Did Constantine Really Convert?

Summary

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman — Episode Summary

Episode Title: Did Constantine Really Convert?
Date: August 1, 2023
Host: Megan Lewis
Guest: Dr. Bart Ehrman

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Misquoting Jesus" centers on the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity—a pivotal moment often seen as transformative for the Christian faith and the Roman Empire. Dr. Bart Ehrman and host Megan Lewis explore whether Constantine’s conversion was genuine or politically motivated, the state of Christianity before Constantine, the sources and nature of his conversion experiences, and the broader implications of his actions for the rise of Christianity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Pre-Constantine Christianity in the Roman Empire

[04:19]

• Christianity was not initially illegal or universally persecuted. Sporadic, localized persecutions occurred until the mid-3rd century.
• The “Great Persecution,” beginning in 303 AD under Emperor Diocletian, marked the first empire-wide legal persecution of Christians, though enforcement varied greatly by region.
  • Quote: “Christianity, when it started out in the early first century, it was never declared illegal… There wasn’t an official persecution… until the middle of the third century.” — Bart Ehrman [04:19]
• By the early 4th century (Constantine's time), Christianity comprised roughly 5% of the empire, about 2–3 million people.

2. Constantine’s Religious Background and Exposure to Christianity

[06:34–09:52]

• Constantine was raised pagan, worshiping Thracian gods, the sun god Sol Invictus, civic gods, and army gods.
• His father, Constantius, was likely a henotheist (worships one god while acknowledging others).
• Though some later Christian sources claim Constantius was Christian, evidence does not support this.
• Constantine had some exposure to Christianity, especially as a member of Diocletian’s court during the Great Persecution, but was probably unfamiliar with its specifics.

3. The Tetrarchy and Succession Crisis

[10:01–13:11]

• The Roman Empire was divided among four emperors (the Tetrarchy) to better manage its breadth.
• The system was intended to eliminate hereditary succession, but after Constantius’ death, Constantine was named his successor, triggering civil unrest and the collapse of the tetrarchy.

4. Conversion in the Ancient World: A Radical Concept

[13:11–15:13]

• Religious “conversion” was virtually unknown in the ancient pagan world; people typically added new gods rather than rejecting old ones.
• Christianity was radically exclusivist: Converts were required to abandon all other gods, a foreign concept to most pagans.
  • Quote: “Christians came along and said, ‘there is one God, and if you don’t worship him, you’re going to be punished forever.’… It was the only religion that was exclusivistic.” — Bart Ehrman [14:11]

5. Sources for Constantine’s Conversion Visions

[15:39–22:11]

• Three primary sources:
  • 310 AD Panegyric: Describes a vision of Apollo and the Sun God Sol Invictus, not Christ. Suggests Constantine became a henotheist.
  • Lactantius: (A few years post-event) Reports a dream the night before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge—Constantine was shown the Chi-Rho (☧) and instructed to mark it on his soldiers' shields for victory (explicitly Christian symbolism).
  • Eusebius: (Decades later) States Constantine and his army saw a cross above the sun with the words “by this conquer.” He then learned about Christ from advisors and adopted the Chi-Rho as his battle standard.
• All accounts agree on a supernatural experience but differ in specifics, timeline, and significance.

6. Why Are the Sources So Different?

[22:11–24:09]

• Memories of conversion often shift to align with later beliefs or circumstances.
• Each author (panegyrist, Lactantius, Eusebius) had their own agenda—pagan, Christian, clerical politics, or personal perspectives.

7. Impact of Constantine’s Conversion

[24:09–27:19]

• Myths dispelled:
  • Constantine did not declare Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (that occurred later under Theodosius).
  • Christianity’s rapid growth predated Constantine and would likely have continued or slowed for demographic reasons.
• Constantine's true impact: He made Christianity a legal religion, ending official persecutions, and provided strong imperial support (money, political privilege).
  • Quote: “The thing that mainly makes Constantine’s conversion important…is that he made Christianity a legal religion soon after his conversion, so that he ended the persecution.” — Bart Ehrman [25:51]
• Social influence: Elites and urban populations were more likely to notice immediate effects, especially as Christianity began constructing large basilicas and church officials gained notable civic privileges.

8. Was Constantine’s Conversion Genuine?

[30:02–35:46]

• For a long time, many (incl. 19th-century scholar Jacob Burkhardt) considered the conversion to be politically motivated—a move to unify the empire.
  • Arguments against the sincerity: Continued use of pagan imagery, ambiguous public inscriptions, lack of baptism until his deathbed, and “unchristian” behavior (e.g., political murders).
• Counterarguments:
  • Pagan imagery (Sol Invictus) likely became for him a symbol of Christ as the “unconquered sun.”
  • Inscriptions and coinage were often the work of non-Christian officials or intended for a still largely pagan population.
  • Delayed baptism was common among elites due to theological concerns about post-baptismal sin; late baptism was not a sign of insincerity.
  • Constantine’s writings and speeches, sustained support for the church, and deep involvement in Christian controversies (like the Arian debate) show commitment.
  • Quote: “It's pretty clear he really was a genuine conversion, even if, of course, there were political issues connected with it.” — Bart Ehrman [35:43]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “When Christians came along, they said, ‘no, there’s one God and you need to worship him through Christ. And if you don’t, you’re going to roast in hell forever.’… It was the only religion that was exclusivistic.” — Bart Ehrman [14:11]
• “Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion.” — Bart Ehrman [24:23]
• “If Constantine decided to rule his empire by following the dictates of the Sermon on the Mount, he wouldn’t have lasted a week.” — Bart Ehrman [34:21]
• “His conversion is not what is the reason that Christianity succeeded.” — Bart Ehrman [49:53]

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Important Timestamps

• [04:19] — The real situation for pre-Constantine Christians in the empire
• [06:34] — Constantine’s religious upbringing and exposure to Christianity
• [15:39] — The three accounts of Constantine’s conversion visions
• [22:11] — Why the stories about the conversion differ
• [24:23] — Debunking the myth that Constantine made Christianity the state religion
• [30:02] — Was Constantine’s conversion sincere or political?
• [35:43] — Conclusion: The evidence for a genuine religious conversion
• [49:02] — Book plug: The Triumph of Christianity and episode summary

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Flow & Tone

Ehrman and Lewis employ a conversational, engaging style, using humor and direct address to clarify complex historical situations for a general audience. Ehrman emphasizes scholarly consensus while also explaining why misconceptions persist and how historical evidence is interpreted.

