obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

Post by neilgodfrey »

Chris Hansen wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:49 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 8:53 am
HOW THE RELIGION OF IC DEVELOPED SO RAPIDLY.
Alternative: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time. Given that Christianity developed out of Judaism, we can look at it, in my opinion, similarly to how various Christian denominations have evolved. Martin Luther, a random monk sitting in an abbey just stewing on problems with indulgences, managed to jumpstart an entire Reformation of the religion in his lifetime.

It seems rather natural and habitual that these events take place.
I have taken the above snippet from another thread because I want to focus on the distinctive theme raised here.

That "obscure people start ... religions all the time" is integral to a theory of religious origins set out by a leading anthropologist of religion Harvey Whitehouse. Whitehouse discusses two modes of religiosity, the doctrinal and the imagistic, and addresses the constant danger facing the former: that obscure members can rise up any time with their own revisionist doctrines and start a new religious body. In short, a religion founded upon doctrinal teachings is always going to be vulnerable to someone coming up with some sort of challenge to those teachings. Whitehouse notes the various techniques used by the would-be parent body to minimize this threat.

What I am interested in is a list of many names of such "obscure upstarts" in order to arrive at a sample that enables us to make serious comparisons with what we know of Christianity. To what extent will a close examination of these common anthropological breakaway events be consistent with the evidence we have for Christian origins? But to address that question I would like a list of sample candidates.

We have started with Martin Luther.

One quickly thinks of Joseph Smith.

Who else?

Added after original posting:

Maybe there are examples where "bodies" or "groups" break away to start anew -- not just individuals. This will open up, I expect, questions of myth-making to justify the break.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Is it easier to count the exceptions? Among the world's largest currently practiced religions, Hinduism and Judaism may be exceptions, given that they go back to the Bronze Age and may be the oldest formal religious traditions of their respective peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... opulations

Or maybe I'm just not understanding the question.
Charles Wilson
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

Post by Charles Wilson »

L. Ron Hubbard: Scientolology:
“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
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neilgodfrey
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Peter Kirby wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:40 pm Is it easier to count the exceptions? Among the world's largest currently practiced religions, Hinduism and Judaism may be exceptions, given that they go back to the Bronze Age and may be the oldest formal religious traditions of their respective peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... opulations

Or maybe I'm just not understanding the question.
If it is easier to count the exceptions then there should be no problem listing a raft of names of the non-exceptions in a matter of minutes.

I would like a list of names of persons about whom we have reasonably clear historical data in order to make serious analytical comparisons of the evidence. I want to go beyond the simple "here's a list of names of religious upstarts so let's fit Jesus into that list, too" type of statement. I would hope to see if we can identify common features involved in the history of those breakaway events and see if models can be proposed that also have explanatory power for the evidence we have for Christian origins. The details will be where the devils lurk. It is not enough to say, in my view, that there are very general similarities. I'm thinking of something like a structural analysis of the evidence.

Or maybe there are already studies of this question in the anthropological literature that I have not yet looked for.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Charles Wilson wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:42 pm L. Ron Hubbard: Scientolology:
“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
What did Ron Hubbard break away from?
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Peter Kirby
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:51 pm I would like a list of names of persons about whom we have reasonably clear historical data
That is definitely an issue. Buddhism and Islam are both important religious traditions that could be said to be a "break away" from their parent traditions. And their founders (Siddhartha and Muhammad) are wrapped up in about as much controversy and ambiguity as Jesus.

And at risk of courting controversy myself, I don't think it's popular in the most respected academic circles to claim Jesus as a religious "founder" of Christianity, since it's typical to trace a development of most novel Christian doctrine as something that arises after Jesus' death (or, for the mythicists out there, simply 'while Jesus isn't there at all').
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neilgodfrey
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Here is one example and the sort of analysis I am thinking of:

In the case of the Armstrong cult of yesteryear, there were numerous breakaways over doctrinal teaching. Nothing unusual about that.

But in every case that I am aware of, no breakaway group exalted the founder of the parent body to heights greater than those made for him while he was still alive.

-- groups that broke away while Armstrong was alive as a rule taught Armstrong held a lower status than was acceptable to claim within the parent body

After Armstrong died, there were two types of breakaway groups from the original parent:

-- groups that claimed a lower status (less than "God's end-time Apostle") for the erstwhile leader
-- groups that maintained the highest status acceptable within the parent body while the leader lived (he was still "God's end-time apostle").

