Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by John T »

MrMacSon wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 6:03 pm I guess we'll need to discuss what Rüpke says about the development of Christianity directly.
Perhaps you are confusing Rupke's "textual communities" with textual criticism.

Furthermore, in the section you provided, Rupke is not talking about the development of Christianity from Roman paganism but rather acknowledging the firm establishment of the Christian communities several hundred years after Jesus.

Not that there is anything wrong about talking about the history of Roman paganism, it is a interesting subject in its own right but try as you might there is no known nexus to Roman paganism and early Christianity.

Once again, the O.P. is on the wrong forum.

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Ulan
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:58 am

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by Ulan »

@DCHindley: Yes, Jungian psychology has mostly been done away with nowadays. I don't think I have read any flattering review of Freke and Gandy's book(s), and if I remember correctly, even Bob Price's words sounded a bit like damning with faint praise.

Anyway, the psychology behind religion is an interesting subject. You are right that you shouldn't put too much faith into our ability to fill in gaps in history with sociological and psychological reasoning, but it's certainly worth an attempt. Thanks for the list of Marxist/Monist ideas regarding Christianity.

Regarding Rüpke's text, the German reviews are mostly addressing his italo-centric view, especially when it comes to the development of Christianity. They don't think that leaving out Jewish, Egyptian, Greek and Mesopotamian influences will yield valid results. I'm still not convinced whether the reviews actually hit the real topic of the book. Changes in Roman (as in Italy) society can certainly give some answers about why Christianity seemed to be rather successful in the old Roman capital.

The other point of contention is, of course, his adaptation of what is described as Markus Vinzent's ideas about the origin of Christianity. It's really hard to judge a book from reviews, so I won't. However, though the "Marcion first" hypothesis is definitely not the leading hypothesis of Christian origins in Germany, you have a whole cluster of people that were taught in Heidelberg and Tübingen, among other places, who share that idea. Matthias Klinghardt and David Trobisch both come from Heidelberg groups (Klaus Berger and Gerd Theissen, respectively), and they both were also studying in Tübingen, where J. Rüpke is from academically. Vinzent had been a postdoc in Heidelberg and "habilitated" there. Of course I don't know, but they may have known each other for quite a while, at least from sitting in similar talks, which wouldn't make following this idea quite that far "out there".
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by DCHindley »

MrMacSon wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 5:48 pm
DCHindley" wrote:
Kyle Harper wrote: Other important recent work on these same figures, for example by Dieter Roth and Markus Bockmuehl, which undercuts the most sensational reconstructions, is damned to the oblivion of missing bibliography.
-- I'm not sure Dieter Roth and Markus Bockmuehl offer reconstructions of early Christian origins.
Well, I don't see how you can write commentary on Marcion or subject early Christian lore about Peter to scrutiny without dealing with their relationship to early Christian development.

Dieter Roth has come up in this forum several times, I remember (mainly in exchange with SA). Paging through works of his that I have on my computer it seems he is arguing for the primacy of Luke to Marcion's Evangelion, but subjects the thinking on the subject of reconstructing Marcion's text to quite rigorous examination from the 1840s to the present.

I am wholly unfamiliar with Markus Bockmuehl, unfortunately, although from the publisher's blurbs from his books on Amazon, I'd say he is a Moderate Christian, very much embracing the Christian tradition. However, he has investigated the traditions about Saint Peter in great detail, from the perspective of a scholar.
DCHindley wrote: Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:55 pm
The section I colorized relates exactly to what I feel Freke & Gandy were themselves doing when they subjected the sources they collected very diligently to analysis.
I'm intrigued with your comparison with what Freke & Gandy were doing ...
In that review I attached as a PDF I lament that to really understand what we have in the Greek myths and their influence on early Christian development, one would have to create quite a database, and I doubted I had the time to ever do so.

As for modern-day Jesus mythicists, I think they are way too quick to jump to conclusions, almost as if any excuse is all the excuse they need to adopt assumptions that are consonant with their romantic love for myth, and/or to make Jesus "go away" by relegating him to the status of a fable.

I mention the Marxists because they also made a thorough survey of Roman history and mythology and Greco-Roman philosophy before interjecting dialectic materialism to conclude that Jesus theology was entirely fictional, although they differed among themselves as to whether the myth precipitated in Rome or Jerusalem.

We may not agree with his opinion that social pressures and economic oppression would always break (in stages) towards revolution and liberation (in real life I don't think they do most of the time), but they put a whole lot of thought into their model, more than modern mythicists.

