Minimalist

There was a bloody revolt going on in Trajan's reign. One must figure that the Romans had had it up to the eyebrows with the Jews by then. How much would they have had to do to piss them off?

andrewcriddle

I'm afraid I was forgetting the Rutgers study. My apologies.
However the 2005 Rutgers_et.al_christian-catacombs article suggests that Rutgers et al do not believe their data is firm evidence for a 1st century date. I'm afraid I don't know anything about the Via Ostiense data.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

There seems no doubt that the catacomb of Domitilla is on land that was once part of the estate of Flavia Domitilla and that she donated some of this land as burial places for members of her household.

The problem is that we have no evidence of Christian use of this burial ground before the middle of the 2nd century at the earliest.
You probably mean the alexamanos_graffito the date of which is uncertain but probably not 1st century.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

I tend to think there's something to this. Jesus could easily have been a symbolic name at first, with the NT Jesus being constructed from the various Jesuses of Josephus (and maybe other contemporary Jesuses too).

This construction could have been:
1. A gnostic deception. There are not-so-subtle clues throughout the Gospels that support this idea

2. A Roman construction to undermine Judaism by removing the support of the God fearers

3. A story for instructive entertainment later confused as real

4. A story constructed as part of the catholicizing movement

5. ...a combination of (1) and (2) ?

Solo

Thanks, Andrew. The second 1st century Jewish catacomb in question was actually Monteverde (on Via Ostiense; I wrote it down poorly). The source does not seem to be checking out with respect of the Utrecht team touching it. The best as I could ascertain, the view that Monteverde was a Jewish necroplis dating from the late Republican period was proclaimed by Harry J. Leon in The Jews of ancient Rome, Peabody Mass. 1995. But apparently the newer archeology, i.a. Rutgers', does not support this view. Theoretically though, there is still quite a strong chance IMO, that catacombs were used by the Jewish community in Rome earlier than 2nd century CE.

There was a large Jewish population in Rome since Pompey and their funerary customs would have not likely changed. Apparently, also, some brick stamps from Villa Torlonia are first century.

Jiri

mountainman

Any analysis of the value of evidence from the catacombs of Rome - for any purpose and/or agenda - needs to begin not with the first, second and third centuries. Every analysis must in all objectivity commence with the known major renovations of the region of the catacombs by Pontifex Maximus Pope Damasus following his military victory in the streets of Rome over the question of who was to become the new Pope. Damasus is known to have undertaken major renovations of the Roman catacombs in order to boost the Roman Pilgrimage and Tourist Industry once he had eliminated his opponents. Damasus floated the "Peter and Rome! Principle" and the "Peter Died Here" postcard, and a host of "Holy Relics". Business was business, even in the fourth century.

Solo

Hi Pete,
are you saying saying the mortar contents in the Jewish catacomb examined by Rutgers were likely planted there by Damasus ?

Jiri

mountainman

No. I am saying that Damasus did a "Backyard Blitz" or a "MakeOver" or a "Major Renovation" on the catacombs of Rome in an extensive fashion when he was in power in the later 4th century.

wordy

Yes it sounds very credible/likely scenario to me.

this was only some 2000 years ago and humans are like that today.

Here in Sweden the ruling political establishment acted exactly like that to pacify the Student Political Left Revolution by setting up competing versions and by sending in false revolutionaries that split up the movement into fractions and one way to counter this was to go the other way to join the Oppressive State and to pretent one belong to the Established rulers and to take over from within.

Constantin and his Eusebius could be such opportunists who took over and made a state institution out of all competing versions of Christians.

Here in Sweden we have "Political Correctness" and that seems to be a contemporary version of Catholic policy to make everybody to agree to, to submit to the Party Line. The Truth (TM)

Sharia laws sneaked in referring to the Political Correctness and step by step a change of culture to adapt or adopt the Islamist views.

Yes I know only Right Wing Conspiracy propaganda describe it that way.

But seen naively it sure looks like what they must have felt during those days of the Nicea? The New Thinking agreed upon under threat of being killed or at least made into an outlaw.

As we are now they where like that then too so not unlikely at all that they tried every mean trick of the trade to keep their political power or to gain it if in opposition.

