Information Related to "Christianity: Burden or Blessing to Mankind?"
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Some 2,000 years ago, in a backwater of the vast Roman Empire, Jesus Christ came into this world. He was born in obscurity; during His lifetime we know of no ancient historian outside of the Bible who recorded His birth.
Surely at that time no mere human prognosticator could have predicted that His life and the instruction He passed on to His followers would affect the world as much as it has. The ripple effect of His work was destined to change history more than that of any other individual ever.
Jesus set an example and preached a way of life that drastically clashed with many basic values of the world that then was. Many of the fundamentals of Jesus' way were considered radical by the religious leaders of His day; some of Christ's teachings surprised even His disciples.
Jesus' first disciples were all Jewish, but the culture into which He came was heavily influenced by the Greek and Roman cultures. The Greek kingdoms that succeeded the Hellenistic Empire of Alexander the Great were absorbed into the Roman Empire, and the Romans retained many elements of Hellenistic culture.
The Greek language, for example, remained the means of international communication throughout most of the known world for centuries to come. The New Testament was originally written in Greek.
The Greco-Roman culture of that time lacked many of the traits of propriety and decency we take for granted today. For example, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato held that most human beings are slavish by nature and suitable only for slavery.
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