Andrew, your reliance on mindless repetition and condemnation of other
people, shows that it is you who is despairing, not the generally competent
and rational people you rant against.

The jesus myth that we were all raised with, is just a compilation of
earlier myths that people are no longer aware of, and they think is
describing some unique actual event (it's not).

If you're interested in how Christianity ACTUALLY became the main religion
of Rome and then the western world, read this book :

Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. by Ramsay MacMullen, Yale Unioversity
Press

This book covers a story that is unknown to most of us: how Christianity
replaced paganism as the religion of the Roman Empire. It started with
Emperor Constantine converting to Christianity and his process of imposing
Christianity on the Roman Empire, in the early 300's AD. The story strikes
familiar chords with the imposition of communism and nazism in the Soviet
Union and Germany, repsectively.
some reviews
http://www.speroforum.com/book/item.asp?ItemId=0300080778&SI=Books

Summary: The History Christianity Never Told
This is a very important book, one that every student of religious history
should read. Ramsay MacMullen has undertaken the task of speaking on behalf
of a people who were not allowed to speak for themselves: the pagans of the
Roman Empire. He points out that the focus of history has been on
Christianity; after all, Christians wrote the histories of that era. But he
notes as well that the estimates on Christian numbers by Tertullian and
Eusebius are "manifestly absurd", an expression "of the authors' zeal and
their sense of the distance traveled by their church since the first
century." What this amounts to, in MacMullen's view, is that "the
Christians, not only in their triumphant exaggerations but in their sheer
bulk, today, seriously misrepresent the true proportions of religious
history."

Orthodox Christianity was not interested in voices raised in protest. What
were seen as heretical writings were burned, as were non-Christian texts and
"copyists were discouraged from replacing them by the threat of having their
hands cut off." And Christianity's own historians were not interested in
giving a balanced accounting of events. MacMullen comments that Eusebius
"disclaimed the telling of the whole truth. Rather, he proposed to limit his
account to 'what may be of profit.'"

This book attempts to set the record straight. MacMullen notes that
previously scholars had thought that paganism had been defeated by the end
of the fourth century and all converted to the new faith. This is not true,
he tells us. "Stain Augustine did not live in a Christian world" he says and
in the book's five chapters proceeds to demonstrate the truth of this
assertion.

We see that paganism of the late Roman Empire was alive and well. "It used
to be thought that, at the end, the eradication of paganism really required
no effort" and that paganism had become a hollow husk. "But historians seem
now to have abandoned this interpretation...The real vitality of paganism is
instead recognized; and to explain its eventual fate what must also be
recognized is an opposing force, an urgent one, determined on its
extinction." And we see the extreme measures to which Christianity was
willing to resort to stamp out all opposition: fines, confiscation, exile,
improsionment, flogging, torture, beheading, and crucifixtion. "What more
could be imagined? Nothing. The extremes of conceivable pressure were
brought to bear." Nor was this violence restricted to pagans. Speaking of
the fourth century, MacMullen says "more Christians died for their faith at
the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the
persecutions."

Like Pagans and Christians before it, Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth
to Eighth Centuries must be read for the truth of the past to be understood.
The facts have for long been misrepresented and misunderstood, and MacMullen
brushes these obstructions away with a masterful hand to reveal the vibrancy
of a pagan world scholarship has long consigned to oblivion. I cannot
recommend it highly enough.

This review was helpful to 2 out of 3 people | Review date: 2006-06-28

Summary: Paganism: Tolerance and Tradition
As far as I know Ramsay MacMullen could not in any way be accurately
described as a Pagan. In fact, he does say some things that indicate that he
almost certainly is not one. Nevertheless, this is one history book that
every well-educated Pagan should read. It's not a pretty story - in fact its
an excrutiatingly painful story.

MacMullen deals with most of the important myths about the rise of
Christianity and the downfall of Paganism:
(1) that Pagans voluntarily chose to convert to Christianity without
coercion
(2) that women, slaves and the rural populations were less loyal to Paganism
than the urban male elites
(3) that Paganism "went quietly"
(4) that Paganism simply disappeared without a trace

All of these myths are laid to rest by MacMullen. May they rest in peace.

Despite (apparently) not being a Pagan himself, MacMullen nevertheless
displays an uncanny sympathy for and understanding of Classical Paganism. In
particular he adeptly captures the spirit of Paganism with the two words
"tradition" and "tolerance". Paganism was a Religion and a world-view in
which tradition was honored and revered - it was a way for human beings to
feel a strong connection to the past and to each other. And it was also a
Religion in which tolerance was taken for granted. This is the real
take-home lesson of this book.

MacMullen calmly tells the tale of how Christianity grappled with a simple
fact: nobody knew exactly how to go about imposing one religion on everyone.
It had never been done before and the very idea was not so much
objectionable as it was simply incomprehensible. MacMullen tells the
horrifying story of how the Christians slowly perfected the repressive
machinery necessary to enforce spiritual and psychological conformity. At
first edicts against Paganism could be safely ignored - but as the decades
and centuries went on, through a combination of savage mob-violence and
state terrorism, Paganism was driven underground.

MacMullen makes it clear that Paganism fought to survive. Without probably
intending to, he leaves the door wide open for future investigations of the
ways in which Paganism continued to survive as a clandestine Religion.
This review was helpful to 4 out of 6 people | Review date: 2006-02-23

Summary: Awsome Book, Crappy Footnotes
Well, a lot has been said about this book. Let me just say this: this book
is most likely the best out there on the subject. MacMullen's arguments and
knowledge of his sources is unquestionable.

This book serves to document the first of many crimes committed by the
Christian religion: the bloody persecution of paganism. Temples were
destroyed, books burned, and yes, people killed. People would not have to
wait for the crusades and the Inquisitions to get a religiously-inspired
blood bath. And the terrible thing is, though most at least know of the
Inquisitions, the crusades, the Witch trials, etc. nobody remembers the
persecution of the pagans, so they basically got away with it. This book
serves, in particular, to outline the despicable deeds of Justinian; I
cannot wait to get the Secret History. Theodosius, Justinian, et al go down
in history with Hitler, Stalin, Moa Zedong, and Pol Pot as the greatest mass
murderers in history. Cannot recommend enough. Except for the footnotes;
prepare for days of fun as you cite them in discussions and then have
trouble actually finding out what in the heck MacMullen is referring to. I
don't get it, the notes in Christianizing the Roman Empire were certainly
not perfect, but they at least did not require a companion volume to read.
Oh, and I liked his writing, if that counts for anything.

Summary: TGIF?
McMullen has an interesting style that some may find irritating but I rather
enjoyed. At times he uses orotund and convoluted sentences reminiscent of
Gibbon or Samuel Johnson. At other times he lapses into the first person and
uses contractions and old-fashioned slang such as "argy-bargy." It is rather
like listening to conversation over the port in the Senior Common room of
some ancient college.
I was irritated by the references. These occupy a large part of the book and
are grouped as end-notes (Gibbon had footnotes). They often give only a
single name of author without date or place of publication. If you track
down the author in the bibliography (which is separate) you often still
don't get anywhere, even if you remember where in the text you started off.
Sometimes the references contain references.
The question of which festivals and folk customs represent survivals of
pre-Christian religions is more complex than he acknowledges. It's better
dealt with by Ronald Hutton in "Pagan religions of the Ancient British
Isles."
I've always been intrigued by the names of the days of the week in
Indo-European languages. In French you have Vendredi for Friday. In Welsh we
have Dydd Gwener. Who was Gwener?