RogueBibleScholar

Here's some of what I have been able to find out about these subjects, as I am not from a NT background at all. Christianity at least appears to have been a real movement well before the time of Eusebius. Not only do we have Patristic literature which must otherwise be assigned an era, but I recently came across a somewhat recent write-up of early Christianity and the catacombs. It is a study of Clement I. The writer also appears to have no use for fundamentalism (i.e. as Wheless calls it, "funny mentalism):

"No modern scholar places trust in the Clement legend or in the
identification it suggests." (ibid., p. 198)

He considers the following a possible holdover from apologetic motives, but not yet disproven:

It seems to me he too quickly rejects the idea that Clement of Rome could have been Flavius Clemens, but he rightly points out that the conversion of Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla was not demonstrably Christian. Dio Cassius' citation of the charge against them, "atheism, for which many others were also condemned who had drifted" is not taken by Wellborn to indicate a genuinely Jewish conversion, but perhaps just dissent against Domitian. Technically, he is true; but it seems the pagan historian Dio Cassius has implied the motive: i.e. that of adopting Jewish beliefs. He does say, "many others," which suggests that they had too. The recalls the unusual nature of the Pseudo-Clementine literature. Wellborn argues that the Pseudo-Clementine literature was later than when it purported to have been written. This seems reasonable, but it is interesting that the Pseudo-Clementia describes Peter in Rome, describing Paul as "the adversary" and murdering James, and being opposed to gentile Christianity. There is also Talmudic and/or rabbinic evidence that Flavius Clemens and Dormitilla converted to Judaism, which Wellborn does not mention. The Christianity they converted to may have been indistinguishable from Judaism to writers like Dio Cassius. It could have prescribed following Jewish Law, but with some Jesus teachings as a footnote to certain changes in practice.

I have also read the 2005 Rutgers report on the catacombs, but I haven't gotten the 2002 one yet. It is interesting that the only catacombs that go back as far as Dormitilla appear to be the Jewish ones in the 2005 study; whereas that ascribed to Dormitilla was not found to be that old. I would interject a note of caution here. In OT studies, it was long maintained that there were not any 10th-11th century BCE remains in the Edomite territory, until some were found in recent years. As such, we can still say that First Century remains may yet be found in the Coemeterium Domitillae, even if unlikely. A possibility I don't think is so unlikely as Wellborn represents, is that Flavius Clemens and Domitilla converted to Christianity, but the version they converted to required following the Jewish Law, which caused writers like Dio Cassius to describe the events as conversions to Judaism.

It seems that here, in any event, are some persons who are described in unaltered, pagan sources, as Jewish, but in Christian sources as Christian; without reliance on the now suspect Josephus (due to Christian editing), and the Acts. It seems probable to me, although less clearly Wellborn, that Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla had converted to Judaism. Whether this was normative Judaism, or a type of Proto-Christianity is not yet clear. Thus, perhaps we have discovered the laminar layer which marks the boundary between what we can think of historical, and Christian legend. Such a boundary must be established, if we are to try to work back from eras with reliable history, through the times when he have principally Christian legends to mark the advent of Christianity. Much later, and we are in the age of the Patristic writers. Much earlier, and we are dependent on Josephus and Christian tradition for much of what we know of Judea in the First Century.

I stand corrected on the matter of the earliest Christian inscriptions. It seems that the catacombs said to have been paid for by Domitilla are not old enough, and the Jewish ones predate her. We might hypothesize that she had bought the Jewish ones for Christian usage, but there is no evidence to substantiate this at this point. Whether Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla are the Clement I and Domitilla of the Christians seems probable, since "Dio Cassius gives Pandateria as the place of exile, rather than Pontia" (p. 208, referring to Dio Cassius 67.14) Eusebius referred to the island as Pontia," (Eusebius Eccl. Hist 3.18.4) However, these two islands neighbor each other in Strabo, and so we have a name, place, and approximate time which corresponds well between the two references.

It is interesting to note then, as per Atwill, that these people who are referred to as Christians by Christians, but as proselytes by others, who are the first to have left something like a believable historical footprint and be referred to as Christians, are also part of the same family which conquered Jerusalem, i.e. the Flavian family of Vespasian and Titus, and of which Josephus was a part - whose works contain considerable Christian interpolations, and had been something like an honorary part of the Christian canon for many centuries.