they're Christians. And so, somehow or another, Pliny is forced to deal
with this as a criminal matter. >> Pliny genuinely
was perplexed, because he sees what appear
to be good, law-abiding citizens being hauled up on trumped-up
charges of being a Christian, and simply on that basis,
by convention, being subject
to capital punishment. So I think Pliny allows us
a rare glimpse into the moral
and legal conundrum that Christianity posed for scrupulous, morally
scrupulous Roman officials. >> (dramatized): The method
I have observed is this: I interrogated
whether they were Christians. If they confessed it, I repeated
the question twice again, adding the threat
of capital punishment. If they still persevered,
I ordered them to be executed. >> Pliny allows,
in his correspondence, how this really is one of the
most stubborn groups of people he's ever encountered. And that in itself seems
to warrant a rather, a rather strident attack
on the Christians. >> (dramatized): I judged it
so much the more necessary to extract the real truth,
with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves
who were styled deaconesses. But I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive
superstition. >> He says, "They don't really
do all that much. "They meet before daybreak. "They sing hymns antiphonally. And they worship Christ
as if he were a god." And then he says,
"They take an oath, "but not an oath
to do anything bad, "rather an oath
only to be good-- not to defraud people, not to
do anything evil," and so on. >> (dramatized): Those
who denied they were or had ever
been Christians, who repeated after me
an invocation to the gods and offered adoration
to your image, these I thought it proper
to discharge. >> And he says to the emperor, "Do you think I handled it
correctly?" The emperor then writes back
and says, "Sounds okay to me. "But don't go out looking
for these Christians. "And if you get some anonymous
charges against people, "don't take that too seriously. We don't want to set
any bad precedents here." >> NARRATOR: Before Pliny,
legal precedent still held that Christians were a sect
of Judaism. >> Because it was considered
a part of Judaism, Christianity was considered
to be protected by the legal status
of Jewish tradition within the Roman Empire. So when we see Pliny
taking note of Christians as a separate group, it really marks a departure, a change in the status
of Christianity, both in its relationship
to Judaism and in its relationship
to the Roman Empire. >> (dramatized): Christians are
warred upon by the Jews and are persecuted
by the Greeks, and those that hate them cannot
state the cause of their enmity. >> Pliny's program evolved into a very explicit policy
of execution that probably was the model throughout a good deal
of Asia Minor, what's now modern Turkey. And that policy was to ask
the question. If the answer is no,
"Fine, go sacrifice." If they couldn't sacrifice, then that was proof
that they were Christian and they could be executed. So Pliny thought, ultimately, that once the matter
was settled, that he was doing
the right thing, that he was saving the empire from the spread of a dangerous
and seditious movement. >> NARRATOR: It was precisely
their unwillingness to make public sacrifice
to the emperor and the gods that made Christians seem
anti-social and seditious. >> Religion was one of the most
important features of the maintenance of the state. One offered sacrifices
on certain days as a part of the celebration
of the founding of the state. One offered sacrifices on the
birthday of the emperor. Cities very often mounted
these enormous celebrations to celebrate the emperors, and all the populace
would have been expected to come and join in. >> NARRATOR: At these great
public ceremonials, Christians were becoming
all too often conspicuous by their absence. >> When the Christians really do
become much more prominent in the social arena
of Greek and Roman cities, the pagans start to take note
of their absence from important festival days and their unwillingness
to participate in certain aspects
of social life. >> Judaism had long ago come to a legal agreement with
the emperor that they would... Jews would not be forced
to participate in pagan rituals. And pagan rituals are part
of the normal fabric of life in a Roman city. Jews were exempted from this because Romans knew
the Jews were odd about this kind of thing. >> Now, along come this new
group, the Christians, and they're behaving
the same way, but they obviously aren't
ancient. They started under Pontius
Pilate, they say so themselves. So it's novel. But if it's novel,
from the Roman point of view, it cannot be a religion. Religion is, by definition,
ancient, from Roman perspective. So if it's new and novel, it's a superstition,
it's not a religion. And superstition is,
by definition, not a good thing. >> We have a good example of the
pagan perspective on Christians from a little graffiti found
in Rome from the Palatine Hill. An inscription scratched
very crudely into the wall says, "Alexamenos worships his god." In the picture,
