EarlDoherty

I’ve been busy for several days and could not reply sooner.

Let’s look at the two supposedly latest apologists, plus Felix:

ATHENAGORAS:
No use of the names “Jesus” and “Christ” and no incarnation
The Son defined as: “Logos…by whom the universe was created”
Salvation gained by: “that (we) know God and his Logos.” No sacrificial atonement.
Christian doctrine “not from a human source, but uttered and taught by God.”

THEOPHILUS:
No use of the names “Jesus” and “Christ” and no incarnation
The Son defined as: “the Word through whom God created the world,” sibling to Wisdom. Not a Son in the sense of begetting, but as innate in the heart of God.
Salvation gained by: obedience to the commandments of God.
Meaning of “Christian”: “because we are anointed with the oil of God”

MINUCIUS FELIX:
No use of the names “Jesus” and “Christ” and no incarnation
No mention of the “Son” or “Logos”

Now, exactly what was “heretical” about all this? If there is not the slightest reference to Jesus Christ, no thought of the Son incarnated on earth, how can this be ‘heresy about Jesus Christ’? Why would a heresiologist like Irenaeus attack them? The heretics he did attack have unorthodox views of a Jesus Christ who was on earth, most if not all of these being Gnostics who held to a docetic Jesus Christ. Felix, Theophilus, Athenagoras are not in the same category. What they are is a Logos religion based on Judaism, that is, acknowledging the Jewish God and interpreting the Jewish scriptures. They didn’t get the “Son” directly from Judaism, that is partly a syncretism with Platonism and the Greek Logos, but it is related to Jewish “Wisdom”, an equivalent figure, especially in regard to Wisdom revealing God and being an agent of creation.

What, then, about their use of the term “Christians”? Theophilus shows the direct connection with Jewish tradition. The term comes from the “christos”/anointed of Jewish thought. There is no “Messiah” in any of these apologists, so it is not related to Messiah expectation. What we have to see is that “Christians” was a term self-applied by a whole range of religious philosophy in the 1st and 2nd centuries. And the fact that the type of Logos religion, a “philosophy treated as a salvation religion,” of the apologists could be labeled “Christian” by them in writing to a pagan audience or an emperor, shows that the term was not restricted to “believers in an historical Jesus who was the Son of God and Messiah”.

We have to note that Justin, in the first part of Trypho, shows that he was converted to the same type of ‘religion’. He states that he had investigated all the other philosophies, not mystery cults, or foreign deities of one sort or another. In describing his conversion experience (which must have happened a couple of decades previous) to Trypho, he presents it in exactly the same way as the other apologists: the prophets had proclaimed the glory of the Jewish God and his Son, a Logos-type entity who saves by imparting wisdom. No mention in that scene with the old man by the sea of any incarnation or Jesus of Nazareth. At the time of his writings, however, he has encounted the “memoirs of the apostles” and come to relate their figure to that philosophical entity he was converted to.

Here we have a prime indicator of the evolution of “Christian” thought (or at least one expression of it) into historical-Jesus thought. At the same time, and earlier, there was another thread of evolution, from Pauline mythical Christ belief into historical Christ belief through the influence of the Gospels. We see that beginning in Ignatius, and eventually in the Church of Rome. A sister evolution came in Gnosticism, in which an “historical” Jesus grew out of earlier forms also (or at least partly) under the influence of the Gospels, but into an earthly Jesus who was docetic. And so on.

We cannot allow ourselves to be influenced by the vast majority of surviving documents that represent historical-Jesus orthodoxy, and assume that this was the dominant way of thinking, or the dominant expression of “Christianity” to the pagan world in the 2nd century. Toward the end of that century, Christian commentators were interpreting everything in even their more recent past (including recent apologists) through the prism of the Gospels, assuming that everything to do with “Jesus” came from Jesus of Nazareth and were referring to him; and when those references didn’t agree with their own “orthodoxy”, such writers and sects became “heretical”. But people like Felix, Theophilus and Athenagoras (if they even knew of them, only Felix shows up several decades later in Tertullian—both from North Africa, by the way), would have slipped under the heresiologists’ radar, because they didn’t say anything about “Jesus Christ.” They were virtually indistinguishable from Jewish-oriented Platonic philosophers. And as I suggested before, it may also be likely that these writers were simply judged orthodox, if puzzlingly silent on anything to do with orthodoxy. At least they weren't mouthing gnostic heresies! Tertullian seems to have expanded on Felix by putting in things that the latter was silent on. The infamous passage in Felix was simply forced into the reinterpretation we are all familiar with. (Certain references in past documents, even if used by later writers, can be ignored! Kevin take note.)

