What Alternatives Are There to Christianity Being an Ascetic Religion?

[Secret Alias]

Ummmm. It doesn't go anywhere. There really isn't any supporting evidence other than the verbal parallel between Adonis and Adonai. And the passing comments of Plutarch in Table Talk.

[nightshadetwine]

Ummmm. It doesn't go anywhere. There really isn't any supporting evidence other than the verbal parallel between Adonis and Adonai. And the passing comments of Plutarch in Table Talk.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. What does Adonis and Adonai or Plutarch's Table Talk have to do with Dionysus? Maybe you're not replying to me.

[Secret Alias]

I am replying to you. Adonis is the Semitic Dionysus. I guess my difficulty is this. Just because we 'like' something doesn't mean it is true.

[nightshadetwine]

What would you consider as evidence of Greco-Roman myths/religion influencing Christianity? In my opinion if there's all these savior/hero myths that have reoccurring motifs then it's most likely that there's some influencing going on. I think these motifs were a part of a lot of different cultures in the Ancient Near East and were added to historical and mythological people's lives/stories.

[Stuart]

Back to the OP, I actually half agree with Stephen that Christianity had a monastic origin. Further I agree that the Marcionites were not the starting point, but one of several sects at the moment evangelist erupted. In fact diversity was so great that we cannot trace the origins back to any single sect. The moment the first Christian literature of what would become the NT became public diversity of sects was already a defining characteristic of Christianity. I arrive at that, not through church father analysis, which I consider suspect but rather from scripture itself, Sola Scriptura (a nod to my Protestant heritage there).

Digression a bit. The concept of early or even pre-Christian "Jesus Communities" is not new and not considered a particularly radical concept. This arose mostly out of Q studies, and Kloppenborg-Verbin gives a rather detailed summary of the Q studies view of this in his 4th chapter Excavating Q (pages 166-213 in the paperback edition I have). This concept came about to explain the diversity of opinion in the very earliest Christians which is reflected in the NT texts and the battles over the "true" way. It's the problem of sectarianism from the very start of the written record, although many traditional or even partly traditional scholars still adhere to some form of the "virgin" church myth. Back to Kloppenborg-Verin's book, the first thing covered is the illiteracy rate in the Mediterranean, such that at most 10% of the population could read, if that. And how the earliest Christian texts, inheriting from the early LXX manuscripts such as P266, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ap_266.jpg, used scripta continua and required almost a performance type reading.

At this point my view diverges greatly from the views presented of a Jewish, perhaps Jerusalem based sect, that was within Judaism, and specifically Palestinian Judaism. This view I think is very wrong. I also think the view presented of these communities, were primarily peasant based. I am more inclined to view these Christian or "pre-Christian" communities as monastic (with Huller) and outside of Palestine (with Detering -- I diverge from Detering in his view that Indian Buddhism was the primary influence, as I believe we may be looking at something more akin to convergent development rather than a direct dependence).

There were communities such as the Theraputae which Philo details that fit the bill. I am not saying there is a direct relationship for sure, but their monastic communities far away from Palestinian Judaism, practices the sort of intense exegesis and performance plays and communal readings where an intensely unique divergence from mainstream Judaism could easily begin. But more importantly, these communities spread throughout the Greek speaking regions of the Mediterranean and seem to have been well along the way of elevating Joshua above Moses when Philo wrote about them. I doubt this Alexandria region community Philo wrote about was unique, as there were probably other more Christian like sects of this movement in other locals such as in what today are Greece, Turkey and Syria. There very spread out nature, semi-isolated from the mainstream society, each with it's own strong leader, were ripe to split into differing readings of the same texts and differing theologies. Such an incubator would have been perfect for pre-evangelizing Christianity of Jesus/Joshua followers. The fact that they were in Greek speaking areas and had been separated from mainstream Judaism for at least a century, suggests their membership was very likely not very Jewish at all, and I would suggest nearly completely Greek ethnic by the time evangelism erupted.

This eruption I place in the 2nd century. The one thing I credit the Marcionites with is the Gospel and evangelism to those not committed to the Monastic life. Their success in this initial evangelism, and their Gospel, is what caused a reaction from the other monasteries, as their theology was at odds with many of them -- the diversity was already pronounced the first day evangelism started. The reaction led to one book after another being written or revised in rapid succession as each group wanted to adjust the message to something closer to what their Sect (monastery) was preaching. This is where the legend of the Petrine counter mission came from. It is the friction in the story telling (of the legends) repeated in Galatians.

