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Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 4:52 am
by spin
Michael BG wrote:spin wrote:MrMacSon wrote:I also wonder if Paul talking about interacting with Jesus apostles in Jerusalem is a later confabulation.
But where in Galatians does Paul ever say that the Jerusalem people were believers in Jesus? They don't seem aware of what the gospels later tell us about Jesus's teachings (eg regarding food). Paul gives no indication that they knew anything about Jesus. He only talks to his Galatians about Jesus. I think the notion comes from Acts.
It is possible that the reason the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem didn’t know that Jesus had declared all food clean was because he didn’t it was a creation of the Gentile church (or as Casey believes a Gentile mis-interpretation of a saying of Jesus).
That's eisegesis. You assume your conclusion with "the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem". You are supposed to demonstrate it. Otherwise it's just smoke dreams.
Michael BG wrote:Paul calls those in Jerusalem “Holy Ones” (1 Cor 16:1, Rom 15:31); as he does those in Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), in Rome (Rom 1:7) and every Christian community (1 Cor 1:2). In Gal 1:22 Paul writes,
And I was unknown by sight to the churches (assemblies) of Judea in the Christ:
I asked about Jesus, not generically the messiah. Many Jews expected the messiah. And anyone saved by god is "holy", be they Gentile or Jew. There are two ways to be saved, Paul makes clear, following the law and following the gospel.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:49 am
by DCHindley
Clive wrote:I know it is poo pooed but actually we need to look again at sacred kings or priest kings. Dare I say the name? J G Frazer?
Why is xianity not another tale of priest kings? I am the bread of life. I am the vine.
What actually is the problem with xianity being a quite ordinary set of myths and rituals gone big?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Nemorensis
Frazer,
Golden Bough (1890). What a crazy Romantic! What he was doing was common in the late 19th century, that is, was reinterpreting history through the plot of "Romance", one of four main literary interpretive frameworks that developed as a result of the enlightenment. In other words, he has made "history" (the historical factoids, as I call them) intelligible in his own age.
Hayden White (
MetaHistory, 1974) came up with a general outline to categorize and correlate the tropes, plots, argumentative strategies and ideological implications common in European literature (which includes history) since the 19th century or so. This 4x4 table sort of sums up his thinking:
TROPE: Figures of speech that deploy words in such a way as to turn or translate meaning. Operates at the deep level of human thought in the sense of 1) creating meaning through binary opposition (Saussure) or 2) otherness, or difference in any historical period (Foucault). As used by White, becomes a means to distinguish the dominant modes of historical imagination (in 19th century Europe in his case). By extrapolation to the cultural level, identifies the figurative structure that underpins the surface tiers that are employed to describe its historical imagination. Can be extended to include creation of large-scale metaphors (such as the base-superstructure metaphor of Marx) that rely upon the basic relationships of part-whole/whole-part that serve that in turn as models used as the basis of a total explanation of historical change. |
EMPLOTMENT: Story line or plot structure that imparts meaning to a historical narrative. A technique that relates a sequence of events with their contextual or colligatory connections. Turns a sequence of events into a story of some kind. Either employed to discover the meaning, or imposing a meaning, on that sequence of events. White conceives this tier as the historian's vehicle(s) of historical explanation. |
ARGUMENT: A set of premises and the conclusion drawn or inferred from them. An argument is "valid" (although not necessarily true) if the conclusion follows either inductively of deductively from the premises. |
IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATION: Ideology is a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness. Time and place specific, ideology represents the dominant mode of explanation and rationalism that saturates a society, transmitted through various social and institutional mechanisms such as media, church, education and law. Some commentators find ideology imbedded in all social artifacts such as narrative structures (like written history), codes of behavior and patterns of belief. Can be viewed as a means employed by the dominant class to maintain its dominant position by obscuring the reality of its economic exploitation of other classes. Suggests to readers the import of the Author's studies of the past for the comprehension of the present: |
|---|
| Four Predominant Means of Communication: |
Four Main Archetypical Plot structures: |
Four Main Theories of truth: |
Four Main Ideologies: |
| METAPHOR: Word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. Represents the similarities between objects. Representational. |
ROMANCE: Imagines the power of the historical agent/hero or protagonist as ultimately superior to his/its environment. Unfolds as a quest where the final success, redemption or transcendence is assured. |
