Christianity from Judaism to Constantine: Crash Course World History #11

Hi there my name’s John Green; this is Crash Course World History and today we’re going to talk about Jesus.

So this is a Roman coin from around the time Jesus was born in the Roman Empire, and it

calls Augustus, the emperor, the son of God. So let’s just state at the outset that in

4 BCE, being the son of God, or at least being the son of a god was not such an unusual thing.

But a poor Jew being the son of God — that was news.

[Theme Music]

Any understanding of Christianity has to start with Judaism, because Jesus was born a Jew,

and he grew up in the Jewish tradition. He was one of many teachers spreading his ideas

in the Roman province of Judea at the time, and he was part of a messianic tradition that

helps us understand why he was thought of not only teacher but something much, much more.

Let’s go straight to the Thought Bubble today.

The people who would become the Jews, were just one of many tribal peoples eking out

an existence in that not-very fertile crescent world of Mesopotamia after the agricultural revolution.

The Hebrews initially worshiped many gods, making sacrifices to them in order to bring

good weather and good fortune. But they eventually developed a religion centered around an idea

that would become key to the other great western religions.

This was monotheism, the idea that there is only one true god (or at least that if there

are other gods around, they are total lameoids). The Hebrews developed a second concept that

is key to their religion as well: the idea of the covenant, a deal with God.

The main man in this, the big macher was Abraham. Not to make this too much of a scripture lesson,

but it’s kind of hard to understand the Jews without understanding Abraham, or Abram

as he was known before he had his big conversation with God. Recorded in Genesis 17: "When Abram

was ninety years and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, 'I am the Almighty

God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.' " And I’m a make a covenant with you and

a bunch of cool things will happen like you’re gonna have kids and your descendants will

number the stars and you can have all the land of Canaan forever, it’s gonna be awesome.

I’m paraphrasing by the way, Thought Bubble.

So God promised that Abram would have kids with his wife even though the dude was already

like 99, but there was a catch: "This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me

and you and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised." Keep

it PG-13, Thought Bubble.

Now that is asking a lot from a guy, especially a 99-year-old geezer like Abram living in

a time before general anesthesia. But those were the terms of the deal, and in exchange

God had chosen Abraham and his descendants to be a great nation. From this we get the