Did the 3rd-4th century leaders of Christendom "christianized pagans" OR?

Question

did they "paganized Christianity"? I would appreciate getting reputable sources.

Answer 1

The person before is on the mark with what they said in that to answer this question truthfully and fully you could do a PhD dissertation on it. In fact, some people have. I would refer you to a library or some internet resources but you have to judge the reliability of the internet sources yourself. I didn't have them bookmarked.

Short answer based on my information is that it is a combination of both. Paganism did have a substantial influence. At the very least most of the Christian holidays we have today are more pagan in nature than Christian.

Answer 2

Both the world book encyclopedia and Brittanica have articles about how most christian holidays have pagan roots. A person even posted a question yesterday, about what pagans do during the holidays, and most said they celebrate it with their christian family, although many do yule a few days before christmas.

As far as the paganism of Christianity, it's remarkable that many people over the earth have converted to it, but still practice a native religion too such as their local saints or ancestor worship. A book by Alexander Hyslop from teh early 1900's called The 2 Babylons shows the many pagan influences that were indoctrinated into the church of the 4th century such as the prominence of the cross, trinity, origens of a pope, worship of the mother of God, and etc.... It's very hard to read but he uses illustrations too, to show the similarities between the ancient religions of Babylon, Egypt, Greece , and so forth and modern day Christendom. Even the Catholic church admits many of its doctrines resulted from the early church fathers studying the Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Answer 3

You will see alot of paganism in Christianity but they will tell you it's not true. The best way to find out is get some books on paganism. We already know that pagans were here 200 years before Christians. Read some books and you'll see the similarities.

Answer 4

They basically paganized Christianity. The Emperor Constatine wanted a state religion to easily control the masses and he picked Christianity then ordered the bishops of all the different Christian churches to get together, iron out their differences and create a Universal or "Catholic" Church acceptable to all Roman citizens. This is also when he ordered a standard Bible to be assembled and editied and also ordered that any older manuscripts, Gosples, Letters and what have you destroyed so they wouldn't confuse the people. The reformation could only base itself on the documents created in the 4th century, they can't go any further back than that, there are no original manuscripts only copies of copies of copies of the 4th century scriptures that were compiled by order of the Roman emperor.

Answer 5

If you wand an understanding of how paganism entered the church, I recommend reading "The Great Controversy" written by Ellen White. This is a history of God's church from the fall of Jerusalem until the second coming of Jesus Christ. It includes the great apostasy, or falling away as Paul puts it in 2 Thessalonians 2, where paganism entered the church. The book is available online. Just type in the title and the chapter index will come up.

Answer 6

Christianity was definitely paganized. There is an old book called "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hislop that will give you much of the pagan origins of xtianity. It was written over a hundred years ago so its a bit of a boring read but there is a lot of priceless information in it.

Answer 7

They placed legitimately holy Christian dates - the birth of Jesus, his death and resurrection, etc. - around pagan holidays and tied a lot of the pagan colors and symbols in with those holidays so it would be easier to convince pagans that Christianity was a GOOD thing, which made them easier to convert. I think it's a little of both, to be honest with you.

http://paganwiccan.about.com/library/weekly/aa032503holidays.htm

Answer 8

yes. If you want very detailed information on that there is a book called "The Two Babylons" that has highly documented exactly what happened. I don't know any more about the book than the name, but if you could track it down it would be worth it. If you are interested email me, and I will see if I can find my copy, one of my kids may have it, and send you added information.

Answer 9

I can't answer that authoritatively, but I believe a little of both probably occurred. On a second note I sure hope Grateful Fred
doesn't represent Christians