2007-06-02 04:56:02 · 17 answers · asked by florin n 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
As with any new religion. It wouldn't have been welcomed. People have hard time to change. search throughout history, and you will find that people reaction to a new religion is as similar or close to what happened with the Romans.
for example when Muhammad started preached Islam he was not welcomed with open arms, he had to struggle to get it started. In the first five years of his preaching there were no more than 500 people who believed in his teaching, and now look how many are Muslims.
Simply put, people don't like change, and more so when it comes to religion.
2007-06-02 05:07:12 · answer #1 · answered by sinafaith 3 · 6⤊ 1⤋
If you mean the period when the roman catholic church ruled much of europe, they were concerned with the newly founded protestantism taking power away from the catholics. They were also very concerned that all of the reformers, Luther, Wesley, Knox, Calvin and others, had identified, through a careful study of history and the books of Daniel and Revelation, that the papacy was an anti-christ. The roman catholic concern manifested itself in two ways. First, the catholics persecuted the protestants and killed most of the leaders of that movement, plus hundreds of thousands of other protestants. Secondly, the pope commissioned two jesuits, Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine, to come up with something that would draw attention away from the pope's role as anti-christ and would encourage those catholics who had fled "the church" to protestantism to return to the roman church. Ribera and Bellarmine fabricated the idea of an evil antichrist who would appear near the end of time, immediately after Jesus "raptured" the church. That idea really gained momentum in the 1970s, with Hal Lindsay's book "The Late Great Planet Earth" and the "Left Behind" series of stories by LeHayne and Jenkins. Neither idea has any basis in scripture, but is widely believed by the majority of protestants today. A careful study of scripture reveals them to be false. Jesus will only return to earth in his "second coming", which will not be a quiet and secret returning at all. Everyone on earth will know exactly when it happens, although it will be a surprise.
2007-06-02 05:12:06 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Rome had the Jewish religion under control they appointed the high priest he was not of the house of levi and they had a flow of money out of the temple into the Government, this is why Jesus over turned the tables of the money changers and drove them out of the temple, the priests made the people feel guilty before God so they would buy more sacrifices and the moneychangers gave the priest kickbacks and Rome got their share of the profits from the high priest. Rome could not control Christianity.
2007-06-02 05:28:15 · answer #3 · answered by exzucuh 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Romans worshiped Caesar. Christians did not. Romans were afraid Christians would rebel and overthrow the Roman government.
2007-06-02 04:59:24 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
They weren't as long as there was a separation of church and state. The Romans became a threat to Christians when they tried to impose Christianity on the masses.
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2007-06-02 05:09:43 · answer #5 · answered by Hatikvah 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Romans knew that if the Christians ever came to power, they would destroy Rome through mismanagement. And you know what? They were right?
(Of course this Roman concern about Christianity is really just a bunch of historical revisionism, create to make Christians appear "persecuted." The Romans were quite tolerant of other religions, including Judaism, and the early Jerusalem Christians were Jews, not "Christians" nor even a new sect of Judaism. They were Jews who simply believed that the prophecies of the Messiah had come true. The Hellenized "Christianity" that developed simultaneously in Rome would not have been considered a threat either.)
2007-06-02 05:05:35 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 5⤋
It wasn't a religious issue, but a political one with Rome.
The Jews had been granted a special dispensation that allowed them to be subjects in good standing without practicing emperor-worship, (they could thank Herod Antipas for that, btw). But Christians were not so tolerated. Nor were they granted said dispensation. And since they flatly refused to offer even the least token of emperor-worship, well....that's obviously a threat to the Empire. And you get rid of threats. So they tried.
2007-06-02 05:02:11 · answer #7 · answered by Granny Annie 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
They saw Christians as a threat in that Christian's were very intolerant of other religions. And they felt that this was a threat to the empire.
The Romans were actually quite tolerant of different beliefs. The easiest example of that to see would be the treatment of the Jews in the Bible. They were far from oppressed.
2007-06-02 05:04:35 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
They had their own religion and gods to protect. It was what was familiar to them and what their government and society was based on. If Christianity spread to Rome and converted most Romans, the base of power would become shaky.
2007-06-02 05:02:23 · answer #9 · answered by Trillian 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it was based on thier own existing religions of the day and would further divide the Jews whom they were having issues of control with all those pesky messiahs (at least 450) who, including Jesus of Nazareth, all failed and were annhililated
religion's main focus is to control the masses, point blank
easier to control minds than bodies by brute strength and make them use moral codes to control thier support, loyalty and finances
2007-06-02 05:00:35 · answer #10 · answered by voice_of_reason 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