Development of Christianity
Undergraduate Course I
chrdevI


Christianity emerged out of several ancient cultures and traditions: Assyrian, Babylonian, Judaism, Hellenism, and the influence of various smaller ethnic groups that shaped public life in the Roman Empire. In this course we research a few of the "ingredients" that finally resulted in the multifaceted "Christianity" we know today.

All pictures of this deck are within cc (creative commons), many from Wikipedia/Wikicommons.

We highly recommend to start an account with Twitter to keep in touch with us during the course. We'll remind you later!

@benoehler

To get back to our roots, that is to do historical research, has been my favorite activity for more than thirty years.

The Internet and the Web provide amazing tools to share content that seems to be essential for us all. Students who cannot afford to go to a college or university, get here the breath-taking chance to study online. Simplicity paired with open education make the cut.

Free online decks (like this one) convey learning content in an amazingly vivid way.

But there's a clue, though!
As you can see on the slide-- we expect you to give your "word of honor" when you enter this course. We want to work with you *only*, if you are committed to do all home assignments until the very last slide. (We strongly discourage people who have a tendency to drop out after the second or third lesson. )

Those who join the "race" through slides, documents, and essays [ http://goo.gl/BRXoAu ] will get all support you can imagine.

Contact us on Twitter (*), if ever there might be something not quite clear, simply wrong, or needs to be added.

@benoehler

(*) Communication platform is not email but the micro-blogger "Twitter". As first step to effective, multi-dimensional online communication we expect you to open a personal Twitter account with your *real name* and an avatar on Twitter with your face not from fifteen years ago, but from today.

To research the genesis of Christianity in all its various forms and expressions in history until today is probably one of the most fascinating activities. We will step by step try to reveal one cultural layer after another. To bridge 2500 years of permanently mutating social experience is not an easy project. You will have to be patient, get trained in your gift of imagination, and be humbled to respect how humans like you suffered through life or enjoyed special moments.

The outlook shows you the first five units that are intended to "warm you up" and to get you used to the matter.

The next five units give you a rough impression about life and society of the first two/three hundred years -- years that shaped Christianity's childhood.

The last five units go deeper. They dissect the cultural hotbed of early Christianity and shed some light on the "apocalypticism", theologically speaking the "eschatological" character of the Christian movement. In other words, until Constantine the Great Christians believed that the end of the world was near.

Some technical stuff:

In each module you have your five lessons on slides. "Lesson" in our online context does not relate to the traditional definition of a learning unit. Here it is more or less a flashlight, or a first idea about a huge and complex topic. To really dig into human tragedy in that particular area and time would take years. We just want you to get a little bit more familiar with what people of these times thought, spoke, and felt. To imagine how people lived their lives is, of course, always subjective. (There's no way to escape our subjectivity. And that's OK.)

After each lesson we will ask you to write a short summary about what you have learned. Write it with your own words and not less than 500 words each. Show that you comprehend the various discussed aspects! You will spread your summarizing thoughts on slide notes with as many slides as you need. The sky is the limit. Publish your specific lesson deck url on Twitter.

Here some helpful info:
http://goo.gl/FE2IW1
http://goo.gl/rW4NuF
http://goo.gl/kw776p (deck intro)
http://goo.gl/S1I0yb (deck intro)

Any question? Tweet us!

We mean real coffee and a break of at least five minutes.

What is history? How did history happen and why? Theories of history provide models and systems as answer to both questions. Some call the theoretical research that is related to these questions "Philosophy of History".

Read the Wikipedia article about Philosophy of History http://goo.gl/uY0Y0D .
Read also Paul Newall about the Philosophy of History http://goo.gl/3dRtAY .

Historiography is the science that researches the way people capture, interpret and
present the past. Croce said: "All history is contemporary history..."It is seen with
my eyes today. Dewey claims: "All history is necessarily written from the standpoint of
the present".
Read Nick Jardin: Historiography of the Sciences (Bibliography) (2000) http://goo.gl/r6rnCx .

Historicism believes that there exist historical laws: If x happens, y will follow.
Karl Popper in "The Poverty of Historicism" rejects that. He believes that scientific laws describe closed system. But human beings, and even human systems/societies are never closed.