we see Alexamenos bowing down before the man
on the cross, but the man on the cross
has the head of a donkey. >> Christians have made
themselves outlanders in their own town. And, therefore, they are used
as an explanatory device whenever there are
the usual natural insults of human existence-- plague, earthquake, flood. It's because Christians, as Gentiles who are not doing
their duty to heaven, are... Why should the gods do anything
for the city, then? >> NARRATOR: Though persecution was still mainly local
and sporadic, it was becoming a crime
to be a Christian. Christians who were charged
faced a terrible choice: to recant and make a sacrifice
to the emperor, or sacrifice their own lives
for the faith. (crowd cheering in background) >> "In the blood of the martyrs
lie the seeds of the church." >> One of the most amazing
documents historians of early Christianity
are privileged to have is the prison diary of a young
woman who was martyred, I think in the year 202 or 203,
in Carthage, as part of a civic celebration. Her name is Perpetua, and
she insisted on being killed. >> (dramatized): We were
lodged in the prison and I was terrified, as I had never been
in such a dark hole. >> Perpetua has brought herself to the attention
of the governor, and she is really insisting
on being put into the arena. There's an incredibly powerful
trial scene, where Perpetua's father
is pleading with her and finally, actually,
trying to beat her. And the governor has him subdued
by his soldiers. And the governor says,
"Please, won't you cooperate?" And Perpetua says,
"No, I'm a Christian." Now, there's no dragnet out
for Christians. Perpetua is visited by other
Christians in prison. If the governor were trying
to get all the Christians in Carthage, he just could have arrested whoever is going
to visit Perpetua, but he doesn't. >> She's pregnant during part
of this story, and only gives birth just before
she herself goes to her death. She has to give
her own child away at the moment that she is
about to give her life away. >> (dramatized): In my dream, I saw a ladder
of tremendous height, made of bronze, reaching
all the way to the heavens. At the foot of the ladder lay
a dragon of enormous size, and it would attack those
who would try to climb up. "He will not harm me," I said,
"in the name of Jesus Christ." >> The authentic diary ends before Perpetua is led
into the arena. What we have concluding
the diary is a description done
by somebody who is presenting a hero tale. >> (dramatized): The day
of their victory dawned, and they marched from the prison
to the amphitheater joyfully, as if they were going to heaven. >> She's led out into the
amphitheater before the crowds and about to be set upon
by beasts. She really goes with a great
deal of, of authority, and stature,
and serenity. (crowd cheering in background) (lions growling in background) >> She faces down the animals. And finally, after being
tormented by several animals, a young gladiator is sent
into the arena to dispatch her. And his... It's just
an incredibly moving scene. His hand is trembling so much,
he can't cut her, and she grabs his hand and guides his sword
to her own throat. (crowd cheering in background) >> The stories of the martyrs
that have come down to us are all hero stories, and they're all intended,
obviously, as ways of strengthening
the faith of those who remain. If we read only
those martyr stories, we would suppose
that all Christians were heroes, and that the church flourishes
because of that heroism. Obviously,
this is an idealization. If we actually tote up
the number of martyrs that we can identify, it's a really quite small number
over the three centuries during which Christianity
was in the position of being the outsiders. >> We don't have
tens of thousands of people being martyred. What we do have is
tens of thousands of people admiring the few
who are martyred. (crowd cheering in background) >> The story of the martyrdom
of Perpetua is a very important milestone in the development
of early Christianity because of what the story
tells us about the perception
of Christians at that time. We can see the contrast
rather sharply. At the time of Pliny, at the
beginning of the second century, Christians are
an unknown commodity. And so even when he executes
them, he really doesn't know
quite what to make of them. Within 100 years,
by the year 203, when Perpetua meets her death
as a martyr, Christianity has become
a recognizable commodity. (crowd cheering in background) The death of Perpetua is a story of a very significant change
in the status of Christianity. It had begun to be a part
of the Roman world. >> Now that Christianity has
emerged as a group, as a church, as something not Judaism, the question that Christians now
confronted is, "What is Christianity?" The second century is an age
of Christian self-definition in which the Christian Church
itself was trying to figure out
exactly what is the new message. What exactly is the new church? >> Certainly, there were some
