Christian Destruction of Paganism

There is a false historical narrative that has been popularized by certain "Christian" cults which bear little resemblance to what actually happened in history. According to these folks, traditional Christianity was infiltrated by paganism and bears little resemblance to the Christianity taught by Jesus, Peter, Paul, James, and John. Now, the notion that traditional Christianity has been swallowed whole by paganism was introduced during the Protestant Reformation (but that's a subject for another post).

In modern times, the most vocal proponents of this idea have been the Jehovah's Witnesses. In an article titled "The Roots of Modern Christmas" (The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom Magazine, 1997), we read: Actually, the only celebration that Christians are commanded to observe is the Lord’s Evening Meal. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26) Because of the idolatrous practices associated with Roman festivals, early Christians did not share in them. For this reason third-century pagans reproached Christians, saying: “You do not visit exhibitions; you have no concern in public displays; you reject the public banquets, and abhor the sacred contests.” Pagans, on the other hand, bragged: “We worship the gods with cheerfulness, with feasts, songs and games.” By the middle of the fourth century, the grumbling subsided. How so? As more and more counterfeit Christians crept into the fold, apostate ideas multiplied. This led to compromises with the Roman world. Commenting on this, the book The Paganism in Our Christianity states: “It was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance.” Yes, the great apostasy was taking its toll. The willingness of the so-called Christians to adopt pagan celebrations now brought a measure of acceptance within the community. Before long, Christians came to have as many annual festivals as the pagans themselves. Not surprisingly, Christmas was foremost among them.

Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God also taught that traditional Christianity had been corrupted by paganism. In one of their publications, we read: Visible Christianity was well on the way to becoming just another version of a modern, updated Oriental mystery religion. Elaborate ceremonies were instituted, an intellectual priestly caste began to assert itself, and esoteric doctrines were kept back from the multitudes. Many of the major tenets of competing pagan religions readily found a safe haven within the walls of a changing Christianity. Pagan divinities were transformed into Christian saints, martyrs and angels. The cult of the Oriental mother goddess was revitalized in the veneration of the Virgin Mary. And pagan temples were often transformed into "Christian" houses of worship. - From the booklet "The White Horse: False Religion" by George Ritter, Pasadena: Ambassador College Press, 1976.

Wrong! This post will demonstrate that almost the exact opposite actually happened - that Christians eschewed heathen religions and actively sought to convert their adherents and erase their influence from the face of the earth!

At the conclusion of the post preceding this one, I mentioned the fact that Christians quite deliberately sought to erase all traces of paganism from the places where they prevailed. In his book The Triumph of Christianity (by Bart Ehrman, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), we read: On one level, it is impossible to say that Christianity caused the disappearance of so much that was lost. What we can say is that much that was alien to Christianity did indeed disappear. A great deal of pagan culture was eventually destroyed or, at least, never renewed. We have seen the beginnings of the destruction in the fourth century, with temples, shrines, and cult statues taken down and mutilated. Some, of course, remain, adorning many of the great museums of the world or left, in some instances, intact at archaeological sites on their places of origin. But most went away forever, destroyed by fervent bishops or marauding monks. Other artifacts that were not made of marble and stone disappeared out of neglect. All sorts of literature, gone forever, thousands of books known and suspected to have once existed: plays, novels, poems, histories, philosophical works, scientific treatises, essays, name your genre. It is not that these were necessarily burned by zealous Christians opposed to the classics, although that sometimes did happen. Instead, they simply were never recopied for posterity. And for a simple reason: copyists throughout the Middle Ages were almost invariably Christian monks working in monasteries. They were far more interested in producing copies of the letters of Paul that the plays of Plautus.

Moreover, Ehrman's view is supported by the ACTUAL history of Christianity. As part of the University of Chicago's series on this history, in the article The End of Paganism, we read: When Constantius II (the second son of Constantine I) visited Rome in AD 357, the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate House. Although returned by his successor Julian, it again was taken away by Gratian in AD 382, this time at the instigation of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who also persuaded the emperor to withdraw State subsidies, and prohibit the legacies and revenues that maintained many of the pagan cults, including endowment of the Vestal Virgins and the college of pontiffs. The title of pontifex maximus, which had signified authority over State religion since the time of Julius Caesar, was renounced as well. The article continued:  The Altar was not restored; indeed, measures against pagans became more repressive. Ambrose also exerted extraordinary dominance over Theodosius I (AD 379-395), to whom he threatened excommunication for having ordered the massacre of thousands in the circus at Thessalonica. The chastened emperor presented himself, bareheaded and in sackcloth at the cathedral in Milan. The next year, in AD 391, he issued the first in a series of edicts that prohibited all pagan cult worship and effectively made Christianity the official religion in the empire. They are preserved in the Codex Theodosianus, a codification of legislative enactments (constitutiones) from the time of Constantine, issued by Theodosius II in AD 438.