There are all kinds of historical philosophies that were developed over time.
Here are only a few:
Historical Realism - historical reality or "what really happened".
Historical Anti-Representationalism - all historiography is fiction, because nothing can be proven.
Linear Theories - Hegel; history as process with beginning and end; history develops progressively.
Cyclical Theories - Toynbee.

Accounts of history are called primary and secondary sources. Sources are human traces that must be understood and interpreted. A primary source contains traces of civilization that survived their authors. This can be architecture, infrastructure (roads, pipelines), monuments.

Others teach that primary documents are predominantly
personal diaries, eyewitness accounts of events, and oral histories.

Secondary sources are human reflections about historical happenings expressed in art,
literature, and research. The author of a secondary source did not eyewitness what he
is presenting in written form.

Read:
http://goo.gl/OoBNkZ

Create a deck:
Why did something happen? Does it have a meaning for today or tomorrow?
Do we learn from history? Whose history is selectively described? Are there
groups excluded from historiography? Which events/ historical facts are important,
which aren't? Where is the center of a system of historical facts? Is it possible to only describe something, or am I always explaining/interpreting how I perceive it?
Can the human factor be scientifically described and researched? Examples: WW II,
Orange Revolution, Spring in the Middle East. Create a deck (about 1000 words) that gives answers to the question:

What exactly is Historiography and why is it so important for human society?

In light of lesson #1 and the various philosophies and theories about how history works and how we can approach it, let us now take some time to think about how we can present historical events to others. At first glance we already see that there are all kinds of different events that each need their specific way of presentation...

CC Wikicommons: "The main figure shows eight records of local temperature variability on multi-centennial scales throughout the course of the Holocene, and an average of these (thick dark line). The data are for the period from 10000 BC to 2000 CE, which is from 12000 BP to the present time." http://commons.wikimedia.org retr. March 14, 2012

CC Wikicommons: "Raid on Taihoku (Current Taipei), Taiwan, Japan. Air Force History Research Agency, United States. 1945."

CC Wikicommons: "Warden's notebook page, with "mug shot" of Robert Stroud, 594-AZ,
aka "The Birdman of Alcatraz.",1942 - Warden's Notebook Pages, 1934 – 1963.
Records of the Bureau of Prisons, 1870 - 1981; Record Group 129; National Archives.

Read:
http://goo.gl/bTZJ4S

Create a deck:
History is history because human experience is described. And here is the biggest challenge.
How can you research human happiness and tragedy with scientific tools?
Above we have shown you three historical events that were historically documented.
Compare them, show characteristics of each of them and explain them.
What does a historical document tell you about what happened?
Does it give us the whole truth?

CC Wikicommons: "The Flood Tablet. This is perhaps the mostfamous of all cuneiform tablets. It is the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, and describes how the gods sent a flood to destroy the world. Like Noah, Utnapishtim was forewarned and built an ark to house and preserve living things. After the flood he sent out birds to look for dry
land. ME K 3375."

Read:
http://goo.gl/0iOm4A
http://goo.gl/8qJ1XJ

Create a deck:
Why is writing necessary for the creation of tradition over generations?
How do traditions influence culture?
Would our modern world be possible without writing systems?

With the use of writing systems and the technique of organizing and saving information over many generations -- actually until today -- human thinking over thousands of years is approachable and can be researched. Besides
a comparatively few written testimonies from neighboring cultures the Semitic texts that Christians call "Old
Testament" are incredible complete and consistent and provide an astonishing variety of text qualities.

In this lesson we want to think about the dynamics that work, once somebody begins to write down what s/he
thinks, experiences and sees. Later the recipient, the reader, also undergoes a complex process of perceiving,
reflecting and making personal choices. Under certain circumstances s/he might re-write what s/he has read and
trade it to another generation of readers. In many cases a subtle and slow paradigm shift might evolve.

Without any doubt all text material of the OT has been processed, written down, and traded by human beings.
Therefore it seems to be legitimate for an historian to ask whether the above described paradigm shift phenomenon
can also be applied to biblical material. It is important not to give theological answers to historical questions.

Read:
http://goo.gl/6T21ek
http://goo.gl/QrwhrQ

Create a deck:
What happens in the mind of a person that starts to write something black on white, or publishes something for his friends on a network like Twitter or Facebook?
Describe in detail the process of reflection, verbalization and the way it influences the perception of reality of the writer during and after the writing process.
What happens in the mind of the reader? How does the read content influence the reader's view and choices during and after the lecture?