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Listener Q&A Highlights

• Roman myths (Saturn/Jupiter) and Christian appeal? No clear evidence but possible resonance in some circles. [43:04]
• Origin of baptism is traced from Jewish cleansing rituals to John the Baptist, then evolving in early Christianity. [44:43]
• Dying and rising gods: The widespread belief in pagan “dying and rising gods” is not supported by careful reading of sources; what is similar is the motif of divinization after death, not literal resurrection. [46:35]
• Theories that Christianity was “invented” by Roman elites: No credible historical backing; dismissed by all mainstream historians. [48:03]

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Closing Summary & Further Reading

• Constantine was a major figure in Roman and church history whose conversion was likely genuine, though politically significant.
• Christianity’s legalization and imperial favor were game-changers, but its demographic surge was already underway.
• Ehrman’s book, The Triumph of Christianity, covers these themes in depth.

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For a comprehensive, readable treatment of these topics, Dr. Ehrman recommends his book: The Triumph of Christianity.
[49:02]

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Next Episode Teaser:
The development of the doctrine of the Trinity and Constantine’s role in the Council of Nicaea. [50:26]

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This summary preserves the scholarly rigor, conversational flow, and memorable moments of the episode, providing a useful guide whether or not you listened to the podcast.

Transcript

[Megan Lewis]

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[Megan Lewis]

Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity is often pointed to as a turning point in the history of the religion. But would Christianity have continued on its upward trajectory without this conversion? Was Constantine's conversion one of genuine religious conviction or was it motivated by something else? And has his conversion been co opted and over emphasized by later Christian authors? But before we get to all of that, but welcome back. It's been a while. Did you find the Holy Grail last week in Cornwall?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, I looked hard and we decided the, the Holy Grail was probably in our local pub and so we spent a lot of time looking for it in there.

[Megan Lewis]

That makes a lot of sen. Cornish pubs are very old.

[Bart Ehrman]

So they're old and they, they serve, you know, they actually don't, you know, serve the kind of substance that Jesus was drinking at the Last Supper. But they, they have comparable beverages and so we thought maybe there's a chance, so.

[Megan Lewis]

Well, it sounds like a productive research trip if nothing else.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, yeah, I was thinking about how to write that one off, but I haven't quite come up with this strategy yet. So you, you were on the Isle of Skye, which is one of the great places on, on the planet. So how was it?

[Megan Lewis]

I was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And my mother and my answer was cold and rainy, which actually for me is a positive. Especially coming from Maryland in the middle of the summer because here it is hot and humid and you can't really go outside without being hit by this like wall of moisture in the air. So it was really, really lovely to be somewhere where you could go outside and enjoy yourself and not feel like you're about to die from heat exhaustion.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, you know, a lot of Brits that I know don't really do well in the heat. My wife is English and we when it hits about 77, she starts complaining about how blistering hot it is. So I'm still in England now, and it's. It's cool. It's like sweater weather. It's. In the morning. It's unbelievable. So it's really a pity. I mean, so much of the nation and the world is just. Just swamped with this horrible heat. Not in England right now.

[Megan Lewis]

No. Very rarely, they had a heat wave. I think you were there for. They had it about a week and a half before we arrived, but we missed it.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, the problem in England, of course, is there's no air conditioning in most places. If it does get to upper 70s, it actually does get very unpleasant inside.

[Megan Lewis]

Yeah.

[Bart Ehrman]

But I'm glad you enjoyed sky, because it's. I've only been there once for, I don't know, a week or 10 days or something. I thought it was absolutely amazing as a place to be.

[Megan Lewis]

It's beautiful. And the last time I was there, I was a teenager on a family vacation, and I have distinct memories of being absolutely unbearable. I did not want to be there. I was not shy about making my feelings known. And I actually apologize. Apologized to my mother, this trip for how awful I was. And she said, you were a trial. Yes, I know I was.

[Bart Ehrman]

It must have been bad, if you remember being bad. Usually we block those things out, but that must be okay.

[Megan Lewis]

Yeah, but it was. It was a lovely trip.

[Bart Ehrman]

I'd like to imagine you in that mode, Megan, because I've never seen it and probably never will, but that was.

[Megan Lewis]

There was a lot of teenage angst going on, I think. So before we get officially to Constantine, I wanted to try and give a little bit of. Of background for people. We've talked a little around this topic before, but what was the position of Christianity prior to his conversion? Was it outlawed, people persecuted, or was it just really unpopular?

