Great read! I believe there's one small error, though. You've numbered the third bullet "1." instead of "3." in the list after "They can be somewhat mitigated."
One comment that's working against your argument is citing Jesus to make the case that oral cultures don't scale. The spread of Christianity before the printing press was far more oral than written -- it actually proves the opposite point. Disciples didn't have printed bibles sitting in their church pew. And even if they did, most of them couldn't have read it anyway.
I'm haven't found any references approximating roughly the number of christians over time - especially ones pre printing press. I'd expect it to explode post printing press but this may be difficult to prove regardless since it was difficult to record the number of followers pre printing press
It's possible that the numbers wouldn't clarify much, given that Christianity scaled in many cases on the backs of government "mandate." Which isn't said to criticize either Christianity or government mandates. Perhaps the spread of <people who were trying to love everybody because Jesus> was in line with oral culture and the spread of <people who were avoiding beheading, etc., because Rome/European colonial powers> was in line with infrastructure?
Great read! I believe there's one small error, though. You've numbered the third bullet "1." instead of "3." in the list after "They can be somewhat mitigated."
Thank you! Fixed
Interesting post.
One comment that's working against your argument is citing Jesus to make the case that oral cultures don't scale. The spread of Christianity before the printing press was far more oral than written -- it actually proves the opposite point. Disciples didn't have printed bibles sitting in their church pew. And even if they did, most of them couldn't have read it anyway.
I'm haven't found any references approximating roughly the number of christians over time - especially ones pre printing press. I'd expect it to explode post printing press but this may be difficult to prove regardless since it was difficult to record the number of followers pre printing press
It's possible that the numbers wouldn't clarify much, given that Christianity scaled in many cases on the backs of government "mandate." Which isn't said to criticize either Christianity or government mandates. Perhaps the spread of <people who were trying to love everybody because Jesus> was in line with oral culture and the spread of <people who were avoiding beheading, etc., because Rome/European colonial powers> was in line with infrastructure?