Yes, there are loose ends. Theophilus is supposed to have been a “bishop.” I don’t know how reliable that is. Tacitus is supposed to have mentioned an historical “Christ” sect early in the century. I don’t know how reliable is the authenticity of that passage. But pagan satirists say nothing about Christians until Lucian in the 160s, and anti-Christian treatises (that we know about) only appear with Celsus around 170. Felix’s pagan mouths calumnies against Christians around 160, but only one relates to an historical man, and note how it is phrased:

“…and some say that the objects of their worship include a man who suffered death as a criminal…”

Some say. An emerging thread of thought, not universal to all who could be labeled “Christian”, as Felix himself, in mocking this thread of thought, illustrates.

I think the picture is pretty clear. And I think the constant questioning here about why heresiologists didn’t attack those apologists, or did not take note of pure “mythicists” of the earlier Pauline variety, is sufficiently answered.

To some extent, some points here will answer some of Kevin’s objections in his long response to my last post, but I will try to deal further with it later or tomorrow. I notice he does try to deal to some extent with the texts themselves, but I still stand by my contention that nothing makes the anomalies of those texts make sense in the context of orthodox apologists. I urge you all to look back over my short list above of what we find in Felix, Theophilus and Athenagoras. They are irredeemable.

Earl Doherty

youngalexander

Earl, I am wondering to what extent you have considered the archaeological evidence? I have been reading Ante-Pacem of late and have been struck by certain interesting "parallels".

For instance, on pg 2, Snyder says

The next critical point comes about 180 C.E. A Christian faith with a suspended view of culture began to be visible as a new culture. It began to produce symbols and language that could be designated Christian. This is not to say there was no Christian culture prior to 180 C.E. It is only to say that the nascent Christian culture either was not yet distinguishable from society in general, or the first Christians lacked sufficient self identity to establish for itself symbols, language, art and architecture.

I was reminded of some passages in TJP.
TJP pg 260
“The first witness to a fourfold Gospel account of the life and death of Jesus, under the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, comes only with Irenaeus around 180.”
and, pg 277
“The astonishing fact is that of the five or six major apologists up to the year 180 -…- none, with the exception of Justin, introduces an historical Jesus into their defenses of Christianity to the pagan.”

Returning to A-P, Snyder provides a number of reasons why pre-Constantinian Christian archaeological data is scarce in general and that of the first two centuries particularly so.

1. Christians did leave material, archaeologists have found it, but it is indistinguishable from non-Christian culture. ie., it took about 130yrs (post Paul) for such culture to develop.

2. The Christian community was too few in number (Stark) for it to be noticed.

3. It took that amount of time (Finney) for artisans to be able to express it.
(Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God (or via: amazon.co.uk))

It occurs to me that another reasons may have been that, with a 'riotous diversity' of mythical origins, and the late promulgation of a HJ, such a late flowering of Christian culture would indeed be expected!

In fact, of the approximately 180 pre-Constantinian pictorial representations of Christianity, only 30 have NT themes, the other 150 are OT. Furthermore, of the 30, two (Christ Helios and the Ascension of Elijah) are mythical, six depict the Baptism of Jesus, two depict Jesus teaching, six depict Jesus healing, five depict the Resurrection of Lazerus (not Jesus) and none have a Cross or resurrected Jesus.

On this later point, pg 110 of A-P says,

Jesus does not suffer or die in pre-Constantinian art. There is no cross symbol, nor any equivalent.

Their faith in Jesus Christ centers on his delivering power. Moreover, their Christology fits more the heroic figure of Mark (without a cross) than the self-giving Christ of the Apostolic Paul.

And, TJP pg 271
"Scholars have long noted that Acts contains a markedly primitive view of Christian theology. Like the Gospel of Luke, it has no explicitly redemptive interprestation of the death of Jesus.
...
Rather, it fits the mid-second century, when the new Gospel picture of Mark's virtually human Jesus had eclipsed the Pauline cosmic Son of God and redemptive Christ."

It seems that the archaeological evidence confirms this view. Jesus is depicted as a wonder worker, a beardless youth bringing deliverance to a society whose life expectancy was around 20 summers. There is no cross until after Constantine.

As Snyder says, pg302,

There is no sign of a more sophisticated immortality, nor does resurrection, at least as revivification or resuscitation, play any role.

I attempted to ascertain whether the NT pictorial representations were late in the range 180-325 C.E., but the data, if it is obtainable, lies in the original sources. It would certainly be interesting to know, and I think that at least a general impression could be gained.

The archaeological evidence would seem to support the MJ position, rather than the HJ, whichever way you cut it!!

Ted Hoffman

There are general points I would like to make.

I dont think its entirely correct to call these forms of Christianities "Logos religions" because the logos only appears to eclipse the son, or is meshed with the son but they are otherwise theocentric religions at the border between Christianity, Judaism and pagan philosophies. At any rate, they are regarded as Christian - whether correctly or incorrectly. We know what the word religion means and I think it is not coherent to say that there was another non-Christian religion that passed off as Christianity.

