The Spread of Christianity--an Urban Story

A. What life was like in the cities of the Graeco-Roman Empire:

1. Cities were relatively small by modern standards, but the population density was exceptionally high.

"The first important fact about Greco-Roman cities is that they were small, in terms of both area and population." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity--A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton):149]

Rome	650,000
Alexandria	400,000
Ephesus	200,000
Antioch	150,000
Apamea	125,000
Pergamum	120,000
Sardis	100,000
Corinth	100,000
Gadir (Cadiz)	100,000
Memphis	90,000
Carthage	90,000
Edessa	80,000
Syracuse	80,000
Smyrna	75,000
Caesarea Maritime	45,000
Damascus	45,000

"MacMullen estimates that the average population density in cities of the Roman Empire may have approached two hundred per acre--an equivalent found in modern Western cities only in industrial slums. Further, given that much of the space--one-fourth, by MacMullen's calculations--was devoted to public areas, 'the bulk of the population had typically to put up with most uncomfortable crowding at home, made tolerable by the attractive spaciousness of public facilities…It follows that privacy was rate. Much of life was lived on the streets and sidewalks, squares and porticoes--even more than in Mediterranean cities today." [Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):29]

"If we assume a population of about a million, we must conclude that Rome in the early principate was one of the most densely populated cities the world has ever known--as crowded, probably, as modern Bombay or Calcutta." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):90]

"The built-up area of imperial Rome corresponded more or less to that enclosed by the third-century walls of Aurelian, 1,373 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acre), which implies a population density of about 730 per hectare (300 per acre). This compares with an overall density of 452 per hectare in modern Bombay, 364 for Dublin, 295 for Calcutta, and 224 for Mexico City. Most of these modern cities have upper-class residential areas and parks, which decrease the density. The highest spot densities recorded are for Hong Kong (1,656 per hectare), Bombay (1,169 per hectare), and Calcutta (1,018 per hectare). Modern figures are taken from the United Nations' 1977 Compendium of Social Statistics (New York, 1980)." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):337]

Comparisons:

Population Density of Antioch around 117/acre. [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):149]…[Compare Chicago 21; SF 23; NY 37; Manhattan 100]..But allowing for public space, Antioch goes to 137 [Bombay 183; Calcutta 122]

Geographical Area	Pop/SqMile
Nanshi area, Shanghai	147,187
Yuexiu area, Guangzhou	132,163
Graeco-Roman cities	128,200
Old Bombay(1958)	125,662
City area, Calcutta	108,005
Hong Kong	73,627
Seoul	61,970
Cairo	60,000
New York: NY County	52,419
Delhi	45,778
New York: King County	32,618
Mexico City	30,263
New York: Bronx County	28,640
Tokyo	18,401
New York: Queens County	17,839
California: San Francisco County	15,502
New Jersey: Hudson County	11,855
Pennsilvanial: Philadelphia County	11,733
Massachusets: Suffolk County	11,345
Washington DC	9,882
City of Baltimore	9,108
Illinois: Cook County	5,398
Michigan: Wayne County	3,488
Louisanna: Orleans County	2,750
California: LosAngeles County	2,183

2. Housing for the non-elite was multi-family and generally occupied by either ethic or occupational groups.

"Roman tenement buildings were usually the only places open to them [new immigrants to Rome]. Persons of the same nationality tended to congregate in individual apartment buildings as new arrivals sought the companionship of established compatriots." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):131]

