Religion, Religion And Religion In The Roman Empire

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Throughout the lifespan of the Roman empire, religion and religious rituals were an important part of Roman identity. For many, religion served as more than just a casual system of shared beliefs, but as a dedicated way of life. Religion governed who people associated with, how their day was structured, their adherence to the Roman Empire, and what was deemed as appropriate behavior. Christianity was born during a time of great religious diversity in the Roman Empire, many of the key characteristics that we view as being ‘Christian’ today were heavily influenced or even taken directly from the surrounding beliefs and rituals.

Public sacrifice and worship was required of citizens in the Roman Empire. It was used as a means to unify its citizens by strengthening their bonds of cultural kinship and devotion to the empire. As long as they paid homage to the emperor by partaking in the rituals and remained loyal, respectable citizens, people were allowed to worship whomever …show more content…

Incoming members of the cult took park in a taurobolium, an initiation ceremony in which they would be baptized in the blood of a bull. This ritual was used by followers to signify an individual’s rebirth upon entering into new eternal life. Similarly, in a less grotesque fashion, new Christian converts are baptized in water as a public proclamation of their faith and to signify being ‘born again’ into a new life.

Not only did early Christianity adopt similar practices of the cults around them, but it was heavily influenced by the surrounding culture and beliefs of the time. The myth of the Origin of Rome shares some similar ideas with that of the Christian origin story. For instance, both Jesus and Romulus and Remus were born of both a virgin and a deity. These and other correlations were common between different cults in the Roman

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