So they believed that the logos did this and that or that the logos was this and that instead of believing that Jesus did or was this and that. That IMO is not sufficient to make a logos religion.
In my view, it would be like saying there was an adoptionist religion (for those that believe Jesus became Christ upon baptims) and a resurrection religion (for those who believe Jesus became Christ upon his alleged resurrection) and an ancestry religion (for those who believe Jesus was Christ because of his divine ancestry).
But we dont do that yet these three forms of Christology live side by side in the New Testament yet they are different. In the same way, the Christianities we are examining were lumped as Christian (anointed) despite their different ideas about what the logos was, its role and what it did. One cannot seriously place Pauline mythicism at the same level as Ebionism. This is just about an aspect of Christianity, not the entire religion.

Secondly, I think kevin is on a tangent when he is asking for other examples of "religions" that were misunderstood by an orthodox wing and that later died by themselves. This is a red herring because even if Doherty could provide several examples of such , that would not make it true that that is indeed what happened to these early forms of Christianity. This argument must be argued on its own merit and will fall on its own merit. One cannot really establish a general rule for how religions or beliefs die because the circumstances are different for each of them. An analogous example is irrelevant unless you want to establish a general rule. What makes you think we can establish a general rule here? Or is this a form of parallelomania?
At any rate, what happened to the followers of JBAp? What about the Apollos religion? in I Cor. 1:12 Paul says "some of you say, I am of Paul; some say, I am of Apollos; some say, I am of Cephas; and some say, I am Christ's." What were the differences between what these guys preached? And what happened to them?

Thirdly, each belief has its own story. Maybe the main proponent died. Maybe he deconverted. Maybe a revolt took place that scattered its main adherents. Maybe they got together for a communal meal and ate meat of a sick animal and all died. They probably got broke and moved on. Or they had weak leadership that had no balls to stand up and compete with the other forms of Christianity. Maybe the belief was eclipsed by a dominant one. Maybe it went out of fashion or was boring. Maybe the mainstream regarded it as a non-issue (the same way the different Christologies have not torn the Church asunder yet the sabbath day has). Maybe it evolved to other beliefs and so on. To demand another example of the exact same thing happening elsewhere is to demand for a convergence of so many historical, social and political facts and it appears unrealistic to me.

Fourth, Pauline mythicism was different from the logos religions. Note that Paul's Christ occured to him via a vision. These logos types were into Philosophical stuff.

Fifth, I think it is incorrect to say Pauline mythicism died or was misunderstood. It was a foundation and a singularity from which the orthodox evolved. The believers just shifted gears to another level which they preferred and maintained. But it is always there in the epistles like a vestigial organ. Waiting for anyone willing to embrace it.
It was not misunderstood: the believers got distracted with the HJ, which was more immediate historically and the scramble for the apostolic succession generated a stampede whose dustcloud resulted in a nuclear winter that left Pauline mythicism stunned. But not dead. When the dust settles, and we have these Papal types figured out, maybe we will be able to see the power play more clearly. Remember that mythicism begins and ends in a myth. But people want political and religious power and only a HJ can provide an apostolic chain of succession. Mythicism could not be beaten to a pipeline through which power could flow to the church leaders.

They do though they dont label their detractors as logos religionists. Polycarp and the Book of John warn and condemn those that do not believe that Christ was on earth as flesh. Plus, Like I have stated before, the heresiologists had bigger problems than the innocuous and fluid logos. Problems such as the virgin birth controversy, the resurrection and so on - those are the issues critics like Celsus were preoccupied with. Slogans like “born of the virgin Mary” and “suffered under Pontius Pilate” which we find in the apostle’s creed were responses to docetism and other non-HJ camps, which may have included logos type Christianities.

False analogies:
Everybody knows what Christianity is now thanks to missionaries and company. Not everybody knew what Christianity entailed in the first and second century. This is a false analogy.
This is a self-destructive argument.
Each match is different while the contents of a religion dont differ. Almost every move is a countermove. False analogy.
Mentioning the OT is not crucial in discussing a HJ. A HJ is a HJ based on historical features, not OT citations. False analogy.
Regardless of your special pleading, his argument cuts accross all of them. You may argue that he was a poor debater but the point still remains" Felix makes no distinction and you cannot impose this distinction on him. Your argument is quite strained here Kevin because the corollary of the argument is very clear. Its like someone with an atheist father saying "atheist fathers are stupid." Unless he adds a disclaimer, his statement will apply to his father too. This is elementary logic.

All theists view their theology as different (read 'superior') from others. This is not enough to argue that they are impervious to self-contradiction.