religious organizations, such as the ecclesiae,
the church, the leadership, the bishop, the deacons,
the presbyters. There were institutions
developing in some Christian churches,
but only in some, and this was not universal,
by any means. >> We have, in effect,
different brands of Christianity living, often, side by side,
even in the same city. At one point, in Rome, Justin Martyr has his Christian
school in one part of the city, and the Gnostic teacher
Valentinus in another school in Rome, and another so-called heretic
by the name of Marcion is also in Rome,
just down the street somewhere-- all of these alongside
of the official papal tradition that developed as part
of St. Peter's See in Rome. >> NARRATOR: There were
still debates about how Christians
should relate to Judaism. One group following
the Jewish calendar felt that Easter should fall
on the same day as Passover. Others thought they should
follow the Roman calendar and celebrate during the solar
festival of the spring equinox, on a Sunday. And Marcion wanted to strip away
everything that smacked
of Jewish traditions. >> Marcion was a wealthy
ship owner. He came to Rome, and he gave
the Roman church a lot of money, and they welcomed him
with open arms. But he felt that
the original Christian gospel was no longer preserved, and he thought
that only the Apostle Paul had the true gospel. And he set out to find
this true gospel, and he took the gospel of Luke and purified it from whatever
he thought was Jewish and said, "This should be
the scripture for the church, and this should be the only
scripture for the church." And the Roman church became
very suspicious of his manipulations
with the Gospel of Luke. It is reported that they gave
the money back to him and said, "Thank you very much, but we
don't want you and your gospel." >> This is where we start to see a kind of proliferation
of gospels tradition all over the empire. And by the third
and early fourth century, there are more gospels
than you can actually count, and certainly more than you can
easily read within a Bible. >> The Gospel of Mary Magdalene,
for example, shows us a Christian community in which Mary Magdalene
is regarded as a disciple, as a leader, as one of
the major teachers in the group, and one who claims that women
should be able to teach. >> Another text called
the "Gospel of Truth" is not a narrative of the death and resurrection
of Jesus at all. It's a symbolic reflection
on certain themes that come from scripture or are associated with the life
and teachings of Jesus. >> We also hear of other kinds
of gospels that develop, stories of the birth
that tell you the... In lurid detail, really,
how true it really was or how marvelous and miraculous
it was; stories of traveling apostles
to all kinds of strange lands-- Thomas, who goes to India, Andrew, who goes out
to some strange world, and so on. These kinds of stories
proliferate through the second and third
century. >> NARRATOR: One of the
important discoveries at Nag Hammadi was a complete copy
of the Gospel of Thomas. Written in Syria in the second
century, this collection of sayings proved very influential...
and startling. >> The Gospel of Thomas is
nothing but sayings of Jesus. It simply goes along and says, Jesus said this,
Jesus said that. Well, some of these things
that Jesus said, according
to the Gospel of Thomas, are quite familiar. They're very similar to things
in the canonical gospels, but not identical. >> "Give to Caesar what belongs
to Caesar; "give to God what belongs
to God; and give to me what is mine." >> NARRATOR: These sayings
of Jesus are filled with familiar,
rustic images, like the parable
of the mustard seed. But others are strange
and unsettling. >> "Look to the living one
as long as you live, "for you might die. "And then try to see
the living one, and you will be unable to see." >> My favorite of these is
saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth
what is within you, "what you bring forth
will save you. "If you do not bring forth
what is within you, what you do not bring forth
will destroy you." >> Now, what is typical about
these sayings is that, in each instance,
these sayings want to say that, if you want to understand
what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself,
you have to know yourself. >> NARRATOR: With its emphasis
on self-knowledge and Jesus as the revealer
of secret wisdom, some scholars think
that the Gospel of Thomas became a source for a competing
stream of Christian tradition known as Gnosticism. >> Paul and Paulian Christianity would have placed
all of the emphasis on Jesus' death and resurrection and the saving power
of that death and resurrection. Gnostic Christianity,
on the other hand, would have placed
its principal emphasis, in fact, its prime emphasis, on the message, the wisdom, the
knowledge that Jesus transmits. >> NARRATOR: Most Gnostics
believed that Jesus was so divine that he had never entered
into human form and so could not
have been crucified. This brought Gnostics into
conflict with other Christians. >> It was very important
