neilgodfrey

Joseph Atwill suggests the NT gospels and Christianity itself were created by the Roman state to finally emasculate (I hate that ‘never split an infinitive’ rule) Jewish militant messianism after Titus crushed Jewish revolt. The possibility finds an echo in recent arguments for the origins of OT literature and Judaism. Atwill has revived my old speculations re an alternative Christian origins scenario I once expressed after reading much of the “Copenhagen� lit on the origins of the OT and Judaism.

To outline how Judaism and the OT literature may have been the product of Persian state policy:

Philip Davies (In Search of Ancient Israel) proposed that the Old Testament grew out of efforts by the Persian state to instil a new collective identity in a people freshly relocated to its new province of Yehud. He argues that the main themes of the OT literature could only be explained within the context of the social, economic, power situations of a people freshly deported by the Persians into a new homeland. Mass deportations presumably can be expected to work a bit more efficiently if the deportees can be told they are being restored to their “true� lands and gods. If these gods were unknown to the deportees then the myths blamed this ignorance on the sins of their immediate ancestors.

A Persian-state backed priestly class created myths that spoke of their god “restoring� them to their “original� divinely appointed place in order to justify their new place as the “rightful� owners of a land that was still inhabited by a reduced indigenous population. Stories of “ancestors� migrating from Mesopotamia mirrored their own recent migrations and lent them a divine sanction. (The alternative story of a migration from Egypt may have originated from a colony of Palestinians that had originally been transplanted as a garrison force to Egypt by Assyria, who subsequently transferred their loyalty to Persia, and who faced harassment and expulsion by the local Egyptians.) New cultic rules of purity and rules and legends about an undeserving indigenous population were created to instil a new identity in the newly implanted group. It was all a control game that dressed up state tyranny in the guise of state liberation and restoration. It wasn’t unique to the forced settlement of Yehud.

The Cyrus Cylinder 30-36 gives us a glimpse of the religious propaganda employed by the state to justify and facilitate its general policy of mass deportations:

From [ . . . ] to Asshur and Susa, Agade, . . . the cities on the other side of the Tigris, whose sites were of ancient foundation—the gods, who resided in them, I brought back to their places, and caused them to dwell in a residence for all time. And the gods of Sumer and Akkad . . . I caused them to take up their dwelling in residences that gladdened the heart. May all the gods, whom I brought into their cities, pray daily . . . for long life for me, and may they speak a gracious word for me and say to Marduk, my lord, "May Cyrus, the king who worships you, and Cambyses, his son, their [ . . . ] I permitted all to dwell in peace [ . . . ]

Isa 48:28-45:1 and 2 Chr 36:22-23 show us how this policy was “correctly� interpreted by one such deported group:

“Cyrus … is my shepherd, and he shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem ‘You shall be built,’ and to the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid’. Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, . . ..�

“Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia that the word of the Lord ….. might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom …. “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: ‘All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me. And he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? …. Let him go up!’�

As Philip Davies notes, it would have made no difference if the ancestors of the people “returned� to the newly created Persian province of Yehud (extending from the Euphrates to Egypt as per Gen 15:18) really did live in that area or not: such a propaganda claim about their identity would have been made and necessarily accepted anyway.

The OT literature reflects the identity needs of such a transported people. The literature justifies their presence among an alien indigenous population, it supports their superior and distinct identity in their presence, it rationalizes their recent history of having been uprooted and transplanted to this new land, and it establishes their debt and obligations to the ruling imperial power (Persia). But the process of developing these myths appears to have involved debate among the various priestly and scribal schools and some of the contradictions within the literature may reflect this dialogue. Other scholars, e.g. Wesselius, suggest that the contradictions in the Primary History rather reflect the Histories of Herodotus who also included opposing versions of tales.

Grafting Davies onto Atwill:

If we were to look for the social milieu and imperial power setting that best explains the NT gospels in the same way Davies looked for the social and power settings that best explained the OT, what might we find?

With the fall of Jerusalem we have a population even more dispersed than they had been before, many enslaved, others subjugated and probably most suffering some form of post traumatic stress as they attempted to deal with rape or violation of their larger group identity (c.f. Volkan’s ‘Blind Trust’) let alone more physical personal losses. This predictably (at least to modern psychologists) prompts further suicidal rebellions elsewhere, such as at Cyrene and Alexandria. So state violence does not solve the problem of Jewish militancy and significant numbers of Jews still hoped for a restoration of their temple and independence 60 years later. We could expect the ongoing violence and increasingly noticeable presence of diaspora Jews to be matched by deepening intolerance of Jewish separatism, of which Sabbath observance, dietary laws, and circumcision were the most obvious markers.

If OT literature with its themes of divinely ordained patriarchal migrations from Mesopotamia, cultic rules to maintain racial purity, an unworthy local population and spiritually flawed ancestors who had to be chastised in captivity before the current ‘restoration’, met the needs of a state-sponsored newly planted group in Yehud, then can the NT literature be seen as likewise meeting the needs of something of a state-sponsored reverse set of conditions? Could a new set of myths and literature be created to counter the identity consequences of Jewish religion, of Jewish separatism, messianic militancy, an ongoing hope for restoration with a new Temple, an uprooted people inflicted with the socially troublesome effects of what moderns would explain as PTSD and children of the same?

What could be better equipped (in addition to expensive and often inefficient state violence, of course) to meet the needs of a state seeking to destroy the identity of a people than a religion and literature that:

1. directed adherents to seek a spiritual temple in place of a physical one – which of course implied stressing the inadequacy of the old temple system, and allegorically substituted the body of Jesus for the new one;

2. directed adherents to embrace gentiles into their fold by giving up circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath observance – breaking down the wall of partition between them and gentiles;

3. broke down the separatism of the Jews by having them reach out to gentiles and establish a new identity as “a new Israel� without racial distinctions;

4. glorified the ‘slave values’ (Nietzsche) of submission and humility, both to the state and to all others, teaching them that God loved them in their lowly lot;

5. gave a new self-accepting identity to a displaced people by declaring them God-protected “pilgrims� and “strangers� in the world who were to look for a new home in heaven, not here on earth;

6. replaced the militant Messiah of war, conquest and an earthly realm with a new Messiah of peace and submission and heavenly aspirations – and ensuring his superiority to the old by making him from the seed of God, not just from earthly descent;


7. gave them a new set of myths to be grafted on to the old, so that they could accept the justice of their being scattered, enslaved, without a home and temple – “his blood be on us and our children!�; -- even the original followers of their “true� messiah remained blinded by militant messianism and ignorant according to the earliest form of this myth in Mark; -- and these same myths offered them spiritual comfort if they accepted meekly their lowly status of being the poor, the outcast, the weak and downtrodden of the world, etc.

8. replaced Moses with a new prophet “like Moses� but naturally enough with the name of his inevitable successor, Joshua/Jesus.

Contemporary Stoic philosophy and allegorical interpretation of ancient texts (not only of Homer but also of course Philo’s allegorising the OT) were ready tools at hand to facilitate the creation of a new religion that met the needs of the state dealing with the post 70 Jewish problem.

Even if we leave state sponsorship out of the picture we still find the new religion potentially serving the interests of those Jewish leaders who we might imagine seeking to accommodate themselves to the new realities post 70.

Looked at this way the question is not, “Who was the historical Jesus?� or even “How did Christianity begin?� (implying that it had self-activating roots from below), but “Who stood to benefit from the earliest appearance of this new literature and religion?� or “What social and cultural conditions best explain the emergence of such a literature?