Peter Kirby

According to Google's definition, a black hole is,

"An object whose gravitational pull inside a certain radius is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape it. A black hole forms when the amount of matter in the core of a star undergoing a supernova is great enough to cause a runaway gravitational collapse."

We see that a black hole has these properties,

1. A great amount of weight of material.
2. A strong gravitational attraction.
3. A way of warping the time and space around it.
4. A way of preventing light coming out of it.

To get to the subject of this essay, I submit that the black hole of classical history is none other than Jesus Christ.

1. A great amount of weight of material

There are about as many New Testament and patristic manuscripts as there are manuscripts of all the other classics in Greek combined. On the Thesaurus Lingua Graecae, the patristic writers form the greater part of the Greek corpus by sheer weight volume. The author of John was prescient in saying that the world might overflow with books on Jesus.

2. A strong gravitational attraction

Not only is there a ton of ancient Christian material, but there is a ton of modern material on that ancient Christian material. It has a strong attraction for the western writer; even the great classicist and popularizer Michael Grant could not find it in himself to neglect providing his view of the Gospels and Jesus.

3. A way of warping the time and space around it

Anyone who is interested in the Levant around the turn of the era, if they are not solely interested because of an intrigue about Jesus, will soon bump up against the legions of scholars who have already scoured the material for anything of relevance to that end. Any historical fact, whether that be concerning crucifixion or burial practices or didactic instruction, can and will be used in the study of Christ.

4. A way of preventing light coming out of it

Or, as we say in the humanities, it is a subject that generates `more heat than light'. I should not need to expand on this.

So, how do we approach this black hole of classical history? There are a few options available to us.

One is to revel in it, dive right in to its orbit and stay there. This is, I must confess, pretty much the approach I have taken. (It would be prime among my biases, if I ever got around to posting about them again in the `Prolegomena' thread for that purpose.)

One is to shun it, to avoid its orbit as much as possible, and to treat it as picayune if it all. This seems to be the approach of most serious classical historians who are engaged in the study of antiquity (up to and prior to Late Antiquity, when it is absolutely inescapable).

Is there a middle path? There may be, though it does seem to be the road less traveled. However, perhaps we can blaze this trail some day...and being that the bias of most of us is towards the dark side of the black hole (to study Christian origins), that would mean taking a greater interest in the classical world as an object of study in its own right.

It is only then, as Neil Godfrey would rightly urge us, that it would be possible to look anew at Christian origins in a way that treated it an a par with `less socially contentious' subjects.

And realizing my existence in the web of the black hole of ancient history, which is the study of Christianity, I must be the first to confess the need for metanoia (a conversion of attitude and self) in my approach to study.

In the spirit of all this, what interest would there be in using this forum as a platform for the study of subjects not in the orbit of the black hole of history--what would be viewed as ancient history proper? I know that I once presented a paper here on 'Imperial Correspondence', but it inspired neither much discussion nor anything else in response. Are we doomed to stay beholden to the study of Christian origins, or is it possible to escape the black hole?

In physics, it is not possible to escape the black hole. It remains to be seen whether it is possible in the humanities.

--
Peter Kirby

gstafleu

Christianity is a religion. There were other religions extant at the time Christianity developed, in addition to Judaism. Could a middle road not be studying these and their influence on the development of Christianity? How come that e.g. F&G's book on the mysteries has not produced a flood of follow-ups, be it pro or con? How about the religion of the Celts, which was AFAIK replaced by Christianity? Surely it had an effect on the development of Christianity, and surely that is relevant?

How come we seem to read so little about the development and derivation of the Maria cult on this forum? Same about all the saints? Why is this forum so sola scriptura? We aren't all good little Lutherans, are we?

BTW, if Hawking is right, a black hole does produce random radiation, and in doing so it does over time shrivel away to nothing. So perhaps there is hope .

If you consider the black hole and the mountains of work it has caused to be written, how productive, in the sense of us actually learning something and discovering new insights, has that whole endeavor been when compared to other undertakings in the field of history?

Gerard (some late evening musings) Stafleu

Peter Kirby

Gerard, your question begs the question, insights into what? What are we trying to get insight on in the humanities in general, and BC&H in particular?

I have tried to do something along the lines of escaping the black hole with my new 'mystery religions' thread. Let's see how that experiment pans out.

--
Peter Kirby

gstafleu

Well, it was intended to be a bit of an open ended question. Apparently I succeeded. How about the following: the humanities try to develop insights into the hows and whys of human development, both on the cultural and the individual levels.

What I was after was more a personal impression. Has the black hole activity at least yielded some worthwhile results commensurate to the amount of energy invested? If the black hole energy had been devoted to other historical pursuits, would we now be further ahead with these hows and whys? In other words, has the black hole eaten up valuable resources without giving back much in return? All this is purely subjective of course, I'd think it would be interesting to see what answers people who are familiar both with the black hole and wider pursuits come up with.

Gerard Stafleu

No Robots

Nope.

Peter Kirby

It's been said that Christian studies has taken up into itself much of the research results of the rest of the humanities and social sciences, without giving much back in terms of general hypotheses about humanity and historical development. And this is certainly true. Christian studies is viewed as an end in itself solely, almost never as a platform to some other study.

This definitely adds to the `black hole' feeling.

--
Peter Kirby

No Robots

Constantin Brunner provides a Christocentric social science. He calls it the doctrine of the inspired few and the common folk (Die Lehre von den Geistigen und vom Volke). According to Brunner, the dialectic between these two types of people serves as the foundation for all human phenomena. This dialectical idealism is Christocentric in that Christ is understood as the greatest exemplar of the inspired few. Brunner's doctrine provides an extremely powerful mechanism for understanding human phenomena. It is in effect the complete scientific operationalization of Christ's work.

Clivedurdle

I wouldn't go there! (Article seems to be public domain) [No it's not - mod]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...t-horizon.html

Toto

It is not that hard to escape the black hole - you just have to truly not care about whether Jesus existed or not. You have to take the stance of an anthropologist from Mars who can look at Christianity as an interesting case study of human organization. And you need to be able to look at Christians and post-Christian believers in the Historical Jesus sympathetically without buying into their need to believe in Jesus, and also be sympathetic to people who think that Jesus must be a mythic symbol of the gnostic inner search, not to mention anti-Christians who are still working through the harm that their religious upbringing caused them and the society around them.

But this might only be possible in a post-Christian or non-Christian environment.

<insert some sort of smilie to indicate that the above is half serious and half ironic>

Peter Kirby

Interesting stuff, Toto, but I meant something even simpler: can we stop studying Christianity for a second and look at the wider ancient world?

--
Peter Kirby