to insist on Jesus as really suffering and dying
on the cross, because Christians were
being called upon at that time to suffer and die as witnesses,
as martyrs to their faith. And if, with some Gnostics, you could denigrate
the physical suffering of Jesus, you might call into question
that obligation to stand and to bear witness
for the faith. >> Bishop Irenaeus, who wrote in the second century
in what is now France, was about 18 to 20 years old zwhen his little community
was absolutely decimated by a devastating persecution. They say that 50 to 70 people
in two small towns were tortured and executed. 50 to 70 people executed
in public is a devastating destruction
of that beleaguered community. And Irenaeus was trying to unify
those who were left. What frustrated him is that they didn't all believe
the same thing. They didn't all gather
under one kind of leadership. And he, like others,
was deeply aware of the dangers of fragmentation. >> NARRATOR: Irenaeus thundered against those he saw
as heretics, including
the so-called Gnostics. >> (dramatized):
Let those persons who blaspheme the creator, as do all the falsely
so-called Gnostics, be recognized as agents of Satan
by all who worship God. >> Bishop Irenaeus coined
the term we call "orthodox." Now, literally in Greek, "orthodox" means
"straight thinking." It's like "orthodontia" means
"straight teeth." I mean, "orthodox" means
"straight ideas." And those who didn't agree
with his ideas, he called "heterodox"-- that means simply thinking
otherwise-- or "heretics," which means people
who make choices about what to think. Irenaeus didn't want people
making choices, he wanted them thinking what the bishop told them
to think. >> NARRATOR: Irenaeus had
to contend not only with those who believed
in vastly different gospels, but also with
the followers of Marcion, who believed that Jesus
should be represented by just one gospel. He looked for a compromise. >> Irenaeus says that the number
of the gospels is properly four; these are the earliest,
these are the best, but four is the right number. After all, there's four corners
to the world; there's four winds;
there are four areas of heaven; and there are four beasts who reveal God's will
in the apocalypse. Four is the right number;
these are the four. >> The story implied is that
there is some smoke-filled room somewhere in the second century, and a bunch of these cigar-smoking
Christian big shots got together, and they decided who was going
in and who was going out. It was a wrap. They closed up, and then everything else was
on the cutting room floor, and the janitors took away
what didn't get in the canon. I think precisely the contrary is closer to a more responsible
historical reconstruction, and that is that there is
some kind of consensus among people
in the Jesus movement as to what constitutes
reliable tradition, reliable literature-- literature that they want
to read, that they want to hear over
and over again, and other kinds of literature
that they don't want to hear. >> NARRATOR: One criterion
for inclusion was whether the gospel told
the story of the suffering and death
of Jesus. This was crucial to the emerging
sense of orthodoxy because the centerpiece
of Christian ritual, the celebration
of the Eucharist, cannot live without that story. >> And it is out
of that movement that the four-gospel canon
arrives. And it comes,
interestingly enough, as a canon that preserves
diversity-- within limits,
but it preserves diversity. There is no claim that this
canon represents four gospels that are all saying
the same thing. It is, rather, an attempt
to bring together as many Christian communities
into one major church. >> NARRATOR: By the middle
of the third century, Christians were buried alongside
Jews and pagans in catacombs, underground tombs
beneath the outskirts of Rome. There is evidence here of the growing homogenization
of the Christian story. The artwork on the tombs shows
little sign of Gnostic imagery. They are largely scenes
from the canonical gospels which are now merging
into one single story. >> What's interesting is what
they choose, because what they choose
of Jesus is especially the healer. He appears beardless,
so he's a young... He's a new, young god,
as it were. He's not an old fuddy-duddy like
Asclepius, the god of healing. And what's extraordinary is, he would either have his hand
or even a wand on the person he's healing. Now, nothing that I know of
in the entire Greco-Roman world ever shows Asclepius with his
hand on somebody he's healing. Jesus is an Asclepius
who makes house calls. I think this is one of the great
things that helps this spread. Jesus is not shown
as a transcendental being, he's down there
in the mud of human history with his hand on people's heads. >> NARRATOR: The art
of the catacombs also illustrates
the Christians' attempts to integrate
into Greco-Roman society. >> As Christianity moved
out of the Jewish sphere into the more pagan sphere, then all sorts of pagan ideas and all sorts of pagan themes
