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Paul goes to Rome

But could Paul persuade anyone to believe him? Would he and his band of Christians be tolerated by the emperor? Worse still, would he himself become a target of Roman brutality?

When Paul arrived in Rome he found he had a mountain to climb. In its early days, Christianity only had Judaism to contend with. Now Paul found he faced real competition, real power. Rome was teeming with cults, all promising salvation. One of the most successful was the cult of Mythras, and that gave Paul a problem.  

On the surface, Mithraism seemed to offer much the same as Jesus. The faithful came together to worship a saviour God in a ritual meal of bread and wine. Even more troubling for Paul, these pagan cults promised an afterlife in which the soul would live forever. But Paul criticised this kind of afterlife as a grim and unfulfilling kind of existence. He argued instead that Christian resurrection was a blissful existence in a new everlasting, yet physical body. It won him many converts, but at a price. Paul's success brought him to the attention of the emperor, Nero.

In 64 A.D., Nero himself was accused of starting the fire that nearly destroyed Rome. He needed a scapegoat to divert blame from himself. Paul was an obvious target. The message of the resurrection, that Jesus was the Son of God, struck at the heart of Roman religion.

Miracles of Jesus

Part 3   The Resurrection  12

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