All arguments can be rebutted. But there is a difference between statements that reject certain ideas and arguments that are susceptible to rebuttals. You are confusing arguments with "weak arguments" and attempting to diminish the significance of Felixe's statements in the process.
Let us be clear: We cannot speak of turning back Felixes' statements on him unless we know he accepted the idea that gods could make women pregnant and die. You are making unwarranted assumptions in the face of Felixes' clear rejections of those ideas.

This is false. You have ignored all the conditional ifs that are in the passage.
First of all, NOBODY knows where Jesus was allegedly cricified, including you, a historicist. Golgotha does not exist. Neither do you know where he was buried. Yet you believe that Jesus was crucified somewhere in Palestine. What makes you think Paul and his followers were any different? Why should we expect them to only hold beliefs that are clear and full of specifics?
Doherty wrote:
Because he cant be in the heart of God and on earth at the same time. And he does not link Jesus being in the heart of God with a recent earthly incarnation except the one during creation.
Why is a clear statement necessary here? Is there a clear statement where the tomb of Jesus is? What about the place he was crucified?

andrewcriddle

Quite apart from whether Tertullian borrowed from Minucius Felix or vice-versa there are problems with dating the Octavius before about 180 CE.

There are strong reasons for regarding MF as borrowing from the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius published c 175 CE.

See my previous post at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=143499

Andrew Criddle

EarlDoherty

I will dispense with two elements by others before addressing Kevin’s long post.

I am well aware of these passages and even quoted them in past debates, to demonstrate that Tatian says nothing here that requires us to assume that he had to agree with everything Justin said, admirable man or not. Does “proclaiming the truth” mean that Tatian thought he was accurate in everything he said? Do we know that Tatian even knew the specific writings of Justin that we know? If “proclaiming the truth” included Justin’s views on an historical Jesus, why didn’t Tatian himself proclaim that truth? Why leave it out entirely in his Apology? If he thought Justin admirable for including it, how could he possibly suppress and HJ in his own writings, out of alleged fear for what pagans would think (the standard rationalization)?

Second, to Andrew and his link to the discussion on dating Minucius Felix. In regard to Gellius:

I find this extremely inconclusive. Though I don’t know any other examples (my knowledge of Latin philosophical literature is hardly exhaustive), this is a pretty stereotypical-sounding setting, and I see no reason for Felix having to rely on Gellius for this kind of ‘inspiration’. Modern entertainment such as film and TV is rife with ‘formula’ writing, and it doesn’t mean that every later such writer is dependent on any specific earlier example, just on the formula itself. Walking by the sea outside Rome, at Ostia? Now if Gellius and Felix had both set their debate while sitting on Hadrian’s Wall in northern Brittania, that might be another matter….

I wonder if any of those “scholars” considered that Gellius might have been copying Felix? Hmmm….

Now to Kevin’s long post. I won’t answer every detail, especially as Jacob has anticipated me admirably in some points. “Atheist fathers are stupid!” Love it.

It is the evidence that creates new entities, not me. That happens all the time. How many ancient documents have been reinterpreted by modern scholarship to show that the ancients’ assignment of those documents was simplistic and we needed to expand our view of what the documentary record represented?

What are you asking here? In any religion, in all of history? Or just Christianity? In either case, I don’t know that your demand is valid. We don’t need multiple examples. I’m reminded of the common objection to my suggestion that the earliest mythicist Christians ‘invented’ their spiritual crucified Christ out of the Jewish scriptures: well, the Jews didn’t read their scriptures that way, and there is no evidence that anyone else at the time of, or before, Paul did so. Maybe not. But Paul and his circles did. Would future historians be correct in maintaining that the Americans did not go to the moon in the 20th century because we can’t find any evidence that anyone else did?

I don’t have multiple clients. I have a class-action suit. As far as the early epistle writers (in fact, everyone outside the Gospels in the 1st century) are concerned, they are almost all essentially offering the same thing, with minor variations on a theme. If the later 2c proto-orthodoxists are going to misunderstand one, they will likely misunderstand all, since they all, to them, seemed to be talking about the newly-developed Gospel Jesus. When we get to the 2c apologists, they may be actually quite different from Paul, but they are offering apparently the same background material (the intermediary Son), so they get caught in the same orbit by commentators later than them. Whether the latter may have expressed some perplexity about why they left out the Gospel Jesus in their text, we don’t know. But what would have been ‘heretical’ about them? Nothing. They were just silent on certain elements, and the elements they did include were more or less compatible with developing orthodoxy.

