第3章 桎梏的开始
基督教迅速征服了西方世界，这件事有时被人们作为佐证，来强调基督教思想来源于天国。我并不想争论这个观点，只是想指出，大多数罗马人水深火热的生活和最早期传教士的成功颇有干系，就像困苦生活导致人们喜欢神话寓一样。
至此，我已向大家展示了罗马图画的一个方面——士兵、政客、企业家和科学富翁的世界，这是些幸运儿，他们住在拉特兰山山坡、坎帕尼亚山脉峡谷和那不勒斯海湾，过着幸福而文明的生活。
但他们只代表故事的一个方面。
在城郊多如牛毛的贫民窟里，却几乎难以看到那种使诗人欢呼太平盛世、激发演说家把奥克塔维安比喻成朱庇特的繁荣盛况。
就在那儿，就在那人头攒动、臭气冲天的一排排漫长无边、凄凉悲惨的租赁房屋中，住着的是一大群劳苦大众。对他们来说，生活不过是无休止的饥饿、流放和痛苦。在这些男女的眼里，只有一个朴实的木匠讲的精彩故事才是真实可信的。这个木匠住在大海对岸的一个小村庄，他用自己的双手劳动换来了每天的衣食，热爱贫苦之辈，因此被冷酷贪婪的敌人谋害了。的确，所有罗马人都知道密斯拉、伊希
died hundreds and thousands of years ago and what people knew about them they only knew by hearsay from other people who had also died hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Joshua of Nazareth, on the other hand, the Christ, the anointed, as the Greek missionaries called him, had been on this earth only a short time ago. Many a man then alive might have known him, might have listened to him, if by chance he had visited southern Syria during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
And there were others, the baker on the corner, the fruit peddler from the next street, who in a little dark garden on the Appian Way had spoken with a certain Peter, a fisherman from the village of Capernaum, who had actually been near the mountain of Golgotha on that terrible afternoon when the Prophet had been nailed to the cross by the soldiers of the Roman governor.
We should remember this when we try to understand the sudden popular appeal of this new faith.
It was that personal touch, that direct and personal feeling of intimacy and near-by-ness which gave Christianity such a tremendous advantage over all other creeds. That and the love which Jesus had so incessantly expressed for the submerged and disinherited among all nations and which radiated from everything he had said.Whether he had put it into the exact terms used by his followers was of very slight importance. The slaves had ears to hear and they understood. And trembling before the high promise of a glorious future, they for the first time in their lives beheld the rays of a new hope.
At last the words had been spoken that were to set them free.
No longer were they poor and despised, an evil thing in the sight of the great of this world.
On the contrary, they were the predilected children of a loving Father.
They were to inherit the earth and the fullness thereof.
斯和艾斯塔蒂，但这些神都死了，在千百年前就离开了人世，人们也只是根据千百年前就死了的人留下的传闻才知道了他们的事迹。
可是，拿撒勒的约书亚，基督，也就是被希腊传教士称为救世主的人不久前还活在世上。当时很多活着的人都知道他，在提庇留大帝统治时期，如果有人去过叙利亚南部，也许还听过他的演说。
还有其他人：街角的面包师和邻街的水果贩在亚壁古道旁边的黑暗小花园里曾与一个叫彼得的人说过话；伽百农村的一个渔夫曾去过各各他山附近，在先知被罗马士兵钉在十字架上的那个可怕的下午，曾目睹了此事。
如果我们要理解人们为什么突然热衷于新的信仰，就要记住这一点。
正是这种人的接触，正是这种亲密直接的私人感情，使基督教获得了高于其他教义的巨大优越性。耶稣的这种爱，表达了各国深受压迫、丧失权利的民众的呼声，并且传到了四面八方。他说的话是否使用与后人完全一样的词汇毫不重要，奴隶们能够理解。他们在崇高诺言面前战栗着，有生以来第一次看到了新希望的光芒。
他们终于盼到了使他们获得自由的话。在世界权势面前，他们不再是可怜、卑贱、可恶的生灵了。
相反，他们成了慈父的宠儿。
他们要继承这个世界以及属于它的富足的一切。
They were to partake of joys withheld from many of those proud masters who even then dwelled behind the high walls of their Samnian villas.