I am hoping my criticism will prompt them to say: "If Engles, Kautsky and Kalthoff can do it, I can do it today - with better resources than they had available!" That does not mean I'll buy their newer, leaner, meaner reconstructions and models, but it will offer more meat to sink one's teeth into. I'm tired of gnawing at the gristle of F & G or Jesus haters dismissively waving him out of existence.

DCH
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by DCHindley »

Ulan wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:28 am The other point of contention is, of course, [Rüpke's] adaptation of what is described as Markus Vinzent's ideas about the origin of Christianity. It's really hard to judge a book from reviews, so I won't. However, though the "Marcion first" hypothesis is definitely not the leading hypothesis of Christian origins in Germany, you have a whole cluster of people that were taught in Heidelberg and Tübingen, among other places, who share that idea. Matthias Klinghardt and David Trobisch both come from Heidelberg groups (Klaus Berger and Gerd Theissen, respectively), and they both were also studying in Tübingen, where J. Rüpke is from academically. Vinzent had been a postdoc in Heidelberg and "habilitated" there. Of course I don't know, but they may have known each other for quite a while, at least from sitting in similar talks, which wouldn't make following this idea quite that far "out there".
I was thrown into confusion by your inclusion of David Trobisch in the company of those German scholars who support a Marcion first hypothesis. I thought that he is himself a protestant evangelical Christian, who happens to have concentrated his study on NT manuscript transmission, especially that the books of the NT are transmitted in such a way that it seems that they were originally published that way (e = four gospel collection, a = Acts & general epistles, p = Pauline corpus & r = Revelation of Jesus Christ to his slave John).

He suggests that there was little evidence that alternate, competing texts or collections were accepted in the same circles as copied out sets of books of the NT canon. There is evidence that some of the works, such as Romans and 2 Corinthians in the "p" complex, and even the ordering of the books in that complex, had undergone editing and consolidation, but we don't see alternate orders for individual books (in some mss) that are strong enough to indicate that there represent competing collections of Pauline epistles out there. The few mss that do differ in order seem to be idiosyncratic, just ordered according to the copyist's whim.

For whatever reason those "cannon-Christians," once adopting the canonical NT mss groups, stopped preserving the older books and forms of the collections that had gone into the NT canon. It seems almost like it was a deliberate strategy in response to a threat. Perhaps Marcion and his ideas about those books served as this existential threat. Is this what you meant to imply?

DCH
Ulan
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:58 am

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by Ulan »

DCHindley wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:08 pm
Ulan wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:28 am The other point of contention is, of course, [Rüpke's] adaptation of what is described as Markus Vinzent's ideas about the origin of Christianity. It's really hard to judge a book from reviews, so I won't. However, though the "Marcion first" hypothesis is definitely not the leading hypothesis of Christian origins in Germany, you have a whole cluster of people that were taught in Heidelberg and Tübingen, among other places, who share that idea. Matthias Klinghardt and David Trobisch both come from Heidelberg groups (Klaus Berger and Gerd Theissen, respectively), and they both were also studying in Tübingen, where J. Rüpke is from academically. Vinzent had been a postdoc in Heidelberg and "habilitated" there. Of course I don't know, but they may have known each other for quite a while, at least from sitting in similar talks, which wouldn't make following this idea quite that far "out there".
I was thrown into confusion by your inclusion of David Trobisch in the company of those German scholars who support a Marcion first hypothesis. I thought that he is himself a protestant evangelical Christian, who happens to have concentrated his study on NT manuscript transmission, especially that the books of the NT are transmitted in such a way that it seems that they were originally published that way (e = four gospel collection, a = Acts & general epistles, p = Pauline corpus & r = Revelation of Jesus Christ to his slave John).

He suggests that there was little evidence that alternate, competing texts or collections were accepted in the same circles as copied out sets of books of the NT canon. There is evidence that some of the works, such as Romans and 2 Corinthians in the "p" complex, and even the ordering of the books in that complex, had undergone editing and consolidation, but we don't see alternate orders for individual books (in some mss) that are strong enough to indicate that there represent competing collections of Pauline epistles out there. The few mss that do differ in order seem to be idiosyncratic, just ordered according to the copyist's whim.

For whatever reason those "cannon-Christians," once adopting the canonical NT mss groups, stopped preserving the older books and forms of the collections that had gone into the NT canon. It seems almost like it was a deliberate strategy in response to a threat. Perhaps Marcion and his ideas about those books served as this existential threat. Is this what you meant to imply?

DCH
It's a funny case, as you probably wouldn't know from his published articles that you can easily download, but he gave this lecture/sermon hybrid in some church three years ago, where he gets very clear on his thoughts regarding this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDC-bVnO_o

The details are mostly in the first part of that video. He clearly states (from 3:11 on) that Marcion's gospel is the oldest that has survived (in the texts of the church fathers). It's also interesting to hear that he sees his field of study as turning around to this view. So this was what I implied.

