How Jesus Surpassed Jupiter, The Great Roman God - A Case Study in Market Innovation
Two thousand years ago, Jupiter was the supreme god of the Roman Empire, worshiped as Optimus Maximus.
He was where Jesus Christ is today, the ceremonial divinity of the world's greatest empire.
While Jesus, a crucified Jewish rabbi, was a cult figure of a breakaway new religion known as the Way.
Within a few hundred years, Jesus grew into the Christ, the promised Messiah, while the Way grew from cult into a mature religion, Christianity.
In the end, the Roman people humiliated Jupiter.
In "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbons tells the story of Jupiter's final humiliation.
Emperor Theodosius I, who was a supporter of orthodox Christianity, officially banned the practice of the old Roman pagan religion in about 389 AD.
In a full meeting of the Roman Senate, he posed the question of whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans.
The outcome was decisive.
Most of the Roman Senate condemned and degraded Jupiter.
It was an impeachment of Divine proportions.
Therefore, Jupiter slipped away, banished by the people who had once worshiped him.
How could a state religion disappear in such a relatively short period, defeated by a religion that people had once considered a cult? It would be comparable to Scientology becoming the official religion of the USA within the next 200 years.
Sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University, and expert on religious economies, offers some insight using marketing theory.
A 2006 paper in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, titled "Religious Competition and Roman Piety," Stark argues it was market forces that ended Jupiter's reign.
In particular, product innovation by the Christians defeated Roman paganism.
According to Stark, the market theory of religious economies predicts that when the state neither supports an official religion nor limits religious choices, competing religious groups will exist.
Also, the more religions that exist, the more people get involved.
This situation existed in ancient Rome.
As well, the more effective and more innovative religious organizations will prosper, and, conversely the less effective, less innovative ones will decline.
To be sure, there were other competing religions.
Some of the competing faiths included the goddess Cybele, known to the Romans as Magna Mater, the "Great Mother," and her consort Attis; Isis, the Egyptian goddess; Mithras, a god popular within the Roman army.
Like any arena of product innovation, like cars and personal computers in the early years, competition among religions was intense and, over time, led to a market shake out.
What were the competitive advantages that made Christianity more appealing? Stark identifies five major innovations.
First, Christianity had greater emotional content, especially in worship.
The trumping emotional ingredient for the Romans was Love.
According to Stark, Romans thought their gods might come to their aid, but they did not believe the gods loved them.
For the most part Jupiter was depicted as unfriendly to people, whereas Jesus loved them.
Similarly, Romans often feared the gods, admired some, and envied all, but did not love them; at least not in the way they came to love Jesus.
A second innovation was that Christianity appealed directly to the individual and virtue.
The focus was on personal morality, atonement, and salvation.
Jupiter and his family were mainly gods of the state.
Salvation of the state mattered, personal morality and salvation did not.
Something like the ethic of the TV series 24.
For years, philosophers had rebuked Jupiter for his philandering ways.
Indeed, his whole family lacked morals and manners, acting more like flawed humans who had immortality and some super powers.
Nevertheless, they also were afflicted with the major deadly sins, including jealousy, greed, pride, and lust.
They set bad examples: they lied, stole, raped, committed adultery, betrayed and tortured.
Reinforcing the moral tone of Christianity was a set of written scriptures, presenting a more rational, sophisticated divinity.
For all of Rome's sophistication, traditional Roman religions had no scriptures.
They were known largely through the works of poets and playwrights like Ovid and Virgil.
Written scriptures satisfied the intellect, presenting a divinity that was at once more potent and more virtuous than Jupiter and his family.
As historian Franz Cumont has noted, the new Christianity "acted on the senses, the intellect and the conscience at the same time, and therefore gained a hold on the entire man.
Compared with the ancient creeds, they appear to have offered greater beauty of ritual, greater truth of doctrine and a far superior morality...
The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the foreign gods (Christianity) the expression of personal belief.
" In addition, Christianity appealed to women.
In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Stark, relying on historical data, argues that Christianity grew as rapidly as it did precisely because of its strong pro-life ethic, which stood in direct contrast to the Roman culture of death.
Abortion was a common killer of both fetuses and women in secular Roman society.
Archaeologists have discovered Roman sewers clogged with the bodies of babies.
Because Christianity condemned such practices from the beginning, pagan women viewed it as a sanctuary.
These women came to the Christian faith out of a wish to protect themselves and their children from a secular world that treated both as disposable goods.
In Christianity, their children were children of God entitled to their own rights and dignity.
A final innovation may well be one of the most important one.
Stark notes that Christian churches were not content simply to function as temples to which people went periodically.
They went further, organizing adherents into active communities that, says Stark, provided a deeply rewarding social as well as spiritual life.
To be sure, at times the Roman authorities resisted.
Officials preferred easygoing gods whose clients gathered for a feast.
Stark argues that one of the strategic errors of the Roman authorities was using a top-down approach to attack Christianity, murdering bishops and other church leaders.
While the logic of killing the leadership to kill a movement may work sometimes, it unfortunately was ill suited as a deterrent to Christianity, which was a bottom-up movement.
There is more to life than economics, that said, Stark's use of market theory of religious economics fits well with the religious life of Rome.