But let’s turn the coin over. You ask why Irenaeus, for example, did not regard someone like Theophilus as heretical. I could ask that, too. After all, even under the assumption that he was a believer in an HJ, Theophilus says things which are at odds with Irenaeus’ view and standard orthodoxy. How could Irenaeus have accepted his “the Son is not a son in the sense of begetting…”? Wouldn’t that be taken as a denial of Jesus’ divine parentage? What about Athenagoras’ claim that eternal life is gained “by this one thing alone” that (we) know God and his Logos”. Isn’t that a denial of Jesus’ saving act on the cross and his resurrection? Aren’t these ‘heresies’? Either Irenaeus could paper over the cracks fairly easily in his own mind, or else he just didn’t know these documents. By the time of later commentators like Eusebius, everything to do with the early period, at least outside gnosticism, had flowed into one big pot of more or less orthodox mush and anything could be interpreted any way they liked.

Why do children die out? Because they grow into adults. The inevitability of original mythicism growing into historicism may not have been as automatic as that, but if it happened, then it happened. My whole presentation, including in many debates here, has been to demonstrate how that evolution happened, why it happened, how it can be traced through the documentary record. The historical Gospel Jesus was a juggernaut, but it certainly didn’t happen evenly and it didn’t happen overnight. And there were other entities in the mix (that we know of, which I did not create) to complicate matters and confuse us two millennia later, such as Gnosticism, which did not begin as “Christian” but as a syncretistic philosophical movement based on both paganism and Judaism. In fact, if you can accept Gnosticism as such, why not what I have styled a Logos-religion? Both are based on the same syncretism, both involve philosophical intermediaries. Many details are different, their processes of salvation are not the same. But we can look back on Gnosticism and see it as misunderstood even in the late 2nd century as derived out of the Gospel Jesus. We now know that this is not the case, that Gnostics had their own savior figures which had nothing to do with J of N, and that they developed alongside “Christianity” and eventually absorbed Jesus but in a docetic way. Why can you not envision yet another type of parallel development (the Logos apologists) which, too, melded eventually with Christian orthodoxy and the Gospel Jesus, especially when we have a set of consistent documents which demonstrate exactly that?

There was no “just” about it. It took decades. And we can trace ‘transitional fossils’ between the two, Ignatius for one, Barnabas for another. And from early in the 2nd century, the great ‘heresy’ became docetism, and the few surviving orthodox criticisms focused upon that. It was a growing concern. Who would bother with the fast-shrinking tail of mythicism? Besides, you seem to treat the record as though it were some vast body of literature, when it is really negligible until we get to Justin and Irenaeus.

And think about Justin for a moment. He actually passed through the evolution from Logos religion to HJ religion. He would have to play some pretty convoluted mind games with himself to look back, after his acceptance of the Gospel story and character, on his conversion to the Logos and still regard the latter as representing a ‘heresy.’ Like many others, I am sure, who “learned” of an HJ through the Gospels in the early 2nd century, he would simply have regarded his earlier knowledge as incomplete, not that he had graduated from one religion (mythicism) to another (the Gospel story). Paul and earlier writers would be reinterpreted to have actually been referring to the latter.

We see this clearly in Ignatius. He condemns those who went about “not preaching Jesus Christ” who was born of Mary, crucified by Pilate. (This is not simply anti-docetism, as some commentators have acknowledged.) In his mind, does he see himself as having belonged previously to a false religion? No, he has simply overlaid an historical figure on his previous beliefs, and thinks that his opponents are blind for not having done the same. That essentially (and simplistically) is how mythicism evolved into historicism, and how the former died out. It wasn’t “quickly,” but when something comes along to replace an earlier form which has a huge advantage in appeal and usefulness, it is not surprising that the former dies out eventually and can even be lost sight of. (How many teenagers today remember, or even know of, long-play vinyl records, let alone 78 RPMs?)

And why wouldn’t he want anything from Tertullian that spoke of an historical Jesus? Would Felix’s “style” in the 3rd century have entailed nothing to do with such a figure?

And, Kevin, I can’t buy into your rationalization (borrowing from JP Holding) about there being “different types of apologists” or persecution prompting withholding of information. The Christian who, in varying circumstances, may or may not declare his own faith is quite different from an apologist (at any time) offering a description of that faith, either at someone’s request, or because he wants to win over an antagonist. In the latter situation, he does not blatantly falsify that faith. He does not heap scorn on it. He does not think to get away with presenting a false picture when he should know that everyone is going to realize that it is false. That does more harm than good, both to his own security and to the group that he is seeking to defend and rehabilitate. It is not a case of being “rational”, although I cringe at your suggestion that modern Christians are better at interpreting ancient Christians than are modern “rationalists.” Are you saying that this is because the former (the group including yourself) are not rational? Irrationals judging other irrationals does not bring them an iota closer to being rational or dependable in regard to their beliefs. In fact, it guarantees that the moderns are going to fall into the same traps as their ancient counterparts.

But I digress. As I said, it is not a case of whether the apologists can be expected to govern themselves by “rationality”. It is a case of them doing what needs to be done, doing what is an inevitable requirement, one they could not shirk. That if they were writing in their sleep, they could not write as they have done, as so many of them have done.

