Greco-Roman Context of New Testament?

[Mormons Talk]

What aspects of Greco-Roman life do you consider to be important for better understanding the New Testament?  What are some specific places in the New Testament where such an understanding will deepen your appreciation for the NT?  I've asked myself these questions while reading Ch. 1 of Luke Timothy Johnson's textbook "The Writings of the New Testament."  Please add to my understanding.

The following are some thoughts I had after reading this chapter (as well as a few other similar chapters in survey books).

LTJ. Week 1. April 30, 2017. Ch. 1 “The Greco-Roman World”

In 15 pages, LTJ gives us an overview of a subject that entire books are written about – the Greco-Roman world as pertinent to the NT. I kept wanting him to go more deeply into how these things apply specifically, but I think a little patience will be rewarded – particularly when we get to the letters of Paul.

Here are some things that stood out to me in reading LTJ, Bart Ehrman, and Dale Martin.

1. Kingdom, Saviors, and Sons of God. There is a delightful scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where King Arthur asks the French to give them shelter in exchange for the privilege of joining them on their quest for the Holy Grail. The response of the Frenchman shocks him: “Well, I'll ask 'im, but I don't think 'e'll be very keen-- 'e's already got one, you see?”

The Greco-Roman world already had a Son of God, a Savior, a King, and a Kingdom. They were Augustus, and he did not tolerate competitors. As I’ll discuss shortly, there was a high degree of Roman tolerance, but it only went so far. You couldn’t actually threaten the social order that had the Emperor at its head. Pax Romana wanted peaceful submission, peaceful servitude. This creates an inherent tension with Jews who saw themselves as God’s chosen people, and who awaited the time when God would allow them to overthrow their overlords (and there had been many over the centuries!).

Given this background, every time in the NT you have Jesus and others discussing Him as the “Son of God,” the “Savior,” “the Kingdom” “the Messiah” – I imagine you have people nervously looking around to make sure there aren’t any Romans in the vicinity. If they hear you, you risk punishment. The Romans don’t take kindly to insurrection.

2. Was the Greco-Roman world one you’d want to live in?

--For most people, life sucked. There was a small upper class, and a very large lower one (perhaps a small middle one as well). 20% or more of the population lived below the subsistence level. Social mobility was minimal (there was a little – slaves could become freedmen, etc.). You would almost certainly stay a member of the class you were born into, regardless of how hard you worked. In some ways, being a slave made you better off than many of the poor.

--Diseases didn’t have the cures we have today. Lots of people died from things that don’t much worry us today. If a miracle worker happened to be passing through town (and who knows how often or rarely this occurred), you wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to get his help.

--90% of people were illiterate. Guess who was educated? (Hint: Not the poor people! Not most of the people who initially adopted Christianity!).

--People had little control over their life.

I’m going to take a stab at how these features might relate to the NT. To be clear, I could be completely wrong about all this. First, insofar as the NT discusses wealth and riches, you need to remember there’s no social mobility. Once you give your fortune away to follow Jesus, are you now stuck in a life of squalor, along with your wife and kids, and their kids – for as far as the eye can see? In addition, you likely didn’t really “earn” your riches – you likely inherited them or married into them. Do you really "deserve" to keep them? Also, I strongly doubt there were social safety nets in a way we would recognize (although they did have "bread and circuses," so something existed). I can imagine that this is a world where people starve and die of exposure. So when a rich person gives away a fortune, it might be the difference between life and death for recipients of some of the money. Perhaps it creates a risk that you or your descendants will also “live on the edge” so to speak.

3. How did people mitigate this life of “alienation” (a word LTJ uses) and lack of control over their own life?

--People of course hoped that their religion would provide them with material benefits in the here and now. Were the “Pagans” Godless brutes? Nope. To the contrary, their world was swimming with Gods. Gods of this, gods of that – Gods recognized around the empire, local gods, even gods of a particular family. The pagans were not godless, but polytheistic. At first glance, Greco-Roman polytheism seems to contrast sharply with Jewish monotheism. But as Ehrman discusses, the educated Romans thought of their Gods in a sort of hierarchy, perhaps with a “most powerful” God at the top that ruled them all. The Jews, on the other hand, recognized the existence of other divine beings less than God – angels, archangels, and the like. So there are differences between paganism and Jewish religion, but there are also similarities.

--If all the gods above still didn’t bring you comfort and happiness, you could always try a mystery religion out. These mystery religions involved secret rites, initiations, and even promises of a better afterlife (which the polytheism above wasn’t focused on).

--And then there was magic. Workers of miracles and wonders were not unheard of. People probably knew someone who knew someone who had experienced a marvelous miracle from a traveling wonder-worker, but I doubt they were on every street corner. People had magic rites, amulets, and spells.

