ظهور المسيحية .. من روما الى بغداد

From Rome to Baghdad

The Emergence of Christianity

At first, the followers of Christ were just a small group of Jewish groups, and through the works of Paul, a Hellenistic Jew from the diaspora, this group became Christianity with all its broad and detailed theology. It was Paul who introduced Christianity to the Roman Empire.

By the second century AD, the Christian Church had a priestly system of officials - bishops, priests, and deacons - and in general this early administration of the Church was completely hostile to pagan science and philosophy. Part of this hostility was due to the Romans' anti-rational stance, but they also felt the need to protect the nascent religion against the method of asking questions, which was associated with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. One of the early Christians, Irenaeus (c. 180 AD), commented that the heretics (schismatics) are struggling to transfer to matters of faith the malicious model of argumentation, which is in fact a picture of Aristotle” (3).
Another, Tertullian, in the late second and early third centuries AD, said: Philosophers indulge in stupid curiosity about natural things (4) and ask the famous flowery question: What is between Athens and Jerusalem? (5) We will see the effect of these attitudes again in medieval Europe, where they slowed down the scientific method without stopping it. Finally, this new, more rigorous religion gained momentum in the Roman Empire. The rigor of its structure provided stability for the culture that was trying to support its crumbling structure.

The Decline of Rome

Rome began to disintegrate starting in the third century, a process that historians refer to as the Decline of Rome, and since that date these historians have been trying to find out the reason until now. Some historians attribute the reason to general moral decay, and although there was more institutional distortion and a tendency to kill mothers and sisters and bloody games that were performed for the amusement of the public, and sexual practices - which are described as the most innovative to say the least - most societies at that time were not characterized by modesty. Other historians attribute the cause to imperialism, the class struggle that accompanies it, and reliance on militarism. As evidence of this, they cite the deaths of 12 successive emperors in violent incidents at the hands of the very soldiers who installed them on the throne. From our chemical point of view, there is another theory of particular interest, namely, the theory that the emperors of the period of decline suffered from lead poisoning (6).

In fact, irritability is one of the symptoms of lead poisoning. The type and number of major punishments can be seen to indicate that these emperors were quick to anger. It is also a fact that the ancient Romans used lead in their water systems and drinking vessels, and they added lead to wine to prevent spoilage. The accumulation of vinegar and acetic acid spoils wine, and lead is a salt with acetate ions. We must be careful before we accept the theory that the decline of the Roman Empire was due to lead poisoning. At least some Romans were aware of the dangers of lead, and it is possible that they restricted its use. For example, the architect Vitruvius noticed the poor health and paleness of workers working in the lead industry. He recommended the use of earthenware pipes to carry water. So the cause, in realistic terms, is likely to have been the leaders’ inability to cope with the external and internal pressures that confront the challenges of change. Whatever the cause, the empire split in two in the late fourth century, the eastern half, the Byzantine Empire, which managed to hold out more or less for the next thousand years, but the western empire, which sank into the chaos of loosely knit wartime alliances, was crushed in the fifth century by Othello the Hun and Rome itself was sacked by the Goths.

In the East during the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian struggled to protect what remained of the ancient Roman Empire, erecting walls against thought: he closed the remaining centers of learning in Athens, and destroyed all pagan icons. He degraded the Jews in the social hierarchy, and restricted their freedom of worship. He got rid of the Nestorians and the Monophysites (heretics who refused to accept the relationship of God the Father with God the Son, as described by the Justinian Church).

He expelled them from the empire, and in this last act he in effect preserved some Hellenistic culture. When these heretics fled and found refuge in Persia, they took with them the Greek teachings. This is the effect we will follow later.