andrewcriddle

Theeophilus quotes verses that occur in the canonical Gospel of John and claims that they are by someone called John. This is good evidence IMO.

AFAIK the use of John by Theophilus is generally accepted by scholars. Metzger 'Canon of the New Testament' p118 Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

Tacitus identifies "Christus" as the founder, states that he was executed by Pilate but the "pernicious superstition" broke out again after being checked briefly.

There is nothing to suggest that the "pernicious superstition" was that they "worshipped a crucified man who they believed was a god". In fact, Tacitus seems to be referring to a "pernicious superstition" that existed before the execution but was briefly checked by the execution only to break out again even in Rome.

mata leao

This thread is a good example of what happens when historical revisionists and form critcs don't understand Christian theology.

EarlDoherty

Don, I'm going to zero in on two elements of your latest posting.

There might be said to be two ways to interpret the passage referred to above about the evil-doer, and I'll speak as though Felix is paraphrasing his own comments to clarify things:

(1) You are wrong to accuse us of worshiping this man who was crucified as an evil-doer, because, being an evil-doer, he would, like all evil-doers, not deserve worship and you are wrong to think that we would do so.

(2) You are wrong to accuse us of worshiping a man who was crucified as an evil-doer, because while no evil-doer deserves worship, the fact is that this man wasn't an evil-doer, and thus you are wrong both in thinking that this man was an evil-doer, and that we would worship him if he were.

I almost tied myself in knots trying to paraphrase No. 2 according to the meaning that you say is implied in the passage. Perhaps you could come up with a better and more succinct way Felix might explain the meaning you advocate here. I certainly think that No. 1 is the more straightforward and natural interpretation, and that No. 2 attempts to read things between the lines which are not evidently there.

You have also put it that "M Felix has in fact denied 'evil-doer', since no 'earthly man' would have been regarded as such", but this seems confused, since it says that no earthly man would be an evil-doer--which is hardly true. If he was NOT an earthly man, does this mean he WOULD be an evil-doer? You'll have to clarify here. I suspect that this is simply more atomistic "reading into" the text. I think you are trying to say: if Felix is declaring that the crucified man wasn't earthly [which is not obviously the case, but your imposed interpretation], then this implies he couldn't have been an evil-doer. But such a relationship between the two ideas would be quite obscure; it can't be found in the text itself.

But for me, the main point in what you've said here is your use of the word "qualification." I decided not to enlarge on the subject in my previous post, feeling sure you would bring it up here. I think you are trying to suggest that what Felix says after "you wander far from the truth" is a qualification of the crucified man accusation, meant to discredit or change its meaning. This, of course, is your basic claim in your analysis of this whole passage. But let's break up the passage into its two elements:

A - “Morever, when you ascribe to us the worship of a malefactor and his cross, you are traveling a long way from the truth...

B - ...in assuming that an evil-doer deserved, or a mortal could bring it about, to be believed in as God. That man is to be pitied indeed whose entire hope rests on a mortal man, at whose death all assistance coming from him is at an end.�

B isn't a "qualification" of A (in the sense of discrediting the legitimacy of the accusation), it is an "explanation" of why the accusation is wrong. A paraphrase of both would be:

A - "When you say we worship a criminal and his cross, you are wrong...

B - ...because an evil-doer doesn't deserve, and a mortal can't get himself, to be believed a god. We'd be fools to have placed our hope in a dead mortal."

You are trying to see B as meaning: "it's OK to worship someone whom you say was a criminal and now dead, because he wasn't a criminal and he isn't a dead mortal." That would be a qualification, designed to deny the characterization of the man referred to. Again, this requires subjectively "reading into" the passage ideas that are not present in the words, an unjustified reading between the lines. My way of taking it is much more straightforward, in that B is an explanation for why the accusation is false. We don't do it because...and as I've said, Felix's explanation is a rational and compelling one.

If someone said to me, it's rumored you spend all your money on prostitutes, and I answered, "You are wrong, no responsible man would consider prostitutes to be worthy of giving all his money to," would you think that I was thereby saying that the women were not prostitutes, but good women I was simply dating? That would be pretty obscure. Why would anyone take it that way without some direct prompting in that direction, prefereably a clear statement that the women weren't prostitutes? So my rejoinder is not a "qualification" (trying to change or discredit the accusation of consorting with prostitutes), it is an "explanation" of why you are wrong to make such an accusation, why the accusation itself is irrational. It's irrational, from my point of view, not because the women were not prostitutes (which I never say), but because no reasonable man would spend all his money on prostitutes (which I do say). And note that I keep referring to the women as prostitutes. Let my words mean what they are clearly saying.

As to the second element in your posting:

I think you are not grasping the point of my discussion about the way Caecilius (which is to say, Felix, the author) presents the pagan accusation. It is not that pagans weren't making the basic accusation itself (that Christians worship the man and his cross, or that Christians worship the head of an ass), it is that they weren't presenting it in the way that Felix presents it, the way he puts it into Caecilius' mouth. The point may be subtle, but it shouldn't be that subtle. And I am convinced it's an absolutely crucial one to make and to have understood, so I'll spend a little more space on it.

To repeat, Caecilius doesn't merely say that Christians worship a crucified man and his cross. That basic part of it would be a reflection of what is being said by the pagans. But he also puts it in a certain way. He gives it an added dimension, and this is the part that I maintain would not be a reflection of what pagans were saying, because putting it this way is not something that would arise or spread in oral circles among the hoi polloi. It has too "literary" a nature, if you like. Let's break the statement into A and B again:

A - “And anyone who says that the objects of their worship are a man who suffered the death penalty for his crime, and the deadly wood of the cross,...

B - ...assigns them altars appropriate for incorrigibly wicked men, so that they actually worship what they deserve.�

It is B that would not be found in pagan parlance. That is Felix's own editorializing. It's too subtle, too sophisticated for an oral setting. First of all, the use of "altars" is a metaphor worthy of an imaginative literary craftsman. But even more polished is the device I've called a "complementary linking": equating crucified man and cross as being in the same category as those who worship them. Both are wicked, making the things worshiped and the people doing the worshiping equally reprehensible.

