Chapters 8-10

These few chapters managed to keep me engaged out of pure curiosity for the history of a faith I thought I knew so well. 

First off, these chapters surprised and delighted me with the first mentions of women actively changing the history of faith, a breath of fresh air from the lists upon lists of men we have encountered thus far.  Helena, Melania, and Egeria made powerful impacts on history, and it makes me curious as to whether their influence during the early stages of Christianity contributed to later legends and cults surrounding Mary.

I see modern Christianity incorporating both the ideas pushed by Eusbius and the Jerusalem cult.  From the early days, I was taught that God is everywhere- there is no place in the universe that does not contain his presence.  In addition, I was taught that the body of the Christian is the “Temple” of Christ, rather than a physical place.  However, Christians also place high significance in holy places.  Jerusalem is still seen as a treasure on earth, and there are behaviors that are simply not permitted in any church building.  In high school I read a very cool, very strange, Old English poem that described the death of Christ from the perspective of the actual wooden cross, reflecting ancient Christian obsession with holy objects and places.

I was disturbed (although, sadly, not surprised) by the way that Christianity was first implemented.  The early believers seemed to think that the only way that growth and legitimacy of their faith could be established was by first desecrating and undermining the previous existing faith, which in Jerusalem’s case, was Judaism.  The mentality stuck.  This pattern has been repeated almost everywhere else in the world that Christianity has been introduced over the centuries.  Even in the Midwest US, the land I grew up in, Jesuit missionaries who came into contact with native peoples in the1600’s struggled to convince them that their understanding of the sacred was backwards and hopelessly flawed.  This has caused many conflicts, persecutions, and bloody wars throughout the history of the faith that blackens its reputation as a peaceful way to seek God.  I wonder how history would have been different if early Christians had not looked at their faith as a “defeat” of Judaism.