Where is divine revelation between biblical poetry,
historical report, and prophecy?

Please create a deck with not less than 2000 words on not less than 15 slides.

Without any doubt it is quite rewarding to read and meditate the precious texts that we find
on almost each page of the Old Testament. During the exploration of this material we observe that historical report and prophetical insight sometimes overlap and are not critically divided.

This is a phenomenon that we can also observe in today's journalism.

Prophecy and wisdom are more than mere information. In this lesson we want to research what
prophecy is and how it works. Again be reminded that this is no theological course but an intro into historical methodology.

Read:
http://goo.gl/wqxdpW
http://goo.gl/nxB57G
http://goo.gl/BlNypI
http://goo.gl/VdzOec
http://goo.gl/8Pu5tF

Create a deck:
Give a detailed explanation of the various genres of the text collection of the OT.
What is history, poetry, and prophecy in these texts? What are the characteristics
of each of them and what do they all have in common?

Besides the links that we give you at the end of each lesson we expect you to research
independently on the net. Ask yourself, why people over many hundreds of years collected written poetry, historical witnesses, prophecies, theological explanations, rules and laws and entrusted
them to the next generation.

What are the moving forces to keep such human knowledge for
later times?

Read:
http://goo.gl/wr6x9W
http://goo.gl/eXJ7Tc
http://goo.gl/T7vMz3
http://goo.gl/ivlGSI
http://goo.gl/FPIhuK

Create a deck:
Present an overview of the structure of the OT. Give details of the process how the texts of the OT one by one historically appeared and how the OT as a whole grew together as "one book" over the centuries.
Try to write with your own words and not less than 500 words.

Some vitamins for your brain cells, some oxygen, go to the window, move a bit, at least five minutes...

Contrary to the traditional historiography of the nineteenth century that painted Greece and Rome predominantly in beautiful and heroic colors, reality of daily life looked rather painful and poor, at least for the majority of the Empire. On that dark canvas of social suffering Christianity developed. In the following lessons we research various phenomena of daily life and the consequences it had for the thinking of people.

We expect from you to research the Internet independently. Although we give you a lot of information you have to collect the answers to your questions creatively on the Internet and on your own..

"MacMullen estimates that the average population density in cities of the Roman Empire may have approached two hundred per acre--an equivalent found in modern Western cities only in industrial slums. Further, given that much of the space--one-fourth, by MacMullen's calculations--was devoted to public areas, 'the bulk of the population had typically to put up with most uncomfortable crowding at home, made tolerable by the attractive spaciousness of public facilities…It follows that privacy was rate. Much of life was lived on the streets and sidewalks, squares and porticoes--even more than in Mediterranean cities today." [Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):29]

"If we assume a population of about a million, we must conclude that Rome in the early principate was one of the most densely populated cities the world has ever known--as crowded, probably, as modern Bombay or Calcutta." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):90]

"The built-up area of imperial Rome corresponded more or less to that enclosed by the third-century walls of Aurelian, 1,373 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acre), which implies a population density of about 730 per hectare (300 per acre). This compares with an overall density of 452 per hectare in modern Bombay, 364 for Dublin, 295 for Calcutta, and 224 for Mexico City. Most of these modern cities have upper-class residential areas and parks, which decrease the density. The highest spot densities recorded are for Hong Kong (1,656 per hectare), Bombay (1,169 per hectare), and Calcutta (1,018 per hectare). Modern figures are taken from the United Nations' 1977 Compendium of Social Statistics (New York, 1980)." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Johns Hopkins):337].

Read:
http://goo.gl/QaS08g

Create a deck following the below instructions:

Compare both societies and describe the major differences.

Are there any similarities, and if yes, how did people then
try to tackle typical problems compared to today's approach?

After having compared both societies in detail, are there any differences in respect to dominating value systems?

How do these value systems understand "dignity of life"?

