Philippians 3: "persecutor of the church"

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mlinssen
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Re: Philippians 3: "persecutor of the church"

Post by mlinssen »

andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:11 am If seekers of smooth things are Pharisees then the Nahum Pesher claims that Alexander Jannaeus the Lion of Wrath crucified his Pharisaic opponents, See Josephus Antiquities 13

Andrew Criddle
I learned that just recently, that seekers of smooth things is "a DSS thing", for lack of a better word. Very interesting, given Thomas

78. said IS : because-of who/at? did you(PL) come outward to the(F) field
to behold [dop] a(n) reed he move outward by the wind
and to behold [dop] a(n) human there-be garment they being-smooth on he in.the.manner of your(PL.PL) kings with your(PL.PL) Mighty-one
these-ones the(PL) garment who/which being-smooth on they and they will be-able she/r know the(F) truth not

ϭⲛⲟⲛ, soft, smooth, weak. Garment is native Coptic too, alas: ϣⲧⲏⲛ

https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C7765
https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C6118

It's the first for me where Thomas links back to something from his environment - save for Judaism, of course

Pharisees though? I think Thomas refers to something higher with his. Some work to do on the translation though, a few lacunae here and there and I'm not happy with the suggestions
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billd89
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NO persecutions? I'm struggling with this, really

Post by billd89 »

neilgodfrey wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:28 amI don't believe Josephus or Philo give us any reason to think that Jewish authorities jailed or whipped, certainly not executed, those who held unconventional views. The only violence that broke out that we know of was between Jews and non-Jews. Roman governance is one of the arguments sometimes used to dispute the historicity of the idea that Jerusalem leaders would send a force to Syria to arrest and punish those who had a different religious viewpoint.

Roman authors who wrote about things they disliked in Jews did not refer to them "persecuting" one another in the sense Paul is said to have done.

I would be surprised -- but very interested -- if there is any evidence of sectarian persecution in the sense of physical punishments.
The Sadducees wanted to kill Peter & John (supposedly.) "Authorities" need not constrain this point: are we sure Saul/Paul was an "Authority"? And this would leave out the Zealots, when they seized authority. And how many other sectarian/terrorist groups, all battling for authority or perhaps even controlling some godforsaken corner of the Diaspora for some time? Since 'Philo to Josephus' is 25-95 AD, and we're talking about Saul/Paul (in what is now Turkey) and Syria, we must include 'Egypt' and 'Libya'.

How much do we know about the Diaspora in this period, really? Precious little - it's an almost incomplete picture, in fact. For me, E. Mary Smallwood's The Jews Under Roman Rule [1979] debunked the irrational presumption that all Jews were friendly with each other. I think that fallacy is absurd - given what little is recorded, and poorly described episodic 'revolts' against Jewish leadership factions by 'other Jews' tells otherwise, I think there must be a 600lb gorilla in the room. gasp! Jews were attacking, persecuting Jews. In sectarian strife. We don't know how bad it was, given that the losers lost.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.
p.13:
The Jews' hatred for the Samaritans was particularly bitter because they always regarded their cult not as a separate religion but as a heretical sect of Judaism.

p.99:
A further conflict with the Pharisees occurred late in 5 B.C. Two popular rabbis incited a group of their pupils to destroy a golden eagle which Herod had placed over the Temple doorway, on the grounds that representational art was forbidden by the Law, at least in the Temple. Herod's response was to arrest and execute the rabbis and their pupils, and also to depose the High Priest Matthias as being ultimately responsible for their action in not preventing it.