4. The NT exists in a Greco-Roman background. Greek was the common language of the empire, and even the Jews in diaspora read their “Bible” in Greek. The NT was written in Greek. Since, as LTJ writes, “language bears with it all the symbols of a culture,” the NT necessarily inherits some Greco-Roman culture.

5. Were Romans intolerant? Quite the contrary. They let people keep their Gods, but they usually promoted the idea that the Gods of different peoples were actually the same in some sense (religious syncretism). Prior Jewish revolts had led Romans to come to an uneasy truce with Jews – giving them some liberties with religion that other people didn’t get. But there wasn’t any way that Rome was going to let new fangled religions like Christianity get the same special treatment. If they did, then who is to say that more religions won’t spring up and disrupt the existing social order? Once Christians were identified as being different than Jews, the Christians got punished to the extent they didn’t conform to the same standards as everybody else (except the Jews).

6. Roman philosophy, not religion, concerned itself with how to live a good life. Roman philosophers compiled long lists of virtues and vices. It’s incorrect to regard Romans and pagans as all being immoral heathen, but their morality came from philosophy.

7. People didn’t value novelty, they valued antiquity. Silicon valley this was not. Thus, rather than developing new symbols, you re-interpreted or allegorized the old ones. The farther back you could trace an idea, the better.

8. Roman religion didn’t concern itself with things we normally associate with religion. Bart Ehrman discusses these differences in his introductory textbook: (1) Roman religion lacked independent religious organizations and hierarchy outside of the state (except, apparently, for those skilled at reading animal entrails and speaking in tongues). (2) There weren’t creeds or doctrinal statements in Roman religion – what mattered was that you appeased the Gods with sacrifices, festivals, and outward ritual. (3) Roman religion did not deal with Ethics, rather, this was a topic of Roman philosophy. (4) Roman religion didn’t concern itself with the afterlife. Most people didn’t believe in the afterlife; the purpose of religion was to make the present one better. (5) Roman religion didn’t have a sacred written canon. (6) There was no separation of church and state – the leaders of Roman religion were political leaders; (7) Roman religion didn’t require exclusive commitments. The more Gods the merrier. If you moved to a new city, you could keep all your old Gods, and start worshipping the new local Gods to.

It’s easy to see some contrasts with Christianity. Roman religion hopefully makes you wealthier; Christianity makes you poorer because it asks you to give your substance to the poor, to voluntarily abase yourself, to give it all up for the Lord. Christianity has a large component focusing on the afterlife. Christianity requires exclusive devotions to the one Father.

Finally, to some outsiders, rumors about Jesus might not have been that big of a deal. A wonder worker? Not unheard of. An itinerant teacher of virtue? Yeah, Cynic philosophers do that. A guy talking about a new Kingdom? Yep, we've had a few of those - they typically have a short lifespan. A Son of God? This guy must be looney – everybody knows there's only one Son of God around here, and that's the Emperor. Kids - stay away from this guy, or you're going to get yourselves in a lot of trouble.

[bluebell]

I think one of the things that would really really help us understand Paul's teaching on faith would be to understand the Roman practice of patronage.  

[strappinglad]

And it only took a couple of hundred years before the Christian religion overtook the Roman one. I suppose it had something to do with the decline and fall.

[Maidservant]

I am convinced that both Jesus' project and Paul's project had nothing to do with religion as we now know it.  I think that Jesus' project and Paul's project have significant differences, but in their base objective they were the same which was to teach people how to live IN THIS WORLD without bloodshed and oppression; and indeed, I would say that Paul was deeply inspired by Jesus' courage and articulation, although he (Paul) took it and ran with it, perhaps in a way that Jesus might not recognize.  Neither were not concerned about afterlife destiny, and would find it extremely off the mark that we are.  (We, meaning, all Christianity as it has developed over centuries.)

The material that Jesus and Paul had to work with, a fine example of bloodshed and oppression, was the Greco-Roman world.  Both Jesus and Paul were DIRECTLY (not incidentally) challenging this. Their concerns were very immediate and NOT as eternal, per se, as we now make them out to be. Yes, they were rising out of a Hebrew tradition, and that is not to be disregarded, but your average Jewish poor nobody, and his corresponding average Roman nobody (as you mention), I would guess (and I am just guessing), had very little historical sense nor connection to, say, Isaiah's prophecies, and other high-minded and esoteric """religious""" matters of their far away ancient ancestors.  What concerned them WAS their life in Roman society.  They wanted to be FREE and rise above their suffering and have their next meal.  That was the concern of the multitudes who Jesus fed with loaves and fishes (etc) and the sermon on the mount.