and images and pictures start pouring
into Christianity. >> We have this figure
of the shepherd with the sheep draped
over his shoulders. We, now, may tend to think
of that as reflecting the gospel stories
of Jesus of the lost sheep or Jesus as the good shepherd
from the Gospel of John. In point of fact,
from Roman perspective, this is the virtue
of philanthropy, of love of humanity, and it's one of the most
important virtues of Roman civic and public life. >> NARRATOR: All around
the Mediterranean world, the ancient pagan gods lingered
in their age-old temples and immemorial shrines. But their power
was under threat. >> Roman society, Roman law, are both highly tolerant
of religious diversity, as long as you do the things which every Roman is expected
to do-- sort of those religious acts
which are your civic duty. Nobody cares what you believe
in your heart of hearts. Then appears Christianity,
which is exclusive, which is intolerant, which will not allow you to do
whatever everybody else does. And it's a profound shock to
those who get to know it well. It appears as a dangerous rival
to the present society as it begins to grow strong. >> Christian writers throughout the middle and later
second century developed the techniques of trying to argue
that Christianity was really a superior religion, because it was monotheistic,
over against polytheistic, and that it... Christians exemplified higher
virtue in their lives than did pagans. They pointed to examples of
Christians living in chastity, great virtue, self-sacrifice and
so on, throughout their lives. These Christian apologists also
made fun of pagan religion in a way that might not
have been too prudent. They laughed at the various
Greek myths that formed the basis for
some of Greco-Roman religion. They laughed at the stories
of the gods-- their adulteries,
their jealousies, their goings-on with each other,
etc.-- and could really make mincemeat
out of these traditions. >> NARRATOR: The ideas that had
started with the carpenter's son were being reinterpreted. In the uncompromising language
of apocalypse, Jesus had preached the message
of the coming Kingdom of God. Now, Jesus himself became
the message... and the source of eternal life. >> The message
that was preached here promised spiritual gifts
to people that went beyond
the everyday life experience and promised also immortality, promised a future life
which would be liberation from sickness and from disease,
and from poverty, and individual isolation,
and whatever. There is a future
for the individual, but one should not
see the success of Christianity simply on the level
of a great religious message. >> NARRATOR: To the subjects
of the Roman Empire, Christianity offered
the individual dignity in this life
and hope in the afterlife. But it was also winning converts by offering a helping hand
to the needy. >> For example, like other elements of the
Jewish community, the followers of Jesus tended
to feed the destitute, take care of people
who were widowed so that they wouldn't become
prostitutes, and orphans, and so forth. That was a primary obligation
of Jewish piety, and Jesus' followers certainly
understood that. >> Of course, there was
no welfare system, so to speak, in the ancient world. Wealthy Romans had given money
for programs such as the feeding of children,
and so on. But even such programs
that we know of didn't compare in size and scope
to what the churches were doing. >> So Christianity really
established a realm of mutual social support for the members
that joined the church. And I think that this has... was probably, in the long run,
an enormously important factor for the success
of the Christian mission. >> NARRATOR: By the year 250,
Christianity had grown so much that a stronger
church organization was needed to administer
the welfare system. It was becoming a state
within a state. Meanwhile, Rome's rulers felt their control of the empire
slipping away, and Christian undermining
of traditional belief was no longer to be tolerated. >> The middle
of the third century is often identified as a crisis
in the Roman Empire. This is a time when the emperor
is feeling under great pressure. There is a sense that we are
being besieged on the borders, that the barbarians may be
coming in at any moment-- the Persians are dangerous,
the Germans are dangerous, and so on. And so there's a great sense that anything that upsets
this ancient contract between the Romans and the gods
has got to be dangerous to us. After a long period in which the persecutions
of Christianity were really spasmodic, local,
involved very few people, suddenly, in the middle of the
third century, the year 250, the emperor Decius decides that Christians are a real enemy
of the Roman order, that they must be dealt with. They must be dealt with
empire-wide, with all the police power that the emperor
can bring to bear upon them. >> Christians could be arrested simply because they bore the
name<i> Christianus,</i> "Christian." That was enough,
under Roman convention, to convict one