"From the second century B.C.E., Rome began erecting multistory apartment buildings (insulae). Packer believes the insula originated in Rome to address the housing needs of its rapidly growing population. They were typically built around an inner courtyard that provided light and air to the rooms above. Small shops (tabernae) were often built into the outer ring of the first floor of the insula. Families who operated such small shops often lived in them as well. There was sometimes a back room behind or a mezzanine above the main room, offering a bit of privacy for the family. A few "deluxe" apartments might be found behind these shops, facing the inner courtyard. These apartments contained a number of rooms, including accommodations for servants, and were suitable for hosting small social gatherings. They generally lacked kitchens and latrines…Above the tabernae were usually three to five floors of apartments. The absence of elevators and the poorer construction of the higher stories meant that the cheapest apartments were on the upper floors. These were mostly one- and two-room apartments. Interior rooms, probably used for sleeping, received no natural light or fresh air. Families either cooked on charcoal braziers located near an outside opening or went out for hot meals. They used public latrines, the small spaces under stairs, or chamber pots. Privacy would have been rare. Within the individual apartment, several unrelated families might have separate sleeping rooms but share a common sitting room. These apartments were too small to allow for socializing with friends, let alone for Christian house congregations. Those who lived in such apartments would have to do most of their eating and socializing in public places." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):132]

3. Ethic divisions were fairly strong, with no statistically dominant group, creating a complex society.

"As a consequence of Rome's entry into the East and her active interest in the cities, urban society became somewhat more complex than it had been even during the Hellenistic age. For a very long time groups of foreigners had gathered in each city: merchants and artisans following the armies or in search of better markets or better access to transportation, persons enslaved and displaced by war or piracy and now set free, political exiles, soldiers of fortune. These noncitizen residents, or metics, often retained some sense of ethnic identity by establishing local cults of their native gods or by forming a voluntary association, which also had at leas the trappings of religion."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):13]

"When a stranger arrived in a city, then, it is taken for granted that he knew, or could easily learn, where to find immigrants and temporary residents from his own country or ethnos and practitioners of his own trade. Nothing could be more natural, for these were the two most important factors in the formation and identification of neighborhoods.."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):29]…(he gives examples of Jewish quarters, linenweavers quarters, etc.)

"By the first century CE non-Romans and their descendants made up a large part, if not the majority, of the common people of the city [Rome], a large population of free resident aliens, and the entire slave class." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):129]

"Roman tenement buildings were usually the only places open to them [new immigrants to Rome]. Persons of the same nationality tended to congregate in individual apartment buildings as new arrivals sought the companionship of established compatriots." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):131]

"there were eighteen identifiable ethnic quarters within Antioch" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):158]

"What does seem clear is that the social integration of Greco-Roman cities was severely disrupted by the durability of internal ethnic divisions, which typically took the form of distinctive ethnic precincts. Ethnic diversity and a constant influx of newcomers will tend to undercut social integration, thus exposing residents to a variety of harmful consequences, including high rates of deviance and disorder. Indeed, this is the major reason why Greco-Roman cities were so prone to riots." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):158]

4. Turnover and poverty in the city was extremely high, due to plague, migration, and high mortality rates--resulting in urban problems.

"As noted, Greco-Roman cities required a constant and substantial stream of new-comers simply to maintain their populations. As a result, at any given moment a very considerable proportion of the population consisted of recent newcomers--Greco-Roman cities were peopled by strangers. It is well known that the crime rates of modern cities are highly correlated with rates of population turnover…This is because where there are large numbers of newcomers, people will be deficient in interpersonal attachments, and it is attachments that bind us to the moral order." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):156f]

"Night fell over the city like the shadow of a great danger, diffused, sinister, and menacing. Everyone fled to his home, shut himself in, and barricaded the entrance. The shops fell silent, safety chains were drawn behind the leaves of the doors.... If the rich had to sally forth, they were accompanied by slaves who carried torches to light and protect them on their way .... Juvenal sighs that to go out to supper without having made your will was to expose yourself to reproach of carelessness ... [W]e need only turn to the leaves of the Digest [to discover the extent to which criminals] abounded in the city. " [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):157]

"Any accurate portrait of Antioch in New Testament times must depict a city filled with misery, danger, fear, despair, and hatred. A city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half of the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most of the children who lived lost at least one parent before reaching maturity. A city filled with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers. A city so lacking in stable networks of attachments that petty incidents could prompt mob violence. A city where crime flourished and the streets were dangerous at night. And, perhaps above all, a city repeatedly smashed by cataclysmic catastrophes: where a resident could expect literally to be homeless from time to time, providing that he or she was among the survivors…People living in such circumstances must often have despaired. Surely it would not be strange for them to have concluded that the end of days drew near. And surely too they must often have longed for relief, for hope, indeed for salvation." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):160f]