[Bart Ehrman]

So it's. People have wrong ideas about. Many people do because they. They get their ideas either from popular culture or from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code or from movies or whatever. So it's a complicated situation. Christianity, when it started out in the early first century, it was never declared illegal. It wasn't against the law to be a Christian. There were persecutions that sprang up over the decades here and there, kind of locally. There wasn't an official persecution of Christians by Romans until the middle of the third century. That's when Christianity was growing sufficiently that there were widespread problems that we can go into in probably other episodes. So in the middle of the third century, there was a kind of a persecution where an emperor passed a law making it so that everybody had to perform sacrifices to the pagan, the traditional gods. And Christians wouldn't do that. And sometimes they were persecuted and sometimes even executed for it. The major persecution, though, didn't happen until Constantine's own day. At the Beginning of the fourth century, in the year 303, the Emperor Diocletian, who was a very, very important and skilled emperor, engaged in a persecution of Christians. There were four edicts that were passed in the year 303. And bas basically, Christians were. Their scriptures were to be confiscated, bishops were to be imprisoned. It became illegal to be a Christian. It was enforced differently in different parts of the empire. It's very important to understand the Roman Empire was very, very big. I mean, it went from Britain to Iraq, basically, and it went up into Europe, went into North Africa. And so it's a massive area. And it was very difficult to administer. And there weren't like police forces, national police forces or anything. And so what would happen is an emperor would pass up, you know, or the Senate, or there'd be some kind of rul ruling and it would go out to the local governors and they would enforce it differently. And so different regions were enforced differently. So it wasn't that Christians everywhere were being persecuted, especially in the west, they weren't so much. But during this persecution that lasted for 10 years, that's called the great persecution, from 303 to 313, during that is when Constantine converted.

[Megan Lewis]

What do we know about Constantine's religion prior to that conversion?

[Bart Ehrman]

Constantine's father was one of the rulers of the empire, Constantius. There are debates about Constantius own religion. There are ancient church historians who claim that he actually was a Christian, but that seems unlikely. It appears that he was a Henotheist. A Henotheist is somebody who worships just one God while acknowledging there are a bunch of others. But one is the one that you worship. And it appears that Constantius was that he worshiped a God called Sol and Wictus, which means the unconquered son. So he worshiped the sun God. Constantine would have been raised pagan. He was born in the northern Balkans. He worshiped the local Thracian gods, and he worshiped the army gods as he went into the military, and he worshiped the civic gods. And so he was a pagan who worshiped many gods up until the time that he converted it as an adult.

[Megan Lewis]

Do we know if Constantine was a Henotheist?

[Bart Ehrman]

I think he became one. The other debate has to do with his mother, Helena, who was later a Christian. And some people have thought that she was a Christian first and that she was influential on Constantine, but I don't think the evidence bears that out. She converted after Constantine. But I think there comes a point at which Constantine follows in his father's footsteps and becomes a henotheist. And that leads eventually then to his Christian conversion.

[Megan Lewis]

Do we know what kind of exposure Constantine would have had to Christianity through his life prior to his conversion? Is it something that would have been relatively common? Were people maybe around him Christian? Was he just aware of it in terms of these persecutions? Do we know anything about that?

[Bart Ehrman]

It's a really good and important question. I have a book that deals with all of this. You know, the spread of Christianity and how it's taking over the empire and how, how it affected the emperors and how the persecutions worked and all that. The book called the Triumph of Christianity. And in it, I kind of speculate a little bit about this because we don't have firm evidence. But it's interesting that when we have stories about Constantine's conversion, we'll be talking about the vision or the visions that he had. But it appears that when he first had his visions connected with Christ, he didn't understand what they were or who Christ was. And so he had to get some spiritual advisors to give him some tips about like who is this and what's it all about? He certainly knew what Christianity was. He was in Diocletian's court as an administrator in Diocletian's court, the persecution started so in 303. And so he certainly was familiar with kind of basics of Christianity, but apparently not very many of the details. The reason he would be familiar is because by the early 4th century, Christianity's probably got 2 or 3 million people who are Christians in the empire, so maybe 5% of the empire. And it's growing very rapidly at that point. So people are becoming increasingly aware of it. Whereas for most of Christian history up to that point, it was really a very minor thing that most people didn't deal with or maybe hadn't even heard of. But by the time constant, at least people knew that there was this phenomenon. They had some basic information about it, and Constantine must have had at least that much.

[Megan Lewis]

So as a member of Diocletian's court then and a member of the military, would he have participated in the suppression of Christianity during the great persecution?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, it's a good question. We don't know anything about his particular involvement at the time, the way the empire worked is important to understand for all of this because as I said, the empire is huge. And for most of its history, there had been one emperor. And it's kind of hard to rule an empire that wide if you're just one person. Especially when you don't have mass communication. It's not like you can call, you know, call Spain on the phone, you know, or have a zoom meeting with the ruler of Gaul. In France, you basically, you've got, you know, horses carrying messengers back and forth, and it's really hard to rule. And if there's a breakaway, you know, if there's a civil war, you may not even hear about it for a few weeks, that kind of thing. So what Diocletian had done is he divided power so that there are four. Four emperors, two who were very senior and two were junior to them. And they each were located in a different part of the empire. And so this is called the tetrarchy, the Rule of the Four. Constantine's father was one of the four in this rule, when Constantine was a younger man and his father, Constantius was in the West. And he appears not to have pursued the persecution very much at all. But Constantine wasn't with him at the time. He was serving with Galerius, one of the major emperors in the East. And Galerius was a fervent persecutor. And so it's hard to know what involvement Constantine himself had in that. Our records really don't give us very good information about it.

[Megan Lewis]

So the. The Rule of the Four was designed, Diocletian designed it, to try and remove this hereditary system of the son of an emperor taking over and becoming the new emperor. And obviously, as Constantine's father was an emperor himself, this didn't work terribly well. Could you talk a little bit about that?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. I'm not going to go into the weeds because it is really weedy down there. But the basic idea is that Diocletian divides this thing up so you've got two senior people, one in the east and one in the west, and two junior people under them. And the idea, it was a novel idea, that the emperor should be chosen on the basis of their qualifications, their merit. Because until then, what happened was an emperor die, and his closest male relative, usually his son or sometimes some other relative who doesn't have a son, took over whether the person had any qualifications or abilities or not. And that's why the world inherited people like Caligula, you know, because he's like, he's the next in line that had gone on for 300 years. And Diocletian finally said, enough, this isn't working. And so it was supposed to be by merit. And then when the senior people died or left office or whatever, the junior people would move up is the idea. And then other people would be appointed on merit to be the junior people. But when Constantius became the senior guy in the west and he died, he appointed his son to be his successor. Wait a second. That's how it's not supposed to work. But after that, all hell broke out in the Empire and civil war and such. So that was the deal. It was supposed to be on merit. It wasn't on merit. And the tetrarchy ended up basically biting the dust about a year after the policy had first been implemented.