For example, if I accuse a group I call backwoods hicks of drinking homegrown moonshine which I have characterized as crude and poisonous, and I say that the latter is appropriate to the former and those alcoholics drink what they deserve, I am quite clearly linking two sides of an equation that are being equally denigrated. (I know Don has said that he doesn’t like analogies, but I think that, if you don’t insist that every fine aspect of an analogy be an exact replica, they can help people grasp the meaning of what you are trying to get across. Here, what Don would probably do is try to insist that I am really saying that the moonshine is of high quality and ought to be sold in wine boutiques.)

Lest one doubt that such an equation is being made by Felix, consider this. If the crucified man and his cross, according to Caecilius' words, were not to be regarded as wicked, if the man were not to be regarded as an actual criminal (not just 'accused' of a crime while really innocent, according to Don's attempt to read a fine distinction into things), then the phrase "appropriate for" would make no sense. If something is appropriate for wicked men, then that thing must itself be wicked. If despicable men worship what they deserve, this is a clear indicator that the thing they worship is itself despicable. (The justification for regarding him as such would be that he had been a criminal.)

The only way for this device of Felix's presentation to work, is for both sides of the link to be viewed in the same way. The man who "suffered death for his crime" has to be as much an evil, criminal, wicked entity as the Christians accused of worshiping him, since he has said that the former is "appropriate for" the latter, that the latter "deserve" the former. To put it another way, if Felix (who created that editorializing, complementary linkage, not the pagans) did not in his own mind regard the crucified man as a criminal and something despicable, he wouldn't and couldn't have fashioned that literary comparison and declared them equal.

And remember, as I pointed out in my last post, Felix has done exactly the same thing, made exactly the same kind of complementary equation, in regard to the accusation about worshiping the head of an ass. This common editorializing approach between the two accusations has to indicate that both accusations are being treated the same way, with the same intention to denigrate the element involved, crucified man and head of an ass.

Minucius Felix's smoking gun is turning out to be a six-shooter.

One other point, for now. You asked,

First of all, I do not see the second century apologists as “writing in a vacuum� and would be quite willing, in another post at another time, to try to sketch out how I see the relationships between the various expressions of “Christian� faith we find in the documentary record throughout the first century and a half of the—I won’t call it a “movement� since that implies some kind of basic unity to it, which I don’t believe it had. Call it a ‘trend of belief’ having certain common features that enjoyed a wide variety of expression. It’s like music or art within a certain period having some basic commonalities of style, but certainly not because all the artists went to the same school, or were inspired by the same mentor. (Sorry, I’m an analogy junkie).

Tacitus (if his passage is genuine, and I think it’s no better than a toss-up) would likely be reflecting hearsay in Rome of his day, no doubt newly-developed. It would be no surprise that Justin’s Apology (which we don’t have) would present a Christianity in conformity with his own personal beliefs. So, to address your question, is 160 CE a reasonable date for pagans to believe that Christians believed in a crucified godman? Is this all pagans? All pagans in every part of the empire? We don’t have enough to go on to be able to answer the latter questions. It could be (and probably was) some pagans in some parts of the empire. In fact, the very fact that we have major apologies by men like Athenagoras, Tatian, etc. in which they didn’t think it relevant enough to even bring up the subject of a crucified Jesus of Nazareth in defending the faith (other than it being a “story� like the Greek ones), would indicate that such writers did not regard the pagan belief about Christians worshiping a crucified godman as universal, requiring address. And what does Felix himself say? Just before Caecilius’ accusation about the man and his cross, he has introduced the accusation about the priest’s genitals with: “Some say…� (Alii - some, others, certain people…). Some pagans hold certain views, others other views. If the idea of an historical crucified godman is something that has not been universal, has recently arisen and is spreading among pagans’ ‘knowledge’ of what Christians are about, then this is the situation we would expect to find. That is the situation I see in Minucius Felix, around the year 160. By half a century later, the process was more or less complete and the myth of Jesus of Nazareth was fully in place.

EarlDoherty

Oops, I was momentarily confusing the Apology with the anti-Marcion work attributed to Justin, which Don has brought up before. Must be posting fatigue.

And while I'm here, Amaleq said this on a point regarding Tacitus that I have always found curious:

He is quite right in pointing out that Tacitus does not style the "Christus" of the Christians a godman, and what he does say is really not much more concrete than Suetonius, whose "Chrestus"--who was the reason for the expulsion from Rome under Claudius--could even be a reference to a mythical Christ, or even to someone unconnected to a Christian group. But what was the "superstition" checked by the execution of Christus? It was hardly anything to do with the pre-crucifixion ministry of Jesus, which Tacitus could hardly have been familiar with. He must have associated it with the general Jewish messianic movement which worked for the overthrow of Roman hegemony in Judea, a movement that had begun with Judas the Galilean at the very beginning of the century.

Which leads to two questions: On what basis would Tacitus have thought that the execution of Christus had led to a temporary checking of that movement, and with whom or what is he associating the subsequent "breaking out once more" in both Judea and in Rome? It hardly seems that it could have been the spread of Christianity itself, since in any of its forms witnessed to in the documents (Gospels or epistles, or even the later legendary Acts) it was not a movement of political agitation like the Zealots, and had nothing to do with what led to the Jewish War. Rather, the reference was more likely to the ongoing zealot and messianic movement epitomized in Josephus' Theudas and the Egyptian and the events leading to the War. Since no critical scholar regards Jesus as an agitator in this sense, or that he performed spectacular miracles such as portrayed in the Gospels (not even the dramatic cleansing of the Temple is regarded as plausible), why would Tacitus have associated such a watered-down historical Jesus with the "pernicious" zealot and messianic movement? He hardly read the Gospels and accepted their accounts at face value.