While all this is speculative, the support for this goes back to the scripture itself. It is long been noted that the stories in the Gospels are largely retelling of OT stories and themes in a new setting with Jesus, and with new message or theology which is synthesized with many non-Jewish elements. This pre-Gospel where the stories accumulated, must have come from the type of intense study one sees in a monastic or university setting. (A more recent example can be drawn from the Protestant Reformation and how quickly it spread out of intense internal settings in a small German speaking area to engulf most of Europe in less than two generations. The diversity in Protestantism was present the day it erupted as it had been incubating for a century or more before erupting.) So then the Marcionite Gospel is but one version of this internal monastic document, common yet variant from one sects monastery to another, which was built upon and honed for their evangelism. Matthew, John and Mark were similarly crafted as response, Matthew and Mark specifically from the internal document, John and Luke derivative (and of course others probably lost).

It was competition due to the diversity before the eruption that forged the NT and it's internal conflicts. All that could only have come about in an intense internal environment, and the monastic setting seems to fit that best. For once I think Stephen Huller has it right, although he probably has very different circumstances.

[Joseph D. L.]

I do not see an issue with comparing Jesus to Dionysus, Bacchus, Osiris, etc.

All have general motifs associated with each other, and most were conflated together because of such assocations. Indeed, some were even more tenuous than the comparisons some draw between Christ and these gods. For example, Dionysus never married his sister; and Osiris was not sewn to his father's thigh. Mithras slays a bull; Osiris does not slay a bull. But these differences did not stop writers, and participants of these religions (that's the important thing to remember, it wasn't limited to Aristotelian observations) to conflate and syncretize these gods accordingly.

And Dionysus has always been my number one suspect for comparing with Jesus, because we have actual testimonies, both Jewish and Gentile, that say that Jews did indeed worship Bacchus, and that their rites were even similar to those paid in honour to Bacchus.

Also, Adonis isn't the Semetic Dionysus. Adonis is Adonis; Dionysus is Dionysus. Only by allowing that a synthesis between the two took place, can you say that Adonis is the Semetic Dionysus, and thus admiting that religions, Jewish and Christian, were susceptible to the same phenomenon of cultural appropriation. If that is the case, then one can just as accurately say that Jesus is the Jewish Dionysus, because religion is not a streamlined process.

[MrMacSon]

... In fact diversity was so great that we cannot trace the origins back to any single sect. The moment the first Christian literature of what would become the NT became public, diversity of sects was already a defining characteristic of Christianity. I arrive at that, not through church father analysis, which I consider suspect but rather from scripture itself, Sola Scriptura (a nod to my Protestant heritage there).

... The concept of early or even pre-Christian "Jesus Communities" is not new and not considered a particularly radical concept ... This concept came about to explain the diversity of opinion in the very earliest Christians which is reflected in the NT texts and the battles over the "true" way. It's the problem of sectarianism from the very start of the written record, although many traditional or even partly traditional scholars still adhere to some form of the "virgin" church myth ...

That's essentially what David Brakke says in the first chapter of his 2010 book The Gnostics: Myth Ritual and Diversity in Early Christianity (Harvard University Press). He refers to a "varieties of early Christianity" model, and says Walter Bauer's central insights -that Christianity was diverse from the get-go, that it developed in different ways in different regions, and that the emergence of orthodoxy was the result of real struggle- are now accepted as the basis for understanding Christianity in the early centuries.

Bauer argued that in some locations, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, forms of Christianity that would later be deemed heretical actually predated what would later emerge as orthodox.

Brakke says three key themes characterize new work on early Christian diversity: hybridity, rhetoric, and ethnicity, with hybridity being like syncretism but as applied by the likes of Justin Martyr in his/their rhetoric -

.
Rebecca Lyman, for example, draws on the notion of hybridity to approach one of proto-orthodoxy's star architects, Justin Martyr. She places Justin's invention of the idea of heresy (which [Brakke] discuss[es] in Chapter 4) in the context of a wider discussion of universalism and multiple traditions occurring in the second century, a time when numerous Greek-speaking authors, like Justin, were attempting to find a place for varieties of Hellenism within Roman imperial domination. Justin's idea of heresy does not reflect an already formed and essentially intolerant Christian proto-orthodoxy, but rather represents one of a range of attempts tempts by Hellenistic thinkers (mostly not Christian) to relate notions of universal truth and local beliefs.

Lyman contests a picture of Christianity as inherently less tolerant and prone to impose an orthodoxy than other ancient religious movements, although she admits that Christians are often "more extreme" than others.

And, indeed, I would observe that we do not find too many other ancient religions with bishops. But Lyman's important move is to dislodge our notion of some essential orthodoxy that Justin defends -or even creates- and to situate Christian discussions of plurality and universal truth within a wider cultural setting. Justin fully participates in dominant Hellenistic and Roman cultures even as he contests tests them-the condition of hybridity.

