Sunday, October 17, 2010

How Historical Were Early Christian Belief And Literature?

I'm going to be writing more posts about issues raised in my recent discussion with Richard. The posts will be partly a response to him and partly intended to address some larger issues. Before I start with those posts, I want to make some introductory comments. I don't want to have to explain this context in each post, so I'd prefer to do it in one introductory post like this one. And some of Richard's posts have disappeared, so I want to quote him now, in case more will disappear later. I know he deleted some of his comments earlier, and he may have deleted other posts after that. Or it may be a problem with Blogger. I don't know.

Here's some of what he said in our discussion:

Early Christian mythography (in the form of "gospels", "acti apostolorum", or sayings collections) all registered within a specific modality vis-a-vis the broad array of other Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac literary works. The generic and modal signals within the New Testament gospels inform and orient the ancient reader toward a mythographic aretology aimed at such outcomes as ethical and political gravitas, entertainment, and socio-religious propaganda (particularly in the wake of the 70 C.E. Jerusalem crisis). One finds a developmental trajectory from the earliest strata of Q, to the rhetorically potent, mythological embellishments of Mark, to their fusion and further embellishment in the compilations Matthew and Luke, concluding with a third creative work, i.e. John. We really do not have any surviving historiography or biography from earliest Christian prose (from the first 3 centuries of the common era). They are all mythographies. Jesus and the apostles are used as literary vehicles propped up in various compiled episodes, composed for their rhetorical performance articulating the socio-political and philosophical distinctions and contestations of these early subaltern movements and communities. For instance, to embroider Q with a mythic birth and then a postmortem raised ascension was to decorate the tale with the standard honorific embellishments granted to others said to have been demigods. Here one thinks of the virgin birth of such towering individuals in the Greek orient as Alexander the Great (Plutarch et al) and the road appearances of Romulus, Aristeas, Proteus, et al. I have an article appearing in JBL in the fourth quarter that more fully documents the primary accounts. Since the gospel authors continued this mode and genre into the subsequent centuries (Luke-Acts, btw, was not known by Papias and does not turn up until the mid second century, the actual time of its composition), it is unacceptable for the modern historian to assign the Gospels any serious value as accurate renditions of Jesus or his earliest movement....

The earliest Christians enter this arena, staking out their own philosophical position through the use of mythography or storytelling. Jesus thus became the literary vehicle articulating the various responses of disparate early Christian communities. Have you yet noticed, Jason, the shocking lack of interest in supporting or defending the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection in the first 2 centuries? Instead the discussion runs almost immediately toward the aforesaid philosophical fray (e.g. Justin, de Resurrectione; the Coptic Treatise on the Resurrection). The Johannine School and the Thomas School were quite evidently in fierce polemic over these matters (cf. Riley again, Resurrection Reconsidered). Not only is there a gaping lack of support (only conspicuous vis-à-vis the historical claims of modern Christianity, mind you) provided for the historicity of the resurrection—indeed which martyr makes any mention of such a conviction in her or his dying testimony in early Christian prose?—but the topic receives such negligence as to be rendered irrelevant. The earliest writers make no visible effort to distinguish their tales from analogous stories and motifs recurring in the broader classical literary domain, except perhaps in terms of quality or degree of significance, never in terms of veracity or generics.

He also made a lot of other claims. And I've responded to him there. I won't be repeating everything I said.

Notice that he used a lot of broad language and claimed to be addressing a lengthy period of time. He said that we "do not have any surviving historiography or biography", and he mentioned the first three centuries. When I cited the example of Ignatius' comments about how Jesus truly was born of a virgin, truly was crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly rose from the dead, etc., he claimed that Ignatius was saying that those things truly occurred within a fictional story, not that they were historical events.

Those are some significant and broad claims Richard is making. They're also massively false claims. And they're claims that are widely contradicted by modern scholarship, including non-Evangelical scholarship.

I'll be addressing some of these issues in the coming days. I'm not just doing this to reply to Richard, but also because I think it will be beneficial for readers to have the historical nature of the early Christian claims reinforced in their minds. What I'll be posting will be representative examples. Much more could be said. The evidence against Richard's position is abundant. The vast majority of people, including scholars, don't hold a position even close to Richard's. But many people do hold views that are somewhat similar, so there's also a broader application in that sense.

10 comments:

  1. Just consider the psychological absurdity of his claims. Were pagans prepared to suffer persecution and martyrdom for Odysseus? No. If early Christians regarded Jesus as a mythical construct, they'd hardly put their life on the line. Likewise, early Christian apologists wouldn't write all the stuff they did to consciously defend a fictive Jesus.