Can we make any better sense of what the Annals passage says if we regard it as a later Christian insertion, designed to play up the whole 'early martyrdom of Christians' tradition, which many think was largely a myth in itself? The vilifying language need not be an impediment, as those who advocate interpolation acknowledge. Do the sentiments about the "superstition" in that passage fit better with a later Christian scribe's own views of his faith's history, as determined in his mind by the Gospel account? I suggest that they would, at least better than as a creation by Tacitus. A Christian would have seen Jesus' career, and his claim to be the Messiah (something Tacitus would less likely have been familiar with), as part of the ongoing first-century movement against Roman domination, and apocalyptic expectations of Jesus' return which Christians nurtured even through the 2nd century would be associated with that hoped-for overthrow. Thus, that aspect of the Annals passage betrays more the mind of a Christian than the mind of Tacitus, and lends extra weight to the whole thing being a Christian insertion. Why make that particular comment? Well, it's a kind of triumphalism in disguise (they thought they had beat us down, but we came back!), and it allows the interpolator also to insert a dig against the capital of the empire.

Anyway, just some thoughts. While I've never regarded an authenticity for this passage to be any real stumbling-block to the Jesus as myth theory, there is no doubt that if it can be rejected as probably inauthentic, the sailing is even clearer.

(If others pick up on this and decide to making it an ongoing discussion, it's probably best that a moderator split it off into a new thread, so that it doesn't get in the way of our discussion of Minucius Felix.)

krosero

I don’t have much familiarity with the Church Fathers, but I’ve read this thread and parts of others. And I have some questions for the mythicist case.

For in that you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a criminal deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God. Miserable indeed is that man whose whole hope is dependent on mortal man, for all his help is put an end to with the extinction of the man. The Egyptians certainly choose out a man for themselves whom they may worship; him alone they propitiate; him they consult about all things; to him they slaughter victims; and he who to others is a god, to himself is certainly a man whether he will or no, for he does not deceive his own consciousness, if he deceives that of others.

Why is M Felix concerned with criminality if he doesn’t believe there was any human being at all to begin with? He could just say,

WE DO NOT WORSHIP A CRIMINAL, BECAUSE OUR CHRIST COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN A HUMAN, MUCH LESS A CRIMINAL. YOU WANDER FAR FROM THE TRUTH WHEN YOU SAY THAT WE COULD WORSHIP A HUMAN, AS THE EGYPTIANS DO, WHO GOES EXTINCT. WE WORSHIP SOMETHING THAT IS NOT EXTINCT, MUCH LESS CRIMINAL.

We don’t see him using this irrefutable argument.

Of course, M Felix heard the charge of worshipping a criminal because Christian historicists were worshipping a man condemned as a criminal. If M Felix was not a historicist, he leaves out the best possible argument in defense of his own faith and the faith, per the mythicist model, of the majority of Christians who had existed from the start of the movement. Why should he do that? Is it because he believes strongly in the foolishness of deifying human beings and want to say so, but doesn’t want to expose his fellow Christians, the historicists, to the same argument? Is it because he knows that historicists worship an innocent, resurrected man, so that they would be understood as not indicted when M Felix deplores the worship of “mortal man�? He freely offers the Egyptian argument, which probably opens up for his audience the question of why the criminal-worshipping Christians should be regarded as any different from the Egyptians.

In the historicist model, it was understood that Christianity as a whole, and from the earliest epistle, worshipped a divine being whose human form was resurrected, who did not go “extinct� at his dying; and such claims would refute the charge of criminality without having to present Pilate’s trial or any history whatsoever, because a deity cannot be a criminal. (And even a deity who descends into human form cannot accurately be regarded by lesser beings as a criminal). In the mythicist model, Christian historicists were recently starting to come up; M Felix declines to point to this new development, or to a split in Christianity, or to the fact that he does not share the new belief. In the historicist model, M Felix’s audience understands him to be defending a faith that proclaimed resurrection of a man’s body and his divine origin; but in the mythicist model, this belief is not automatically understood, because it’s just a subset of Christianity, and it’s new (or newer). Yet M Felix declines to refer to it, explain it, or say why it is not like the ancient Egyptian practice of worshipping men.

So what do I believe M Felix was saying?

1) M Felix acknowledges that Christ was seen as a criminal, and that Christ was seen as an “earthly being." (The latter need not have been a specific charge, and probably did not offend pagans; M Felix just says that “earthly being� is what a “criminal� is). He says it’s foolish to charge Christians with making either a criminal or an earthly being into God. His only argument regarding the charge of criminal-worship is that true criminals do not deserve to be regarded as “God�, or deum, presumably the one true God; their wickedness makes it impossible for them to attain such positive regard. Therefore Christ was not a true criminal. End of story, for M Felix. He is saying only: Christians would not hold a deserving criminal to be God. He may also be saying that no peoples make their criminals into “gods,� but we need a clarification from anyone who knows Latin better than I do.

2) M Felix says it’s also far from true that “an earthly being�, or potuisse terrenum, can achieve regard as “God�, deum. Again, presumably he means the one true God; he is speaking of the rationality of what Christians do, not what pagans do.

3) He says that placing your “whole hope� in one kind of earthly being, a “mortal man,� or homine mortali, would result in a miserable believer who could count on no more help once his man was dead. So he starts discussing as a very close example the case of the Egyptians. He offers them not as people who actually are miserable or without help when their leader dies, nor as people who made their one true God out of mortal man, but as people who “choose� a mortal man and offer him many things usually accorded to deities, such as sacrifices. They place much hope in him and his successors (and perhaps in the possibility of the afterlife or the return of souls in other bodies?), and are a very close example of the misery he’s talking about. In short, M Felix gives an example of treating a mortal man as more than he is, of which his example is not Christ, but Pharaoh. This man, he says, was regarded as “a god�, or deus.