I do not think any group exalted him more highly than ever. However, some groups did exalt other members, previous "nobodies", to be equal with the former leader in status. Hence they could rationalize the new body --- a second voice given equal status to the former maintained the status of the former leader.

There was nothing in the doctrines or traditions of the parent body that suggested that the leader would ever attain a higher status in hindsight.

I think that has significance as a point of comparison with the evidence we have for Christian origins.

But it is only one case-study. More are needed, obviously, before we can reach any sort of explanatory hypothesis.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Peter Kirby wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 5:01 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:51 pm I would like a list of names of persons about whom we have reasonably clear historical data
That is definitely an issue. Buddhism and Islam are both important religious traditions that could be said to be a "break away" from their parent traditions. And their founders (Siddhartha and Muhammad) are wrapped up in about as much controversy and ambiguity as Jesus.
That's why I'm asking for specific instances where we do have historical data. The claim is that something "happens all the time" so I expect it should not be too difficult to get beyond other cases long since lost in history. Martin Luther was mentioned as an example. That's the sort of person I am looking for.
Peter Kirby wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 5:01 pm And at risk of courting controversy myself, I don't think it's popular in the most respected academic circles to claim Jesus as a religious "founder" of Christianity, since it's typical to trace a development of most novel Christian doctrine as something that arises after Jesus' death (or, for the mythicists out there, simply 'while Jesus isn't there at all').
Exactly. Hence I am interested in the development of founding myths of breakaway groups, too.

The claim that "it happens all the time" is a strong one and, I think, a common assumption. But it is of course circular to then talk of founders of the long distant past whom we explain as part of that "happens all the time" model. We simply don't know about those long-lost examples. Let's start with names we do know.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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First-thoughts on Martin Luther:

Luther had no intent to start a new religion. Events took over beyond his control. Solely first thoughts at this stage and going by memory, I think Martin Luther was "mythologized" as something of a suffering Paul figure, one tormented by sin and who found liberation through key passages in Paul's letter to the Romans.

How Martin Luther was mythologized is significant, I think, when we are making comparisons. Compare the way Armstrong-cult figures were mythologized: they, were made into "Armstrong-like" figures of the same apostolic status.

We have here two examples at a superficial level so far that might be said to inform us about the nature of the mythologization of a breakaway religious founder. Stories, I recall, of miracles in the lives of those founders also emerge and these are used to confirm the myths.
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Re: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time

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Chris Hansen wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:49 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 8:53 am HOW THE RELIGION OF IC DEVELOPED SO RAPIDLY.
Alternative: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time. Given that Christianity developed out of Judaism, we can look at it, in my opinion, similarly to how various Christian denominations have evolved. Martin Luther, a random monk sitting in an abbey just stewing on problems with indulgences, managed to jumpstart an entire Reformation of the religion in his lifetime.
It seems rather natural and habitual that these events take place.
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:28 pm
That "obscure people start ... religions all the time" is integral to a theory of religious origins set out by a leading anthropologist of religion Harvey Whitehouse. Whitehouse discusses two modes of religiosity, the doctrinal and the imagistic, and addresses the constant danger facing the former: that obscure members can rise up any time with their own revisionist doctrines and start a new religious body. In short, a religion founded upon doctrinal teachings is always going to be vulnerable to someone coming up with some sort of challenge to those teachings. Whitehouse notes the various techniques used by the would-be parent body to minimize this threat.

What I am interested in is a list of many names of such "obscure upstarts" in order to arrive at a sample that enables us to make serious comparisons with what we know of Christianity. To what extent will a close examination of these common anthropological breakaway events be consistent with the evidence we have for Christian origins? But to address that question I would like a list of sample candidates.

We have started with Martin Luther.

One quickly thinks of Joseph Smith.

Who else?

Added after original posting:

Maybe there are examples where "bodies" or "groups" break away to start anew -- not just individuals. This will open up, I expect, questions of myth-making to justify the break.
(I'm not sure to what extend Whithouse's doctrinal mode of religiosity would have applied to all Judaism in the first or second century AD)

I'm also not sure to whether 'Christianity developed [directly] out of Judaism' eg. I wonder if what became orthodox or early-catholic Christianity did so via Judaising or re-Judaising of so-called gnostic or even mystery religion concepts; and that happened later than is traditionally asserted and believed.

As for obscure upstarts in terms of an imagistic mode of early Christian religiosity: Paul and, if Marcion priority is true, Marcion
Last edited by MrMacSon on Fri Jan 07, 2022 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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