And Jesus taught them that--their dignity and freedom and their self-mastery.  For example, in the instruction to go a second mile, he was not teaching them kindness.  He was teaching them resistance against (Roman) oppression.  That was a very specific instruction that had a very specific meaning to his listeners.

While Jesus was more focused on a human response, Paul had a larger vision, and wanted to create an alternate kingdom--a kingdom without bloodshed and oppression.  A holy nation, a peculiar people (although these words are found in 1 Peter).

So when you say that there already was a Son of God, etc, in Roman culture; I am saying that, not only drawing upon Hebrew Meschiach tradition, but the presentation of the Son of God, was a DELIBERATE, not accidental, challenge to the current Roman culture.  When Paul (and others) were organizing "ecclesia"s (now translated 'church' in English New Testaments), they were not organizing religion, they were organizing an alternate nation.  They were deliberately in foil to the world's way of going about life and government. They were teaching their followers how to be humans and not animals or devils, as much of earth's history seemed to be.  They did not choose a term other than "ecclesia" (assembly, as in a civic assembly--there had been ecclesias for a long time in Greek civil culture and into Roman) . . . in organizing themselves around the message of Jesus (as presented by Paul); they deliberately said, ECCLESIA.  The new kingdom.  The kingdom of God.  (Which, by the way, Jesus is only reported saying 'church' (translated from?) in Matthew.  All the rest of the mentions are in Acts and further in the New Testament.)  (The idea of separation of church and state was a meaningless thing.  "Ecclesia" IS a "state".)

Anyway, base point from me here, is to take your idea #1 that the Romans were nervous about someone presenting a Son of God (etc), because they already had one; and I am asserting even further that--Jesus and Paul deliberately set OUT to make an articulation against the current society (again, NOTHING ABOUT RELIGION).  They WANTED the Romans to get nervous--not in a game-playing way, but in the sense that they and everyone would be seeing a new world based on transformed, holy people.  I think Paul, at least, got a little excited and felt like the human transformation could be accomplished in his lifetime.

Nope.

[Mormons Talk]

Very interesting, Maidservant. Thank you for your deeply thoughtful engagement.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Maidservant said:

I am convinced that both Jesus' project and Paul's project had nothing to do with religion as we now know it.  I think that Jesus' project and Paul's project have significant differences, but in their base objective they were the same which was to teach people how to live IN THIS WORLD without bloodshed and oppression; and indeed, I would say that Paul was deeply inspired by Jesus' courage and articulation, although he (Paul) took it and ran with it, perhaps in a way that Jesus might not recognize.  Neither were not concerned about afterlife destiny, and would find it extremely off the mark that we are.  (We, meaning, all Christianity as it has developed over centuries.)

The material that Jesus and Paul had to work with, a fine example of bloodshed and oppression, was the Greco-Roman world.  Both Jesus and Paul were DIRECTLY (not incidentally) challenging this. Their concerns were very immediate and NOT as eternal, per se, as we now make them out to be. Yes, they were rising out of a Hebrew tradition, and that is not to be disregarded, but your average Jewish poor nobody, and his corresponding average Roman nobody (as you mention), I would guess (and I am just guessing), had very little historical sense nor connection to, say, Isaiah's prophecies, and other high-minded and esoteric """religious""" matters of their far away ancient ancestors.  What concerned them WAS their life in Roman society.  They wanted to be FREE and rise above their suffering and have their next meal.  That was the concern of the multitudes who Jesus fed with loaves and fishes (etc) and the sermon on the mount.

And Jesus taught them that--their dignity and freedom and their self-mastery.  For example, in the instruction to go a second mile, he was not teaching them kindness.  He was teaching them resistance against (Roman) oppression.  That was a very specific instruction that had a very specific meaning to his listeners.

While Jesus was more focused on a human response, Paul had a larger vision, and wanted to create an alternate kingdom--a kingdom without bloodshed and oppression.  A holy nation, a peculiar people (although these words are found in 1 Peter).

So when you say that there already was a Son of God, etc, in Roman culture; I am saying that, not only drawing upon Hebrew Meschiach tradition, but the presentation of the Son of God, was a DELIBERATE, not accidental, challenge to the current Roman culture.  When Paul (and others) were organizing "ecclesia"s (now translated 'church' in English New Testaments), they were not organizing religion, they were organizing an alternate nation.  They were deliberately in foil to the world's way of going about life and government. They were teaching their followers how to be humans and not animals or devils, as much of earth's history seemed to be.  They did not choose a term other than "ecclesia" (assembly, as in a civic assembly--there had been ecclesias for a long time in Greek civil culture and into Roman) . . . in organizing themselves around the message of Jesus (as presented by Paul); they deliberately said, ECCLESIA.  The new kingdom.  The kingdom of God.  (Which, by the way, Jesus is only reported saying 'church' (translated from?) in Matthew.  All the rest of the mentions are in Acts and further in the New Testament.)  (The idea of separation of church and state was a meaningless thing.  "Ecclesia" IS a "state".)