"For they [the lowest classes, without social attachments to patrons] provided the manpower for dangerous urban riots. They were not easy to control. They were men without honor. Without honor, they were difficult to coerce. They had no status to lose and no wealth that might be threatened by fines. They could only be beaten, not blackmailed, into submission. Their daily behavior showed this only too clearly." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):53]

5. Plagues and natural disasters were frequent, extensive, and life-shattering.

"In 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire….During the fifteen-year duration of the epidemic, from a quarter to a third of the empire's population died from it, including Marcus Aurelius himself…Then in 251 a new and equally devastating epidemic again swept the empire, hitting the rural areas as hard as the cities. " [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):73]

"The following summary of natural and social disasters that struck Antioch is instructive and rather typical. I have not attempted a careful survey of the sources to assemble my list but have depended primarily on Downey (1963). The totals are probably incomplete. Moreover, I skipped the many serious floods because they did not cause substantial loss of life. Still, the summary shows how extremely vulnerable Greco-Roman cities were to attacks, fires, earthquakes, famines, epidemics, and devastating riots. Indeed, this litany of disasters is so staggering that it is difficult to grasp its human meaning…During the course of about six hundred years of intermittent Roman rule, Antioch was taken by unfriendly forces eleven times and was plundered and sacked on five of these occasions. The city was also put to siege, but did not fall, two other times. In addition, Antioch burned entirely or in large part four times, three times by accident and once when the Persians carefully burned the city to the ground after picking it clean of valuables and taking the surviving population into captivity. Because the temples and many public building were built of stone, it is easy to forget that Greco-Roman cities consisted primarily of woodframe buildings, plastered over, that were highly flammable and tightly packed together. Severe fires were frequent, and there was no pumping equipment with which to fight them. Besides the four huge conflagrations noted above, there were many large fires set during several of the six major periods of rioting that racked the city. By a major riot I mean one resulting in substantial damage and death, as distinct from the city's frequent riots in which only a few were killed…Antioch probably suffered from literally hundreds of significant earthquakes during these six centuries, but eight were so severe that nearly everything was destroyed and huge numbers died. Two other quakes may have been nearly as serious. At least three killer epidemics struck the city--with mortality rates probably running above 25 percent in each. Finally, there were at least five really serious famines. That comes to forty-one natural and social catastrophes, or an average of one every fifteen years." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):160-161]

6. There were no meaningful social/medical support services, with physical abandonment common during plague.

"…they died with no one to look after them; indeed there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention.... The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law... No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. " (Thucydides, on the plague of Athens)

'The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape. [Dionysius, in Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):83]

"It is worth noting that the famous classical physician Galen lived through the first epidemic during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. What did he do? He got out of Rome quickly, retiring to a country estate in Asia Minor until the danger receded." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):85]

"What needs to be stressed is that the Christian poorhouse-cum-hospital was a novel institution in the ancient world. Temples, of course, had always contained large sleeping quarters for those in search of healing, as at the incubatory shrine of Ascelpius at Epidaurus. But the new xenodocheia were not necessarily connected with healing shrines. Only soldiers and slaves--that is, persons who had no family to look after them--had valetudinaria, hospital quarters in their camps and slave barracks. To extend this facility to the poor in general and to associate it with any human settlement was a new departure. " [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):34]

7. The truly destitute were 5-10% of the population, but those in 'shallow poverty' would have been most of the middling "class".