For that constituted the strength of the new faith. Christianity was the first concrete religious system which gave the average man a chance.
Of course I am not talking of Christianity as an experience of the soul—as a mode of living and thinking—and I have tried to explain how, in a world full of the dry-rot of slavery, the good tidings must spread with the speed and fury of an emotional prairie fire. But history, except upon rare occasions, does not concern itself with the spiritual adventures of private citizens, be they free or in bondage.When these humble creatures have been neatly organized into nations, guilds, churches, armies, brotherhoods and federations; when they have begun to obey a single directing head; when they have accumulated sufficient wealth to pay taxes and can be forced into armies for the purpose of national conquest, then at last they begin to attract the attention of our chroniclers and are given serious attention. Hence we know a great deal about the early Church, but exceedingly little about the people who were the true founders of that institution. That is rather a pity, for the early development of Christianity is one of the most interesting episodes in all history.
The Church which finally was built upon the ruins of the ancient empire was really a combination of two conflicting interests. On the one side it stood forth as the champion of those all-embracing ideals of love and charity which the Master himself had taught. But on the other side it found itself ineradicably bound up with that arid spirit of provincialism which since the beginning of time had set the compatriots of Jesus apart from the rest of the world.
In plain language, it combined Roman efficiency with Judaean intolerance and as a result it established a reign of terror over the minds of men which was as efficient as it was illogical.
To understand how this could have happened, we must go back once more to the days of
他们还要分享一直被住在萨姆奈别墅高墙之内骄横跋扈的人所独霸的欢乐。
新信仰的力量由此产生了。基督教是第一个给予普通人关怀的实实在在的宗教体系。
当然，我并不想把基督教说成是灵魂的感受——一种生活和思考的方式——我只是想说，在腐朽的奴隶制社会，这种好事情必然会以极快的速度点燃情感烈火，并得到传播。但是除了个别情况外，历史是不关注普通人的精神冒险的，不管他们是自由人还是奴隶。这些卑微的人被整齐地划分为民族、行会、教会、军队、兄弟会和同盟，当他们开始服从一个统一的指挥，积累了足够的财富来缴税，并被强招入伍为征服其他民族而战时，他们才会吸引编年史家的注意，受到重视。因此，尽管我们对早期基督教会了解很多，却对它的创始人知之甚少。这的确很遗憾，因为基督教的早期发展是最值得探讨的历史之一。
在古老帝国的废墟上最终建立起来的基督教堂，实际上是两个相冲突的利益结合的产物：一个代表友爱慈善理想的高峰，这是耶稣亲自教导的；另一个则代表狭隘的地方主义，由于它的根深蒂固的束缚，使得耶稣的同乡从一开始便与世界其他地方疏远了。
说得浅显些，这种地方主义将罗马人的效率和犹太人的专横联系在一起，结果建立了压抑人的思想的恐怖统治，虽然这种统治行之有效，却不合逻辑。
为了理解事情是如何发生的，我们必须再次回到保罗的年代和耶稣遇难后的
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
头50年，而且我们要牢牢把握住这个事实：基督教是从犹太教内部的变革中产生的，是一场纯民族主义的运动，它从一开始就威胁到了犹太王国的统治者，而不是别人。
耶稣在世时，正在掌权的法利赛人清楚地知道这一点。他们自然十分害怕这种鼓动宣传的严重后果，因为它威胁说要对政府的精神垄断提出质疑，而这种垄断只是建立在野蛮的武力基础上的。为了不被赶走，他们惊慌失措地采取行动，在罗马当局还没来得及插手带走他们的对手之前，就把敌人送上了绞刑架。
谁也说不准，假如当时耶稣还活着，将会采取什么对策。他遇害时还没有把信徒组成一个教派，也没有写下任何东西告诉追随者应该怎样做。
结果证明，这倒成了福音。
由于没有文字形成的规定，没有明确的条例规则汇编，反而使信徒可以自由地遵循其导师的精神，而不是他的法规文字。如果他们被一本书束缚了，那他们很可能会把全部精力用在标点符号之类的迷人话题的讨论上。
当然，如果是这样，那么除了几个专业学者之外，就没有人会对新信仰感兴趣了，基督教就会重蹈其他众多教派的覆辙，以精心写成的文字纲领开始，最后以那些争吵不休的理论家被警察扔到大街上告终。
在过了近20个世纪之后，我们了解了基督教对罗马帝国的严重危害，但令人惊讶的是，既然它对国家安全的威胁就像匈奴人和哥特人的侵略一样，罗马当局竟
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.
