Chapter 16 Summary and Analysis

Once Christianity appears, it spreads rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. Like Stoicism, it offers people inner peace and salvation, focusing on a Savior that will free them from their misery with the promise of an afterlife. Freedom is the central theme of its existence.

According to Patterson, four phases exist in the development of early Christianity. The phases are "the prophetic phase of Jesus and the Jesus movement; the primitive Palestinian sect; the Hellenistic phase of Jesus and gentile Christianity; and the culmination of this phase in the religion of Paul." (p. 295)

Jesus does not intend to lay the foundations for a church based on his teachings. He is the prophet delivering his message or vision. It is those who come after him that found the church. The cult of Christianity preaches the coming of the apocalypse, as did other cults...