The role of rhetoric is the second feature of recent attention to early Christian diversity. If Christians like Justin were not easily differentiated from other ancient religious people and in fact shared even in the cultures tures that they claimed to reject, then they faced the challenge of asserting ing such a difference in their rhetoric.

.... scholars increasingly follow [the French theologian Alain Le] Le Boulluec's example by studying how authors such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian created different notions of heresy in their projects of intellectual and social formation.

David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth Ritual and Diversity in Early Christianity (Harvard University Press), 2010.

One can probably view that 1st chapter of The Gnostics: Myth Ritual & Diversity in Early Christianity via preview on Amazon or via a 'Kindle sample' download.

[MrMacSon]

... the battles over the "true" way ...
.

Brakke refers to battles and warfare as metaphors for the jostling, jockeying, and arguing, as reflected in the title of Bart Ehrman's book, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

Brakke says the proto-orthodox Christians won their victory with an "arsenal" of "weapons," including 'apostolic succession', the rule of faith, the biblical canon, and the like.

[Giuseppe]

There very spread out nature, semi-isolated from the mainstream society, each with it's own strong leader, were ripe to split into differing readings of the same texts and differing theologies. Such an incubator would have been perfect for pre-evangelizing Christianity of Jesus/Joshua followers. The fact that they were in Greek speaking areas and had been separated from mainstream Judaism for at least a century, suggests their membership was very likely not very Jewish at all, and I would suggest nearly completely Greek ethnic by the time evangelism erupted.

This eruption I place in the 2nd century. The one thing I credit the Marcionites with is the Gospel and evangelism to those not committed to the Monastic life. Their success in this initial evangelism, and their Gospel, is what caused a reaction from the other monasteries, as their theology was at odds with many of them

I see that you are a bit elusive about the question of what was the Earliest Gospel, differently in this, probably, from dr. Detering. The latter will be surely more explicit in tracing a distinction between theologies preceding the Earliest Gospel - basically theologies without the idea of a historical Jesus (even if among them there were already Gnostic theologies of the more radical kind) - and the same theologies following and adapting the historicist idea of Jesus.

My point is that the same idea of a Gospel (of a Life for Jesus) is so strictly connected with the surprise raised by Jesus in the (essential) obscurity of this world, that we have very few candidates for the author of a 'surprise' of this kind: the Gnostic side.

[Secret Alias]

But this is part of the fucking stupidity I am talking about. THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS 'GNOSTICISM' meaning a movement which identified itself as such or which was 'purely' or 'wholly gnostic.' I don't care what you have been led to believe by reading (or not reading) Irenaeus. Yes there was mysticism and mystics as a rule hoped to 'bring themselves into acquaintance' with the divinity or divine mysteries or divine power. But this whole nonsense that you go on about - i.e. that there was a 'gnostic religion' or a 'gnostic Church' - is so fucking stupid it has more to do with Blavatsky than antiquity.

Rich people were gnostics. They always have been. Why? Because fucking bored and it sounds 'kind of cool' to meet God or any number of his ministering attendants.

But all things reported in the Church Fathers are things associated with the elites within the Church, within a structured body of Christian believers where the vast majority of the members were dumber than a bag of hammers. Only the elites were 'gnostic.' Why? Because in order to hope to be enlightened or gnostic you had to have the ability to read, reading 'brings you into acquaintance' with the divinity. There were no illiterate 'gnostics' (I utterly detest the word 'gnostic' even though Clement and others use it). When Clement uses the word 'gnostic' he does so as a Platonist. He knows that Moses was a 'gnostic.' He knows that prophets can be 'gnostic.' Jesus was 'gnostic.' But he doesn't mean the term to denote a separate 'church' or a movement or a tradition where these gnostics weren't also part of a broader 'church' which tended to utter ignoramuses who couldn't not by their very nature have been 'brought into acquaintance' with truth or beauty of goodness.

Clement clearly states that for most of the people faith was all they could hope for. He inherited this way of seeing the world in a tripartite divide from Philo. But Philo was a member of the Jewish aristocracy or theocracy. Perhaps the Sadducees as a rule were 'gnostic' but that doesn't mean that they weren't also a part of a structure which basically controlled and restricted the beliefs of practices of the rabble to 'faith.'

Your abuse of terminology is so bloody annoying. My point at the beginning of the thread is still living, beating the more you spout your nonsense. There is no evidence for any Christian model or model of Christianity outside of the standard one, the familiar church structure with a group of priestly elites tending to a mass of complete morons. Why? Because the elites either craved power or needed the support of the mob.