Anyway, base point from me here, is to take your idea #1 that the Romans were nervous about someone presenting a Son of God (etc), because they already had one; and I am asserting even further that--Jesus and Paul deliberately set OUT to make an articulation against the current society (again, NOTHING ABOUT RELIGION).  They WANTED the Romans to get nervous--not in a game-playing way, but in the sense that they and everyone would be seeing a new world based on transformed, holy people.  I think Paul, at least, got a little excited and felt like the human transformation could be accomplished in his lifetime.

Nope.

I find this supposition unsupportable. Both Jesus and Paul spoke at length about God, another world, death, post-apocalyptic judgments, and an afterlife. The only way I can see this theory working is if you just assume that all of that was added after the fact. Possibly a fun exercise but trying to reconstruct the teachings of Jesus by cherry-picking from the record is unlikely to end up being accurate.

[mfbukowski]

Presentism

We can't conceive what it was like to be Roman 

Heck Republicans can't even figure out liberals and vice versa

Them Romans didn't even have cell phones I hear.

Edited May 1, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, strappinglad said:

And it only took a couple of hundred years before the Christian religion overtook the Roman one. I suppose it had something to do with the decline and fall.

It also had a lot to do with the dominant force of Mithraism within the Roman legions.  Mithra worship had so much in common with Christianity, that the transition under General Constantine was made so much smoother.

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, Mormons Talk said:

Greco-Roman Context of New Testament?

What aspects of Greco-Roman life do you consider to be important for better understanding the New Testament?  

One of the most important contexts to consider is the claim that NT Christianity was a mystery religion, like many other such  mystery religions of the time.  Not only do we have Richard Reitzenstein, Hellenistic Mystery Religions: Their Basic Ideas and Significance (1978), but we also have Cyril of Jerusalem's frank Lectures on the Ordinances (Mystagogikai Katacheseis), which indeed portrays Christianity as a mystery religion -- not to mention that modern Mormonism is also a mystery religion.

Please note "mystery" (Greek mysterion) in Colossians 1:27, and I Timothy 3:9,16.  The Greek mysterion is rendered in the Latin Vulgate sacramentum.

Another important source to consider is Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament, NRSV (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

Edited May 1, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[Kevin Christensen]

14 hours ago, Maidservant said:

I am convinced that both Jesus' project and Paul's project had nothing to do with religion as we now know it.  I think that Jesus' project and Paul's project have significant differences, but in their base objective they were the same which was to teach people how to live IN THIS WORLD without bloodshed and oppression; and indeed, I would say that Paul was deeply inspired by Jesus' courage and articulation, although he (Paul) took it and ran with it, perhaps in a way that Jesus might not recognize.  Neither were not concerned about afterlife destiny, and would find it extremely off the mark that we are.  (We, meaning, all Christianity as it has developed over centuries.)

The material that Jesus and Paul had to work with, a fine example of bloodshed and oppression, was the Greco-Roman world.  Both Jesus and Paul were DIRECTLY (not incidentally) challenging this. Their concerns were very immediate and NOT as eternal, per se, as we now make them out to be. Yes, they were rising out of a Hebrew tradition, and that is not to be disregarded, but your average Jewish poor nobody, and his corresponding average Roman nobody (as you mention), I would guess (and I am just guessing), had very little historical sense nor connection to, say, Isaiah's prophecies, and other high-minded and esoteric """religious""" matters of their far away ancient ancestors.  What concerned them WAS their life in Roman society.  They wanted to be FREE and rise above their suffering and have their next meal.  That was the concern of the multitudes who Jesus fed with loaves and fishes (etc) and the sermon on the mount.

And Jesus taught them that--their dignity and freedom and their self-mastery.  For example, in the instruction to go a second mile, he was not teaching them kindness.  He was teaching them resistance against (Roman) oppression.  That was a very specific instruction that had a very specific meaning to his listeners.

While Jesus was more focused on a human response, Paul had a larger vision, and wanted to create an alternate kingdom--a kingdom without bloodshed and oppression.  A holy nation, a peculiar people (although these words are found in 1 Peter).