The society was very hierarchical, with layers of patron/client relationships, and with a very high dependence on patrons.
"What may be more significant is that fairly often in imperial times women were asked to serve as founders or patrons of men's clubs. This might involve provision of a place of meeting, either in the patron's house or in a special building erected or obtained for the purpose, or an endowment for the other expenses of the association, including its banquets, sacrifices, and funeral expenses for members. [Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):24]

"Such subsidies apart, the poor did what they could. Traditionally they became the clients of patrons who provided food or money in exchange for political support or other help. If that did not work--and the sources show that the process could involved an intensely competitive scamble--there was begging, stealing, or starving." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City(Johns Hopkins):134]

"'Middling' persons had always needed protectors." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):50]

Read:
http://goo.gl/l5c7Zy
http://goo.gl/7TUY4W

Create a deck:
What do you think a hierarchy in society is necessary for?
Compare hierarchies in totalitarian societies with those in democratic societies.
Are there differences? Which ones?

Ethnic divisions were fairly strong, with no statistically dominant group, creating a complex society.

"As a consequence of Rome's entry into the East and her active interest in the cities, urban society became somewhat more complex than it had been even during the Hellenistic age. For a very long time groups of foreigners had gathered in each city: merchants and artisans following the armies or in search of better markets or better access to transportation, persons enslaved and displaced by war or piracy and now set free, political exiles, soldiers of fortune. These non-citizen residents, or metics, often retained some sense of ethnic identity by establishing local cults of their native gods or by forming a voluntary association, which also had at least the trappings of religion." [Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):13]

"When a stranger arrived in a city, then, it is taken for granted that he knew, or could easily learn, where to find immigrants and temporary residents from his own country or ethnos and practitioners of his own trade. Nothing could be more natural, for these were the two most important factors in the formation and identification of neighborhoods.." [Meeks, The First Urban Christians (Yale) :29] (He gives examples of Jewish quarters, linen-weavers quarters, etc.)

"By the first century CE non-Romans and their descendants made up a large part, if not the majority, of the common people of the city [Rome], a large population of free resident aliens, and the entire slave class." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):129]

"Roman tenement buildings were usually the only places open to them [new immigrants to Rome]. Persons of the same nationality tended to congregate in individual apartment buildings as new arrivals sought the companionship of established compatriots." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):131]

"There were eighteen identifiable ethnic quarters within Antioch" [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):158]

"What does seem clear is that the social integration of Greco-Roman cities was severely disrupted by the durability of internal ethnic divisions, which typically took the form of distinctive ethnic precincts. Ethnic diversity and a constant influx of newcomers will tend to undercut social integration, thus exposing residents to a variety of harmful consequences, including high rates of deviance and disorder. Indeed, this is the major reason why Greco-Roman cities were so prone to riots." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):158]

Read:
http://goo.gl/JuPauK
http://goo.gl/peVhyE

Create a deck:
How did the various ethnic groups shape the Roman Empire?
Compare the old times with the evolution of the modern United States.

There was a high frequency of single-parent families, with women retaining custody of children.
"Inscriptions in Rome also mention a number of single-parent families (only one parent is named on the inscription). The frequency of divorce and of the early death of one parent must have led to frequent remarriage, and thus to stepchildren and blended families." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):135]

"On the other hand, women in nonlegal marriages could leave a relationship without interference by the state. Such women were far more likely to get custody of their children, since Roman law recognized the mother as the only legitimate parent in an illegitimate relationship. By contrast, the divorcing father in a legal Roman marriage almost always was awarded custody of the children, since they were his heirs. Many lower-class families were fatherless, requiring the mother to take full responsibility to provide for and raise her children, thus acquiring the rights and duties of a head of household." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):.141]

"When the marriage dissolved, she probably kept the children." [Donfried/Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Eerdmans):150]

"For what we know of the demography of the Roman world and of similar societies suggests that the destruction of the family unit by the death or desertion of male protectors and wage earners was the single greatest cause of poverty." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):58]

Read:
http://goo.gl/z59DHJ
http://goo.gl/WUHy8y

Create a deck:
Write a short overview of the family life of that era. Give details about what seems to be most important for you.
Are there any differences between a family of those times and a family today?

Create a deck:

Write about the history of the social group that is called "family".

Begin with ancient times, through the Middle Ages, early modern times, up to our time.

Write not less than 2000 words on not less than 15 slides.

Turnover and poverty in the city was extremely high, due to plague, migration, and high mortality rates--resulting in urban problems.