"In the Roman sense of values, predicated on a morality of reciprocal favors granted and expected, helping the poor and homeless was simply not the traditional way. That kind of charity was an Oriental concept codified by Jews and Christians who became conspicuous and a little suspect in their zeal for taking care of the sick and poor." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):135]

"Preaching at Antioch in the 380's, John Chrysostom told his congregation that they should think of their city as being made up of one-tenth of rich residents, one-tenth of 'the poor who have nothing at all,' while the remaining 80 percent were of 'the middling sort'…The tolerance level of such societies appears to have wavered between accepting 5 percent to 10 percent of the population as permanently 'poor' and in need of relief, while being prepared to help between 20 percent and 25 percent of the population for short periods in times of crisis." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):14]

"To use a term favored by historians of early modern Europe, John's [Chrysostom] hearers lived in a society characterized by widespread 'shallow' poverty. And for most of them, the 'deep' poverty of actual destitution remained an ever-present possibility. 'Deep' poverty was a state into which them might fall, and from which they might emerge again, scrambling back painfully into 'shallow' poverty, on many occasions in the course of their lives." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):15]

8. There was a high frequency of single-parent families, with women retaining custody of children.

"Inscriptions in Rome also mention a number of single-parent families (only one parent is named on the inscription). The frequency of divorce and of the early death of one parent must have led to frequent remarriage, and thus to stepchildren and blended families." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):135]

"On the other hand, women in nonlegal marriages could leave a relationship without interference by the state. Such women were far more likely to get custody of their children, since Roman law recognized the mother as the only legitimate parent in an illegitimate relationship. By contrast, the divorcing father in a legal Roman marriage almost always was awarded custody of the children, since they were his heirs. Many lower-class families were fatherless, requiring the mother to take full responsibility to provide for and raise her children, thus acquiring the rights and duties of a head of household." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):.141]

"When the marriage dissolved, she probably kept the children." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):150]

"For what we know of the demography of the Roman world and of similar societies suggests that the destruction of the family unit by the death or desertion of male protectors and wage earners was the single greatest cause of poverty." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):58]

9. The society was very hierarchical, with layers of patron/client relationships, and with a very high dependence on patrons.

"What may be more significant is that fairly often in imperial times women were asked to serve as founders or patrons of men's clubs. This might involve provision of a place of meeting, either in the patron's house or in a special building erected or obtained for the purpose, or an endowment for the other expenses of the association, including its banquets, sacrifices, and funeral expenses for members.[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):24]

"Such subsidies apart, the poor did what they could. Traditionally they became the clients of patrons who provided food or money in exchange for political support or other help. If that did not work--and the sources show that the process could involved an intensely competitive scamble--there was begging, stealing, or starving." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):134]

"'Middling' persons had always needed protectors." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):50]

10. Status was everything--the society was built to keep you 'in your place'.

"In the society of the principate it was apparently not uncommon for these [communal meals] to become occasions for conspicuous display of social distance and even for humiliation of the clients of the rich, by means of the quality and quantity of food provided to different tables."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):68]

"Roman authors scorn Jews for their poverty." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):130]

"What needs to be stressed, in assessing the social texture of the later empire, was that such persons were in an uncomfortable position. We have found that late Roman society was not as drastically "polarized" between the rich and the poor as we had been led to suppose. The class of "middling" persons was more extensive and more differentiated than we had thought. But such persons did not, enjoy the autonomy and the protection that we associate with a modern "middle class." The powerful and the truly rich remained overbearing presences in a society where so many self-respecting persons lived uncomfortably close to the widespread 'shallow' poverty that had always characterized an ancient society. It was a tense situation. As Keith Hopkins has put it succinctly, by reason of the "steepness of the social pyramid ... Roman society demanded an uncomfortable mixture of pervasive deference to superiors and openly aggressive brutishness to inferiors.'" [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):49]

"If you're poor, you're a joke, on each and every occasion. What a laugh, if your cloak is dirty or torn, if your toga appears a little bit soiled, if your shoe has a crack in the leather. Of if several patches betray frequent mending! Poverty's greatest curse, much worse than actually being poor, is that it makes man objects of mirth, ridiculed, grumble, embarrassed…Sons of freeborn men give way to a rich man's slave." [Juvenal, early 2nd century AD, cited at Worth, The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse and Roman Culture (Paulist):41]