So when you say that there already was a Son of God, etc, in Roman culture; I am saying that, not only drawing upon Hebrew Meschiach tradition, but the presentation of the Son of God, was a DELIBERATE, not accidental, challenge to the current Roman culture.  When Paul (and others) were organizing "ecclesia"s (now translated 'church' in English New Testaments), they were not organizing religion, they were organizing an alternate nation.  They were deliberately in foil to the world's way of going about life and government. They were teaching their followers how to be humans and not animals or devils, as much of earth's history seemed to be.  They did not choose a term other than "ecclesia" (assembly, as in a civic assembly--there had been ecclesias for a long time in Greek civil culture and into Roman) . . . in organizing themselves around the message of Jesus (as presented by Paul); they deliberately said, ECCLESIA.  The new kingdom.  The kingdom of God.  (Which, by the way, Jesus is only reported saying 'church' (translated from?) in Matthew.  All the rest of the mentions are in Acts and further in the New Testament.)  (The idea of separation of church and state was a meaningless thing.  "Ecclesia" IS a "state".)

Anyway, base point from me here, is to take your idea #1 that the Romans were nervous about someone presenting a Son of God (etc), because they already had one; and I am asserting even further that--Jesus and Paul deliberately set OUT to make an articulation against the current society (again, NOTHING ABOUT RELIGION).  They WANTED the Romans to get nervous--not in a game-playing way, but in the sense that they and everyone would be seeing a new world based on transformed, holy people.  I think Paul, at least, got a little excited and felt like the human transformation could be accomplished in his lifetime.

Nope.

I periodically cite this essay by Fr John McDade on Jesus in Recent Research for the powerful point it makes on how significantly the way a person decides to contextualize Jesus influences how they see Jesus.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiXuurr_c7TAhVKxYMKHSK_DrwQFggiMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.1.sqspcdn.com%2Fstatic%2Ff%2F38692%2F394611%2F1270557825007%2FJesus%2Bin%2BRecent%2BResearch.pdf%3Ftoken%3DaL8uUvY9XLYs48KRVVqPPpByuTc%3D&usg=AFQjCNGfSaGPO7NYAwM977u8eGB4drFpJQ

It's very much worth reading, as well as in comparison with Richard Bushman's comments on the same issue in Joseph Smith Biography at the 2005 Washington DC Joseph Smith Conference.

http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol44/iss4/3/

All worth comparing with the parable of the sower, on the context for the seed, the harvest, and Jesus's comment that "Know ye not this parable? How then shall ye know all parables?"

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[clarkgoble]

One thing to be careful of is not to limit context to one culture. Yes the Greek/Roman context matters a great deal. But also do the essenes, the Pharisee, Egyptian magic and other contexts.

[Anijen]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Presentism

We can't conceive what it was like to be Roman 

Heck Republicans can't even figure out liberals and vice versa

Them Romans didn't even have cell phones I hear.

You are misdefining presentism here. We can conceive what it was to be Roman and even if we could not that would not be presentism.

Regarding Republicans and Liberals I'm not going to touch.

You are correct that Romans did not have cell phones ;).

Presentism is when one judges past conduct or interpret values of the past with a modern day standard of values. However if you were being tongue in cheek here, I apologize, I did not read most of the prior posts.

 

[Anijen]

13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It also had a lot to do with the dominant force of Mithraism within the Roman legions.  Mithra worship had so much in common with Christianity, that the transition under General Constantine was made so much smoother.

Although later than the Roman Empire, circa 1050-1250 AD. I believe a study of the the investiture controversy can help see how fractured kingdoms became less powerful (as to swaying its citizens) and how the church [Catholic] took much of that authority back from the kings. For example, the church was more able to do this because at this juncture in time, Christians where both in France and in England and many looked to the Pope for answers whereas before they could only look to their king.

[halconero]

14 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

One of the most important contexts to consider is the claim that NT Christianity was a mystery religion, like many other such  mystery religions of the time.  Not only do we have Richard Reitzenstein, Hellenistic Mystery Religions: Their Basic Ideas and Significance (1978), but we also have Cyril of Jerusalem's frank Lectures on the Ordinances (Mystagogikai Katacheseis), which indeed portrays Christianity as a mystery religion -- not to mention that modern Mormonism is also a mystery religion.

Please note "mystery" (Greek mysterion) in Colossians 1:27, and I Timothy 3:9,16.  The Greek mysterion is rendered in the Latin Vulgate sacramentum.

Another important source to consider is Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament, NRSV (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

Good post. It should be noted that one of the reasons why Christianity was considered so radical was because it opened up initiation into the mysteries to women, children and slaves, who were generally excluded from such groups.

Edited May 1, 2017 by halconero

[halconero]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

One thing to be careful of is not to limit context to one culture. Yes the Greek/Roman context matters a great deal. But also do the essenes, the Pharisee, Egyptian magic and other contexts.

I think it bears worth noting that the Essenes, Pharisees and Egyptian magical schools were part of Greco-Roman culture.