[Megan Lewis]

A valiant effort by Diocletian there. Moving away for a moment from the political situation. What would conversion have meant to someone who came from a pagan background?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, this is a really interesting question, because most people don't realize that in the ancient world, broadly, there wasn't really such a thing as conversion, religious conversion, because virtually everybody in the empire, you know, like 93 or 95% of the empire was following traditional religions. And they didn't even think of themselves as like, following traditional religions. They were just doing what everybody did. Just like they, you know, they live in a town and they follow the rules in the town, and they'd keep the culture and keep the customs. And part of the customs was worshiping the gods. And so they didn't realize they had, like, a religion, but they all worshiped many gods, and the different gods were worshiped in different ways. And there was no sense that if you worshiped one God, you were obliged to worship some other God too, or that you shouldn't worship one God or another, that you worshiped many gods. So if you decided to worship a new God, if you're worshiping Zeus and you decide now, you know, oh, man, Apollo, I hear he does great things. I'm going to worship him too, you know, and, oh, Athena, yeah, she's good. And so you add them on. You don't choose one over the other. When Christians came along, they said, no, there's one God and you need to worship him through Christ. And if you don't, you're going to roast in hell forever. And most babies are saying what I mean, they had known about Jews worshiping one God, but Jews weren't insistent that anybody else worshiped their God. And most Jews didn't believe in heaven and hell or Anything like that. It's just, you know, you've got your gods, we have our God, let us worship our God. Christians came along and said, there is one God, and if you don't worship him, you're going to be punished forever. And so it was exclusivistic. It was the only religion that was exclusivistic, which means it was the only religion that you had to convert to. And when you converted to it, you had to give up everything else. You didn't find that in the pagan religions.

[Megan Lewis]

And we'll get into the mechanics of conversion and why people might have decided to do that in a future episode. Going back to Constantine, he claims that his conversion was the result of religious visions he experienced while he was marching his empire, while marching his army to Rome as part of the political turmoil you mentioned previously. What sources do we have for these visions? And how many visions did he have?

[Bart Ehrman]

Good question. And we wish we knew scholars who spent their lives studying this particular thing, you know, they're scholars who are experts on Constantine, and there are many, many books and many studies about the life of Constantine because he's so important just for Christianity, but for the history of the West. But we have three sources from his time that describe his conversion. And interestingly, the three are all people who knew Constantine and claimed to be reporting his views. The three have many things in common, but they are also differences among the three, so much so that it's hard to figure out how to reconcile them. So the first one doesn't describe him becoming a Christian, but it does describe him becoming a henotheist. And there's questions about whether that's his conversion or not. He had a military battle against one of the other emperors in the year 310, and he's up in what's now France, but Gaul. And after he won this battle, he went to a temple of Apollo, who is thought to be the God of the sun. And Apollo appeared to him in a vision and handed him several wreaths that were supposed to be symbolic of 30 years of life. And so Apollo's promising him a very long life. And also he learns in this vision that he is the embodiment of Apollo on earth. He's young, he's handsome, he brings health to people. And so according to this speech that was given in honor of the event by some unknown speaker at that point, Constantine then became a worshiper of just one God. And later people said then, well, that's, you know, that's when he started worshiping the God of the Christians.

[Megan Lewis]

What are the other two accounts of his visions then? If we've got that one about Apollo, do the other two explicitly mention Jesus and the Christian God?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. The second one I'll talk about was by a church father, a Christian church father, a bishop of Caesarea, who is named Eusebius, who's very famous. I mean, he's well known to people familiar with early Christianity because he wrote the first history of Christianity from the days of Jesus for the first 300 years. It's just called the Church History of Eusebius. And so a very important book. But he also wrote a biography of Constantine. He knew Constantine probably not well, but he. He was in his presence. Some in that book, Eusebius says, is that Constantine was on his march to take back Rome. Rome had been taken over by a usurper named Maxentius who claimed to be an emperor. And so this tetrarchy, the rule of four people, had become a rule of five people because Maxentius had taken over the Italian peninsula and Rome. And so the other four wanted to get him out of there. Constantine was marching to do battle in order to take out Maxentius so that they take out the usurper. And according to Eusebius, while he was on his march, he started thinking about how he was going to win this battle. A couple of the other emperors had tried to take Rome and had failed miserably. And now it's his turn to try it. He's trying to figure out, you know, what kind of power can I use in order to win this? He's thinking in religious terms. He's thinking, you know, it's clear that armies aren't enough. I need divine help here. And the other two who tried it, they were, you know, they were regular polytheists. So the polytheist option doesn't seem to be working. I need a God with a lot of power. And so he's thinking about this, that, you know, he needs to choose a divine being that will enable him to win this battle. And then, according to Eusebius, Constantine had his vision. It wasn't just Constantine. His entire army had a vision on the march. They saw a vision of the sun. And above the sun was a cross like image. On the top of the cross were two letters, the Greek letters chi and rho. Chi looks like an X and rho looks like a capital P. And the P goes through the X. And it just happens that those are the two first letters of the name Christos Christ Cairo. Above it was a sign that said, by this Conquer. So that's the vision. Constantine had no idea what in the world was that and nobody else. And so he calls in his advisors and he talks to them. Then before the battle, he has a vision of Christ. Christ comes to him and shows him the same thing. And he says, you know that you need to take this into battle. And so he wakes up, he gets his advisors, they explain to him who Christ is, and he starts reading the Bible a bit, and he tries to figure out what this is all about. He realizes that Christ is the power of God on earth and that if he worships Christ, he can win the battle. And he has an image of this vision that he had the cross with a Cairo on the top made. It's called the Labarum. And it was a standard that he would take into battle. And according to Constantine, that's why he won the battle at Rome. And in fact, every time he went on war, he took the Labarum and he won every war. And it was at that point, according to Eusebius, that he decided that Christ was the one to worship.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. And who wrote the third account then?