"As noted, Greco-Roman cities required a constant and substantial stream of new-comers simply to maintain their populations. As a result, at any given moment a very considerable proportion of the population consisted of recent newcomers--Greco-Roman cities were peopled by strangers. It is well known that the crime rates of modern cities are highly correlated with rates of population turnover…This is because where there are large numbers of newcomers, people will be deficient in interpersonal attachments, and it is attachments that bind us to the moral order." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):156f]

"Night fell over the city like the shadow of a great danger, diffused, sinister, and menacing. Everyone fled to his home, shut himself in, and barricaded the entrance. The shops fell silent, safety chains were drawn behind the leaves of the doors.... If the rich had to sally forth, they were accompanied by slaves who carried torches to light and protect them on their way .... Juvenal sighs that to go out to supper without having made your will was to expose yourself to reproach of carelessness ... [W]e need only turn to the leaves of the Digest [to discover the extent to which criminals] abounded in the city. " [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):157]

"Any accurate portrait of Antioch in New Testament times must depict a city filled with misery, danger, fear, despair, and hatred. A city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half of the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most of the children who lived lost at least one parent before reaching maturity. A city filled with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers. A city so lacking in stable networks of attachments that petty incidents could prompt mob violence. A city where crime flourished and the streets were dangerous at night. And, perhaps above all, a city repeatedly smashed by cataclysmic catastrophes: where a resident could expect literally to be homeless from time to time, providing that he or she was among the survivors…People living in such circumstances must often have despaired. Surely it would not be strange for them to have concluded that the end of days drew near. And surely too they must often have longed for relief, for hope, indeed for salvation." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):160f]

"For they [the lowest classes, without social attachments to patrons] provided the manpower for dangerous urban riots. They were not easy to control. They were men without honor. Without honor, they were difficult to coerce. They had no status to lose and no wealth that might be threatened by fines. They could only be beaten, not blackmailed, into submission. Their daily behavior showed this only too clearly." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):53]

The truly destitute were 5-10% of the population, but those in 'shallow poverty' would have been most of the middling "class".

"In the Roman sense of values, predicated on a morality of reciprocal favors granted and expected, helping the poor and homeless was simply not the traditional way. That kind of charity was an Oriental concept codified by Jews and Christians who became conspicuous and a little suspect in their zeal for taking care of the sick and poor." [Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City(Johns Hopkins):135]

"Preaching at Antioch in the 380's, John Chrysostom told his congregation that they should think of their city as being made up of one-tenth of rich residents, one-tenth of 'the poor who have nothing at all,' while the remaining 80 percent were of 'the middling sort'…The tolerance level of such societies appears to have wavered between accepting 5 percent to 10 percent of the population as permanently 'poor' and in need of relief, while being prepared to help between 20 percent and 25 percent of the population for short periods in times of crisis." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):14]

"To use a term favored by historians of early modern Europe, John's [Chrysostom] hearers lived in a society characterized by widespread 'shallow' poverty. And for most of them, the 'deep' poverty of actual destitution remained an ever-present possibility. 'Deep' poverty was a state into which them might fall, and from which they might emerge again, scrambling back painfully into 'shallow' poverty, on many occasions in the course of their lives." [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):15]

Create a deck:
Describe which effect successful business and a living in poverty has on thinking and lifestyle.
Compare both.
What is the essence of "poverty" today?

"In 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire….During the fifteen-year duration of the epidemic, from a quarter to a third of the empire's population died from it, including Marcus Aurelius himself…Then in 251 a new and equally devastating epidemic again swept the empire, hitting the rural areas as hard as the cities. " [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):73]

"The following summary of natural and social disasters that struck Antioch is instructive and rather typical. I have not attempted a careful survey of the sources to assemble my list but have depended primarily on Downey (1963). The totals are probably incomplete. Moreover, I skipped the many serious floods because they did not cause substantial loss of life. Still, the summary shows how extremely vulnerable Greco-Roman cities were to attacks, fires, earthquakes, famines, epidemics, and devastating riots. Indeed, this litany of disasters is so staggering that it is difficult to grasp its human meaning…During the course of about six hundred years of intermittent Roman rule, Antioch was taken by unfriendly forces eleven times and was plundered and sacked on five of these occasions. The city was also put to siege, but did not fall, two other times. In addition, Antioch burned entirely or in large part four times, three times by accident and once when the Persians carefully burned the city to the ground after picking it clean of valuables and taking the surviving population into captivity. Because the temples and many public building were built of stone, it is easy to forget that Greco-Roman cities consisted primarily of woodframe buildings, plastered over, that were highly flammable and tightly packed together. Severe fires were frequent, and there was no pumping equipment with which to fight them. Besides the four huge conflagrations noted above, there were many large fires set during several of the six major periods of rioting that racked the city. By a major riot I mean one resulting in substantial damage and death, as distinct from the city's frequent riots in which only a few were killed…Antioch probably suffered from literally hundreds of significant earthquakes during these six centuries, but eight were so severe that nearly everything was destroyed and huge numbers died. Two other quakes may have been nearly as serious. At least three killer epidemics struck the city--with mortality rates probably running above 25 percent in each. Finally, there were at least five really serious famines. That comes to forty-one natural and social catastrophes, or an average of one every fifteen years." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):160-161]