It also helps us understand how Christianity came to displace the Roman pantheon of Gods.
He was where Jesus Christ is today, the ceremonial divinity of the world's greatest empire.
While Jesus, a crucified Jewish rabbi, was a cult figure of a breakaway new religion known as the Way.
Within a few hundred years, Jesus grew into the Christ, the promised Messiah, while the Way grew from cult into a mature religion, Christianity.
In the end, the Roman people humiliated Jupiter.
In "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbons tells the story of Jupiter's final humiliation.
Emperor Theodosius I, who was a supporter of orthodox Christianity, officially banned the practice of the old Roman pagan religion in about 389 AD.
In a full meeting of the Roman Senate, he posed the question of whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans.
The outcome was decisive.
Most of the Roman Senate condemned and degraded Jupiter.
It was an impeachment of Divine proportions.
Therefore, Jupiter slipped away, banished by the people who had once worshiped him.
How could a state religion disappear in such a relatively short period, defeated by a religion that people had once considered a cult? It would be comparable to Scientology becoming the official religion of the USA within the next 200 years.
Sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University, and expert on religious economies, offers some insight using marketing theory.
A 2006 paper in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, titled "Religious Competition and Roman Piety," Stark argues it was market forces that ended Jupiter's reign.
In particular, product innovation by the Christians defeated Roman paganism.
According to Stark, the market theory of religious economies predicts that when the state neither supports an official religion nor limits religious choices, competing religious groups will exist.
Also, the more religions that exist, the more people get involved.
This situation existed in ancient Rome.
As well, the more effective and more innovative religious organizations will prosper, and, conversely the less effective, less innovative ones will decline.
To be sure, there were other competing religions.
Some of the competing faiths included the goddess Cybele, known to the Romans as Magna Mater, the "Great Mother," and her consort Attis; Isis, the Egyptian goddess; Mithras, a god popular within the Roman army.
Like any arena of product innovation, like cars and personal computers in the early years, competition among religions was intense and, over time, led to a market shake out.
What were the competitive advantages that made Christianity more appealing? Stark identifies five major innovations.
First, Christianity had greater emotional content, especially in worship.
The trumping emotional ingredient for the Romans was Love.
According to Stark, Romans thought their gods might come to their aid, but they did not believe the gods loved them.
For the most part Jupiter was depicted as unfriendly to people, whereas Jesus loved them.
Similarly, Romans often feared the gods, admired some, and envied all, but did not love them; at least not in the way they came to love Jesus.
A second innovation was that Christianity appealed directly to the individual and virtue.
The focus was on personal morality, atonement, and salvation.
Jupiter and his family were mainly gods of the state.
Salvation of the state mattered, personal morality and salvation did not.
Something like the ethic of the TV series 24.
For years, philosophers had rebuked Jupiter for his philandering ways.
Indeed, his whole family lacked morals and manners, acting more like flawed humans who had immortality and some super powers.
Nevertheless, they also were afflicted with the major deadly sins, including jealousy, greed, pride, and lust.
They set bad examples: they lied, stole, raped, committed adultery, betrayed and tortured.
Reinforcing the moral tone of Christianity was a set of written scriptures, presenting a more rational, sophisticated divinity.
For all of Rome's sophistication, traditional Roman religions had no scriptures.
They were known largely through the works of poets and playwrights like Ovid and Virgil.
Written scriptures satisfied the intellect, presenting a divinity that was at once more potent and more virtuous than Jupiter and his family.
As historian Franz Cumont has noted, the new Christianity "acted on the senses, the intellect and the conscience at the same time, and therefore gained a hold on the entire man.
Compared with the ancient creeds, they appear to have offered greater beauty of ritual, greater truth of doctrine and a far superior morality...
The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the foreign gods (Christianity) the expression of personal belief.
" In addition, Christianity appealed to women.
In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Stark, relying on historical data, argues that Christianity grew as rapidly as it did precisely because of its strong pro-life ethic, which stood in direct contrast to the Roman culture of death.
Abortion was a common killer of both fetuses and women in secular Roman society.
Archaeologists have discovered Roman sewers clogged with the bodies of babies.
Because Christianity condemned such practices from the beginning, pagan women viewed it as a sanctuary.
These women came to the Christian faith out of a wish to protect themselves and their children from a secular world that treated both as disposable goods.
In Christianity, their children were children of God entitled to their own rights and dignity.
A final innovation may well be one of the most important one.
Stark notes that Christian churches were not content simply to function as temples to which people went periodically.
They went further, organizing adherents into active communities that, says Stark, provided a deeply rewarding social as well as spiritual life.
To be sure, at times the Roman authorities resisted.
Officials preferred easygoing gods whose clients gathered for a feast.
Stark argues that one of the strategic errors of the Roman authorities was using a top-down approach to attack Christianity, murdering bishops and other church leaders.
While the logic of killing the leadership to kill a movement may work sometimes, it unfortunately was ill suited as a deterrent to Christianity, which was a bottom-up movement.
There is more to life than economics, that said, Stark's use of market theory of religious economics fits well with the religious life of Rome.
It also helps us understand how Christianity came to displace the Roman pantheon of Gods.