In principle, the basis for this view has already been laid out in his earlier works. The way he portrayed the formation of the NT canon always involved substantial editing by whoever did this, a point that is often missed.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by DCHindley »

Ulan wrote: Sat Aug 11, 2018 1:02 am It's a funny case, as you [as an amateur] probably wouldn't know from [Trobish's] published articles that you can easily download, but he gave this lecture/sermon hybrid in some church three years ago, where he gets very clear on his thoughts regarding this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDC-bVnO_o

The details are mostly in the first part of that video. He clearly states (from 3:11 on) that Marcion's gospel is the oldest that has survived (in the texts of the church fathers). It's also interesting to hear that he sees his field of study as turning around to this view. So this was what I implied.

In principle, the basis for this view has already been laid out in his earlier works. The way he portrayed the formation of the NT canon always involved substantial editing by whoever did this, a point that is often missed.
Trobisch is an interesting guy. I listened to the whole YouTube video, and he gives a little background in setting up the sermon, where he speaks of Marcion research that - he believes - has definitively demonstrated that Marcion's Gospel predates the NT gospels.

However, due to his research on NT manuscript transmission (I own both of his books on the Pauline corpus and the "Canonical NT") he also believes that the 4 sets of books that comprise the NT as we have it now was published as an authoritative "canon" for Christians of the day in which it was published. For whatever reasons, these four sets of books overshadowed the alternatives among Christians that the others quickly fell out of use and their transmission stopped. The date he sets for that 'canonical' edition is "150 AD".

However, this is not the same as saying those individual gospels, Acts, Letters and Apocalypse were written then. He proposes, and I think rightly, that they had been collected, edited and published in 4 parts as an authoritative 'canon,' at that time.

But the setup to the sermon (that when it comes to Jesus, "opinions vary," and we are better off having a wider view of things as opposed to restricting our inquiries to a limited set of documents) he, I think, wanted to emphasize that even when the gospels were being developed each had its own perception of what Jesus ought to haven been like. So, essentially, he thinks that canonical Luke postdated Marcion's Evangelion. He doesn't say, but can be assumed, that they may have shared a common account about Jesus, which each took and either embellished or excised before adding their own material.

As Trobish said: "Sermon finished!"

DCH
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by DCHindley »

In the introduction to Dieter T. Roth's article, "Marcion’s Gospel and Luke: The History of Research in Current Debate" (JBL 127, no. 3, 2008, pp 513–527), he says:
[513]The issue of the relationship between Luke and Marcion’s Gospel has been revived recently in several discussions of Marcion and Luke-Acts.1

Although this renewed interest is to be welcomed because of the importance of the question for the study of the canon, the fourfold Gospel collection, the Synoptic Problem, and text-critical issues pertaining to the Gospels in the second century, it is curious that numerous, including the most recent, summaries of the veritable flurry of work in Germany in the 1840s and 1850s have been marred by inaccuracies.

These erroneous views have then, at times, been employed to develop a connection to and draw support from the purported consensus of German scholarship by the mid-1850s on the relationship between Luke and Marcion’s Gospel, when no such consensus actually existed.

Thus, the incorrect impression has arisen that recent advocates of the position that Luke was the product of a significant redactional revision after the time of Marcion are renewing a supposed consensus that resulted from the intense discussion of the issue in Germany 150 years ago.

In the light of this besetting problem, the purpose of this article is to revisit the scholarly debates concerning Marcion’s Gospel in the mid-nineteenth century in order both to [514] provide an accurate presentation of the history of scholarship in this period and to address the claims found in recent discussions.

1) Whenever “Luke” is used in this article without qualification it refers to the text of canonical Luke as we know it. Recent discussions of the relationship between Marcion’s Gospel and Luke include
• Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus (WUNT 2/169; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, (2003), 173–210;
• Matthias Klinghardt, “‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas,” in Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum 75. Geburtstag (ed. Dieter Sänger and Matthias Konradt; NTOA 57; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 99–128; idem, “Markion vs. Lukas: Plädoyer für die Wiederaufnahme eines alten Falles,” NTS 52 (2006): 484–513; idem, “The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion,” NovT 50 (2008): 1–27;
• and Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
I reformatted the text to make the points stick out, and underlined what I take to be his overarching theme.

He is not at all impressed by the accuracy of modern summaries of German language Marcion research of the 1840s-50s, and one gets the impression that he thinks the modern scholars have been dishonest in their summaries. I also get the impression that he felt that the mid-19th century researchers were getting ahead of themselves.