The police did watch out, but found little occasion to act. The followers of the new mystery went about their business in a most exemplary fashion. They did not try to over-throw the government.At first, several slaves had expected that the common fatherhood of God and the common brotherhood of man would imply a cessation of the old relation between master and servant. The apostle Paul, however, had hastened to explain that the Kingdom of which he spoke was an invisible and intangible kingdom of the soul and that people on this earth had better take things as they found them, in expectation of the final reward which awaited them in Heaven.
Similarly, a good many wives, chafing at the bondage of matrimony as established by the harsh laws of Rome, had rushed to the conclusion that Christianity was synonymous with emancipation and full equality of rights between men and women. But again Paul had stepped forward and in a number of tactful letters had implored his beloved sisters to refrain from all those extremes which would make their church suspect in the eyes of the more conservative pagans and had persuaded them to continue in that state of semi-slavery which had been woman's share ever since Adam and Eve had been driven out of Paradise. All this showed a most commendable respect for the law and as far as the authorities were concerned, the Christian missionaries could therefore come and go at will and preach as
然没有采取任何实际行动。他们当然知道，正是这位东方先知导致了家奴的巨大骚动，女人们也喋喋不休地谈论上帝会很快重现，而且许多老人还一本正经地预言地球即将在一团火球中毁灭。
但这已经不是贫苦阶层第一次为了某个新的宗教人物而疯狂了，而且很可能也不是最后一次。只要警察密切关注，贫穷的狂热者就扰乱不了帝国的安宁。
情况就是这样。
警方的确戒备森严，但找不到诉诸武力的任何机会。新的宗教追随者以一种很值得效仿的方式在做自己的事情。他们并不想推翻政府。起初，有几个奴隶还期望上帝的父爱和人与人之间的兄弟之情会终止旧的主仆关系，但圣徒保罗赶忙来解释说，他所说的王国是看不见摸不着的灵魂王国，尘世的人最好对一切都逆来顺受，以期在天国得到好报。
同样，许多妻子也在对罗马法典规定的婚姻束缚进行抗争，她们得出结论说，基督教是解放、男女权力平等的同义词。但保罗又跳出来，以一连串娓娓动听的字眼恳求心爱的姐妹们不要走向极端，那样将会使保守的异教徒对教会产生疑心；而且他还劝她们继续维持半奴隶的状态，因为自从亚当和夏娃被逐出天堂以后，这一直是女人的本分。所有这些都表现了对法律的极大顺从，很值得效仿，因此对罗马当局来说，基督教传教士可以随意往来，因为他们的说教最符合当政者的口味和愿望。
best suited their own individual tastes and preferences.
But as has happened so often in history, the masses had shown themselves less tolerant than their rulers. Just because people are poor it does not necessarily follow that they are high-minded citizens who could be prosperous and happy if their conscience would only permit them to make those compromises which are held to be necessary for the accumulation of wealth.
And the Roman proletariat, since centuries debauched by free meals and free prize-fights, was no exception to this rule. At first it derived a great deal of rough pleasure from those sober-faced groups of men and women who with rapt attention listened to the weird stories about a God who had ignominiously died on a cross, like any other common criminal, and who made it their business to utter loud prayers for the hoodlums who pelted their gatherings with stones and dirt.