pp.154-5:
When recording the inception of the nationalist extremist movement, Josephus attributes to it the responsibility for all the misery brought upon the province by years of internal strife and by the revolt of 66-70. Yet when recounting the various episodes of the decades before the revolt, and even the outbreak of the revolt itself, he never mentions Judas' sect again either by name or by implication. The element which is blamed for the trouble is then always the ‘brigands’, the terrorists or guerilla fighters. But brigand activity figures among the by­products of Judas' ‘philosophy’, and there seems little reasonable doubt that they were his spiritual heirs; to Josephus their present actions were all that mattered and their historical inspiration could now be ignored. The identification is then taken further; the terror­ists who put Judas' tenets into practice from c. 30 onwards are often regarded as having formed the nucleus of the war-party known as the Zealots from late in 66....the Zealots were inspired by the same attitude to the Law, the same dream of the recovery of independence, and the same hostility to foreign domination and hence to Jewish collaboration with Rome, which was rooted in the tradition of Jewish nationalism going back to the days of the Maccabees.

At the risk of introducing an obvious anachronism, I do think the Leninist-Trotskist-Stalinist viciousness is typical of how sectarians have ALWAYS behaved throughout human history. Political and religious violence is/was the norm, not an aberration, in that period also. So it was only mentioned in the scant and incomplete histories if it CAUSED something dramatic and the author had a point to make. Persecuting your enemies - w/ violence - was always background noise, in ever-present power struggles.
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Re: Philippians 3: "persecutor of the church"

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:25 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 2:14 pm
ABuddhist wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:38 pm
rgprice wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:48 am And beyond that, whether someone would list "persecution of sect" as a credential of their Jewish piousness? That's why the listing of persecution among these other claims seems so out of place.
Well, certain modern religious denominations and movements regard such persecution as a manifestation of piety, so in theory Paul could have belonged to a similar Jewish sect. But I understand your point, because the scenario that I contemplate would need evidence for it in order to be more than a hypothetical.
Which ones are you thinking of? I don't deny your point but wonder if a survey of them might give us a useful insight or comparison with Paul's setting and claim.
In all fairness, the religious movements that I am thinking of are quite different from anything that I know about in connection with Judaism, but here are three that come to my mind off-hand.

1. Various factions within Geluk Buddhism persecuting each other (even unto murder!) about whether true Geluk Buddhists should worship the Dharma-protecting deity Dorje Shugden. This may actually parallel Paul's persecution of Christians (if authentic!) - it would be part of disputes about whether Christ should be part of "true Judaism".

2. Roman Catholicism providing lengthy justifications for why pious Roman Catholics should arrest and kill unrepentant heretics within a Roman Catholic state. Some Traditionalist Catholics still endorse such views.

3. The Islamic State and related movements in the Near East - efforts to establish true Islamic states are presented as requiring the mass execution of Shia Muslims and others.
Thanks for these three. Still thinking through what they can tell us.
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Re: Philippians 3: "persecutor of the church"

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:11 am If seekers of smooth things are Pharisees then the Nahum Pesher claims that Alexander Jannaeus the Lion of Wrath crucified his Pharisaic opponents, See Josephus Antiquities 13

Andrew Criddle
Of course. We are looking at a different situation, though, once Judean authorities are ultimately answerable to Rome, I would think.

(Would not the Jannaeus mass executions be more a case of political persecution than religious persecution? Were the Pharisees persecuted because of "wrong" religious teachings?)
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Re: NO persecutions? I'm struggling with this, really

Post by neilgodfrey »

billd89 wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:03 pm At the risk of introducing an obvious anachronism, I do think the Leninist-Trotskist-Stalinist viciousness is typical of how sectarians have ALWAYS behaved throughout human history. Political and religious violence is/was the norm, not an aberration, in that period also. So it was only mentioned in the scant and incomplete histories if it CAUSED something dramatic and the author had a point to make. Persecuting your enemies - w/ violence - was always background noise, in ever-present power struggles.
The situation changes once there are political powers who make it their business to maintain some sort of order. Sectarians with a potential for violence need to control their impulses (usually by rationalizing more peaceful behaviour appropriate for the times) if they want to survive.
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Re: NO persecutions? I'm struggling with this, really

Post by DCHindley »

Gotta watch them "Leninists, Trotskists & Stalinists." :!:

Yes, they sure did oppress and execute one another! However, I don't recall there being any "you're not a *real* Russian" talk.