Scholarship for years considered the Jewish and esoteric Egyptian communities as being cultural enclaves, but that is largely refuted by current literary and material evidence. Mediterranean (I find this term to be more expansive than the terms 'Greco-Roman' or 'Hellenistic' culture) culture included a spectrum of religious, linguistic, and philosophical worldviews that had certain commonalities with each other. Rabbinic schools were a subset of Hellenistic philosophical schools, Maccabees was a Hellenistic epic as far as literature goes even if it was a story of rebellion against a Hellenistic King, and Jewish philosophy was heavily intertwined with Greek philosophy (Look no further than Philo Judeaeus' writings on the Logos and Moses as the founder of Platonism).

Nazareth was not a small village in the middle of nowhere. It was essentially the suburb of the Greek city of Sepphoris, being just about 20-30 minutes walking distance from a panoply of cosmopolitan and urban culture. Heck, given Jesus' likely profession as an artisan (and more particularly a stonemason)  it's likely that he worked in Sepphoris which was undergoing a major revitalization project during his youth and adulthood. Given his interaction with the city he likely spoke Greek along with Aramaic, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say he knew some Latin as well.

These groups were so intertwined that being an Essene, a Pharisee, or an Egyptian miracle worker was part of the Greco-Roman context. It's like how being an African-American creole speaker from Louisiana, a Spanish-speaking Chicano from Los Angeles, a or white liberal urbanite from Portland are all part of the American context even if they form readily identifiable populations/demographics within it.

Edited May 1, 2017 by halconero

[halconero]

Great post btw. I wrote a paper a couple years back on the revolutionary concept of the Basileia ton Theou (Kingdom/Empire of God in Greek) and how subversive it was in the Roman Principate.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, halconero said:

I think it bears worth noting that the Essenes, Pharisees and Egyptian magical schools were part of Greco-Roman culture.

I think that's getting into some confusing semantics. If greco-roman culture is everything in the greco-roman empires then I think the term loses a lot of meaning. Usually one will distinguish hellenistic culture from the more traditional cultures within a community and then note the syncretic aspects of mixing. I'm fine if you want to call it all one thing so long as we're clear what we're talking about. 

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Anijen said:

You are misdefining presentism here. We can conceive what it was to be Roman and even if we could not that would not be presentism.

Regarding Republicans and Liberals I'm not going to touch.

You are correct that Romans did not have cell phones ;).

Presentism is when one judges past conduct or interpret values of the past with a modern day standard of values. However if you were being tongue in cheek here, I apologize, I did not read most of the prior posts.

 

Disagree on both counts.

Yes I am saying that these posts interpret values of the past with a modern day standard of values AND that we cannot conceive fully what it would like to be Roman, and indeed I submit contemporary political analogies as evidence.

How fluent are you in classical Latin?

Enjoy watching gladiators killing each other?  Like public toilets in your communal bath? Enjoy watching Christians getting eaten by lions?  

 

 

[Anijen]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Disagree on both counts.

I am exactly correct on the definition of presentism which is when we (now, today) interpret values of the past with today's values. IOW we should not anachronistically introduce our present-day judgment and form an opinion on that judgement.

 

Quote

Yes I am saying that these posts interpret values of the past with a modern day standard of values AND that we cannot conceive fully what it would like to be Roman, and indeed I submit contemporary political analogies as evidence.

Scratches head. First, you said you disagree with me on both counts, but then give me a correct definition of presentism in this sentence above. The same definition (basically) I used. Perhaps, when you wrote; "Presentism" and then wrote; "We can't conceive what it was like to be Roman"  I misinterpreted your second sentence as an example of presentism (in which I disagreed with you). I disagreed because the mere conception (conceiving of what it was like to be Roman) is not presentism. Hence, my posted reply of; "You are misdefining presentism here." If I still have misinterpreted your post I apologize.

Regarding your disagreement of the second part, (which I think is when I wrote; "We can conceive what it was to be Roman") As a Historian (quasi- historian, I have given it up for a legal career). Although it is true we can not fully or completely know the Roman Empire, we can actually conceive what it was like to be Roman. The very definition of the word conceive is; to form a notion, opinion, imagine, think, believe... I submit we can conceive what is was like to be Roman, which is far different from having a complete knowledge. However, after a second reading of your second post you changed it slightly to: "we cannot conceive fully..." So, perhaps we are close to agreeing.

 

Quote

How fluent are you in classical Latin?

Regarding Classical Latin, I have better than a rudimentary knowledge. As I said, I was/am a past History major, and I received my Juris Doctorate this week, my knowledge of Latin helped. However, I wouldn't say I am even close to fluent.

 

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Enjoy watching gladiators killing each other?  Like public toilets in your communal bath? Enjoy watching Christians getting eaten by lions?  