The Roman priests, however, were not able to take such a detached view of this new development.
The religion of the empire was a state religion. It consisted of certain solemn sacrifices made upon certain specified occasions and paid for in cash. This money went toward the support of the church officers.When thousands of people began to desert the old shrines and went to another church which did not charge them anything at all, the priests were faced by a very serious reduction in their salary. This of course did not please them at all, and soon they were loud in their abuse of the godless heretics who turned their backs upon the Gods of their fathers and burned incense to the memory of a foreign prophet.
But there was another class of people in the city who had even better reason to hate the Christians. Those were the fakirs, who as Indian Yogis and Pooughies and hierophants of the great and only mysteries of Isis and Ishtar and Baal and Cybele and Attis had for years made a fat and easy living at the expense of the credulous Roman middle classes. If the
但是，正像历史上经常发生的那样，群众表现出来的宽容精神却不如他们的统治者。因为他们贫困潦倒，即使良知准许他们为了必要的财富积累而做出妥协让步，他们也不会成为快慰和富足的品格高尚之人。
古罗马的最下层人，由于数世纪以来沉湎于免费的大吃大喝和职业拳击赛，都毫无例外地遵守着上述法则。起初，他们从那些一脸严肃的男男女女那儿获得了大量粗俗的快乐，这些男女全神贯注地听着耶稣像其他普通罪犯那样不光彩地死在十字架上的神奇故事，而且他们把为那些流氓无赖（他们朝耶稣投掷了无数石头和泥土）高声祈祷看成是自己的责任。
然而，罗马教士对这种新发展不能泰然处之。
罗马帝国奉行的宗教是国教，它包括在某些特定时节举行的隆重祭祀，人们要为此缴纳现钱。这些钱自然进了教堂主管的腰包。如果成千上万的人开始抛弃旧的圣地，而投奔另一个不收任何钱的教堂，教士的收入就会大大减少。这当然让他们不高兴，不久他们就竭力诽谤咒骂不信奉传统神灵的异教徒，说他们背叛了祖先的上帝，而且为了纪念异邦的先知而进香。
但城市中另一个阶层的人更有理由憎恨基督教。他们是些骗子，他们就像印度的瑜伽信奉者和伊希斯、阿施塔尔、巴力、自然女神和阿提斯神话中伟大而唯一的祭司长一样，年复一年地挥霍着偏听轻信的罗马中产阶级的钱，过着舒适奢侈的生活。假如基督教建立了一个竞争性组织，为他们自己的上天启示而收取一定的费
Christians had set up a rival establishment and had charged a handsome price for their own particular revelations, the guild of spook-doctors and palmists and necromancers would have had no reason for complaint.Business was business and the soothsaying fraternity did not mind if a bit of their trade went elsewhere. But these Christians—a plague upon their silly notions!—refused to take any reward.Yea, they even gave away what they had, fed the hungry and shared their own roof with the homeless. And all that for nothing! Surely that was going too far and they never could have done this unless they were possessed of certain hidden sources of revenue, the origin of which no one thus far had been able to discover.
Rome by this time was no longer a city of free-born burghers. It was the temporary dwelling place of hundreds of thousands of disinherited peasants from all parts of the empire.Such a mob, obeying the mysterious laws that rule the behavior of crowds, is always ready to hate those who behave differently from themselves and to suspect those who for no apparent reason prefer to live a life of decency and restraint. The hail-fellow-well-met who will take a drink and（occasionally）will pay for one is a fine neighbor and a good fellow. But the man who holds himself aloof and refuses to go to the wild-animal show in the Coliseum, who does not cheer when batches of prisoners of war are being dragged through the streets of the Capitoline Hill, is a spoil-sport and an enemy of the community at large.
When in the year 64 a great confiagration destroyed that part of Rome inhabited by the poorer classes, the scene was set for the first organized attacks upon the Christians.
At first it was rumored that the Emperor Nero, in a fit of drunken conceit, had ordered his capital to be set on fire that he might get rid of the slums and rebuild the city according to his own plans. The crowd, however, knew better. It was the fault of those Jews and Christians who were forever telling each other about the happy day when large balls of fire would descend from Heaven and the homes of the wicked would go up in flames.
Once this story had been successfully started, others followed in rapid succession. One
用，那么巫师、看手相者和巫术师行会是没有理由抱怨的。生意毕竟是生意，预言行业并不在意其他人也干这行。但这些基督徒却出了些该死的主意——他们竟拒绝收取任何报酬，甚至还把自己的东西送给别人，给饥饿者饭吃，把无家可归者请到家里住，而这一切竟不收任何钱。这太过分了，除非他们有某些私下的收入或尚未被发现的财源，否则他们不可能这样做。
这时的罗马已不再是自由民的城市了，它是来自帝国各地的成千上万失去了财产的农民的临时栖身之所。这些下层民众只知道服从统治大多数人行为的玄奥法则，却总是憎恨那些行为与众不同的人，并且对那些无缘无故想过体面而节制生活的人怀有戒心。时常喝上一杯酒、（偶尔）还替别人付钱的好心人的确是好邻居和好伙伴；但自命清高、拒绝去圆形大剧场看斗兽表演、不为在凯皮特林山的街道上游街的一批批战俘而欢呼的人，却成了扫兴的人和大众的公敌。
公元64年，一场大火烧毁了罗马贫民居住的地方，这一事件导致了对基督徒第一次有组织的进攻。
一开始有人谣传是喝得醉醺醺的尼禄皇帝异想天开，命令在首都放火，以便除掉贫民窟，按照他的计划重建罗马城。然而大家知道得很清楚。这是那些犹太人和基督徒干的，因为他们总是谈论那幸福的日子，那时天国大火球就会降临，这邪恶的世界将化为灰烬。
一旦这种说法有根有据，很快就会传开。一个老妇人听到了基督徒和死人说
old woman had heard the Christians talk with the dead.Another knew that they stole little children and cut their throats and smeared their blood upon the altar of their outlandish God.Of course, no one had ever been able to detect them at any of these scandalous practices, but that was only because they were so terribly clever and had bribed the police. But now at last they had been caught red-handed and they would be made to suffer for their vile deeds.
Of the number of faithful who were lynched upon this occasion, we know nothing. Paul and Peter, so it seems, were among the victims for thereafter their names are never heard again.
That this terrible outbreak of popular folly accomplished nothing, it is needless to state. The noble dignity with which the martyrs accepted their fate was the best possible propaganda for the new ideas and for every Christian who perished, there were a dozen pagans, ready and eager to take his place.As soon as Nero had committed the only decent act of his short and useless life（he killed himself in the year 68., the Christians returned to their old haunts and everything was as it had been before.
By this time the Roman authorities were making a great discovery. They began to suspect that a Christian was not exactly the same thing as a Jew.
We can hardly blame them for having committed this error. The historical researches of the last hundred years have made it increasingly clear that the Synagogue was the clearing-house through which the new faith was passed on to the rest of the world.
Remember that Jesus himself was a Jew and that he had always been most careful in observing the ancient laws of his fathers and that he had addressed himself almost exclusively to Jewish audiences. Once, and then only for a short time, had he left his native country, but the task which he had set himself he had accomplished with and by and for his fellow-Jews.Nor was there anything in what he had ever said which could have given the average Roman the impression that there was a deliberate difference between Christianity and Judaism.
What Jesus had actually tried to do was this. He had clearly seen the terrible abuses which had entered the church of his fathers. He had loudly and sometimes successfully protested
话；另一个人得知他们偷小孩，割断他们的喉咙，把血涂在稀奇古怪的上帝祭坛上。当然，没有任何人目睹这些丑恶的勾当，但这仅仅是因为基督徒太狡猾，已经用钱收买了警察。这次，他们终于被当场抓住了，他们必须为他们的罪恶行径接受惩罚。
有多少虔诚的教徒在这一事件中被私刑处死，我们毫无所知。或许保罗和彼得也是受害者，因为从这以后再也没有听到过他们的名字。
不用说，这场愚蠢的民众性的可怕大发泄自然一无所获。牺牲者接受厄运的高贵姿态是对新信仰的最好宣传。尼禄在短暂而无用的一生中做了唯一一件体面的事（这就是他在公元68年自杀）以后，基督徒马上重返旧土，一切依然如故。
这时的罗马当局有了大发现。他们开始怀疑，基督徒和犹太人是两码事。
我们很难责怪他们犯下的这种错误。近百年来的历史研究清晰地表明，犹太教堂其实是一个情报交换所，新信仰通过它传到了世界各地。
要记住，耶稣本人是犹太人，他一直小心谨慎地遵守着祖先的古老律法，几乎只对犹太听众演讲。他离开家乡只有一次，而且时间很短，但他为自己制定的使命却是与他的犹太同胞共同完成的，目的也是为了犹太同胞。他所说的话，没有任何蛛丝马迹会使普通罗马人感到基督教与犹太人有什么细微区别。
耶稣努力想做的实际上是下面这些：他已经清楚地看到各种可怕陋习进入了祖先的教堂，他曾经大声疾呼并有效地和这些陋习做了斗争。但他为之奋斗的只是内部的改革，他从未想过要成为一门新宗教的创始人。假如当时有人向他提到
against them. But he had fought his battles for reform from within.Never apparently had it dawned upon him that he might be the founder of a new religion. If some one had mentioned the possibility of such a thing to him, he would have rejected the idea as preposterous. But like many a reformer before his day and after, he had gradually been forced into a position where compromise was no longer possible. His untimely death alone had saved him from a fate like that of Luther and so many other advocates of reform, who were deeply perplexed when they suddenly found themselves at the head of a brand new party “outside” the organization to which they belonged, whereas they were merely trying to do some good from the “inside.”
For many years after the death of Jesus, Christianity（to use the name long before it had been coined）was the religion of a small Jewish sect which had a few adherents in Jerusalem and in the villages of Judaea and Galilee and which had never been heard of outside of the province of Syria.
It was Gaius Julius Paulus, a full-fledged Roman citizen of Jewish descent, who had first recognized the possibilities of the new doctrine as a religion for all the world. The story of his suffering tells us how bitterly the Jewish Christians had been opposed to the idea of a universal religion instead of a purely national denomination, membership to which should only be open to people of their own race. They had hated the man who dared preach salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike so bitterly that on his last visit to Jerusalem Paul would undoubtedly have suffered the fate of Jesus if his Roman passport had not saved him from the fury of his enraged compatriots.
But it had been necessary for half a battalion of Roman soldiers to protect him and conduct him safely to the coastal town from where he could be shipped to Rome for that famous trial which never took place.
A few years after his death, that which he had so often feared during his lifetime and which he had repeatedly foretold actually occurred.
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. On the place of the temple of Jehovah a
这样的事，他会认为这主意荒唐可笑。但就像在他前后的一些改革者一样，他逐渐陷入了不能再调和的境地。他的过早死亡反而使他免于遭受路德和其他许多改革者那样的命运，这些人本来也只想在“内部”做一点好事，可是当他们突然发现自己成为所属的组织“外部”的一个新团体的首领时，他们陷入了困境。
耶稣死后很多年，基督教（这个名字是很久以后才有的）是犹太教一个小教派，只在耶路撒冷、犹大村和加利利村有几个支持者，而且从未超出叙利亚省的范围。
正是犹太血统的罗马公民盖尤斯·朱利斯·保罗斯（即圣徒保罗）首先意识到这个新教义有可能成为全世界的宗教。他那饱受磨难的故事告诉我们，犹太基督徒是如何强烈反对将这个宗教世界化的。他们只希望它在本国享受统治地位，只对他们自己民族的人开放。他们深恨一视同仁地向犹太人和非犹太人宣扬灵魂拯救的人，因此保罗最后一次来到耶路撒冷时，如果不是他的罗马护照保护而使他免遭被怒火填膺的同乡撕成碎片的话，他肯定会和耶稣的下场一样。
不过还是有必要派出半个营的罗马士兵保护保罗，把他安全地带到港口城市，再从那里乘船回罗马参加那前所未有的著名审判。
他死了几年之后，他一生经常担心而又不断预言的事情真的发生了。
耶路撒冷被罗马人毁了，在耶和华神庙的所在地建起了祭祀朱庇特的新庙。城市的名字改为爱利亚首都，犹太也变成了叙利亚巴勒斯坦罗马行省的一部分。至于
new temple was erected in honor of Jupiter. The name of the city was changed to Aelia Capitolina and Judaea itself had become part of the Roman province of Syria Palaestina.As for the inhabitants, they were either killed or driven into exile and no one was allowed to live within several miles of the ruins on pain of death.
It was the final destruction of their holy city which had been so disastrous to the Jewish-Christians. During several centuries afterwards, in the little villages of the Judaean hinterland colonies might have been found of strange people who called themselves “poor men” and who waited with great patience and amidst everlasting prayers for the end of the world which was at hand. They were the remnants of the old Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem.From time to time we hear them mentioned in books written during the fifth and sixth centuries.Far away from civilization, they developed certain strange doctrines of their own in which hatred for the apostle Paul took a prominent place.After the seventh century however we no longer find any trace of these so-called Nazarenes and Ebionites. The victorious Mohammedans had killed them all.And, anyway, if they had managed to exist a few hundred years longer, they would not have been able to avert the inevitable.
Rome, by bringing east and west and north and south into one large political union, had made the world ready for the idea of a universal religion. Christianity, because it was both simple and practical and full of a direct appeal, was predestined to succeed where Judaism and Mithraism and all of the other competing creeds were predestined to fail.But, unfortunately, the new faith never quite rid itself of certain rather unpleasant characteristics which only too clearly betrayed its origin.
The little ship which had brought Paul and Barnabas from Asia to Europe had carried a message of hope and mercy.
But a third passenger had smuggled himself on board.
He wore a mask of holiness and virtue.
But the face beneath bore the stamp of cruelty and hatred.
And his name was Religious Intolerance.
当地居民，或者被杀，或者被逐出家园，在废墟周围数英里内，不许有人居住。
这座曾给犹太基督徒带来过许多灾难的圣城终于被摧毁了。在以后的几个世纪，在犹太内地移民的一些小村子里会发现一些怪异的人，他们自称是“穷人”，正以极太的耐心和终日不断的祷告等待即将来临的世界末日。他们是耶路撒冷老犹太基督徒团体的残余。我们可以在15世纪和16世纪的书中不时地看到他们的身影。他们远离文明世界，形成了自己特有的怪诞的教义。在这种教义中，对使徒保罗的仇恨是其宗旨。但公元7世纪之后，我们再也没有发现这些所谓的拿撒勒人和爱比恩特人的踪迹。获胜的伊斯兰教徒把他们全杀了。不过，即使他们能再苟延残喘几百年，也无法使历史倒退。
罗马把东西南北聚集在一个大的政治联合体之下，使世界接受一个全球性宗教的条件渐渐成熟。基督教既简单又实用，教徒可以直接与上帝讲话，因此注定会成功；而犹太教、密特拉教以及所有其他参与竞争的宗教肯定会失败。但不幸的是，新信仰从未摈弃自身的一些不良特点，而这些特点显然是与其初衷相悖的。
一艘小船曾载着保罗和巴拿巴从亚洲来到欧洲，带来了希望和仁慈。
但另一个乘客也悄悄溜上了船。
它戴着神圣高贵的面纱。
面纱后面的嘴脸却是残忍和仇恨。
它的名字就是宗教专制。