In the NT, Paul does not accuse his "superabundant" opponents of being false Jews, just misdirected ones.

If the factions are ethnic variations in a defined geographic region (e.g., Tutsi & Hutu tribes in Rwanda), the geographic region is irrelevant, only the ethnic factor is relevant.

Now in the *1990s* among the Hutu population of Rwanda there were extremists who had decided that to overthrow the long-time domination of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi minority, "*All Tutsi must die!" This was what folks were caught on camera saying as they hacked their neighbors to death with machetes. Then again, Hutu extremists even executed fellow Hutu who were moderates, including even the Rwandan President who was shot down by a shoulder fired missile while in his own presidential jet - the event that signaled the start of the rebellion.

In the Judean war of 66-74 as described by Josephus, the opposing parties (militias) formed along ethnic lines ("Greek" = "Non-Jew," & Judean). Josephus describes a lot of infighting between Judean factions, but not because they were not "real" Jews. Some Jewish factions attacked and killed neighboring Greeks, as well as fellow-Jews with mistaken opinions who must be stopped or even killed if necessary to prevent that kind of thinking. Among the Greeks, though, there were extremists who advocated mass execution of their Jewish neighbors, and even arrested and detained fellow Greeks who were deemed "too-friendly" with the Jews, although I do not recall reading about killing Greeks who were suspected of being friendly towards Jews.

This situation is similar to the factional fighting and relationships between Bosnians, Croats and Serbs as Yugoslavia dissolved in the *1990s.* In that war, some Serbs rounded up 7,000 Bosnian young men, drove them into the woods in busses, and shot them before burying in mass graves. But then, the factions were largely of different ethnicities in an arbitrarily defined Yugoslavia.

DCH

Edit: 2021-08-01. Changed "1980s" to "1990s." Some of us old farts who lived through the 1980s must have suffered brain damage that prevents us from remembering our decades correctly.
neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 11:54 pm
billd89 wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:03 pm At the risk of introducing an obvious anachronism, I do think the Leninist-Trotskist-Stalinist viciousness is typical of how sectarians have ALWAYS behaved throughout human history. Political and religious violence is/was the norm, not an aberration, in that period also. So it was only mentioned in the scant and incomplete histories if it CAUSED something dramatic and the author had a point to make. Persecuting your enemies - w/ violence - was always background noise, in ever-present power struggles.
The situation changes once there are political powers who make it their business to maintain some sort of order. Sectarians with a potential for violence need to control their impulses (usually by rationalizing more peaceful behaviour appropriate for the times) if they want to survive.
Last edited by DCHindley on Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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billd89
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Exactly This.

Post by billd89 »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:07 amNow in the 1980s among the Hutu population of Rwanda there were extremists who had decided that to overthrow the long-time domination of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi minority, "*All Tutsi must die!" This was what folks were caught on camera saying as they hacked their neighbors to death with machetes...
1994! Yugoslavian violence also erupted in the 1990s - I vacationed (!!!) in Croatia in Aug 1990 and it had not yet begun.

If literate and educated 'Americans'/anglophones* miss simple facts within their own lifetimes, how much more is lost 2,000 years ago??? (*I don't know the ethnicity/nationality of DCH; I would guess less than 5% of Americans could identify and explain even rudimentary facts about that genocide.) This is exactly my point.

In the multiple kingdoms/satraps of the Near East, we 'want to' assume
a) there were basically no violent sectarian incidents amongst the Jews, because few/none were recorded. (Rummy's 'Known Unknowns' are not 'Unknown Unknowns')
b) 'Jews tolerated one another' because ethnic/religious affinity, etc. (Unsupported belief, from bias/'positive prejudice')
c) the successful Roman Empire controlled everything, ergo there wasn't (internecine) conflict. (Wrong Thinking).

