Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 07-30-2009, 04:54 PM

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker

Quote:

Originally Posted by amazon review

. . . Why are images of the crucified Christ absent from early Christian art? After visiting Mediterranean and European sites sacred to early Christians, Brock and Parker formulate a provocative answer: the dying Christ never appears in early Christian art because early Christians did not believe Christ’s redemptive death had opened a heavenly afterlife for the faithful. Rather, Brock and Parker assert, early Christians looked to Jesus as the exemplar who showed how to defy injustice by creating paradise on Earth in a loving community. In this theory, images of Christ’s passion and death invaded Christian art only when the Church started using a theology of otherworldly salvation to recruit the forces necessary to build a Christian empire. Skeptics may view with suspicion the authors’ willingness to substitute conjectural interpretations of art and heretical gnostic texts for plain readings of the orthodox biblical canon. . .

Also on Google Books

The thesis seems to have a lot in common with James Carroll's Constantine's Sword (or via: amazon.co.uk), but these authors do not cite that book.

These authors definitely have an agenda - but then so do most writers on Christianity.

Toto · 07-30-2009, 08:04 PM

Essay on Religious Dispatches

Quote:

This book is a rock-the-foundations work. Christians have been thoroughly taught that the crucifixion of Jesus saved the world. If the crucifixion is absent in historic Christian art, what is present?

Paradise is present, Brock and Parker assert: this world, with water, sheep, hills of grass and flowers, winged seraphim, doves, deer, sheep and a small golden city. They found these images in the art of the apse, quite hidden, in the basilica of St Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. “Paradise, not crucifixion was the dominant image of early Christian sanctuaries, and paradise was this world, not the next. What the images said was that God blesses this world with the spirit”.

Susan2 · 07-30-2009, 09:17 PM

Quote:

We Did Our Homework
Posted by rita_brock on July 30, 2009 at 11:27 AM
I am a coauthor of this book. We wrote a readable, exciting, interesting book. However, we did extensive research, and our 100 pages of endnotes document our insights and conclusions. Before you accuse us of bogus things, at least make sure you've understood what we've said.

The idea of salvation as paradise in this world is deeply grounded in Jewish texts and ideas, esp Gen. 1-2, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Psalms. Chapters 1-2 of our book show the deep roots of the Jesus movement in Middle Eastern religions, even in the pre-biblical Sumerians.

The idea that Jesus' crucifixion saved the world is the betrayal of Christianity. Paul is clear in Rom 6, Jesus died once, he will never die again, death has no power over him and Christians worship the RISEN Christ. Worship of crucifixion was war propaganda for imperial conquest and holy war.
One key point the review elides. There are crosses after Constantine, but they depict life and resurrection. They are golden and jeweled, dotted with doves or spiraling into green vines of abundant life. Jesus sometimes appears on them alive and unwounded. Jesus is NOT DEAD on the cross til 960. There are crosses by the 4th-5th centuries, but not crucifixions.

As a scholar, I am not quite sure how the author, quoted above, can keep a straight face, especially when speaking of Paul, as highlighed in the above quote.

She states that, 'Paul was quite clear'. Yes, he was. He would have told her to sit down and shut up. He would have told her he will not suffer her to speak. He would have asked her where her husband was, and probably asked her how many babies she had spit out of late?

He would have demanded that she suffer in pain.

Hebrews 12:8

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Does she have an agenda? Probably a book to sell and a job to keep, times are tough, truth is not an option.

IamJoseph · 07-30-2009, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker

Quote:

Originally Posted by amazon review

. . . Why are images of the crucified Christ absent from early Christian art? After visiting Mediterranean and European sites sacred to early Christians, Brock and Parker formulate a provocative answer: the dying Christ never appears in early Christian art because early Christians did not believe Christ’s redemptive death had opened a heavenly afterlife for the faithful. Rather, Brock and Parker assert, early Christians looked to Jesus as the exemplar who showed how to defy injustice by creating paradise on Earth in a loving community. In this theory, images of Christ’s passion and death invaded Christian art only when the Church started using a theology of otherworldly salvation to recruit the forces necessary to build a Christian empire. Skeptics may view with suspicion the authors’ willingness to substitute conjectural interpretations of art and heretical gnostic texts for plain readings of the orthodox biblical canon. . .