[Bart Ehrman]

All right, now this is where it gets more complicated, because the third account wasn't written a few decades after the event the way Eusebius was. Eusebius is written, like, 30 years later in this account. This was written a few years later by somebody who really knew Constantine. He was a Christian theologian named Lactantius. Lactantius was actually appointed by Constantine to be the personal tutor to Constantine's eldest son. And so he was in Constantine's household, and he's writing, you know, a few years after the event, presumably. I mean, he would. He'd be the one you would trust. But his. His version is different from the other two. The other two are different from each other, obviously. But in. According to Lactantius, what happened was on the night before the battle, the very night before the battle, Constantine had a dream. And in the dream, he was shown the image of the Cairo and he was told to put it on the shields of his soldiers and they would win the battle. And he did, woke up, instructed all the soldiers to have their Cairo put on their shields, and they went into battle and they won. And Constantine realized that Christ was the power that he needed, and then he converted to Christ. So those are the three accounts. They obviously have things in common, and there are things that are different.

[Megan Lewis]

Why do you think we have these differing accounts? Is it that Constantine's story changed through his life, or is the story being altered to suit the aims of the writers.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I wish we knew. I think most people would say both.

[Megan Lewis]

But I come to you for definitive answers.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay. The definitive answer is I'm not sure. I mean, I have ideas about it. The deal is, is that the scholars have studied this phenomenon of conversion, especially in the modern period, and one of the interesting things that they have found and documented. Absolutely. Shown to be true, is that when somebody converts years later, when they talk about their conversion, the things that have happened in the meantime affect how they remember the conversion event. So, like, it changes in their own head. It's absolutely possible that happened with Constantine. It appears to happen quite commonly. It's also possible that each of these authors is trying to portray it in light of something that he thinks is important. The guy who gave the speech praising somebody is called a panegyric in 310. So two years before the event, the guy who gave the panegyric says nothing about Christ. It's about Apollo and, you know, the Sun God. And so, you know, this panegyrist was a. Was a pagan. Well, maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't want to mention Christ, or maybe the whole Christ thing wasn't even involved at that point. Eusebius, writing later, clearly has an agenda. He wants to emphasize that Constantine's father was also a Christian, and he wants to emphasize the very Christian aspect of all of this. And. And Lactantius is also a Christian who wants to stress that Christ is the power that overcomes everything. So he has his own thing. So you have these differences. The other option, these are not mutually exclusive, but the other thing that a lot of people focus on is can you get back to some historical event given the three differences? Is there enough here to reconstruct something that probably actually did happen that you can explain how you get these three versions?

[Megan Lewis]

What was the impact of Constantine's conversion on the trajectory of the growth of Christianity? And do you think that had he not converted, that upward growth would. Would have maintained and we'd still be in the same position we are today?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. So I should correct a couple of very common misconceptions about Constantine's conversion. The one that is most widespread, that immediately after Constantine converted, or soon or sometime during his reign, he made Christianity the official religion of Rome, that Constantine's the one who declared Christianity the state religion. That's false. That's not true. And we know that that's not true. That's not even debated among historians. He did not do that. Another thing that is more widely believed or not more widely believed, but it's widely believed. That, I think is really not true. I think it's not true, is that Constantine is the reason Christianity became so widespread in the Roman Empire that it's his conversion that made the difference in Christianity. I understand why people say that. The reason I understand why they say it is because I used to say it. I said it for years and years. You know, that's what we all heard, and so that's what we all said, and it's just not true. And the reason it's not true, it has to do with what you were referring to, which is how Christianity had been growing over the years. And I'm not going to get into the data here, but if you actually look at the growth of Christianity, if you plot it out as you would plot out something like population growth, the growth rate is going at such a rate that even though There are only 2 or 3 million people who are probably Christian when he converted, or maybe 4 or 5 million when he converted at that rate of growth, that it had been going on for decades and centuries, Christianity's growth had to slow after Constantine converted. It had to slow because if it didn't slow by the end of the fourth century, at the rate it was going, without Constantine, there would have been more Christians in the empire than there were people in the world. So it's an exponential curve is basically what you explain. So Constantine's conversion was hugely important, but it's not the reason Christianity took over. If he hadn't converted, probably, you know, another emperor would have after him. Maybe one of his sons was an emperor next. And we went after that, because Christianity was just taken over unless somebody stopped it, which is what Diocletian tried to do. The thing that mainly makes Constantine's conversion important and hugely significant is that he made Christianity a legal religion soon after his conversion, so that he ended the persecution. People could fearlessly accept Christianity, so they didn't have to worry about it. But also people who were among the elite started to convert, and that helped things, because the elite were the ones who were funding local religions, the rich folk. And now the emperor converted, they have no qualms about converting. So they didn't all convert at once. I mean, for the next decades, at the end of the 4th century, still half the empire was pagan by the end of the 4th century. But it's going out and it's going to go out.

[Megan Lewis]

So I was just wondering, given the size of the empire and the difficulties you mentioned earlier with communication, how aware would the General population of the empire have been of constant conversion.