My point, and what I'm grappling with, is how to gauge the underlying conflict between Jewish factions in Egypt - where a million Jews just 'disappeared' in the period 38-118 AD. Admittedly, this is a different Diaspora case, in a distant area (than Saul/Paul), etc. but I wonder if some of the same factors came into play. Saul is believed to have persecuted the Assembly of God; it is useful to try to understand what that meant, exactly. Egypt is a much more dramatic case: I do think there was a true genocide of the Egyptian Jews c.116 AD - ignored, forgotten, too awful to admit - but internecine factors (however inconvenient) and darker complexities must also be considered. Philo's writings hint at secret organizations and nefarious antinominian preachers - I suppose some conflict existed. **I presume there were no 'Pharisees' in power in Egypt. Their equivalent were ...?** And such an internecine conflict may have set the stage - or helped precipitate? - the 'disappearance' of a million people. Its almost unfathomable, really.

Another example: I don't believe the 'sicarii' appeared overnight. Misunderstandings around this mysterious 'faction' are discussed by Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary: Judean War 2, 1b, [2008] n.1604:

Certain sicarii, still carrying this name that Josephus connects with a technique for urban assassination (not with an ideology), will go to Masada under Eleazar’s leadership (4.400, 516; 7.253-311); yet after the reportedly complete self-destruction of the group there, a substantial number of sicarii (600-1,000?) escape to Alexandria from somewhere to cause further trouble (7.410-419). Yet again, after they have been removed to a man (7.416), “the madness of the sicarii” reappears in Cyrene—in the odd form of a general trouble-maker (not apparently an urban dagger-assassin) named Jonathan (7.437-444; for analysis, Brighton 2005: esp. 194-201). Even in the present passage, Josephus describes former friends using concealed knives to eliminate each other as part of the same social problem (2.254, 255-256): this does not sound like a political or militant organization, but only a means of killing; the label sicarii seems to lack content.

I think the vague term 'sicarii' may conflate Zealots/nationalists, terrorists/anarchists, opportunists/gangsters, psychopath beserkers and common murderers. See Marijn J. Vandenberghe, "Villains Called Sicarii: A Commonplace for Rhetorical Vituperation in the Texts of Flavius Josephus" in Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period Vol. 47, No. 4/5 (2016), pp. 475-507.
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Re: NO persecutions? I'm struggling with this, really

Post by neilgodfrey »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:07 am ......If the factions are ethnic variations in a defined geographic region (e.g., Tutsi & Hutu tribes in Rwanda), the geographic region is irrelevant, only the ethnic factor is relevant. .....


In the Judean war of 66-74 as described by Josephus, the opposing parties (militias) formed along ethnic lines ("Greek" = "Non-Jew," & Judean). Josephus describes a lot of infighting between Judean factions, but not because they were not "real" Jews. Some Jewish factions attacked and killed neighboring Greeks, as well as fellow-Jews with mistaken opinions who must be stopped or even killed if necessary to prevent that kind of thinking. .......
These examples -- the Rwanda genocide and events of the Jewish War --support my point. They were both the direct outgrowths of breakdowns of central authority, of competing powers in the midst of respective power vacuums. Besides, I don't know it relevant comparisons can be made with outbreaks of ethnic violence and religious persecution without also providing justification for the comparisons.

And were the Jews who attacked fellow-Jews "with mistaken opinions" doing that attacking because those opinions were deemed to be political threats?

In societies where there is the political situation I described in my comment then even when ethnic conflict does break out it is, among the instances I can think of, a stop is put to it pretty quickly. Exceptions are those circumstances where the controlling political power is itself compromised and sympathetic to one ethnic group over the other.

