While I do not endorse the Marxist view of history, I have to say that there was no proletariat in antiquity according to Historical Materialism. Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.
Sometimes words like this take on a more general meaning, like how “bourgeois” is used sometimes to imply association with the economic elite rather than specifically a middle class between peasants and aristocracy … it’s not necessarily wrong to classify slaves or the lower classes as “proletariat” in a general sense for the same reason, the term is just being used in a more generic way.
Point being, Christianity spread first and fastest among Middle Eastern slave populations. The violence inflicted on slave Christians was the same violence that had been inflicted on pagan and monotheist minorities in ages past. Christians were simply better at organizing into opposition, which freaked out the Pagans, which heightened the divide between wealthy masters and increasingly rebellious slaves, which fueled civil wars and ultimately toppled the smaller insular, sclerotic military cults ruling Rome up to that point.
Along the way, Christian social networks became a ladder by which the lower classes could climb into higher station. And Constantine claiming the imperial crown was the apex of this early Christian revolution.
“Proletariat”
While I do not endorse the Marxist view of history, I have to say that there was no proletariat in antiquity according to Historical Materialism. Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.
Sometimes words like this take on a more general meaning, like how “bourgeois” is used sometimes to imply association with the economic elite rather than specifically a middle class between peasants and aristocracy … it’s not necessarily wrong to classify slaves or the lower classes as “proletariat” in a general sense for the same reason, the term is just being used in a more generic way.
Fair enough.
Point being, Christianity spread first and fastest among Middle Eastern slave populations. The violence inflicted on slave Christians was the same violence that had been inflicted on pagan and monotheist minorities in ages past. Christians were simply better at organizing into opposition, which freaked out the Pagans, which heightened the divide between wealthy masters and increasingly rebellious slaves, which fueled civil wars and ultimately toppled the smaller insular, sclerotic military cults ruling Rome up to that point.
Along the way, Christian social networks became a ladder by which the lower classes could climb into higher station. And Constantine claiming the imperial crown was the apex of this early Christian revolution.
The Jews were already militant, and we know that Christians were not even perceived as a distinct group from Jews by the Romans initially.