Sorry, others might be able to catch sarcasm from posts, I am not that talented. Are you mocking me here? If so, I think it is uncalled for.  I can never tell if the little emoji is to confirm this was suppose to be taken humorously or otherwise not seriously intended. If so, I guess my humor needs to be updated.

[halconero]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think that's getting into some confusing semantics. If greco-roman culture is everything in the greco-roman empires then I think the term loses a lot of meaning. Usually one will distinguish hellenistic culture from the more traditional cultures within a community and then note the syncretic aspects of mixing. I'm fine if you want to call it all one thing so long as we're clear what we're talking about. 

Jews at the time spoke Greek along with Aramaic. They melded platonic philosophy with their notion of God (see Philo of Alexandria). Their rabbinic schools were modelled after the Greek and Roman philosophical school and patronage systems. Their bible was the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew version. Their literature was in the style of Greek epics. The crowns of upstart messiahs were the Hellenistic ribbons rather than an eastern crown.

How is that not Hellenistic Culture? Sure, they were monotheistic, but so were other Hellenistic groups, and their conception of God at that point was heavily Platonic. Heck, the notion of the an intermediary divine being called the Logos was lifted from Greek philosophy.

Jewish culture and all its ethnoreligious derivatives was the late classical period identifiable as falling along the Hellenistic spectrum just as Indo-Bactrians were even though they were Buddhist, Thracians were their Celtic pantheon, Geats along the Black Sea, etc. You can't take 2nd Temple Judaism outside of its Hellenistic context, philosophy, literature and language without making it something unidentifiable as 2nd Temple Judaism.

Edit: Think of it this way. Hellenism (or Greco-Roman culture) is as broad a term as European culture is, yet when we think of European culture we can think of some common shared values (liberal democracy), religion (Christianity), trade language (English), and philosophical world views (liberalism in its original sense is the guiding world view of most of Europe).

Hellenism had common values, gender norms, religion (Platonic Immaterial deity versus imperfect material world), a trade language, and philosophical world views that the Jews and their subgroups absorbed and reproduced in the late classical period. Jews of Jesus' times were not the wildly distinct culture people think they were. They were largely part of the Alexandrian melting pot with their own distinct flavours just every subgroup had, the keyword being "subgroup."

Edited May 2, 2017 by halconero

[Maidservant]

7 hours ago, halconero said:

Great post btw. I wrote a paper a couple years back on the revolutionary concept of the Basileia ton Theou (Kingdom/Empire of God in Greek) and how subversive it was in the Roman Principate.

Do you have that online (want to read!)?

[Maidservant]

11 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I periodically cite this essay by Fr John McDade on Jesus in Recent Research for the powerful point it makes on how significantly the way a person decides to contextualize Jesus influences how they see Jesus.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiXuurr_c7TAhVKxYMKHSK_DrwQFggiMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.1.sqspcdn.com%2Fstatic%2Ff%2F38692%2F394611%2F1270557825007%2FJesus%2Bin%2BRecent%2BResearch.pdf%3Ftoken%3DaL8uUvY9XLYs48KRVVqPPpByuTc%3D&usg=AFQjCNGfSaGPO7NYAwM977u8eGB4drFpJQ

It's very much worth reading, as well as in comparison with Richard Bushman's comments on the same issue in Joseph Smith Biography at the 2005 Washington DC Joseph Smith Conference.

http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol44/iss4/3/

All worth comparing with the parable of the sower, on the context for the seed, the harvest, and Jesus's comment that "Know ye not this parable? How then shall ye know all parables?"

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Thanks :).  Reading now.

[halconero]

5 minutes ago, Maidservant said:

Do you have that online (want to read!)?

I can dig it up, I'm sure.  It was on an old laptop that's kind of a dud but I can poke around.

[Maidservant]

12 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

how significantly the way a person decides to contextualize

Reminds me of of a final paper I wrote when completing my bachelor's (in History).  Excerpt:

" For some time, historians generally considered their role in society as that of a detective searching for and discovering the facts of the past.  A historian could find the puzzle pieces and put them together into the correct picture and then share the masterpiece with colleagues and lay person, for all to see. . .

We cannot extricate ourselves, as historians, as being one hundred percent separate and observant of those processes.  We are participants.

Within the last thirty years of so, a historiographic shift has been taking place.  Historians still use facts, but they use them as the nail-and-board framing.  The rest of the picture--drywall, paint, carpet--is the recovery or production of meaning.  This is the result of conceding that all facts are observed from a point of view--thus, any single fact can never be the same history.  The 1857 conflict in India (once termed a "mutiny" or "rebellion" or "revolt" from the colonial point of view), while it only happened once, and encompasses certain recoverable facts or events, nevertheless is not the same history from the point of view of a Charles Canning (governer-general of India at the time) and from the point of view of a young Brahman Bengali, Mangal Pandey, serving in the British East India Company's infantry.  Thus, as historians, we collect as many facts, and then collect as many points of view as may be pertinent to a given set of parameters (time, place, et cetera), then we reconstruct the Meaning of what really happened.