And to demonstrate my point, I am going to offer one of my patented analogies.

Suppose you were a university professor teaching American politics and a foreigner came to you and asked for an account of the American political system. Perhaps he was very anti-American, finding fault with U.S. foreign policy, and dumping on its integrity and democratic principles. You undertook to write an “Apology” for America. In it, you described the workings of Congress, Senate and House, the crafting of legislation; you described the justice system and the stipulations of the Constitution and its Amendments. The rumors, you say, that we hold citizens incarcerated without due process, that we consider an accused guilty until proven innocent, are wrong and offensive. And yet you remain entirely silent on the office of the presidency and his appointed Secretaries. When submitting your Apology, you say, “You asked for a full description of our political system. Here it is.”

First of all, I guess this ‘foreigner’ would have to be from Mars, because every earthling surely knows that the American political system has a President, and many know of its “administration” branch. So when he takes home your dissertation and sees that you don’t mention such things, he’s hardly going to think much of your integrity and honesty. He’ll probably put it down to more American duplicity, further increasing his mistrust of all things American. If, further, you undertook to define the word “President” by saying it refers to a brand name of certain foods served at the Congressional cafeterias, your foreigner will take this as another sign of your duplicity and moreover be insulted at your evident assumption as to his ignorance and gullibility.

But suppose that foreigner had approached several professors in the American politics faculty, and they all submitted an “apology” which did the same thing, they all left out the same key information. They all assured him that they were presenting a full picture of the U.S. government. Perhaps most of them said that the system looked heavenward to the guidance and guarantees of a divine figure, referred to as the “Holy President” but there was no word about him ever having been to earth, let alone giving the name(s) of any incarnation(s).

And perhaps one of your fellow professors actually poured scorn on the idea of a President as head of the American state. What fools they who would put such trust and power in the hands of a single man who could make a disastrous mistake. I mean, look at the Germans who elected Hitler to a position of power and brought about the destruction of the nation. At the same time, that professor heaped ridicule on any nation that would allow appointment to its key executive positions through a non-elective process! Or place all ultimate judicial decisions in the hands of a partisan body of nine judges! He even went so far as to identify “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” as written by some nameless, if inspired, pencil-pusher.

Need I go further? This is hardly just a case of “leaving something out,” or “not all professors are the same.” Nor do I think a responsible future investigator, coming across a copy of your apology, would consider that you had remained silent on the office of President because, well, the foreigner came from a country where “president” was a dirty word because presidents in their own past history had done harm to the nation, and he was too sensitive and antagonist to hear the very word. Past U.S. Presidents may have included Richard Nixon, or Lyndon Johnson who gave us Vietnam, but they also included John F. Kennedy who kept the world from a nuclear Holocaust over Cuba, Dwight Eisenhower who had helped defeat the Nazis, and even Jimmy Carter who was just an all-round good guy. If you wanted to ‘redeem’ the Presidency, why not point to these examples?

All your other considerations, those I’ve referred to as ‘secondary indicators’ are simply not effective enough, not nearly so, to get around the texts themselves.

I also wanted to touch on your counter-arguments to do with Felix as well as the business of “the apostle” (referring to Paul) in Athenagoras, finding them either strained, special pleading, or otherwise problematic and less than conclusive, and perhaps I will still do so. But the hour is too late, this has been too long, and I’m out of energy. And tomorrow I’m busy.

Earl Doherty

Ted Hoffman

Earl,
That analogy of university professor teaching American politics is just the best! If it doesnt lay out the case of the silence by the second century Christian apologists, none will.
That was excellent! I would like to see what Ben/Krosero/GDon thinks of it.

Ted Hoffman

Thanks for clarifying but my point still stands.
Thanks for clarifying but my point still stands: heresiology is a late development.
You are right wrt the second century apologists - the idea that there were no heresiologists then does not apply to them. I had Paul in mind. Doherty's explanation makes better sense.

krosero

You’re an amateur, Earl.

And so am I.

With that out of the way, I hope you’ll forgive my saying, from one amateur to another, that I don’t think you’re doing the work that any historian would have to do in a case like this. You often describe your proposed Logos-religion as if it consisted simply of the six apologies that you’ve chosen to include in the religion. But it is next to unbelievable (as you would agree) that what you call a Logos religion, separate from all other forms of Christianity, wrote nothing except six apologies.

Of course you don't believe that, and I'm not saying that you do -- just that you work as if nothing else was written. The religion, you say, slipped under the radar because the surviving documents would have slipped under the radar. There is no more attempt from you to imagine what the religion would actually have looked like, apart from its surviving documents, to its contemporaries.

And you're also wrong in your reading of the surviving documents, but I will get to that.

