BrettS

All,

A couple days ago I ran across this article by N.T. Wright:

God's Way Of Acting

In it, he's very skeptical that early Christians would have borrowed from or been influenced by the "nakedly pagan" stories of virgin births. The conclusion he draws from this is fuzzy, but it's basically that no Christian would have invented such a story, and Matthew and Luke wouldn't have included it in their writings unless they thought it was true.

My initial reaction is that it doesn't seem out of the question that some pagan influence managed to seep into the tale of Jesus' birth. It also seems like the virgin birth could have been invented by early pagans who converted to Christianity, but I'm not sure when pagans started converting over.

What does everyone else think? Is there any evidence that early Christians borrowed from or were influenced by pagan ideas, or is this as completely out of the question as Wright makes it out to be?

Toto

Christians had a unique way of reading the Jewish scriptures. We don't know of any Jewish expectation that a Messiah would be born of a virgin, but that doesn't mean that a creative Christian mind could not find that somewhere in the Septuagint.

And why would the evangelists make Jesus out to be a pagan demi-god if they did not believe it to be true? Hmmm . . . let me think about that, okay, I've got it, yes, they probably did believe that Jesus was somewhere on the same plane of existence as a pagan demi-god, except that they thought he was god. What is the point that The Rev. Wright is making here?

Again, I'm not sure what this is such a problem. Christian apologists swallow bigger inconsistencies all the time.

Christianity arose out of Hellenistic Judaism. There are Jewish elements. There are Hellenistic elements. All at the same time. Is there a problem with this?

Again,

No, not difficult, and parthenogenesis refers to only having one parent, not "without visible parentage." But we've already identified the parentage - pagan god-men and a Jewish sense of divinity. I think he means intellectual bastardry, not intellectual parthenogenesis, and that is no miracle.

It appears that NT Wright thinks that early Christians were too stupid to make things up, therefore what they wrote is true.

But actually, this little piece is intended for the faithful, to lull them to sleep while reassuring them that they are not stupid for believing in the literal truth of these early myths.

What a waste of intellectual effort.

Elentar

It seems that the original source of the gospels, called "Q", was much like the gospel of Thomas, a set of aphorisms. The story of Jesus' life was left out. In collected folk accounts of his life long after the fact, it seems likely that pagan myths would have crept in, as well as heroic attempts to redirect old prophecies to correspond with Jesus.

The prophecies of Isaiah, for example, are badly suited to the purpose--it seems that Immanuel was probably Isaiah's own son, and his other prophecy of the messiah was of a great king, not an itinerate preacher. In the absence of details, the gospel writers were not above spinning yarns whole cloth--the warning at the end of Revelations is a reaction to just such adulterations, which by then were widely known and despised.

But by then it was too late. Little remains of the original, and much that was left was invented, borrowed, or wrenched into place. We will never know who Jesus was. Indeed, we can barely discover if he was at all.

BrettS

Thanks, Toto and Elentar. I agree that N.T. Wright is uh, wrong here.

What Hellenistic elements of Christianity were you thinking of, Toto?

Toto

By Hellenistic elements of Christianity, I am thinking of the influence of Platonism, which might have come through Philo. There are also other Hellenistic elements throughout the New Testament, from the story themes in Acts, various details and references in the gospels, etc.

If you are interested, you might want to read The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark by Dennis MacDonald.

Malachi151

I tend to disagree with his reasoning, but agree with the conclusion.

I don't think that there was much so-called "pagan" influence on the first 100 years of "Christianity" (not yet called Christianity).

Also, what constitutes "influence"?

There are a few clear issues here.

#1 We know for a fact that there was an existing mis-translation in the Septuagint in Isaiah 7:14 whereby "young woman" was mistranslated as "virgin".

At base, we can easily see that this passage in the Septuagint is at least partially responsible for the virgin birth story.

Would there have been any claim that Jesus was born of a virgin without this passage? I don't think so, but on the other hand one can argue that "Luke" is an independent "witness" to some "virgin" tradition, so the question is whether GLuke was influenced by this same passage or what exactly the influence was on GLuke?

#2 I have also read, though I have not confirmed, that there was existing controversy over the "virgin" passage in the Septuagint prior to the writing of the Gospels, with traditional Jews urging for the correction of this passage, but there was politics involved this and for whatever reason the correction was not made.

At issue here is the idea of Hellenistic influence. Certainly Hellenistic culture would have made accepting this reading more acceptable in the first place, but that doesn't make it a cause of the mistranslation, however it could have made it more easy to accept this mistranslation.

The same goes for the Gospel stories. I don't think that Hellenistic culture caused the invention of the "virgin birth" element, but I do think that it made it easier to be accepted. The virgin birth element was comfortable within the so-called pagan tradition, just like the 12 disciples were comfortable in "pagan" tradition, though I don't think that the pagan tradition was the source of either of these elements.

One of the arguments against the virgin birth element as a "pagan" element is its first recording in the Gospel of Matthew, which is by all accounts the most Jewish of the Gospels.

The question I think simply fails to acknowledge the main facts about Hellenistic Judaism. Any so-called "pagan" influence on the earliest elements of Christianity, in the first 100 years, was influence by way of Hellenistic Judaism itself. In other words, any early pagan influence was not direct, it was via already Hellenistically incorporated Judaism. What many people fail to realize is that Judaism was many times more diverse prior to the rise of Christianity than after it. More accurately, Judaism was more diverse prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE, and was furthermore yet still more diverse even after that than it was after the Medieval period.

1st century Judaism contained within it a wider scope of ideas than modern Judaism does. The discussion of the degree to which ancient Judaism was influence by other religions is another matter entirely, which itself gets more to the heart of this issue.

Was the virgin birth story a total introduction from outside any existing branch of Judaism at the time? No, I don't think so.

Was the virgin birth story compatible with the existing pagan religious beliefs? Yes. Was it spawned directly by the pagan religions? No, I don't think so. Did the "pagan" religions exert some prior influence on various elements of Judaism leading to the acceptance of "virgin birth" motifs among various sects of Jews prior to the rise of Christianity, whereby providing the fertile ground for this story element? Probably.

robto

I think a very good case can be made for the Greek/Persian influence on Christian concepts of Heaven/Hell, Satan, angels, etc. In the OT, there is barely a mention of afterlife reward/punishment, in the NT it is a major theme. In the OT, Satan is God's servant, in the NT, he is God's cosmic enemy. These differences can be traced through intertestamental writings like Enoch to sources in Greek myth and Zoroastrian belief.

If this is correct, then the impossibility of pagan influence on Christian belief is disproved. Note that many of the themes I mentioned came into sectarian Judaism BEFORE they found their way into Christianity - it's not a case of a sudden jump in pagan influence when Christianity came about.