3.4 christians in the roman empire

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• Leerjaar 1

3.4 christians in the roman empire

What did the Romans copy from the Greeks?	Proletarians	How did the Western Roman empire collapse?
dictator	Germanic peoples	Pax Romana
What is Roman Law?	big landowners	elites

Learning questions

How did the roman empire become Christian?

What are the differences between te Roman and the Christian wordview

The plan

What do you know about christianity?

explanation

Roman vs christian worldview 

writing a letter 

Assignment

write down everything you know about christianity

Try to make categories

• Explanation

• The Roman empire consisted of many religions
• One of them was Judaism
• - Monotheistic
• - holy books
• - holy land 

crash course christianity

• Main question: How to get things right with God?
• Judaism: following the law and making sacrifices
• Christianity:
• - you can't, everybody sins 
• - Jesus took all the blame
• - What does that ask of us?
• 1. gratitude
• 2. Kindness and foregiveness to others
• 3. care for all of creation (humans, animals and nature)
• What can we hope:
• - That one day all of creation will be whole again 

Christians in the Romans empire

• Two probems:
• - too many peoples became christians
• - christians didn't worship the emperor
• Many christians were killed (Nero, for example)
• In 313, emperor Constantin became a christian
• After that, the church became very powerful (as we will see in the next chapter)
• New problems with power

Assignment step one (together)

Search on the internet for:

- Roman values

- Christian values

Write down the most important differences

15 minutes

Step 2 (homework, alone)

1. Choose one of these people

- a Roman who meets a christian for the first time

- a christian who lives in the Roman empire

2. Write a page from your diary, in which you talk about yourself and your views about the world and the other group

3. Important:

- structure (head, body, tail)

- use as many historical details as you can

- use your knowledge of Roman and christian values

- most important: you áre a Roman or a christian, try to empathize