Let me ask you something. You argue that the six apologies were just misunderstood, because they say nothing explicit about “Jesus” or “Christ”; their heresy remained ambiguous. Well, today all we have from your proposed “Logos” religion is the six apologies, and to you they may appear ambiguous, with respect to Jesus Christ. But a historian, if he’s going to accept your new entity, is obliged to imagine this religion as a group of living people and to do everything he can to fit it into what he already knows about the times. Is there any reason to believe that the orthodox could not find out that the Logos-Christians were against them and that they rejected their idea of Jesus Christ?

I mean, the orthodox had access to much more than the six texts. They were there; they could find out information that is forever lost to us. They could and probably did meet Logos-Christians (if, as seems to be the case, you do not imagine the Logos-religion as small and negligible). They could ask third parties, or former adherents, who could easily be candid if someone asked them questions.

Maybe the Logos-Christians themselves were secretive or deliberately ambiguous; that possibility has already been floated in this thread. But first, is there any reason to suppose that the Logos-Christians were especially secretive cults? Were they like the mystery cults? Secondly, secrecy does not win trust. The secrecy of the mystery cults certainly did not result in the orthodox believing that these cults were orthodox and then adopting their texts as their own.

I think it’s pretty well out of the question that these contemporaries – the orthodox and the Logos-religion – did not know each other. You regularly allow that some of your Logos-authors show knowledge of the orthodox; you allow that Tertullian used Felix's work, and that Tatian was mentioned in surviving documents by his contemporaries. Now, if we accept that they knew each other, how do you suppose that the orthodox simply didn’t know that these six texts had come from a group with an unorthodox theology excluding a historical Christ? Do you think that the orthodox would have simply taken these six apologies and not bothered to find out whether they were written by the Logos-Christians that rejected orthodox Christianity?

You say that in these six apologies there are clear signs, smoking guns, for anyone who reads these texts even in English and with 2,000 years separating us from the events. But supposedly the orthodox, reading the texts in the original languages, meeting other Logos adherents or perhaps the five authors themselves, with much other information at their disposal, were just not suspicious enough to make a few simple inquiries. The Logos-religion surely wrote more than six apologies, and in the numerous documents which this religion must have produced (documents both ordinary and otherwise, but all now lost), it’s likely that at some point they were less than ambiguous about what they believed and what they rejected. Yet the orthodox, searching for those who agreed and disagreed with them, just failed to identify the Logos-heresy(ies). Tertullian reads Felix and just fails to apprehend what should be so clear to us.

These were, supposedly, the most suspicious of men. And certainly Irenaeus tells us that the orthodox were suspicious of Gnostics who spoke ambiguously and who recited the orthodox creeds while interpreting them in their own way.

Ambiguity does not produce trust. It leads to further inquiries. I am not a historian, but I’ll tell you how I think this would have happened.

The apologies in question were public documents. If I were an orthodox Christian leader of the time, and I heard that a certain apologist was directing an apology to the Emperor or other important public figure on behalf of “Christians”, I’d be curious whether it came from an ally or enemy. Then I hear, or read, that the apology seems to be quoting from all the texts that I revere. Is this from an ally? But what if it isn’t? What if then I hear, or read, that this apology makes no distinction between its own Christians and my own? Well then it really appears like it could come from an orthodox Christian. But is it? I ask myself, what if it comes from the pen of a heretic who mouths the orthodox creeds but has his own secret, Gnostic interpretation? What is the Emperor hearing? Will he think that what he is hearing applies to all Christians? What is being said about “Christians” in this apology that might reflect on us? Is the apology in any way misleading or dangerous?

In short, there is more than enough here to provoke deep interest and inquiry. So I find it very hard to believe that, in their own time, the works of your Logos-Christians were accepted by the orthodox. That is all the more true in your model, because under your reading, the disgust that Felix had for orthodox faith in Christ would have been palpable.

This is why I don’t understand the rationale that you provided for the silence. You maintain that these Logos-Christians were not attacked because the six surviving apologies say nothing explicitly about Jesus Christ. You include Felix as one of those who did not mention “Jesus” or “Christ” and did not speak “heresy about Jesus Christ,” which is a most misleading way of putting things. Felix does mention the crucified man at the center of Christian ceremonies, and it would have been clear enough to any orthodox Christian that the subject was Christ.

And did the other Logos-authors share Felix’s attitude toward the orthodox? You have never said explicitly that they did, but according to your model, is there any reason that they would have viewed the literal crucified Christ of orthodox faith favorably?

