andrewcriddle

I raised the point because IMHO someone in the Ancient World could have disapproved of the brutal and brutalizing slave trade without necessarily disapproving of slavery as such.

Your point about Paul's eschatologically influenced teaching in Corinthians is a very sound one but it does maybe raise the question whether the differences between Paul and Colossians/Ephesians on this sort of issue can be explained as due to a decline in eschatological urgency.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

I do not think Colossians and Ephesians are what they are principally because of a decline in eschatological urgency, though that may have been a factor; I think they are simply conforming more closely to the status quo of the rest of the Roman empire. Social pressures eventually render most nonconformist groups more conformist.

Ben.

mountainman

Dear Gerard and Casper,

This is an important point. The superiority of the medical practices of the cult of Asclepius in the Roman empire during the period in question of christian origins is well cited. Unfortunately it is ignored by most authors ride a superior christian hobby horse. The citations in the last few decades have grown astronomically due to intense research by retiring doctors (and others associated with the medical profession) into the ancient history of medicine. The staff of Asclepius was replaced for a thousand years by two bogus christian saints (Cosmas and Damien) but was reinstated after the Rennaisance and today is represented on many medical letterheads/emblems, etc. Amazon has dozens of books dealing with the history of the cult of Asclepius in regard to the history of modern medicine. The cult was distributed over the entire empire. (eg: Asclepius By Gerald David Hart, Martin St. J. Forrest). I have not yet determined precisely whether the "thereapeutae" mentioned and described at length in Philo Judaeus: On Ascetics are in fact "The Therapeutae of Asclepius" (the son of Apollo).

Best wishes,


Pete

Casper

Hi pete,

I think what he is getting at is that if the Asclepius cult "movement" failed then it doesn't invalidate the contribution that charity had in the success of christianity. On the other hand, if we could chow that it was indeed smilar to Christianity then Christianity did not succeed merely because of superior ethics and cosmology, but for other reasons.

My only problem there though is that Asclepians may readily have embraced Christianity due to its similarities and willingly shed the differences, blurring the lines of the argument.