To understand how this could have happened, we must go back once more to the days of Paul and to the first fifty years after the death of Christ, and we must firmly grasp the fact that Christianity had begun as a reform movement within the bosom of the Jewish church and had been a purely nationalistic movement which in the beginning had threatened the rulers of the Jewish state and no one else.
The Pharisees who had happened to be in power when Jesus lived had understood this only too clearly. Quite naturally they had feared the ultimate consequences of an agitation which boldly threatened to question a spiritual monopoly which was based upon nothing more substantial than brute force. To save themselves from being wiped out they had been forced to act in a spirit of panic and had sent their enemy to the gallows before the Roman authorities had had time to intervene and deprive them of their victim.
What Jesus would have done had he lived it is impossible to say. He was killed long before he was able to organize his disciples into a special sect nor did he leave a single word of writing from which his followers could conclude what he wanted them to do.
In the end, however, this had proved to be a blessing in disguise.
The absence of a written set of rules, of a definite collection of ordinances and regulations, had left the disciples free to follow the spirit of their master’s words rather than the letter of his law. Had they been bound by a book, they would very likely have devoted all their energies to a theological discussion upon the ever enticing subject of commas and semi-colons.
In that case, of course, no one outside of a few professional scholars could have possibly shown the slightest interest in the new faith and Christianity would have gone the way of so many other sects which begin with elaborate written programs and end when the police are called upon to throw the haggling theologians into the street.
At the distance of almost twenty centuries, when we realize what tremendous damage Christianity did to the Roman Empire, it is a matter of surprise that the authorities took practically no steps to quell a movement which was fully as dangerous to the safety of the state as an invasion by Huns or Goths. They knew of course that the fate of this eastern prophet had caused great excitement among their house slaves, that the women were forever telling each other about the imminent reappearance of the King of Heaven, and that quite a number of old men had solemnly predicted the impending destruction of this world by a ball of fire.
But it was not the first time that the poorer classes had gone into hysterics about some new religious hero. Most likely it would not be the last time, either. Meanwhile the police would see to it that these poor, frenzied fanatics did not disturb the peace of the realm.
And that was that.