of a capital crime, and the crime was
being a Christian. So put yourself in the... in the
position of society, you know, if you were, say, a merchant and wanted to limit
your competition, all you had to do was point fingers
at your competitors and say, "Well, you know,
I think they're Christians." Well, by Roman convention, those people then could be
hauled in on capital charges. >> What you have to do is get
a ticket, a<i> libellus.</i> It's a chit saying
that you have sacrificed for the well-being
of the empire. And you go
and you do your sacrifice, and there's a whole
various response on the part of different
Christian communities. You can have your servant go
and do it for you. He might also be a Christian, but, you know,
that's his problem. Pay him, he'll get two chits, and then you're covered
for purposes. Or you can pay for the ticket but not actually do
the sacrifice if you can bribe
a friend of yours who is a magistrate. Or you can just go ahead
and get... you know, sacrifice, knowing that these gods
are nothing. After all, that's right
in Paul's letters, that these gods are nothing. >> (dramatized): As to the
eating of food offered to idols, we know that no idol
in the world really exists and that there is no God
but one. >> NARRATOR: Decius
was determined to be completely ruthless in persecuting those who refused
to make public sacrifice. For the first time,
ordinary Christians were methodically rounded up. >> And the odd thing is,
it fails. The net effect of this is that a new cult of the martyrs
appears in Christianity, which strengthens the church. (crowd cheering in background) >> NARRATOR: But ironically, very few Christians were willing
to be martyred. >> Many Christians were not made
of the kind of moral fiber of the people who went
to their deaths as martyrs-- that they had been willing
to recant the faith, to offer a pinch of incense
to the emperor. >> Christians were sort of
taking to the hills. We know this from the so-called
Lapsus controversy. What do you do
with those Christians who took to the hills
and saved their souls as opposed to standing their
ground and dying as martyrs? >> All this made a grave problem
for the church when the persecutions were over, because many of these people
then wanted to come back into the church. There were many controversies
about this. >> NARRATOR: 50 years later, the emperor Diocletian
made one last attempt to wipe out the Christians. He targeted those
who held public office, but the persecution failed partly because
Christian institutions were now so entrenched
in Roman society. >> Christians wanted
to have their members knowledgeable and capable
of reading the Bible. So we find that a large number of people
in imperial administration are Christians, because they could read
and write, which constituted a big problem with the persecution
of the Christians, because they were thrown
out of their office first when the persecution
began, and suddenly,
the, the government didn't work anymore. >> By that time,
the Christians are so numerous that they can't possibly
be eradicated, they've already grown that much. So in a sense, the persecution
really doesn't catch up until it's already too late. >> NARRATOR: By now, the Jesus
movement had spread its message to every corner
of the Roman Empire. >> The last decades
of the third century, you get a great insurge
of people into Christianity. There are some scholars
who think that, in Egypt, for example,
by the 320s, there would actually be
a majority of Christians-- maybe a rather slight majority, but nonetheless
a sizable number of Christians. >> NARRATOR: The turning point in the history
of the Christian movement occurred in the first decades
of the fourth century. It was a transformation filled
with ironies. It was brought about by a Roman general
who worshipped not Jesus, but Apollo,
the god of the sun. >> One of the most surprising
Christian heroes in the entire tradition,
I think, is Constantine. He is, first of all,
a successful general. He is, also, the son
of a successful general and at the head of the army
of the west, and he's fighting
another successful general, struggling for who is going
to be at the top of the heap
of this, the very higher echelons
of Roman government. What happens is that Constantine
has a vision. >> In the dream, a cross appears
on the sun. The sun was very important
to Constantine, anyway. He had a thing about Helios and very often represented
himself with the sun god. But the intrusion of the cross
was something new, and below this vision
was an inscription, were the words,
"By this, conquer," en touto nike. And he interpreted this dream to mean that, by this symbol
of the cross, he could defeat his archenemy at the battle
of the Milvian Bridge and become sole emperor. And so he had his--
so the story goes-- he had his soldiers paint
the cross on their shields. Constantine won the battle
of the Milvian Bridge, became the sole emperor
of the Roman Empire, and then, in a dramatic shift
of geopolitics, relocates the center
of Roman rule from the eternal city, Rome,
