The Triumph of Christianity

The best estimate is that there were 131 males per 100 females in Rome, rising to 140 males per 100 females in the rest of Italy, Asia Minor, and North Africa.

In contrast, in the pagan world, and especially among the philosophers, mercy was regarded as a character defect and pity as a pathological emotion: because mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice.

In keeping with their Jewish origins, Christians condemned the exposure of infants as murder.31 As Justin Martyr (100–165) put it, “we have been taught that it is wicked to expose even new-born children... [for] we would then be murderers.”32 So, substantially more Christian (and Jewish) female infants lived.

Christians differed in this respect not only from pagans, but from Jews: “The Christian clergy... took a step that separated them from the rabbis of Palestine.... [T]hey welcomed women as patrons and even offered women roles in which they could act as collaborators.”25 As Wayne Meeks summed up: “Women... are Paul’s fellow workers as evangelists and

Women were especially drawn to Christianity because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.

As Rabbi Eliezer is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud (ca. 90 CE ), “Better burn the Torah than teach it to a woman.” Indeed, elsewhere the Talmud advises: “Everyone who talketh much with a woman causes evil to himself.”11

IN THE YEAR 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Some medical historians suspect this was the first appearance of smallpox in the West.46

The second chapter of the Didache (an early Christian text probably written in the first century) orders: “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.”

need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.