Likewise, in yet another article in this series (The Temple of Serapis in Alexandria), we read: The destruction of the Temple of Serapis (the Serapeum) at Alexandria is related in the ecclesiastical histories of the church fathers. Encouraged by the imperial edict addressed to the prefect of Rome prohibiting pagan worship (Codex Theodosius, XVI.10.10), Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, took the cult objects that had been found during the conversion of a pagan temple and contemptuously paraded them in the street, holding them up to ridicule. A riot was provoked and Christians killed. Just four months after promulgating his first edict in February AD 391, Theodosius I was obliged to reiterate the prohibition against pagan worship (CTh. XVI.10.11), this time in a rescript addressed to the prefect and military governor in Egypt. Indeed, most historians are quite clear that these were NOT isolated instances. In his article "The End of the Temples: An Archaeological Problem," Bryan Ward-Perkins observed: The Christian challenge to paganism was very explicitly a challenge to these imposing pagan buildings and sacred images, rather than a persecution of individuals, and the triumph of Christianity was marked by the destruction or removal of cult objects, above all statues, and by the destruction or, at least, closure of the temples. 

In still another article in the University of Chicago series titled The Destruction of Pagan Temples, we read: In AD 385, Theodosius I directed Cynegius, his praetorian prefect in the East, to enforce the prohibition of sacrifice for the purpose of divination (CTh. XVI.10.9). Exceeding his mandate, Cynegius began to suppress the temples, themselves, including the Temple of Zeus at Apamea in Syria. Its destruction by the bishop there is described Theodoret in his Ecclesiastical History. An attempt was made, but the stone was so hard and the columns so massive, each measuring some twenty-five feet in circumference and held together with iron and lead clamps, that the prefect despaired of pulling them down. Praying for divine assistance, the bishop was visited the next morning by a simple laborer, who suggested that the foundation of three of the columns be undermined and replaced by timber beams, to which he then set fire. "When their support had vanished the columns themselves fell down, and dragged the other twelve with them. The side of the temple which was connected with the columns was dragged down by the violence of their fall, and carried away with them. The crash, which was tremendous, was heard throughout the town" (V.21). The bishop destroyed other pagan shrines in his diocese and Cynegius proceeded to Egypt. A little later, in the same article, we read: In AD 401, the last remnants of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, built to house the great cult image of Artemis and regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, were plundered by John Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, its marble burned in lime kilns to make cement, and the stone robbed for the construction of other buildings. 

In a Church and State article entitled Christian Atrocities: Three Centuries of Pagan Persecution, we are given a rather impressive chronology of Christian anti-pagan activities. Unfortunately, due to space and copyrights, only a portion of that timeline can be given here:

326 Constantine, following the instructions of his mother Helen, destroys the temple of the god Asclepius in Aigeai Cilicia and many temples of the goddess Aphrodite in Jerusalem, Aphaca, Mambre, Phoenicia, Baalbek, etc.

330 Constantine steals the treasures and statues of the Pagan temples of Greece to decorate Nova Roma (Constantinople), the new capital of his Empire.

335 Constantine sacks many Pagan temples of Minor Asia and Palestine and orders the execution by crucifixion of “all magicians and soothsayers”. Martyrdom of the neoplatonist philosopher Sopatrus.

341 Flavius Julius Constantius persecutes “all the soothsayers and the Hellenists”. Many gentile Hellenes are either imprisoned or executed.

346 New large scale persecutions against non-Christian peoples in Constantinople. Banishment of the famous orator Libanius accused as a “magician”.

353 An edict of Constantius orders the death penalty for all kind of worship through sacrifices and “idols”.

354 A new edict of Constantius orders the closing of all Pagan Temples. Some of them are profaned and turned into brothels or gambling rooms. Executions of Pagan priests. First burning of libraries in various cities of the Empire. The first lime factories are built next to closed Pagan Temples. A large part of Sacred Gentile architecture is turned into lime.

To be clear, Christians should NOT be proud of this history of destruction. Nevertheless, the intolerance which motivated these actions makes the notion that early Christians were overwhelmed by paganism absurd! On the contrary, the evidence is clear that early Christians were extremely prejudiced against pagans and often actively worked to destroy the edifices of their religious life.