to a new city, Constantinople. >> NARRATOR: To reunite
a divided empire, Constantine moved the capital
from Rome to a more strategic location,
the ancient city of Byzantium, and renamed it Constantinople. >> An important part of what was
going on here was jockeying
at the imperial administration. Clearly, by the end
of the third century, Christianity was a major force
to be reckoned with throughout the empire, and something that had
to either be suppressed or had to be integrated. Galerius, Constantine's rival, who was one of the major
instigators of the persecution, favored the option
of suppression. Constantine and his associates favored the option
of integration. >> Constantine was
a consummate pragmatist and a consummate politician. And I think he gauged well the upsurge of interest
and support Christianity was, was receiving, and so played up to that
very nicely and exploited it
in his own rule. >> When Constantine
came into power and started to favor
Christianity, he did do many things
that plainly showed a support for Christianity. He gave money for the building
of churches, money for the copying
of scriptures, he exempted clergy members from having to perform
civic duties on town councils, that kind of thing. >> The bishops are able to take
advantage of Constantine's mood and his curious intellectual
interest in things like Christology and the Trinity
and church organization. They're able to have Bibles
copied at public expense. They're finally able to have
public Christian architecture and big basilicas. So there's a comfortable
symbiotic relationship between the empire
and the church. >> All that certainly stands
in favor of his true Christian
commitment. On the other hand, he did retain
the coinage with the sun god on it. He did say the day of the sun
would be made a day of rest, but it's very unclear
whether the day of the sun meant the day dedicated
to the sun god or the day dedicated to Jesus
and his resurrection. >> Whatever one finally decides about the nature
of his conversion-- whether it's a real,
sincere conversion or not-- it has profound impact
upon the future of Christianity, upon the future
of Western civilization. Constantine's patronage doesn't
just mean that a lot of new churches
get built, though it means that. It doesn't just mean that the salaries of bishops
go up astronomically, though it means that. It doesn't just mean that Christians have freedom now
to worship as they choose. It means that it has become part
of the imperial establishment, and obviously, that is going
to mean profound changes for the society
and for Christianity. >> NARRATOR: Constantine showed
his support by massive building programs, especially in Jerusalem. Ironically, the city that was
destroyed by one Roman emperor was being rebuilt by another. But the new holy places in this
traditional center of Judaism were now all Christian. To strengthen his new church, Constantine called
for more unity in organization and teaching. But such unity came at a cost. >> One of the first things
Constantine does as emperor is start persecuting
other Christians. The Gnostic Christians
are targeted, Marcionite Christians,
and other dualist Christians-- Christians who don't have
the Old Testament as part of their canon-- are targeted. The list of enemies
goes on and on. There's a kind of, in a sense,
internal purge of the church as one emperor ruling one empire tries to have
this single church. >> To appreciate the remarkable,
dramatic evolution that had occurred
in so short a period, one might counterpose
the image of Pliny in his courtroom
under the emperor Trajan, sending Christians
off to their execution simply for being called
Christians, to the majesty of Constantine presiding over the great
gathering of bishops that he had called
to resolve particular questions. The imperium, on the one hand, being used clearly to extinguish
a religious movement; the imperium, on the other hand,
being used clearly to undergird and support
a religious movement, the same religious movement,
in so short a period of time. >> NARRATOR: The cross, the hated symbol of death
and defeat, now emerged as the symbol
of triumph. And in the eyes of some, the apocalyptic prophecy
of Revelation had at last been fulfilled. >> (dramatized): The kingdom
of the world has become the kingdom
of our Lord and of his Christ. >> NARRATOR: The Kingdom of God
and the Roman Empire had now become one and the same. Jesus of Nazareth had become
Jesus Christ, and his church had become
a power on Earth. A new chapter in history was
about to begin. >> Frontline's "From Jesus to
Christ, the First Christians" is available on DVD. To order, visit shopPBS.org. Or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
Link to part 1, which examines how Judaism and the Roman empire shaped Jesus’ life and traces the beginnings of the “Jesus Movement” in those early years before it was called Christianity.
edit: Note that the original documentary was broadcast in 1998 but was published here again by the channel in 2020.
"documentary"