Can anyone give us a more detailed treatment of the difference in the original between potuisse terrenum (“earthly being�) and homine mortali (“mortal man�)? And the difference in the original between deum (“God�) and deus (“a god�).

Barring an explication of the original Latin from someone who knows more (I know only what I’ve heard at Christmas masses), “mortal man� seems to be one example that M Felix gives for “earthly being.� He had been talking a little bit about animal worship, and here he goes into an example of worshipping mortal men who go extinct. Mortal men and animals are all earthly beings, and no hope can rationally be placed in them. Christ was not believed to be an animal, mortal man, or any earthly being.

If by “earthly being� M Felix means that Christ could not have appeared on earth and rational hope placed in him, we’re thrown back on the question of why M Felix fails to mention that many or most Christians (or the original Christians; or M Felix himself) do not believe in an earthly appearance at all, and are therefore obviously not worshipping a criminal.

Note: In the historicist model, it makes sense that M Felix would not speak of docetism and other splits in Christianity, because docetism and Gnosticism still believed in an appearance on earth (besides also accepting Christ’s innocence).

If by “earthly being�, M Felix means that Christ could not really be God if he was flesh and blood, M Felix would sound like a docetist. But then he should just say that his Christ is not flesh and blood. There are no real explanations, only the possibility, per the mythicist model, that he is understood to be saying that a flesh-and-blood man cannot be the object of Christian worship.

No, it seems that by “earthly being�, M Felix is talking about the kind of being, and not about the places where a being might be seen, or about the confusing similarity between flesh and what only appears to be flesh. He is talking about things that originate in the earth: mortal men and all animals. Christ is neither, because he did not originate in the earth, though he did partake of it. M Felix does not seem to me a mythicist, gnostic, or docetist.

_______________________

For what it’s worth, I do agree with the mythicist arguments in this thread that M Felix’s comment about honoring an illustrious man and loving a good man does not refer to the crucified man. His comment is stimulated by a discussion of Egyptian practice, and it is a general statement (though I can hold the possibility that M Felix knew, when he wrote it, that an allusion to the crucified criminal might be heard; we certainly hear one). I say so because I read his progression of thoughts as follows:

Pagans come close to placing all their hopes in a mortal man when they believe him to be more than he is. “Moreover,� the regard they do hold for their man-turned-god is to be deplored because it is not the esteem that should justly be given to great rulers, but rather the false flattery that always caresses earthly rulers. More sincere is the honor you would bestow on an illustrious man, and the love you would give to a good man.

GakuseiDon

I would phrase (2) as:

(2) You are wrong to think that we worship a wicked man and his cross. No criminal or mortal man could be believed to be God (and thus so worshipped). Anyone pinning their hopes on a mortal man comes undone when that man dies.

Earl, where does this leave those Christians who believed that Christ was ACTUALLY a god, IYO?

And even if (1) was the meaning that M Felix had in mind, what conclusions can be drawn on the historicity of Christ? As stated, it would be an affirmation that some people worshipped a criminal and his cross. (I think you agree to this in your post).

You are correct, I was having double-negative problems there!

In this case, I agree I'm reading this into that particular passage. But I think that it is supportable. The concept of "Earthly" vs "Divine" was a duality that was expressed in the writings of the day. I offered up some quotes from M Felix to support this:

"Plato's God is by His very name the parent of the world, the artificer of the soul, the fabricator of heavenly and earthly things..."

"The same man also declared that demons were earthly, wandering, hostile to humanity."

There is also this quote from Tertullian's "Ad nationes":

"mortal beings (come) from mortals, earthly ones from earthly"

I suggest that saying someone is not "earthly" would mean they are divine, thus M Felix is saying that Christians do not worship a wicked man but in fact worship a god. But this comes down to the overall meaning we attribute to the passage, so I am indeed reading this into the text.

OK. I think I understand where you are coming from. I agree that M Felix is doing a "complementary linking". I'm not sure why you think that the accusation had to have come from an oral setting, though. M Felix refers to accusations made by the famous rhetorician Fronto. Pagan philosophers like Celsus also wrote against Christianity. Justin Martyr and Tatian refer to attacks by the philosopher Crescens.

Yes, I agree. The accusation is that Christians worshipped a wicked man and his cross, therefore Christians themselves were wicked.

To invoke the distinction again: the element involved is a crucified wicked man. Otherwise, I agree. M Felix is saying that it is ridiculous to worship a crucified wicked man and his cross, in the same way that he says it is foolish to worship the head of an ass.

So, IYO, M Felix DOES appear to be alluding to a belief in a historical Christ, except that in M Felix's view, this Christ was a wicked man, and thus not a god?

EarlDoherty

It leaves them somewhere outside Felix’s own circles of Christianity. But I will be going on to answer Krosero’s post, with a (hopefully) capsule summary of how I see the picture of the various Christianities during the initial period c.130-180.

As for your version of my quote #2, it is more or less simply restating the actual text. It doesn’t expand on Octavius’ thoughts to spell out the meaning you are trying to see in it. It can still be interpreted according to my “plain meaning� of the passage. We’re still at square one here.

Yes, it is. I have not said that Felix directly denies the historical existence of the crucified man. Obviously, some circles of what some people regarded as “Christian� did have such a worship of man and cross (as for example, Justin, as well as the Roman church of the time that was moving toward ‘orthodoxy’). But because such beliefs were limited to only some, this is an indicator that the entire movement did not begin in that way.

Felix does not say that the crucified man was “not earthly�. That is your imposed reading on the passage. In fact, he directly refers to him as an “earthly being� (the ANF translation). You can’t just lift a general reference to ‘earthly vs. mortal beings’ from somewhere else, especially from a different writer, and say this demonstrates Felix’s attitude toward the crucified man. That’s being atomistic again. In your quotes, there is not even a “someone� about whom this “not earthly� has been applied. They are general statements about earthly and divine beings. Since your imposed meaning is not supportable from this direction, your conclusion from it, “that Christians do not worship a wicked man but in fact worship a god� has nothing to stand on.