[Bart Ehrman]

I always think of the Monty Python Holy Grail, since you brought it up earlier. But, you know, these people in England in the Middle Ages start talking about, like having a new, new ruler or new king, and the peasants don't even know they had a king. So it's that kind of thing. Well, hoi polloi know that. What's going on with the emperor? Yeah, it's hard to say. I would say probably not in the rural areas, in the urban areas, maybe because one of the things Constantine did once he converted was he not only made Christianity legal, he started favoring it with imperial favor, which meant he dumped a ton of money into the church and he passed legislation that gave leaders of the churches special privileges. He himself funded big basilicas in cities. Clearly, Christianity was being highly favored. And people absolutely recognize that. People who had any kind of connection with government just on the local level would have seen that Now Christianity is starting to thrive because of all this money coming into it.

[Megan Lewis]

And I suppose people just wandering around the streets, if they lived in an urban area, would probably have noticed, oh, look, there's a new church that wasn't there. How strange.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, yeah, we're not talking about, you know, the small Baptist church on the corner. We're talking about, you know, cathedral type things and big, big churches. And they. People are being employed doing that. You know, the bishops are starting to acquire serious power locally. One of the pieces of legislation that ends up getting passed is that bishops, leaders of the churches do not have to fulfill their civic obligations. Civic obligations for the elite in the Roman world were very onerous because if you were made like a major figure in the local government, you were expected to fund the local government. You had to pay out. And many people went bankrupt because they had to pay for this as elite in the empire. But the law got passed that if you're an elite and you convert, you become a bishop, you don't have to do that. That's a nice deal. Yeah. So people noticed, I'm sure.

[Megan Lewis]

So finally, the big question. Without a time machine, it's really hard to say for sure, I think. But do you think that Constantine's conversion was genuine? And there might be a sense that it was motivated by political reasons, given that Christianity at the time was growing but not massively powerful. That seems relatively unlikely to me. But what's your sense?

[Bart Ehrman]

Right, so this is the question, and it's another one of those questions that people are most interested in. You know, was it genuine or not? I Used to think that it was not genuine or that I questioned it for years again until I actually, actually spent the time to do the research. And most people today who do the research say, yeah, no, it was genuine. The big question was raised in the 1850s. There was a German scholar who wrote a book called the Age of Constantine. His name is Jacob Burkhardt. He argued it was not genuine, that Constantine had political motivations for wanting to appear to be Christian. You know, the typical claims about that are that Constantine wanted a unified empire and it was hugely fragmented at the the time. And the value of Christianity was that it worshiped one God. It said, there's one way to salvation. Christ is the one Son of God. There is one faith, one Lord, one baptism. It's all about oneness. And so if everybody is devoting themselves to a religion of oneness, it will facilitate social oneness. And so the idea is that he converted just out of a power play because he would then become, in effect, the leader of this unified church and it all be one. And so Burkhardt argued that, and he had evidence for it that he and he and others, you know, so it isn't just kind of made up. People have reason for thinking, but there are also reasons for not thinking it.

[Megan Lewis]

But so what is some of the, like the evidence that we have that maybe this was a political move on Constantine's part? And maybe some of the counterpoints there.

[Bart Ehrman]

The evidence for it sounds convincing until you hear the counter evidence, I think, but the, the evidence that it was purely a political, political move. There are several things. One thing is when Constantine converted, he. He continued to use pagan imagery in his public propaganda. The ways emperors use propaganda, the most common way was the way they printed their coins. And their coins would have an image on them. And Constantine's coins before 312, the year he converted, had an image of Saul and Wictus, the, the sun God. And sometimes with him, he and Saul and Wict is next to each other. And after his conversation, version that continued to have this pagan God on it. Well, okay, so it sounds like he's pagan. Moreover, the public information about Constantine didn't really talk about him being a Christian. When there, the Arch of Constantine that's still in the forum in Rome has an inscription on it that attributes his victory over Maxentius to divine help. But there's nothing about the Christian God on there. And why wouldn't their Christian God be mentioned if that's really the point of this thing? Also, people point out that he didn't act Like a Christian. I mean, when he became emperor he had served under Galerius. I mentioned earlier the another senior emperor who had died. But Constantine had Galerius's 10 year old son murdered, assassinated. And then later he assassin. He had his own son assassinated, Constantine's own son and his former wife. Assassin. His wife assassinated. And so like what? He ain't acting like a Christian. And the other thing then is that he didn't get baptized until 25 years later. On his deathbed, people say, look, it sure doesn't look like he's a Christian. So those are the arguments. There are good counterarguments for all of those.

[Megan Lewis]

What are some of the counterarguments then? Why would he keep using pagan imagery after his conversion?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it's important to recognize what kind of pagan imagery it was because the pagan imagery is of the unconquered Satan. And one way to think about Constantine's conversion is that early on he became a henotheist. Not early on, a couple years before, as the Panegyrist says in 310, he became a henotheist worshiping Saul Invictus. And one way to understand his conversion in the year 312 is that he finally realized that Saul Invictus, the unconquered son, was Christ. So Christ is the unconquered son. So I think what he ended up up thinking isn't that he converted from the worship of like Apollo, the unconquered Son, to Christ. He came to realize that Christ himself was the unconquered son. So he would use the imagery because that's an image of Christ for him. The idea that the public celebration of his conversion or of him or his conquest of Rome doesn't say anything about the Christian God. Makes sense. That inscription on the arch of Constantine, he didn't write the inscription. This is made by builders who are making this arch who are not Christian. And so they just say he was helped by a divinity. So that's not very convincing either in terms of him not acting like a Christian. Yeah, well, most Christians I know sometimes don't act like Christians. You know, you can't really define Christians by whether somebody, you know, behaves well and just kind of speaking practically. If Constantine decided to rule his empire by following the dictates of the Sermon on the Mount, he wouldn't have lasted a week. I mean, it's just the reality of the situation, the deathbed baptism thing really means nothing. A lot of elites in the Roman Empire waited till their deathbed because they were convinced by these scriptural passages that say if you sin badly after your conversion, you lose your salvation, like in the book of Hebrews, chapter six. And so they just waited because they didn't want to, you know, botch their chances. There's positive evidence that he, he really did convert. His writings and his speeches he gave, I mean, they are crystal clear. At least he says that he really is committed to Christ. And it's not just that he says it. He gets involved with Christian controversies in the Arian controversy in the 4th century about whether Christ is really God or not. He was actively involved in these things. So it's pretty clear he really was a genuine conversion, even if, of course, there were political issues connected with it. But yeah, it was a genuine conversion.