Also on Google Books

The thesis seems to have a lot in common with James Carroll's Constantine's Sword (or via: amazon.co.uk), but these authors do not cite that book.

These authors definitely have an agenda - but then so do most writers on Christianity.

Did you know the cross was a Jewish symbol since 150 BCE when the Romans introduced crucifixion in Judea? The cross represented a warning Romans were around, and afixed on doors and worn on garments as a code.

spamandham · 07-30-2009, 11:06 PM

Well, not being familiar with the timeline of Christian artwork, I will withhold judgment.

But, if it turns out to be true that the earliest Christian artwork does not depict the crucifixion, I think that does tell us something.

Toto · 07-31-2009, 12:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IamJoseph

...

Did you know the cross was a Jewish symbol since 150 BCE when the Romans introduced crucifixion in Judea? The cross represented a warning Romans were around, and afixed on doors and worn on garments as a code.

I didn't know this, and I still don't know it. Do you have a source for this claim?

Toto · 07-31-2009, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Susan2

...
She states that, 'Paul was quite clear'. Yes, he was. He would have told her to sit down and shut up. He would have told her he will not suffer her to speak. He would have asked her where her husband was, and probably asked her how many babies she had spit out of late?

He would have demanded that she suffer in pain.

Hebrews 12:8

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Does she have an agenda? Probably a book to sell and a job to keep, times are tough, truth is not an option.

You realize that at least some liberal Christians think that the anti-women clauses in Paul's letters are later insertions. Paul himself seems to have worked with women who spoke up in church and prophesied on their own, and the passages that tell women to shut up in church and listen to their husbands do not fit into the context of the epistles where they are found.

And no one thinks that Paul wrote Hebrews.

The same authors have written Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (or via: amazon.co.uk) also on Google Books. I think you might find something there that you would agree with.

Joan of Bark · 07-31-2009, 01:15 AM

Quote:

In this theory, images of Christ’s passion and death invaded Christian art only when the Church started using a theology of otherworldly salvation to recruit the forces necessary to build a Christian empire.

I would certainly be open to believing this assertion. So much of the church after the fourth century was geared toward conversion and power, that this conclusion seems entirely reasonable.

Clivedurdle · 07-31-2009, 12:51 PM

Maybe Billy Graham in Jesus People was onto something - maybe they were the peace and luv descendents of the elysian fields.

A Greek import of Baccanalia into Judaism? All those miracles of sharing food and turning water into wine and singing hosanna and talking of the new Jerusalem and blessed are the peacemakers. Thanks for all the fish.

The god jesus bringing the delights of the Greek ways into Judaism?

Clivedurdle · 07-31-2009, 01:01 PM

Quote:

In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas, like Heracles and Odysseus before him, travels to the underworld. Virgil describes an encounter in Elysium between Aeneas and his father Anchises. Virgil's Elysium knows perpetual spring and shady groves, with its own sun and lit by its own stars: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt (Aeneid, 6.541).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium

Cue Blake - and did those feet, and Beethoven, Pastorals

And Bachanalia is possibly part of this - Jesus drinking with the publicans. Are we looking at a Jewish possibly puritan interpretation of the stories of the Elysian fields and the Bachanalia?

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07-30-2009, 11:06 PM	#5
spamandham Contributor Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 11,525	Well, not being familiar with the timeline of Christian artwork, I will withhold judgment. But, if it turns out to be true that the earliest Christian artwork does not depict the crucifixion, I think that does tell us something.

07-31-2009, 12:51 PM	#9
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Maybe Billy Graham in Jesus People was onto something - maybe they were the peace and luv descendents of the elysian fields. A Greek import of Baccanalia into Judaism? All those miracles of sharing food and turning water into wine and singing hosanna and talking of the new Jerusalem and blessed are the peacemakers. Thanks for all the fish. The god jesus bringing the delights of the Greek ways into Judaism?

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