The fact remains that the "Church" or any faction of it has not been permitted to seek out and burn heretics at the stake as they were once empowered to do.


neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 11:54 pm
billd89 wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:03 pm At the risk of introducing an obvious anachronism, I do think the Leninist-Trotskist-Stalinist viciousness is typical of how sectarians have ALWAYS behaved throughout human history. Political and religious violence is/was the norm, not an aberration, in that period also. So it was only mentioned in the scant and incomplete histories if it CAUSED something dramatic and the author had a point to make. Persecuting your enemies - w/ violence - was always background noise, in ever-present power struggles.
The situation changes once there are political powers who make it their business to maintain some sort of order. Sectarians with a potential for violence need to control their impulses (usually by rationalizing more peaceful behaviour appropriate for the times) if they want to survive.
[/quote]
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Re: Exactly This.

Post by neilgodfrey »

billd89 wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 6:58 am
If literate and educated 'Americans'/anglophones* miss simple facts within their own lifetimes, how much more is lost 2,000 years ago??? (*I don't know the ethnicity/nationality of DCH; I would guess less than 5% of Americans could identify and explain even rudimentary facts about that genocide.) This is exactly my point. . . . .

I think the vague term 'sicarii' may conflate Zealots/nationalists, terrorists/anarchists, opportunists/gangsters, psychopath beserkers and common murderers. See Marijn J. Vandenberghe, "Villains Called Sicarii: A Commonplace for Rhetorical Vituperation in the Texts of Flavius Josephus" in Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period Vol. 47, No. 4/5 (2016), pp. 475-507.
Agreed, and does this not support my point? If we were better informed about the nature of political and ethnic persecutions of modern times we would see that the historical circumstances of the outbreaks of such events then we would see the stark contrast with the situation in the first century Roman empire.

The sicarii clearly operated as "outlaws", criminals, in direct defiance of state authority, and necessarily kept themselves hidden. They were hardly comparable to an established and publicly recognized sect or individual that openly -- with blessings of a high priest -- went out to kill Jews of a different religious persuasion. Is there any evidence of such a practice under the Pax Romana that the perpetrators lived to write and boast about? That sort of thing, as far as I am aware, only happens "in the bible".
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Re: Exactly This.

Post by andrewcriddle »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:21 am
billd89 wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 6:58 am
If literate and educated 'Americans'/anglophones* miss simple facts within their own lifetimes, how much more is lost 2,000 years ago??? (*I don't know the ethnicity/nationality of DCH; I would guess less than 5% of Americans could identify and explain even rudimentary facts about that genocide.) This is exactly my point. . . . .

I think the vague term 'sicarii' may conflate Zealots/nationalists, terrorists/anarchists, opportunists/gangsters, psychopath beserkers and common murderers. See Marijn J. Vandenberghe, "Villains Called Sicarii: A Commonplace for Rhetorical Vituperation in the Texts of Flavius Josephus" in Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period Vol. 47, No. 4/5 (2016), pp. 475-507.
Agreed, and does this not support my point? If we were better informed about the nature of political and ethnic persecutions of modern times we would see that the historical circumstances of the outbreaks of such events then we would see the stark contrast with the situation in the first century Roman empire.

The sicarii clearly operated as "outlaws", criminals, in direct defiance of state authority, and necessarily kept themselves hidden. They were hardly comparable to an established and publicly recognized sect or individual that openly -- with blessings of a high priest -- went out to kill Jews of a different religious persuasion. Is there any evidence of such a practice under the Pax Romana that the perpetrators lived to write and boast about? That sort of thing, as far as I am aware, only happens "in the bible".
I don't see any clear indication in Paul's writings that Paul was responsible for killing other Jews (in Acts he is an accessory to the homicide of Stephen and years later claims in his speeches when on trial in Jerusalem to have opposed Christianity to the death and to have voted for the death penalty at the trial of Christians. IMHO Paul was involved in the death of Stephen but probably no other killing.) Possibly Paul's persecution usually involved having other Jews receive the 39 strokes.

Andrew Criddle
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