11. Upward mobility was very doable, but 'status inconsistency' was frequent too.

"We have already seen that there were a number of women prominently involved in the Pauline circle who exhibited the sorts of status inconsistency what would inspire a Juvenal to eloquent indignation. There were women who headed households, who ran businesses and had independent wealth, who traveled with their own slaves and helpers."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):71]

"In recent years, however, most sociologists have come to see social stratification as a multidimensional phenomenon; to describe the social level of an individual or a group, one must attempt to measure their rank along each of the relevant dimensions. For example, one might discover that, in a given society, the following variables affect how an individual is ranked: power (defined as 'the capacity for achieving goals in social systems'), occupational prestige, income or wealth, education and knowledge, religious and ritual purity, family and ethnic-group position, and local-community status (evaluation within some subgroup, independent of the larger society but perhaps interaction with it). It would be a rare individual who occupied exactly the same rank, in either his own view or that of others, in terms of all these factors…All these kinds of behavior, some sociologists believe, show that a high degree of status inconsistency produces unpleasant experiences that lead people to try to remove the inconsistency by changing the society, themselves, or perceptions of themselves. "[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):54,55]

B. Situating Christianity in its social setting:

12. Christianity was basically an urban movement (like all 'cults' were)

"The third reason Pauline Christianity is an apt subject for our investigation is that it was entirely urban.[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):8]

"of the twenty-two largest cities in the empire, four probably still lacked a Christian church by the year 200" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):10]

13. Christianity was mostly made up of 'middling-plus' class folks: merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen.

"The picture of Barnabas as a reasonable well-to-do man who deliberately chose the life of an itinerant artisan to support his mission is reinforced by the report in Acts that he was the owner of a farm that he sold, the proceeds going to the Jerusalem Christians."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):61]

"What we do see clearly is that the collection is to be assembled little by little, week by week. This bespeaks the economy of small people, not destitute, but not commanding capital either. This, too, would fit the picture of fairly well-off artisans and tradespeople as the typical Christians."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):65]

"But there is also no specific evidence of people who are destitute--such as the hired menials and dependent handworkers; the poorest of the poor, peasants, agricultural slaves, and hired agricultural day laborers, are absent because of the urban setting of the Pauline groups."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):73]

"The 'typical' Christian, however, the one who most often signals his presence in the letters by one or another small clue, is a free artisan or small trader."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):73]

"Abraham J. Malherbe analyzed the language and style of early church writers and concluded that they were addressing a literate, educated audience." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):31]

"If this is so, and if cult movements are based on a relatively privileged constituency, can we not infer that Paul's missionary efforts had their greatest success among the middle and upper middle classes, just as the New Testament historians now believe?" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):45]

"Consequently, the early church was a mass movement in the fullest sense and not simply the creation of an elite. Ramsay MacMullen recognized that the failure of Roman authorities to understand this fact accounts for the strange aspect of the persecutions: that only leaders were seized, while crowds of obvious Christians went unpunished. That is, when the Romans decided to destroy Christianity, "they did so from the top down, evidently taking it for granted that only the Church's leaders counted." This mistaken judgment was, according to MacMullen, based on the fact that paganism was utterly dependent on the elite and could easily have been destroyed from the top." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):208]

"…the Christian Church stood squarely in the middle of Roman society. It occupied the extensive middle ground between the very rich and the very poor. 'Middling' persons formed its principal constituency. The church tended to recruit its clergy from among the more prosperous artisans and from the fringes of the class of town councilors." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):48]

14. Christianity contained members from most levels of the elite, from its inception.

"It is indeed plausible that those who, after conversion to Christianity, may still have had reason to accept invitations to dinner where meat would be served, perhaps in the shrine of a pagan deity, are likely to have been the more affluent members of the group, who would still have had some social or business obligations that were more important to their roles in the larger society than were comparable connections among people of lower status. The difference is not absolute, however, for Christian clients of non-Christian patrons would surely also sometimes have found themselves in this position."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):69]