FORMIST: Identifies the unique atomistic or dispersive character of events, people and actions in the past. Permits historians to graphically represent vivid individual events from which it is possible to make significant generalizations. |
ANARCHISM: Demands rapid, perhaps even cataclysmic, social change in order to establish a new society. |
| METONYMY: Use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute of, or of which it is associated. Reduces an object to a part or parts. Reductionist. |
TRAGEDY: Imagines the agent/hero or protagonist as engaged in a quest where final success is eventually thwarted by fate or by a personality flaw. |
MECHANIST: Identifies events, people and actions in the past as subject to deterministic extra-historical laws, usually cast in the form of equivalent part-part relationships. Tends to be reductive rather than synthetic. |
RADICALISM: Welcomes imminent social change, but are more aware of the effects of inherited institutions, and are thus more exorcised by the means to effect change than are anarchists. |
| SYNECDOCHE: A part is put for the whole, or the whole for a part. Integrates objects by stressing their similarities or essences. Integrative. |
COMEDY: Imagines an agent/hero or protagonist as moving from obstruction to reconstruction, achieving at least a temporary victory over circumstances through the process of reconciliation. Often ends with rejoicing over the coherence or consensus a heroic figure achieves between groups of men, women, races, nations or classes. |
ORGANIC: Identifies past events, people and actions as components of a synthetic process in a microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship whereby a single element or individual is just one element among many. Tends to be integrative. |
CONSERVATISM: Oppose rapid change by supporting the evolutionary elaboration of existing social institutions. Are most suspicious of change than the other ideologies. |
| IRONY: Negates literal meaning. Negational. |
SATIRE: Imagines the agent/hero or protagonist as inferior, a captive of their world, and destines for a life of obstacles and negation. |
CONTEXTUAL: Identifies events, people or actions in the past by their presumed connections to others in webs of colligatory relationships within an era, or with a complex process of interconnected change. Tends to be moderately integrative. |
LIBERALISM: Prefers the fine tuning of social institutions to secure moderately paced social change. |
|
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This is a generalized picture of clear-cut literary conventions in 19th century European literature, but he thinks the way he has them ordered (by row) tend to be characteristics that are often found together. If one goes by this, a "Romantic" Frazer does seem to fit the characteristics of Trope, Plot and Argumentative Strategy, and less so with his/her Ideology. Can't win them all. However, a really complex author/historian could go against the norms White had correlated together, and use any combination of the above characteristics to effect his communicative magic with the reader.
Frazer's book has been resurrected to an extent in modern times by Freke & Gandy,
The Jesus Mysteries (1999). I have posted a review of their book in the net, probably only on a couple discussion boards. Some of the criticisms of their approach may equally apply to Frazer's.
Another case where examples of Romantic emplotment are taken as workable data is the Rank-Raglan criteria.
They are all imaginative reconstructions determined by their times and not scientific by any means.
DCH
DCH
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 8:24 am
by outhouse
DCHindley wrote:[This is a generalized picture of clear-cut literary conventions in 19th century European literature, but he thinks the way he has them ordered (by row) tend to be characteristics that are often found together. If one goes by this, a "Romantic" Frazer does seem to fit the characteristics of Trope, Plot and Argumentative Strategy, and less so with his/her Ideology. Can't win them all. However, a really complex author/historian could go against the norms White had correlated together, and use any combination of the above characteristics to effect his communicative magic with the reader.
Frazer's book has been resurrected to an extent in modern times by Freke & Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries (1999). I have posted a review of their book in the net, probably only on a couple discussion boards. Some of the criticisms of their approach may equally apply to Frazer's.
Another case where examples of Romantic emplotment are taken as workable data is the Rank-Raglan criteria.
They are all imaginative reconstructions determined by their times and not scientific by any means.
DCH
DCH
What is sad is how many here use similar methods of textual study, to turn the context into what every they imagine it to be.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 8:27 am
by outhouse
The Origins of Christianity
Factually is the Hellenistic divorce of cultural Judaism. Anything else is trash.
It is based on multiple traditions over a hundred years regarding a perceived sacrifice of a crucified man. Anything else is trash.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:05 am
by John2
Michael BG wrote:
"i am not sure what the idea of a Priestly and Davidic joint Messiah in a Dead Sea Scroll adds to a discussion of whether first century Jews believed that when the Messiah came there would be the end of time, which is what Neil and I are debating."