The challenge and privilege of such a venture is that there is always the meta-point of view of the historian.  . . . . while in history we might find "answering" meaning, we realize that first we begin to inquire from the present (of the historian from whom the inquiry issues forth)--the "asking" meaning.  This brings up some interesting problems or possible realizations.  Where is the meaning located then?  Have we uncovered meaning in the past?  Certainly we attempt this honestly.  We get better and better at allowing the logic of varying cultures and times to speak to us on their own terms.  We do our utmost to stave off the infection of the colonial narrative (for example).

However, I think something that has happened in our historiographical efforts is that we have managed to produce meanings that never existed for the agents themselves.  We theorize, for example, about social resistance behaviors in English women in the early American colonies.  We discuss the Islamic religious networks of the Indian Ocean region and how they provided diasporic pressure.  Yet, no early American female woke up on a day, stretched her arms and said, "I think I'm going to do some social resistance today."  No Muslim alim, as he contracted marriage with the sister of the ruler of Moqdishu (east Africa), did so with the purpose of contributing to his portion of the Hadrami diaspora.  There is nothing wrong with approaching history in this manner, but we do have to realize whose meanings they are.  We are the ones who connect the dots to create an Atlantic world.  We are the ones who draw the radiating lines of the Mongol expansion efforts.  We are the ones who determine Kermit Roosevelt, serving the CIA, to be almost single-handedly responsible for the assassination of Mossadegh, the democratic leader of Iran (1950s).  Did these things happen?  Do they exist?  Is there really such a thing as an Atlantic world?  There is, surely.  But where is the location of its existence?  Can we take a boat to the middle of the Atlantic this week and see anything but the wind, sky and water?  The Middle Passage cannot be found there. . . .

Perhaps we need to remember the foundational fact that makes the work of historians possible at all--that these are all dead.  They do not exist. . . .

. . . which means that the history written by a historian is very much something from the present, not the past.  This is not a bad thing.  It is simply to be recognized that this is a great deal of magic to be wielding.  And to whom does the message matter?  The pylon, the wall, the timber, the document do not care.  The dead do not care.  The message is IN and FOR the historian (and the larger set of humanity she represents).  The historian creates the history out of herself as she has come in contact of the truth of the artifact.  The message is always a story about the present, not the past which does not exist.  Thus, history is a statement about what we are presently willing to see about ourselves as human beings--what we have to say about the choices that had as their consequence the existence of the present historian (participant observer).

 . . . . .

If the human body is the primary artifact site of historical information and significance, and if the bodies that history reconstructs are imaginary (though the essential reason for history), then where, or who, is the literal primary site upon which history has converged?  It is the historian.  The historian must orient the existence of her body and the nature of the meanings she carries to those meanings recorded on time-persisting artifacts.  As the historian stands in Auswitchz and bends to touch the train tracks, reading out the meaning, the historian has now related herself in the present to those tracks.  In that moment, the historian has brought into existence a new body or human (herself) that has become a vessel for new meaning.  Are the train tracks in the past?  No.  They are present; she is touching them.  Is the meaning from the past?  No, that is gone.  The most that can be said is that the message of the meaning from the past has been fused with the meaning and orienting relationship the historian herself wanted to create.  That is why we can have different histories from different actors and different historians, and why we can have new histories from each new age of the present, though all the histories may cradle the same facts.

So, in the end, what is the work of the historian?  Is it to know the past and tell it well to the audience?  Not so much.  That is an illusion.  The work of historians is to bring into existence present meanings of which all artifact-bodies currently alive on the planet may partake if they choose.  The joy of being a historian is that there are myriad meanings out there--attached to temple pylons and train tracks--and there is no meaning that historians can bear to lose.  The historian wants all of these meanings from the signal of artifacts to continue to be the ingredients for the newly created present meanings."

Edited May 2, 2017 by Maidservant

[RevTestament]

6 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Enjoy watching gladiators killing each other?

isn't that why we watch the likes of Muhammed Ali, Mike Tyson, etc?

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 Like public toilets in your communal bath?

Isn't that why Obama was forcing everyone to accept trans in their bathroom?

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Enjoy watching Christians getting eaten by lions?  

I think some enjoyed watching the Mockingjay - I admit, I watched it too.

Maybe we aren't so different as one may think at first glance. Maybe that is why the US is the last beast of Revelation. Just some thoughts