Theophilus attacks “heresies” in his own apology. Look at how he attacks them, for I think it would certainly raise the attention of an orthodox Christian reading it:

So Earl, who do you think that Theophilus regards as heretical? Is it the orthodox? Is he attacking non-orthodox forms of Christianity, perhaps some form of Gnosticism? Well, I don’t know who precisely Theophilus was thinking of when he penned the passage above; nobody knows his exact thought. But I can imagine the passage stirring the curiosity of the orthodox; and once they find out that Theophilus rejects their faith, then his general attack on heresies becomes in the eyes and ears of the orthodox, an attack upon them. Unless Theophilus can say that he doesn’t reject orthodox faith, he has, in the ears of the orthodox, included them among the “pirates.”

I don’t see how the orthodox could have forgotten that Theophilus regarded them as heretical. At any rate, I don’t see such knowledge being lost while heresies abounded, which they did for centuries more. No one forgot that Tatian and Tertullian apostasized, or that Augustine had his own heretical background.

Theophilus doesn’t need to spell out his “heresy about Jesus Christ” in order to get noticed.

Tatian, whom you did not mention above, is in your model someone who interpreted the gospels as mere stories – or as you put it in your book, stories that are factually untrue. If this is not “heresy about Jesus Christ,” I don’t know what is. Tatian's Christian group, if it called the Gospels mere stories (and esp. if they did so as clearly as you think Tatian does in his apology), would certainly have been noticed by the orthodox. Yet Tatian is known, by his contemporaries, for apostasizing to the Encratite heresy, and not for the allegorical interpretation of the Gospels that you put upon him. His apology, apparently, was never identified with the Logos-Christians that were known, as we have now established, to the orthodox.

(Moreover, you have suggested in this thread that Theophilus could also be embracing the Gospel story as a mere tale; you linked him with Tatian in that regard. But you write above as if this possibility were not even on the table, since you include Theophilus categorically as one of those authors who could not have spoken heresy about Jesus Christ. If I were less charitable I would say you were waffling about Theophilus, but seriously, what do you think he believed?)

So of your five apologists, we have Felix, Theophilus and Tatian all saying things that would get them in trouble with the proto-orthodox. The only two remaining are Athenagoras and the Epistle to Diognetus. But those are the two cases where we find a reference to “the apostle”, Paul, which hardly allows them to fit into your model.

I do hope you address that latter point in your future responses.

Do you see that you’re using your own group as evidence for your group? Look at your last sentence: you say that the fact that the Logos-apologists called themselves Christians shows that “Christian” was not restricted to HJ Christians. But your group is the one in question. If we shared your conclusion about your apologists, then and only then could they serve as evidence that “Christian” did not have to refer to a cult revering Jesus Christ in some way (as more than a story).

But as it stands, what independent group can you name which called itself “Christian” but did not look to Jesus in some way (as more than a story)?

By “independent”, you know what I mean: a group which you did not identify through your own work.

This is the actual quote, Earl:

Now, how does this mean that only some people, and not others, witness to an HJ Christianity?

You have this habit of telling us what the apologists said, and putting it in quotes, even when it comes only from your memory.

(This quote I'm offering from Felix is doubly interesting because it expresses what I wrote above, namely that the secrecy or ambiguity of a cult does not result in trust, but in suspicion).

None of your answers have made this problem go away.

I've made a more general point elsewhere, and it's worth repeating here: the fact that your group's surviving documents consist of nothing but six apologies should raise red flags, to the effect that you just might be making some kind of mistake in reading the apologetic genre.

Does anyone think that's possible?

Kevin Rosero

krosero

TedH, I am working on a reply to you but it may take a little while. One of the problems is that, as I see it, you did not comprehend what I was saying in a few important places, and I will have to re-quote myself to clarify my argument. I don't say that insultingly, of course; I am not always the clearest of writers; I just urge you that if you have any question at all about what I'm saying, just ask. I would much rather devote my time to clarifying my arguments before your response, rather than after.

If this is unclear, just wait for my post.

Earl, I will have a reply for your latest post -- and thank you for taking the time to do this debate.

Kevin Rosero

Ben C Smith

It is often the case that the analogies Earl presents have glaring discontinuities lurking right on the surface. For this one, however, I see no immediate surface problems.

And I will admit that it puzzles me that some of the apologists do not mention Jesus seemingly at all while others mention him every other opportunity (Justin), at least in some or most texts (Tertullian).

A caveat, however. I really have not looked at the apologists very closely in this regard, so there may be problems with the analogy that I have not spotted.

This is the thing, however. Even if I admit that it puzzles me that the apologists do not mention Jesus like Justin does, what then?

Take Theophilus of Antioch, for example. Doherty appears to agree that Theophilus quotes from Matthew (and there is influence from Luke, too) and John, at least (though he seems to think that the name John itself is an interpolation, which seems like a bandage solution to me). So Theophilus knows the gospels, but never mentions that Jesus is the founder of Christianity. What conclusion about Theophilus do you or does Doherty wish me to draw from this scenario?

Ben.