He then proceeds to show the reader what these mid-19th century scholars "really" said, demonstrating to his satisfaction that there was no consensus then that Marcion's Evangelion served as the basis for canonical Luke.

There is, I think, a tiny bit of apologetic defensiveness by using words like "curious," "inaccuracies," "flurry," "purported" and "supposed." However, he does give a very thorough survey of mid 19th to early 20th century German scholarship, hopefully relatively free of those "curious inaccuracies" he complains about (dream on!).

The relationship to the OP is that if modern scholars can allow their wish to make Marcion's Evangelicon the basis of the NT Luke skew their summary of previous research, cannot we also assume that modern scholars have done so when explaining the development of Christ theology as myth?

To be fair, this is true of scholarship of all peoples in all times, a timeless truth, that researchers always interpret the evidence in conjunction with the spirit of their age/time/place, as they have experienced it. There is no "truth" that is not also subject to change and development over time, as opinions and biases develop over time. Boo hoo!

But what fun it is to read, and pick apart, the works of predecessors. Whoo-hoo!!

DCH
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by Giuseppe »

Another point really interesting about Rüpke's book:

Flavius Josephus took up the biographical schema, turned it into autobiography, and set it within an imperial frame. He began with a reference to his priestly and royal origins (1), and ended by referring to his relationship with Augusta Domitia, and to the unremitting good services she had performed for him (429).82 At the same time that Josephus in Rome expounded on the Jewish War,83 Plutarch and soon also Suetonius were writing their multiple biographies. By the midsecond century at the latest, these texts were joined by many gospels and acts of the apostles, whose production continued without let- up through the third century.84 Marcion’s interest in biography was not exercised solely in his gospel, but also in his selection of Paul’s letters,
which allowed readers to follow the apostle from Jerusalem to Rome. Pythagorean vitae began to circulate.85 To the already familiar types of narrative— stories of exemplary lives or of extraordinary phenomena, such as those of Apollonius of Tyana— were added conversion stories.

(p. 344, my bold)

This remembers me a Neil's argument to push in second century the Gospels:

The biographical interest, in turn, is no doubt a result of the renewed actuality of the ‘Aesopic’ fables in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. This is the time when Phaedrus, a slave of Thacian origin who became a freedman of Emperor Augustus, wrote his well-known fables in Latin iambic verse . . . ; when Babrius, . . . ‘a hellenized Italian living in Syria, or somewhere near by in Asia Minor’, published his two books of Mythiambi, versified Aesopic fables in Greek; and when Plutarch, who in his works often refers to Aesopic fables, invites the fabulist himself to take part, as an outsider, in his Banquet of the Seven Sages to debate with Solon and others. The author of the Life [of Aesop] was evidently part of this vogue and set out to answer the question of who the legendary first inventor of the popular prose genre really was. . . . .

(Hägg, p. 127. My highlighting)
So can we likewise say that the author of the Gospel of Mark was evidently part of this vogue of interest in Paul, a second century development?
https://vridar.org/2017/08/07/aesop-gui ... e-gospels/

Both Rüpke and Neil are describing the same second century vogue.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:18 pm
Another point really interesting about Rüpke's book:

Flavius Josephus took up the biographical schema, turned it into autobiography, and set it within an imperial frame. He began with a reference to his priestly and royal origins (1), and ended by referring to his relationship with Augusta Domitia, and to the unremitting good services she had performed for him (429).82 At the same time that Josephus in Rome expounded on the Jewish War,83 Plutarch and soon also Suetonius were writing their multiple biographies. By the midsecond century at the latest, these texts were joined by many gospels and acts of the apostles, whose production continued without let-up through the third century.84 Marcion’s interest in biography was not exercised solely in his gospel, but also in his selection of Paul’s letters, which allowed readers to follow the apostle from Jerusalem to Rome. Pythagorean vitae began to circulate.85 To the already familiar types of narrative— stories of exemplary lives or of extraordinary phenomena, such as those of Apollonius of Tyana— were added conversion stories.

(p. 344, my bold)

Immediate previous to that Rüpke had said

Religious practices and ideas were only gradually brought within the remit of biographical narratives. It was probably shortly before the death of Domitian (AD 96) that Plutarch wrote the first proper biography of Rome’s second king, Numa, to whom he also first ascribed the role of pontifex.78 This was vexing, as Numa had previously been described as the founder of Rome’s religious institutions, but not as an actor within them.79 In making this attribution, Plutarch was probably responding to the Flavians’ desire to conflate the ethical grounding of the ruler with his priestly roles, especially the supreme pontificate.80 Numa, as a Pythagorean philosopher and a king, thus conformed to the ideal of a philosopher-king,81 with the addition now, for the first time, of a religious element.