Create a deck:
Did the catastrophes in the Roman Empire happen by accident or were they man made?

There were no meaningful social/medical support services, with physical abandonment common during plague.
"…they died with no one to look after them; indeed there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention.... The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law... No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. " (Thucydides, on the plague of Athens)

'The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape. [Dionysius, in Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):83]

"It is worth noting that the famous classical physician Galen lived through the first epidemic during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. What did he do? He got out of Rome quickly, retiring to a country estate in Asia Minor until the danger receded." [Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton):85]

"What needs to be stressed is that the Christian poorhouse-cum-hospital was a novel institution in the ancient world. Temples, of course, had always contained large sleeping quarters for those in search of healing, as at the incubatory shrine of Ascelpius at Epidaurus. But the new xenodocheia were not necessarily connected with healing shrines. Only soldiers and slaves--that is, persons who had no family to look after them--had valetudinaria, hospital quarters in their camps and slave barracks. To extend this facility to the poor in general and to associate it with any human settlement was a new departure. " [Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Brandeis):34]

Create a deck:
How did infrastructure (and the lack of it) influence the thinking of humans of the Roman Empire?
Infrastructure includes roads, transport, water supply, hospitals, garbage recycling and much more..

Upward mobility was very doable, but 'status inconsistency' was frequent too.
"We have already seen that there were a number of women prominently involved in the Pauline circle who exhibited the sorts of status inconsistency what would inspire a Juvenal to eloquent indignation. There were women who headed households, who ran businesses and had independent wealth, who traveled with their own slaves and helpers."[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):71]

"In recent years, however, most sociologists have come to see social stratification as a multidimensional phenomenon; to describe the social level of an individual or a group, one must attempt to measure their rank along each of the relevant dimensions. For example, one might discover that, in a given society, the following variables affect how an individual is ranked: power (defined as 'the capacity for achieving goals in social systems'), occupational prestige, income or wealth, education and knowledge, religious and ritual purity, family and ethnic-group position, and local-community status (evaluation within some subgroup, independent of the larger society but perhaps interaction with it). It would be a rare individual who occupied exactly the same rank, in either his own view or that of others, in terms of all these factors…All these kinds of behavior, some sociologists believe, show that a high degree of status inconsistency produces unpleasant experiences that lead people to try to remove the inconsistency by changing the society, themselves, or perceptions of themselves. "[Meeks, The First Urban Christians(Yale):54,55]

Create a deck:
Was it possible for somebody from the bottom of social hierarchy to climb up the ladder?
Compare to the United States as the so-called country with unlimited possibilities.

Long-term dominating Christian communities had urban character. We have studied the social background
of these communities in the lessons above. It is your task to research how all these circumstances had a major effect on the development of Christian thinking.

No home assignment this time. Make yourself ready for the final!

The "final" is a very special project. The course provided much opportunity to collect some experience in how to create decks.

This time we expect you to build a deck with at least 35 slides. Your slide notes should give extensive in-depth detail. Facts and arguments have to be supported by links.

Topic:
Describe major strengths and weaknesses of the Western world that are rooted in Christian history and heritage.

We'll publish here the winners of the final deck competition.

In the end of this course we would like to ask you to
give us a kind of feedback in regard to this coursework.

Create a deck and present your opinion about pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses.

Please, be concise and come with good arguments.

Our courses are continuously optimized, actualized,
and modified to achieve a high level of quality.

Please, give us an honest evaluation of your experience
with these fifteen lessons.