I'm not trying to add anything to your discussion with Neil, just to the subject of this thread, which concerns the origins of Christianity.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:08 am
by John2
spin wrote (re: Mk. 10:47):
"Jesus Nazarene."
Thanks for pointing that out, spin. I didn't check the Greek.
http://biblehub.com/interlinear/mark/10-47.htm
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:17 am
by John2
Neil wrote:
"I have no problem with any of these references in the DSS, or with the probability that certain strands of thought appear in both DSS and the NT. NT concepts appear in a wide range of Second Temple literature. No question."
I didn't mean to direct my comment at you or anyone in particular, but I appreciate your response.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:51 am
by John2
Michael BG wrote:
"The joint Priestly and Davidic Messiah I think appears in Ps 110."
Yes, but the Damascus Document may be closer to the time of the origin of Christianity, and it also shares the concept of "the Way," for an example of another similarity, and as Bauckham notes, "Although the Qumran community and the early Christians were certainly not the only Jews to focus their hopes on the Isaianic picture of the way ... they are the only two groups we know to have applied the image of this way to their own way of life."
https://books.google.com/books?id=U7-Qe ... am&f=false
Michael BG also wrote:
"I don’t think anyone believes there was a structured church in Judea with priests and bishops by 70 CE. The word that is translated as “church” means “assembly” and I expect that early Christian communities met in people’s house (a bit like Bible study groups that some churches have today).
If the DSS sect were proto-Jewish Christians then they had a structured assembly (or yachad:
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/3161.htm) with priests, etc. in Judea before 70 CE. One example of this is in column 6 of the Community Rule (Vermes):
Each man shall sit in his place: the Priests shall sit first, and the elders second, and all the rest of the people according to their rank. And thus shall they be questioned concerning the Law, and concerning any counsel or matter coming before the Congregation, each man bringing his knowledge to the Council of the Community.
No man shall interrupt a companion before his speech has ended, nor speak before a man of higher rank; each man shall speak in his turn. And in an Assembly of the Congregation no man shall speak without the consent of the Congregation, nor indeed of the Guardian of the Congregation. Should any man wish to speak to the Congregation, yet not be in a position to question the Council of the Community, let him rise to his feet and say: 'I have something to say to the Congregation.' If they command him to speak, he shall speak.
Every man, born of Israel, who freely pledges himself to join the Council of the Community, shall be examined by the Guardian at the head of the Congregation concerning his understanding and his deeds. If he is fitted to the discipline, he shall admit him into the Covenant that he may be converted to -the truth and depart from all falsehood; and he shall instruct him in all the rules of the Community.
And later, when he comes to stand before the Congregation, they shall all deliberate his case, and according to the decision of the Council of the Congregation he shall either enter or depart. After he has entered the Council of the Community he shall not touch the pure Meal of the Congregation until one full year is completed, and until he has been examined concerning his spirit and deeds; nor shall his property be mingled with that of the Congregation.
Then when he has completed one year within the Community, the Congregation shall deliberate his case with regard to his understanding and observance of the Law. And if it be his destiny, according to the judgement of the Priests and the multitude of the men of their Covenant, to enter the company of the Community, his property and earnings shall be handed over to the Bursar of the Congregation who shall register it to his account and shall not spend it for the Congregation.
Michael BG also wrote:
"I am not sure why anyone should expect any written materials to survive from Judea and Galilee following the Jewish Wars of 66-73 and 132-36 CE."
if the DSS sect were proto-Jewish Christians then their writings survived by being hidden in the Qumran caves.
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:00 pm
by John2
Michael BG also wrote:
"i am not sure what the idea of a Priestly and Davidic joint Messiah in a Dead Sea Scroll adds to a discussion of whether first century Jews believed that when the Messiah came there would be the end of time..."
This is what I am suggesting is the case in the Damascus Document. The book I linked to earlier notes:
Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:10 pm
by John2
Chester lists the four passages in the Damascus Document that refer to the coming of a singular Messiah of Aaron and Israel at the end of days here, and they also mention the New Covenant in a place called Damascus, and that "'he will atone for their iniquity":
https://books.google.com/books?id=0YJ3n ... el&f=false