This is actually a good point, in theory. Unfortunately, we don’t have any of the anti-Christian writings of Fronto or Crescens, and Celsus only survives in pieces in Origen. Perhaps you should investigate the latter to see if something resembling the way Caecilius is made to express himself can be found there. However, you would need to find something pretty specific, virtually identical (that “believed and believer� are alike, or that “one deserves another�), otherwise the idea and imagery we find in Felix would have to be his own creation, and thus reflective of his own thinking.

Yes to the first element, as I said above. As to the second, he is assuming, I assume, that the crucified man was wicked since he was executed as a criminal, and if he says that no man deserves to be so worshiped, then he must reject any notion of regarding him as a god. Note that he seems to be against any “earthly being� being worshiped as a god, not just a crucified criminal.

But let’s see what light can be cast on things in my reply to Krosero, which I will try to post later today.

Roger Pearse

The central argument of Tertullian in the Apologeticum.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

EarlDoherty

and,

I think a lot of the confusion arising out of what Minucius Felix is saying is due to a lack of understanding of how he fits into the picture of early Christianity, and that’s because most people are still under the influence of the traditional paradigms: that the movement was a single phenomenon (even if splintered, or immediately going off on different trajectories) arising out of some kind of historical figure in Palestine. It misleads us into thinking that there has to be a coherent relationship along those lines between the various communities and expressions represented by the wide range of documents that have come down to us. The whole Jesus Puzzle case is dedicated to showing that this is an imposed view, and that the documentary record shows something quite different. As for Krosero’s remarks above, we don’t know whether Felix “doesn’t believe there was any human being at all to begin with.� He’s not clear on that point. He simply wants to deny that proper Christians would do such a thing as worship a crucified man and his cross. If I had to guess, I’d probably put him in the same camp as Tatian, who seems to label such a concept a “story� like the myths of the Greeks.

But in one respect, Felix is quite unlike Tatian and the other major apologists. He has no Christ at all, no Son and Logos. At least, he is silent on them. If he is silent yet actually does subscribe to a Logos-type entity like the others, at least he doesn’t make any statements which would rule out such an entity as part of his faith, as the others do; he doesn’t say that ‘I am telling you everything there is to say about our faith.’ Thus, though I know Don would like to do so, one can’t parallel such a silence with the silence we find on the historical Jesus in the major apologists as a whole (other than Justin). I don’t think it is possible to answer the question of whether Felix had a “Son/Logos� figure, so I am going to leave it unresolved. Perhaps we can get some idea on the question when looking at the wider picture.

Krosero seems to recognize one thing. He doesn’t fall into the trap of regarding Felix as a “mythicist� in the sense of having a mythical Christ like that of Paul. He judges that “Felix doesn’t seem to be a mythicist.� Such a misconception was addressed here on IIDB a few weeks ago after my rebuttal to Don was posted. In my first “Response� to Don’s critique, right near the end of it, I pointed out that the apologists were adherents to a type of “Logos religion� which did not involve a mythical savior-god figure who had performed a redeeming act in the supernatural world. Their Logos concept was more abstract, an emanation of God through which God revealed himself and taught humanity, and it was that reception of knowledge through the Logos which “saved�. This and this alone, as I argued with Don through my website articles, is the picture created even in Justin’s Trypho when he recounts his conversion experience with the old man by the sea. In a broader sense, such a Logos could be said to be a “mythical� entity, in that it inhabits the spiritual dimension, and its interaction with the material world is on a “mythological� plane (see my Note 8 in The Jesus Puzzle for a discussion of this term). But the Logos as found in the apologists is not “mythical� in the sense that Paul’s is, in being a descending divine being with a character of his own who undergoes suffering and death and interacts with evil spirits, etc.

So let’s see if there is a picture available, derived from the documentation, which can make sense of all this variety and seeming incompatibility on the first and second century scene.

I have said that the dominant religio-philosophical idea of the Hellenistic Age was the “intermediary Son� concept. If you make God transcendent, so pure and lofty that he can’t have any contact himself with ‘imperfect’ matter, then you have to invent an intermediary entity that can, an “emanation� of God, a “Son� of God. For philosophies like that of Middle Platonism, this became the Logos; for scribal Judaism it became Wisdom, though being “feminine� it was not styled as a Son. This intermediary then takes on the roles of creation, sustaining the universe, revealing God and his wishes, providing salvation in one way or another, etc. Once this fundamental idea of the intermediary Son is established, it can be carried in all sorts of directions, limited only by a given thinker, or a given sect’s, imagination, prompted by scripture or any other precedent or elements of the philosophies of the day, in one’s own or neighboring cultures.

While earlier Jewish writings, like Proverbs, speak of a creative and revelatory Wisdom figure, perhaps the first full-blown expression of this phenomenon is Philo of Alexandria. We know he was part of a ‘school’ or trend of thought that preceded him, since about a half century earlier, Aristobolus, in surviving fragments, was also talking of a Sophia (Wisdom) and Logos, who confers knowledge of the truth and guidance. And he bases these interpretations on both Jewish and pagan philosophers, from Solomon to Homer and Aristotle. Philo, of course, is the ultimate expression of this Hellenistic Judaism, the process I’ve referred to above of bringing together different philosophies and cultures to produce a syncretistic product. That’s essentially what almost all forms of “Christianity� were: a wedding of Jewish and Greek concepts and trends of thinking. In principle, we do not have to see such trends and developments as the product of any single person, let alone as based or inspired by any historical individual. They arise out of the conditions and mindsets of the times, thinkers and groups absorbing what lies in the air around them, and evolving new expressions of those ideas. Because there is no centralized origin or authority involved, variety is what we are going to find, common elements but also contradictions and incompatibilities. Trying to impose unity on them is futile and misleading.

Philo regarded the Logos as “first-born� of God, and while he didn’t quite turn it into a personal divine being, it was a “force� that could be instilled in people (like Moses), to confer knowledge of God and Philo’s own brand of ‘mystical salvation’. There was no sacrificial element to his Logos, but his philosophy of it so resembles certain aspects of the Pauline type of Christ that he has been styled the “grandfather� to Christianity. I don’t think it would be a misnomer to style Philo’s philosophy as a “Logos religion.� Did it give rise to a movement? I’m pretty sure it did. What we can read behind the scenes in 1 Corinthians is that Apollos of Alexandria was going about preaching a figure or force that conferred spiritual perfection and salvation through the acquiring of wisdom, dispensed through such a figure. And as I’ve argued in my website article on Apollos (No. 1), he seems to have denied the “crucified Christ� of Paul. Whether Apollos used the term “Christ� for his mythical Revealer figure is unclear, but if he did, it would have been an advance on Philo, just as Paul finding or confirming in scripture that his Christ Jesus had been sacrificially crucified (“we preach Christ crucified�) was an advance, on a different trajectory, over Philo’s philosophy of the Logos. Not that Paul directly drew on Philo necessarily, but on that trend of thinking of the day which we have no reason to believe would have been restricted within the walls of Alexandria. Paul laments that other apostles “of the Christ� are going about “preaching another Jesus� which he condemns as Satanic, so all in all we have a picture in the earliest days of varied and competing religio-philosophies about the intermediary Son, some of which adopted the term “Christ� to refer to such a figure, probably under the influence of Jewish tradition.

And note that it is syncretistic. That is, it is a product of more than one philosophy and culture. Christianity is not exclusively Jewish. Nor is it exclusively pagan or Platonic. It’s a blend of the two. And the fact of this blend is more ill-fitted to the idea that it arose out of the preaching of a singular Jewish rabbi through followers that were Jewish, than that it was the outgrowth of the cauldron of ideas and activities of the period, that “seething mass of sects and salvation cults� of the first century in John Dillon’s colorful phrase.

The single best example, in my estimation, of that syncretistic activity is the epistle to the Hebrews. Again, no apparent or historically demonstrable connection with Paul, or any other document of early “Christianity.� It’s saturated with Alexandrine Logos philosophy (epitomized in 1:1-3); it is thoroughly Platonic in its higher and lower worlds and the relationship between the two. It has a Christ, and he is a savior figure. He is found in, and speaks from, the Jewish scriptures. That voice—from scripture, not historical teaching—is the new method of God’s communication “in this final age� (1:2), supplanting the prophets of old. But its Christ is never located on earth, never identified with a Jesus of Nazareth, and his sacrifice is placed in heaven, based on a scriptural “archetype-antitype� comparison. This community, and its Christ, lives in an entirely scriptural universe.

Off in a different corner of the Levant is the Odes of Solomon, probably late first century or early second. The Odist reverences God, but also his Son and Beloved, one of the emanative entities of heaven who serves as revealer, but (despite the best efforts of J. H. Charlesworth) shows no sign of incarnation, sacrificial death or resurrection, and no name “Jesus,� much less a Gospel-type career on earth. Much the same is true of the Shepherd of Hermas, probably around the same time, which has a Son (no “Jesus� or “Christ�). Salvation comes “through the Son.� The Fifth Parable has the Son “cleansing the sins of the people� but not through sacrifice or atonement. Though neither of these documents uses the term “Logos� itself (though the use of “Word� might be said to be just that) and have a predominantly Jewish character, it is all intermediary-Son philosophy, and could be categorized under the heading of “Logos religion.� The fact that the Shepherd’s “Son� is occasionally merged with the Holy Spirit and the Jewish Law shows the fluidity enjoyed by the concept, and we find the same fluidity elsewhere.

I might stick in here the 2nd century (around 130) Epistle to Diognetus, another reflection of a Logos/Word religion, but this one has tentatively added the element of atonement, though without historical details. I was originally willing to accept that it also suggested incarnation, but I have withdrawn that on further examination, as I outlined in my Response article to Don. Here, then is a Logos religion that has taken a step toward the mythical redeemer camp, though not far enough to use the name Jesus.

As everyone knows, the Odes have much in common with elements of the Gospel of John, and it is precisely those elements which I think identify the basic and original nature of the beliefs of the Johannine community. They are found in the “teachings� put in Jesus’ mouth about himself, being the “Bread� and “Water�, the “Resurrection and the Life�, and so on, which fit the sort of intermediary Son philosophy (entirely spiritual) of the Odes. Things were completely recast when the Synoptic Gospel story was brought in and the two ideas became melded together. When a Logos hymn (perhaps pre-existing) was added on, the transformation was complete. (But more about the Gospels later.)

Thus far, we can see a landscape dotted with all sorts of trees of different varieties, though all of them growing out of the same soil and some sharing in certain common ‘DNA’ in their wood and foliage. Which variety or varieties were more dominant? Whose branches were elbowing whose for more space to grow, to gain the greater amount of nutrient? Did the elms share ground or borrow from the maples, were the oaks spurning the encroaching pines, did the poplars claim that the willows were growing in crazy directions? That’s what the documents show us. The writer of 1 John railed against the “antichrists� who denied Jesus had come in the flesh. Ignatius was spurning the “mad dogs� who didn’t preach that Jesus was born of Mary and crucified by Pilate. Early docetics were claiming that a Jesus on earth couldn’t have been really human, only a phantom. The Gnostics emerging from the woodwork in the early second century with their heavenly Pleroma and dual God and Demiurge, at first had a spiritual redeemer who brought them salvific gnosis, but then they liked the look of some of the neighboring trees that had been watered by the Gospels and decided to change their own foliage into a Jesus of Nazareth, but giving him their own colors and shapes. They emphasized the revealer element, and often, like John, reworked the sacrificial one to make it more in keeping with their own preferences.

Other trees had darker hues. One of the features found in several species of intermediary Son religion, and other related expressions of the time, was Jewish apocalyticism. The Christ in the book of Revelation has attached to him all sorts of mythological motifs of the day, both Jewish and pagan, he’s a sacrificial figure but without a career on earth (as chapter 12’s birth of the Messiah painfully shows). This one is close to Paul’s version, but without the universalism Paul was preaching, and it shows less dependence on Logos-type thinking than Paul does. I have a feeling that the picture in Revelation is a personal projection of its writer in his preaching, probably at the end of the first century, to communities that may have been a little more enlightened than he himself was, but there is no denying that his redeemer is more ‘selective’ in his salvation net than other views were. But that’s another class of distinction between the various expressions of the day: do we cater to an elect, or do we welcome all comers? Syncretism didn’t always work to the same degree. Gnostics made clear distinctions among different classes of people, and never could agree on who was to enjoy salvation. And generally speaking, the more Jewish-oriented a sect was, the less it tended to be, due to the weight of its own tradition, universalist. The Similitudes of Enoch have a Messiah/Son of Man/Righteous One who represents the (Jewish) righteous on earth. Then there’s the Ascension of Isaiah, whose fully “mythical Son� operates in the heavens (until an interpolator got his hands on chapter 11), in order to rescue the righteous from Sheol. This kind of “paradigm� feature, that the savior is the heavenly counterpart and guarantor for a group on earth, has both pagan and Jewish roots, the latter in Daniel 7.

So what kind of picture do we have when we get into the second century? A riotous one, I would say (and we still have to fit the Gospels in). And remember that the pagans themselves, unrelated to any Christ belief, had their own range of subordinate deities who descended, underwent sacrifice, and redeemed devotees. Some common elements among them all, but a lot of incompatible diversity. Hardly all arisen, where Christianities were concerned, within the space of a century, from one man and one point of origin. Such a thing would be unparalleled within history. Is there room for the second century apologists in this unrestrained madness? I can’t see why not. Actually, they are a bit of a voice for reason amid the crazier expressions of intermediary Son and savior philosophy around them. Remember, too, that this surrounding diversity shows no sign of unity, no commonality of now-orthodox ideas or alleged historical figures and events. There is no central authority on any side. We cannot say that the Ignatiuses outnumbered the Odists, that historicists trumped the mythicists, that Pauline theology enjoyed a greater following than Gnostic mysticism. The existence of a group of writers, of congregations of ‘believers’ who followed a devotion to the Logos concept while rejecting just about everything else that swirled around them, is quite conceivable.

Could such a group and coterie of writers regard themselves as “Christian� while rejecting all those other things? I maintain that they could. First of all, they subscribe to the basic concept underlying all these diverse expressions: the “intermediary Son�. That’s what the Logos is. And they use the term “Logos� far more than they use the term “Christ� or “Christian.� Remember, too, that this broad trend of belief is rooted in Judaism, appealing to Jewish concepts and especially the scriptures. Apologist after apologist says that it was the Jewish scriptures that not only determine their beliefs and orientation, it was usually what led to their conversion. Thus the adoption of a term like “Christ� and “Christ-follower� (Christian) would be in keeping with that foundation. It has become a widely-used term for the Logos by the movement as a whole. As such, it is part of the inherent opposition to paganism on the part of the movement and especially to the pagan mythology of the traditional gods. This is why perhaps the most prominent aspect of so many apologetic writings is attacking that old Greek and Roman mythology. The Logos-followers have an undying disdain for it all. Not only is it ridiculous, it compromises morality and intellectual integrity. They’d like nothing better than to pull down the whole rotten structure. To replace it, they offer the Jewish God, but it’s a God that can only be approached and understood through the Logos, the “intermediary Son,� and thus the Logos itself becomes the central object of faith and even worship.

In the absence of any central organization, any commonality of doctrine (other than the most basic one), any universal or even majority traditions identifying a time or place or historical figure as the root genesis of the intermediary Son religion, there is nothing to prevent the apologists I have focused on from regarding themselves as the “true� expression of the faith, and from approaching the emperors or their pagan readers in general as representative of the movement, ignoring the overblown expressions around them. For that readership, the animosity they feel toward the Logos/Christ-believers is not for their Logos beliefs (which are close, in any case, to basic Greek philosophy) but for their rejection and ridicule of the traditional mythology, the traditional state religious observances, the refusal to accept any other deities (including the deified emperor) besides the Jewish God. This makes them atheists and underminers of society, and casts them as hating the world beyond themselves, more than enough reason for persecution.

No doubt, especially as the century progressed, the pagans are not oblivious to some of those more outlandish beliefs of certain Christian circles regarding a crucified man, and may quite naturally confuse the various expressions, but because the apologists don’t want to taint themselves with such things, and because they regard them as without foundation, either in history and/or in faith, they will ignore them in presenting their case. (This is quite different from the standard claim that such things were actually part of the apologists’ faith and were suppressed by them for whatever reason.)

Can we trace a theoretical line of development from the beginnings of intermediary Son philosophy in Philo to a general “Logos religion� presence in the second century, one that had bypassed or ignored all the rest of the paraphernalia that had been attached to it in other quarters, a presence that could have taken a prominent place on the second century stage, capable of presenting itself to the emperors and pagans in general as the proper “Christian� religion? I believe we can. The essence of it is the Logos as revealer, the intermediary channel to God, enabling one to be “saved.� As Justin puts it, in relating his conversion experience, “if you are eagerly looking for salvation, and if you believe in God…you may become acquainted with the Christ of God, and, after being initiated, live a happy life.�

This, essentially, was Philo’s outlook, though the Logos was also his path to mystical experience and immediate contact with God, something the more grounded apologists don’t get into. When we move on from Philo, what can we uncover? I believe something very revealing can be found in what are termed the “Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers� imbedded in the Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century. A full discussion of this can be found in my Article No. 5, “Tracing the Christian Lineage in Alexandria�. In these prayers, we can trace an evolution of “Logos� thinking and terminology within a Hellenistic Judaism setting, into “Christ� terminology in much the same setting, and finally into full-blown Gospel-Jesus thinking when later Christianity fully absorbed these prayers. That intermediate stage is the telling one. It seems to show a progress of Philonic-type Logos philosophy into Logos religion, that is, into regarding the Logos as a distinct divine entity (which Philo did not) having a definable role in creation and salvation, though still without any sacrifice or atonement, and such an entity attracting a kind of devotion Philo had not accorded it.