[Megan Lewis]

Well, thank you so much, Bart, for sharing your knowledge on this subject. We are going to take a brief break. Then we will be back with news of an upcoming event. And finally, some listeners questions. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to Ms. Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with QA, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions, questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship, such as why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? If they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did? And where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the Gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and john? @barterman.com Authors thank you. Welcome back, Bart. So you are organizing a brand new conference. It is going to be on September 23rd and 24th. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what it is?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I wish this were my brainchild because it was. Chris Huntley who organizes our podcast and just about everything else in my professional life came up with his idea and oh my God, we're going to have a remote conference. I've never heard of a conference like this ever. We're going to have 10 speakers who are some of the top level scholars of the New Testament in the world world. Each of them giving a lecture for lay people, for non scholars on issues connected with the Gospels. Each one will be a different lecture. And these are all people who know how to communicate to people who are not scholars about scholarship. And that's what I'm all about is presenting scholarship to non scholars. And these people are all really adept at it. We're going to have these 10 things. Each one will have it be like a 50 minute lecture followed by a Q and A after each one. It'll take place over two days. I think it's going to be brilliant. You can sign up for it and you just do it at home. You don't have to travel to, you know, Los Angeles or something for it. It's just like you'll have it and you'll have it as a course afterwards. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to this.

[Megan Lewis]

It sounds really fantastic. And I have to say, as someone who's been to multiple academic conferences, the travel and finding a hotel and it's, it's exhausting. So I am personally looking forward to being able to watch this from my living room, but then also watch it as and when I feel like if I can't catch all of them live, I can come back and have a look again later when I have time. We're going to talk very briefly about two of the presenters. First up is Candida Moss. The title of her talk is Bad Reputation. Who Was Jesus Actual Family? Which sounds fascinating.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. So, you know, I'm not privy to what she's actually going to say, but I have a pretty good idea. Canada Moss is a really, really. She's one of the most public figures in religious studies in the, in the country. She, she writes a column for the Daily Beast and she's always writing for the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times and the, you know, for Slate. I mean, she, she is a very, very prominent figure and she's, she's really bright. She did her undergraduate at Oxford and then she did her PhD at Yale and she's written these books that have made an impact on scholarship, especially on Christian martyrs. And she deals with how Christians understood the body and disabilities and she's really wide ranging, but a superb New Testament scholar. But this talk she's going to be giving, who really Was Jesus Family, I mean, there have been questions over the years. I mean, you have the stories of the virgin birth, but some people think, well, it sounds like there were some stories about an Unusual birth, what was unusual about it and who was really the father becomes a big issue. And so that'll be the kind of thing I imagine that she'll be talking about.

[Megan Lewis]

And then after Candida, Hugo Mendez is going to be talking and then his talk is how to decipher the symbolism of the fourth Gospel.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. So Hugo I've known for a number of years now because he's my colleague at UNC Chapel Hill. We did a podcast so people can see him. On one of our earlier podcasts, we discussed whether the Gospel of John was forged. Hugo's. He's got an interesting background. He did a PhD in linguistics. It wasn't even connected with religion. He's like this expert in all of these on linguistics, but he also knows all of these ancient languages. It's kind of mind boggling Armenian and Georgian and, you know, a bunch of Semitic languages, bunch of Indo European and Greek and Latin of course, and all sorts of stuff. But he went from that to go to Yale and get trained as a New Testament scholar. And he's a, he's a really bright New Testament scholar and he's, he's writing a book on the Gospel of John. I'll tell you, I'm so impressed with his New Testament scholarship. I was asked to do an eighth edition of my New Testament textbook which is widely used throughout colleges and universities in the country. I just felt too overwhelmed with other things. I asked Hugo to be my co editor, so my co author. So Hugo's co authored my, my eighth edition. So I really. So his topic is the symbolism in the Gospel of John. And man, does he know that stuff. He's taught me a lot about what's going on in the Gospel of John in terms of the symbolism because it's very symbolic, metaphorical stuff going on there. So he'll be giving a talk on that.

[Megan Lewis]

So I don't think I actually said. The title of the conference is New Insights into the New Testament. It will run from September 23rd to 24th and will include 10 fantastic scholars, each speaking for about 50 minutes on the subject of their choice. The cost is $59.95. You can get $10 off using early bird registration, which is available through Saturday, August 26th. You can learn more or sign up at www.ntconference.org. and I think it sounds absolutely fascinating and a great easy way for people to learn a lot more about the New Testament. Okay, we are now going to go to some listeners questions.

[Bart Ehrman]

Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers Real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart

[Megan Lewis]

and we are back. Okay, Bart, are you ready for some listeners questions? It's been a while.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yes. Okay. I hope I am. Let's go.