Rüpke, Jörg. Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (p. 344). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

(my bold)

and immediately after the passage Giuseppe quoted [above^^], Rüpke goes on to say -

To the already familiar types of narrative... were added conversion stories. All of this literary activity likely reached only a small fraction of the people living around the Mediterranean; but in a rudimentary, paradigmatic form, the biographical schema certainly reached much further. By its clarity, capacity for extension, and flexibility, it permitted authors to impart religious knowledge in a way that facilitated an emotional relationship akin to identification with the life retold, thus easing the recipient’s way to appropriating the values and lessons embodied in the texts.

(my bold)



I've added Neil's prelude here -
Giuseppe wrote: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:18 pm
This [reminds] me [of] Neil's argument to push in[to] [the] second century the Gospels:

Neil Godfrey wrote:
.. a discussion by Tomas Hägg in The Art of Biography in Antiquity about the Life of Aesop (by Anonymous) composed probably in the first century CE. Addressing the time the Life appeared and the context of its emergence, Hägg writes

The biographical interest, in turn, is no doubt a result of the renewed actuality of the ‘Aesopic’ fables in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. This is the time when Phaedrus, a slave of Thacian origin who became a freedman of Emperor Augustus, wrote his well-known fables in Latin iambic verse . . . ; when Babrius, . . . ‘a hellenized Italian living in Syria, or somewhere near by in Asia Minor’, published his two books of Mythiambi, versified Aesopic fables in Greek; and when Plutarch, who in his works often refers to Aesopic fables, invites the fabulist himself to take part, as an outsider, in his Banquet of the Seven Sages to debate with Solon and others. The author of the Life [of Aesop] was evidently part of this vogue and set out to answer the question of who the legendary first inventor of the popular prose genre really was ...

(Hägg, p. 127.)

(my -MrMacSon's- bolding)

So can we likewise say that the author of the Gospel of Mark was evidently part of this vogue of interest in Paul, a second century development?

https://vridar.org/2017/08/07/aesop-gui ... e-gospels/

Both Rüpke and Neil are describing the same second century vogue.
.
I agree with Giuseppe.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Jörg Rüpke on early Christianity in 'Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion'

Post by MrMacSon »


.
Discursive Diversification and the Extension of Networks

Did biographical narratives about common forebears or teachers serve other purposes besides consolidating group relationships? The texts themselves suggest two opposing tendencies. Those that have survived in the greatest numbers, martyrs’ histories among them, have narratives that are schematized and generalized in such a way as to make them easily accessible to an ever greater number of people. As has been observed in the case of texts from North Africa and their reception by Donatists and Catholics in the fourth post-Christian century, homogenization generated consensus that went beyond the bounds of groups and interests ...

... Since the mid-second century, experts had been bringing out a succession of new gospels, which clarified particular issues and defended their points of view at length in narrative form. This created followers and adversaries.

Such diversification was not necessarily intentional, and it might itself engender a new crop of variants that would be referenced and debated again and again. The more trivial and incoherent the detail, the more likely it was to imprint itself on the reader. So Numa could no longer be thought of in the Imperial Age without his books, which had been invented in the early second century BC in order to legitimize Pythagorean philosophy in Rome. Halachic midrashim concerned themselves with the smallest details in the narratives of the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses).90 The same is true of Virgil commentators, especially in Late Antiquity.91
.
.
... Judeo-Christian narrative texts, surviving in sufficient numbers for us to find variants at different locations, once again show us the boldness with which individual authors have introduced new ideas into existing narrative schemata, going so far beyond reproduction as to justify the use of such descriptive terms as “rewritten Bible” or “rewritten gospel.”95 The gospel described as the Epistle of the Apostles, for example, is configured as a dialogue with the risen Jesus. An apostolic pair, characterized simply as “we,” learn from Jesus that he appeared to the virgin Mary in the shape of the archangel Gabriel and spoke with her in such a way that her heart received him, and she believed and laughed. He was thus his own servant, and would assume that role again, in the guise of an angel, before returning to his father.96 There are similar new attempts at explanations in the Ascension of Isaiah, where Mary conceives upon catching sight of a baby.97 The author of the Gospel of the Saviour, again probably written in the second century, and likewise in dialogue form, does not hesitate to make Jesus announce that he will descend into “Hades.”98

Rüpke, Jörg. Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (pp. 345-347). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
.

Last edited by MrMacSon on Fri Aug 17, 2018 12:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply