Strange Religion

How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling

By: Nijay K. Gupta

Narrated by: Nijay K. Gupta

The first Christians were weird. Just how weird is often lost on today's believers.

Within Roman society, the earliest Christians stood out for the oddness of their beliefs and practices. They believed unusual things, worshiped God in strange ways, and lived a unique lifestyle. They practiced a whole new way of thinking about and doing religion that would have been seen as bizarre and dangerous when compared to Roman religion and most other religions of the ancient world.

Award-winning author, blogger, speaker, and New Testament teacher Nijay Gupta traces the emerging Christian faith in its Roman context in this accessible and engaging book. Christianity would have been seen as radical in the Roman world, but some found this new religion attractive and compelling. The first Christians dared to be different, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, transformed how people thought about religion, and started a movement that grew like wildfire. This book shows how the example of the earliest Christians can offer today's believers encouragement and hope.

©2024 Nijay K. Gupta (P)2024 eChristian

Excellent Book for Understanding New Testament Contexts

This is an excellent book for understanding the context of the New Testament writers, specifically the Apostle Paul.
As one who is involved in leading "Footsteps of Paul" and "Churches of Revelation" trips across Greece and Turkey, I highly recommend this book for anyone engaging in these type of trips as it will create a great deal of depth to the experience of visiting these ancient ruins.

Nice overview of NT Spirituality

I would recommend this for anyone who wants an entry point into church history combined with an overview of the Christian worldview. Christianity was strange in the Roman Empire because Christians worshipped without idols, and minimized in radical ways established social hierarchies, and conceptualized religion as a transformative relationship with the divine, as opposed to Roman religio, which focused on appeasing the Gods though impersonal rituals. One of my favorite sections was the comparison between Saturnalia as pretend liberation of slaves and church fellowship as a practice of brotherhood between even masters and slaves. My only point of contention is the critique of Paul language against the Jewish opposition to the gospel. It fails to recognize that 1) Paul was Jewish and 2) viewed the hardening of Jewish society as temporary or non-permanent. Even though both pagans and non-believing Jews were enemies of the gospels, neither were beyond God’s grace. I think the concept of grace makes Christianity exceptional and could have been explored more. I look forward to digging deeper with the actual print copy. Audible is just my first pass-through.

Modern analogies helped

Great research and easy to understand. Must read for seminary students. I like how he doesn’t go into deep dives and stays relevant with what he is teaching.

Will definitely learn something

Remember what you learned about the Roman and Greek culture that directly influenced our Western democracies? Your teachers probably left out a lot. And maybe you thought the early Christians were a lot like today’s Christians, except more pure and perfect. Also, not accurate. This study looks at the true religious culture of the first century Roman Empire. They were not all stoics and certainly not atheists. They believed in hundreds of gods. The author describes the true nature of everyday Greco-Roman religion and then explains how weird and different the Christian faith would have seemed. It’s a fascinating story. Read by the author, who is an excellent narrator.

All Christians could benefit from this

This book was excellent at documenting what was going on in the first century between Christianity and other religions. It also shows how far we have come from the true faith.
But it does help us understand what we need

It was ok

Not particularly well written. Sort of occupies a strange space between popular and academic but doesn’t fit either. Overall, good content with awkward delivery.

misleading title

The title suggests that you're going to learn about the really strange things that early Christians actually did. My hope was that it would be somewhat scholarly. It ends up being a book that punches down on the strange Roman religion, and is dogmatic about Christianity. it treats Christianity as being consistent, sensible, and empirically true.