[Megan Lewis]

We have a good selection. I think so. First question. Is there a chance that the Roman myth of Saturn returning to end the reign of Jupiter and usher in a new golden age made Roman pagans more likely to understand the message of Christianity?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, so it's hard to say. We don't have anybody that I know of reporting that that had any influence on their conversion. There are a number of things about Christianity that would have been palatable to Roman sensibilities, religious sensibilities. That could have been one of them. I mean the, the idea that with Christianity a new world is beginning. People had ideas of new worlds beginning within their own religious traditions. And they had, they also had views of, you know, religious divine men like Jesus and there. So there are enough similarities that some people might have cordoned on for one reason or another. We don't have any references to that particular belief being influential, but it's possible linked to that.

[Megan Lewis]

Same questioner says, since the planet Saturn is linked with the Jewish people by Roman writers as early as Tacitus, is it possible that this astrological symbolism lent credence to Christianity in philosophically oriented pagan circles?

[Bart Ehrman]

Once again, I'd say we don't know. We do have Christians who convert who are philosophically oriented, going back at least to Justin in the middle of the second century and then going on up into the third and fourth centuries. To my knowledge, we don't have anybody mentioning this particular phenomenon as having an influence on their thinking about either the similarities of Christianity to paganism, making them convert or not.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. What is the origin of the ritual of baptism? Although there are antecedents in Jewish religion, we now associate this ritual primarily with Christianity. Do we know how this transition took place and why?

[Bart Ehrman]

It's usually thought that the transformation happened with Jesus predecessor John the Baptist. John, of course, was Jewish within Judaism, basically forever. There had been cleansing rituals involving water. Normally in Jewish cleansing rituals, these are repeated events as needed. And so people would go through a number of baptisms or a number, not just being dunked under water, but being, you know, using water for purification. It appears that John the Baptist, we don't know if he actually came up with it, but he's the first we know of who did this, maintained that a person needed to have a complete immersion in water to symbolize or to be connected with their repentance for the forgiveness of sins, so that when God's kingdom arrived very soon they would be cleansed and ready to enter into it. And so John's ministry involved baptizing people for the coming kingdom. Jesus himself was baptized by John. There's mixed information even in the New Testament about whether Jesus himself baptized followers. But certainly after his death, it became the standard view with Christians that Jesus had been baptized. We too are baptized in preparation for the kingdom. The theology within Christianity took various turns, very interesting turns. So that Paul has a very different interpretation of baptism from the interpretation of John the Baptist. And, and the New Testament interpretations are all very different. Almost all. All modern forms of baptism have different theologies than what you find in the New Testament. But the practice itself appears to have originated with John.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. Do you think the fact that dying and rising deities are relatively common and normal in pagan pantheons had an impact on how easily early Christianity took hold amongst the pagans? Particularly if we compare its poor reception amongst the Jews.

[Bart Ehrman]

I personally think that this idea that you will find all over the Internet and in many books and many people saying that there were lots of pagan dying and rising gods, I think that that's not true. I've written about this a good bit. And what you get in paganism is you. You never get a human, a divine human who dies and comes back from the dead, gets resurrected from the dead. In pagan religions you have some beings who never actually die, who come back. And you have some people who die and never come back, back to earth, but maybe go up straight to heaven. But the idea of a divine human dying and then physically being raised from the dead isn't present in pagan religion. People who know the materials will come up with, well, yeah, what about this, what about that? But if you actually look at the primary sources themselves and read them carefully, I'm not convinced it happens. What you do have, of course, are, are people being taken up to heaven at death and they die and they're taken up to heaven, not that they become back on earth as a human. And that certainly, I think affected pagans understandings of Jesus, that he was the one who. He was one who was taken up to heaven and made a divine being. And so I think that played a huge role. But I don't think that there were lots of gods who died and then came back on earth as a God or as a human.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. One final question. What are your thoughts on the Ideas argued that Christianity was an intentionally created religion by the Roman elite.

[Bart Ehrman]

That's a very modern idea. I've never understood why anybody thinks it's true. I know there are books about it, but the books about it are written by people who actually don't know much about the Roman world or Roman religion or early Christianity. I would say that there is no way the Romans invented Christianity. If you can read the sources, the people are saying these things. You're just making stuff up. And some of them made significant money doing so. There's not a Roman historian in the world who thinks that, or an ancient historian or a New Testament scholar or anybody who's skilled in this stuff. So, you know, it would take a long time to explain it, but the way they work out these hypotheses just show. They just haven't. They either haven't read ancient Roman biographies or ancient Roman Jewish histories, early Christianity. They just don't know the primary materials to think this is a possibility, in my judgment.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we talked about and maybe give them the name of your book where they can find out some more?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. Well, my book is called the Triumph of Christianity, and it's about how Christianity spread from its small beginnings to becoming the religion of the west for centuries and centuries. How that happened, our discussion has been about a key moment in that, which was the conversion of Constantine. Constantine is a major figure in Roman history, quite apart from Christianity. He was the second longest ruling emperor who made the biggest changes of probably anybody since Caesar Augustus. So he was really huge in terms of Roman social and political history, but also because of his religious conversion in the year 312. We talked about what led up to the conversion and what we know about the conversion and what kind of sources of information we have about the conversion and whether it was really genuine or not. And we do have sources. We have sources by people who knew him, who talk about it, and it appears from everything we can see that it was a genuine conversion. But I've also argued that he did not make Christianity the state religion and his conversion is not. What is the reason that Christianity succeeded.

[Megan Lewis]

Bart, thank you so much for that and thank you for sharing your time and expertise. Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.botehrman.com misquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, next time we're talking about something that's kind of distantly related. We're talking about where the Trinity came from. And it's distantly related to Constantine because he called and officiated over a council, the Council of Nicaea, that was instrumental in the later development of the full doctrine of the Trinity. So we'll be talking about what the Trinity is. Most people don't even get that. Don't get that right because of misinformation. We're talking about what the Trinity doctrine is and where it came from.

[Megan Lewis]

Wonderful. Thank you, everybody, and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Herman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.