    What Richard is giving us is not a sociorhetorical construct from 1-2C Christianity, but a sociorhetorical construct from Yale divinity school. A papier-mâché artifact by insular, overbred "scholars" in self-referential dialogue with their peers, utterly detached from the conditions of the 1C, could possibly produce. Ingrown "scholarship" that moves in a literary world of texts within texts within texts, having no extratextual point of contact with the real world.

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  6. Richard,

    I addressed your claims about credentials in a previous thread. You're ignoring what I said there. In a comment there that you deleted, you said that we need psychological help. You also wrote, more recently:

    "More cowardly 'gatling gun' rhetoric, instead of informative discourse. Jason, you have little idea about my position or its relation to the data. That would take work on your part and character. Since when are laziness, misrepresenation, and arrogance Christian virtues? If you want to interact with my position, then ask questions that unpack that position. Instead you just fire off your amatuer assault on strawmen congratulating yourself on how airtight your positions must be. Pathetic."

    So, your latest claims about our alleged "immature tone" don't seem to be consistent with your own behavior. What if I had said that you need psychological help, had referred to "casting my pearls" before you, etc.? Wouldn't you have objected to such a "tone"?

    You criticize us for speaking too quickly and not "asking questions", yet you just made some assumptions about Steve Hays' background without asking questions first. You've also made a lot of assumptions about our motives and have frequently misrepresented us. Why is it that you've been deleting so many of your own posts? Probably not because you were careful when you wrote them. You're not in much of a position to be criticizing others for carelessness.

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  7. (continued from above)

    You write:

    "So, I ask, for what did John the Baptist die? Did any of these individuals in the narrative die because Jesus was 'born of a virgin' or had an 'empty tomb'? Indeed, I am unaware of ANYONE in the ancient world who indicated that either of these stood as the reason for their confidence in facing death."

    Nobody cites John the Baptist as a resurrection witness. And your argument about the resurrection witnesses is a weak objection often repeated by ignorant skeptics. I've answered it here and here.

    You write:

    "In ancient Christian martyrology no mention is made of a compelling historical Jesus or eyewitness testimony regarding divine interruption of history. They all die resisting the demands of empire in fidelity to the emblem of their countercultural ideology, i.e. Jesus, rather than to divine Caesar."

    You're failing to address why they held such a view of Jesus to begin with. One of our earliest sources tells us that the resurrection was foundational to their view of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:17), and it's a central event in all of the gospels and Acts. Stephen's dying words mention Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy (Acts 7:52), an evidential concept that was prominent in both Judaism and early Christianity. 2 Timothy, which is significant as Paul's testimony near death or significant with regard to how others viewed his death (depending on one's view of authorship), wants Timothy to remember such historical facts as Jesus' Davidic descent and resurrection (2 Timothy 2:8). As I documented in our previous discussion linked above, Ignatius' letters written on his way to martyrdom repeatedly mention the resurrection and the physical evidence for it and the witnesses of it. He also refers to fulfilled prophecy (Letter To The Smyrnaeans, 5; Letter To The Philadelphians, 5). In the very passage in Ignatius that you've referred to (Letter To The Romans, 4), Ignatius distinguishes himself from the apostles on the basis of their apostleship. As I explained in our earlier discussion linked above, that distinction between apostleship and later church leadership was based on evidential concepts like the eyewitness status of men such as Peter and Paul. In our previous discussion linked above, I documented what Justin Martyr said about the significance of the evidence of prophecy. Similar comments were made by many other ancient Christians. They don't have to have mentioned such concepts in the closing moments of their lives, before martyrdom, in order to have sufficiently expressed their belief in those things.

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  8. (continued from above)

    Section 10 of The Martyrdom Of Polycarp has the proconsul telling Polycarp to "persuade the people" about Christianity. Polycarp was willing to meet with the proconsul to discuss Christianity with him, but he wasn't going to attempt it before such an unreasonable crowd. That's what the account says. You can't judge what Polycarp knew, why he believed what he believed, and how concepts like Jesus' resurrection were related to his willingness to die simply by reading The Martyrdom Of Polycarp. As I said in our previous discussion, you keep making unreasonable demands on Christianity, then complain when it doesn't meet those demands.

    You write:

    "Notice I did not say that you must agree with us--Indeed I have never yet fully agreed with anyone in the academy."

    We agree with a lot of scholars. I've already cited some I agree with in my exchanges with you.

    You write:

    "Neither of you know a tenth of what you suppose....You both have so much more to learn and yet, so long as you imagine otherwise, you will remain ignorant and only impressive to them who know less."

    How do you know what we "suppose" and "imagine" about such things?

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  10. The Richard in this thread has since been identified as Richard C. Miller. You can read more about him and his unethical behavior here.

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