"The NT provides information about Prisca and Aquila, two of the Roman Christians greeted in Romans 16. They were tentmakers who worked in Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus, indicating a high degree of mobility. The fact that Aquila and Prisca could afford to rent residences capable of seating a dozen or two worshipers shows that they were able to live well above a subsistence level. Their wealth, though modest, exceeded that of most residents of Rome and, therefore, probably that of most other Roman Christians. Perhaps they were able to rent a "deluxe" apartment. It also is possible that a house church could have met in the work area of their taberna." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):137]

"Although Acts might not give a clear indication of status for all the people mentioned, the internal evidence from the Pauline Corinthian correspondence would seem to indicate that by the third quarter of the first century A.D. the Christian community contained a good number of members of the social elite. First some members of the Christian community could be described as wise, powerful and well-born. Some members of the community were involved in vexatious litigation which is suitable for members of the elite. 'Boasting' may reflect the keenness to display social position. Enmity within the church reflects the case in the wider Roman world. The form of worship with its concern over dress seem to be more suitable to people familiar with formal Roman worship. The Lord's supper may reflect the wider tensions within Corinthian elite society." [Gill/Gempf, The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting--Graeco-Roman Setting:111]

"Indeed, based on an inscription found in Corinth in 1929 and upon references in Rom. 16:23 and 2 Tim. 4:20, many scholars now agree that among the members of the church at Corinth was Erastus, 'the city treasurer' And historians now accept that Poponia Graecina, a woman of the senatorial class, whom Tacitus reported as having been accursed of practicing 'foreign superstition' in 57 (Annals 13.32), was a Christian. Nor, according to Marta Sordi, was Pomponia an isolated case: 'We know from reliable sources that there were Christians among the aristocracy [in Rome] in the second half of the first century (Acilius Glabrio and the Christian Flavians) and that it seems probable that the same can be said for the first half of the same century, before Paul's arrival in Rome.'" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):30f]

"The fundamental thesis is simply put: If the early church was like all the other cult movements for which good data exist, it was not a proletarian movement but was based on the more privileged classes." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):33]

"If this is so, and if cult movements are based on a relatively privileged constituency, can we not infer that Paul's missionary efforts had their greatest success among the middle and upper middle classes, just as the New Testament historians now believe?" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):45]

"Finally, what difference does it make whether early Christianity was a movement of the relatively privileged or of the downtrodden? In my judgment it matters a great deal. Had Christianity actually been a proletarian movement, it strikes me that the state necessarily would have responded to it as a political threat, rather than simply as an illicit religion. With Marta Sordi (1986), 1 reject claims that the state did perceive early Christianity in political terms. It is far from clear to me that Christianity could have survived a truly comprehensive effort by the state to root it out during its early days. When the Roman state did perceive political threats, its repressive measures were not only brutal but unrelenting and extremely thorough-Masada comes immediately to mind. Yet even the most brutal persecutions of Christians were haphazard and limited, and the state ignored thousands of persons who openly professed the new religion, as we will see in chapter 8. If we postulate a Christianity of the privileged, on the other hand, this behavior by the state seems consistent. If, as is now believed, the Christians were not a mass of degraded outsiders but from early days had members, friends, and relatives in high places-often within the imperial family--this would have greatly mitigated repression and persecution. Hence the many instances when Christians were pardoned." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton): 46]

"It is very difficult to estimate how far, despite these adverse factors, Christianity had by the beginning of the fourth century penetrated into the upper classes. The edict of Valerian, laying down special penalties for senators and equites Romani who refused to conform, suggests that as early as 257 there were some Christians in these classes. The canons of the council of Iliberris, probably held shortly before the Great Persecution, lay down penances for Christians who as provincial sacerdotes or municipal duoviri or flamines take part in pagan rites or celebr