Which leads us to the key document, one lurking lonely and ignored on the sidelines in most examinations of the documentary record. That is the “Discourse to the Greeks� erroneously attributed to Justin Martyr. It’s brief, but it epitomizes in clear fashion the two elements of the Logos religion I have accorded to the second-century circles we can see represented by the apologists. The first four chapters are devoted to a vicious denunciation of the divine mythologies of the pagans and the immorality they give rise to. The fifth and final chapter offers the alternative:

“Henceforth, ye Greeks, come and partake of incomparable wisdom, and be instructed by the Divine Word, and acquaint yourselves with the King immortal.…For our own Ruler, the Divine Word [logos], who even now constantly aids us, does not desire strength of body and beauty of feature, nor yet the high spirit of earth’s nobility, but a pure soul, fortified by holiness, and the watchwords of our King, holy actions, for through the Word power passes into the soul….The Word exercises an influence which does not make poets: it does not equip philosophers nor skilled orators, but by its instruction it makes mortals immortal, mortals gods; and from the earth transports them to the realms above Olympus. Come, be taught; become as I am, for I, too, was as ye are. These have conquered me—the divinity of the instruction, and the power of the Word….the Word drives the fearful passions of our sensual nature from the very recesses of the soul….Lust being once banished, the soul becomes calm and serene. And being set free from the ills in which it was sunk up to the neck, it returns to Him who made it. For it is fit that it be restored to that state whence it departed, whence every soul was or is.�

This is hardly speaking of Jesus of Nazareth. The Word/Logos is an entirely spiritual entity, worthy of worship: not the bowing-down kind, but a reverence of morality, guidance and perfection, and a knowledge of the true and estimable God. This is the natural outgrowth of Philonic philosophy, and it is in the same vein as so much of what we find in the second century apologists, including aspects of Justin. (See, for example, chapter 10, Book 2, of Theophilus’ “To Autolycus�.) For them, the Logos was the antidote to the base mythology of the pagans. It and they have preserved (except for Justin, who succumbed to the Gospel lure) a purity which others adulterated in a crude historicism that has forever hamstrung western culture. The irony is that such Logos-believers adamantly condemned pagan mythology with its stories of the gods’ and heroes’ activities as base and corrupting, not only leading to immorality but obscuring the purity and perfection of the one true God, and yet Christianity was in the process of evolving into a dominant form which fell into the very same trap. It turned its mythology into literal history and adopted every word and deed of Jesus as fact and guide. Since there is a wealth of dross among the few Gospel pearls, we have inherited bigotry, inquisition, superstition, intellectual ignorance, rigid fundamentalism, hatred of Jews and non-believers, and a host of other albatrosses that we are only now struggling to remove from our necks after 2000 years…But I digress.

It seems to me that these documents attest to a strong presence of a Logos-religion form of Christianity throughout much of the second century, one that could regard itself as the true and best form of the faith. To judge by the writers, it ignored or scorned those circles which had gone off in questionable directions. All versions of Christianity seem to have been persecuted equally, but that, as I say, was principally for its rejection of the Greek gods and culture in general, and the whole movement may also have been tainted by those extremist expressions of an apocalyptic nature, expecting or advocating the overthrow of society and its eschatological downfall. The apologists could speak for the faith as a whole, without having to address the historical fantasizing with which the Gospels were gradually infecting the entire scene.

And what about those Gospels? How do they fit into the intermediary Son picture of the Christ-belief trend? I view them as coming out of left field, indeed out of a different ballpark. Their pre-Markan roots are something entirely different. If we accept Q—and I think this entire picture lends credence to the idea of such a document and the setting that produced it—those roots lie in a preaching movement that had nothing to do with Christs or Logos religions. Neither the Messiah nor the Logos appears in a reconstructed Q, no saviors, no atonement doctrines. No human or spiritual entity is a special channel to God. Q and its Sitz-im-Leben is again a syncretistic product: Jewish apocalyptic expectation of the Kingdom, having an End-time figure who is not a “messiah� but the Son of Man (a peculiar derivation from Daniel), and Greek Cynic social mores relating to another kind of expectation and itinerant apostleship. It inhabited a sphere of its own, until one of those strange twists of history whose details we will probably never know brought it into the ken of the intermediary Son religion. Somebody must have thought the two were made for each other. The founder figure invented for Q (which happened before Mark) and the words and deeds Q bestowed on him, offered a new dimension for the Logos Savior, now appearing on earth. It gave him a ministry and an (allegorical) setting for a sacrificial redemption. That ensured the movement would have legs, and the Logos in the guise of Jesus of Nazareth, regarded as historical, galloped ahead of the competition, eventually leaving those second century purists in the dust. Felix never knew what hit him.

I don’t have the time or energy to properly refine this posting right now, so it’s rough around the edges and may have left out significant elements I’ll only think of later. Maybe Don and others will find ways to poke a few holes in it, which will give some food for discussion. I want to get it posted today because I will have little time over the next three days to contribute very much, if anything. What I’ve tried to demonstrate is that there can be ways to present the evidence with a whole new orientation, but it requires that one loosen the straps of the old paradigms. That’s what The Jesus Puzzle tries to do, and I think the reaction by so many to the book, as well as my website, indicates that it has been to a great extent successful.