stephan huller

Judaism is a self-contained religious system cut off from the rest of antiquity (and modernity). If there was such a thing as ritualized castration in Christianity - which I believe there is - it would have been justified exclusively through references to concepts in the Torah and to a lesser extent the Prophets and Writings.

The pagans can engage in ritual bestiality. It's not going to have an impact on Judaism or a Jewish messianic offshoot.

While there is little in the way of a historical framework the boogeyman 'Marcion' appears everywhere in the writings of the second and third century Church Fathers. We know something about their practices, beliefs and interpretations. I can't recall a single original detail about Marcion in Eusebius that doesn't appear somewhere else before Church History.

I suspect that Eusebius may have had a hand in shaping or softening certain details about the Church Fathers and Josephus. But it is impossible to argue that Eusebius acted like a second creator of the canon. The simplest refutation of this idea is that he can't rescue the reputation of his beloved Origen. If he had magic powers to completely establish things ex nihilo - why do Epiphanius and others ignore his efforts to redeem Origen?

Origen was one of the 'good guys.' He was ffriendly with Hippolytus for God's sake. If Eusebius couldn't save Origen his powers were limited, limited enough that he couldn't 'invent' Christianity and unlikely that he could completely invent or forge the writings of Irenaeus. He might have reshaped them or 'polished them' - at least theoretically - but even then how do we prove such a thing. You're better off avoid pinning the deed on a specific historical individual and prove that such a reshaping effort ever occurred.

To the minds of most people there isn't even so much as a crime let alone an accused.

But when people say things like this the rest of the world thinks "kookoo!" You can't just claim people don't exist because it contradicts your thesis. The writings exist. We have the manuscript evidence. Why would a fourth century conspiracy want to claim that Jesus, the prophet Elijah, John, Paul, and the rest of the disciples were all eunuchs? It doesn't sound like an orthodox position to me.

The most likely explanation is that Tertullian (or some third century Latin editor) translated an early text with these crazy beliefs.

I do think that the discovery of an interest in ritual castration is a double edged sword. It certainly shakes the certainty that the pious have about the inherited orthodoxy being representative of Christian belief in the earliest period (or at least I hope it does). But it also challenges those who try and claim there was no such a thing as Christianity merely because the beliefs of Eusebius resemble those of Irenaeus and other third century Church Fathers.

There is an effort on the part of everyone in the field to simplify Christianity in order to make sweeping generalizations about its constitution. I don't think that we should pretend that things were really that simple. I think Christianity had a very early relationship with the Imperial government - certainly from the late second century. Christians sat on, in or around the Imperial court in disproportionate numbers from the time of Commodus to Diocletian.

The strange thing is that it seems very likely that most or at least many of these Christians were court eunuchs.

Why? How? I think it has something to do with a eunuch tradition in Alexandria which the Imperial government was trying to control. Why? How? I have my theories but I will address them in my next post. The bottom line however is that there is something there in that historical darkness. It's just hard to make out exactly what it is.

Clivedurdle

I disagree.

This is what is wanted to be believed - it is part of the chosen people myth, but it is impossible. Interactions continually occur and this immediately causes coevolution. This area has been trampled over by so many empires and is on major trading routes it is impossible for judaism to have stayed self contained. The maccabean civil war is precisely an example that it was not self contained.

The fact that there were significant Jewish communities all over the area means we can legitimately talk of judaisms. Just because one lot has allegedly asserted this is not so. I was brought up in Golders Green and within walking distance were a full set of different synagogues.

Israel is fascinating with different Jewish groups with very different traditions from all over the place.

Anyone remember some jets taking a large group to Israel?

Alexandria is precisely the sort of place that some fascinating marinades would develop.

Oh, and pagan is a xian propaganda term demeaning the true gods.

Clivedurdle

There is possibly something important to discuss about eunuchs and power.

Any leader has a real problem. They need excellent confidential advisers who are not interested in assassinating the king and taking power for themselves and especially not siring the queen.

We can forget that us humans are highly experienced at breeding. It might have been worked out thousands of years ago that yes there is a huge attrition rate, but the result is intelligent teachable men who are critically obedient and trustworthy.

We were doing similar stuff until very recently to get castrati.

I propose that an ascetic sect started producing highly educated docile people who quickly would do well in the kings' courts.

A religion already based on reading and argument would be a sound base.

These Christians - actually meaning annointed - were an elect group of eunuchs with a vague set of beliefs. Over time this group got watered down and became a religion, but interestingly kept a huge amount of imperial bureaucratic hierarchical ways, including most importantly, looking after the books. Eco - Name of the Rose.

Clivedurdle

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c...tract/74/4/902

charles

I think even in the story about Maccabean war the Jews who went along with the Greeks might be an exaggeration on the part of the Jewish authors. We only have the one side of the narrative. The Jews may have been trying to make the Greeks look like awful people to justify the revolt.

I think Stephen's point is that even if the Jews were influenced by Greeks they would still have to justify how ever they were influenced through references from their Law. It is a strange way of thinking but you can see it on the internet today. I think Muslims do the same thing. There has to be a reference in the Koran.

I don't think he's saying they're better or that he believes that they're better. It's just a different way of thinking. A different culture.

stephan huller

Clive,

That is a very interesting sounding paper. I will have to read it.

Just a quick note about Judaism and its relation to paganism. Charles is on the right path but let me try to explain it in a different way.

Whoever wrote the Torah (Ezra?) was certainly influenced by external traditions. We see Persian references in the description of Pardes (Paradise). There are Babylonian creation myths so no one can deny that the religion of Moses was influenced by external religion and scientific understandings.

The cornerstone of the tradition however is that knowledge has to be filtered through the divine sensor of the Torah. It represents the proper context for the understanding of all things.

To this end if the Jews saw for instance the devotees of the Syrian goddess - the galli - they couldn't just run off an imitate their religion no matter how attractive it might have been. There is an utterly predictable process that we know that these people MUST have carried through in their own heads or collectively and that is 'justifying' an innovations to the status quo with what we might call arguments from scripture.

There can be no doubt about this. Legal arguments come naturally to the Jews. It's probably why there are so many Jewish lawyers in the world. Everything has to have a legal basis. Certain Christian writers carried on this practice but the Gentiles never had the need for legal arguments to run every aspect of their lives so there is this chasm which always has and always will separate people of the two cultures.

I can remember thinking about cheating on my then girlfriend and even though I am not a religious Jew this 'rationale' emerges - 'is it really adultery?' we aren't married 'what is adultery?' isn't it just a law saying that I can't appropriate the property of another man? etc.

As stupid as this example appears to be I use it to demonstrate what I like to call the mathematical approach to the universe that I don't think Gentiles fully understand. It isn't that Jews think they are better than everyone else, they have just been brought up in this 'awareness' of what they like to think is 'the real fabric of the universe' - not the physicality that you can touch with your hands - but the ineffable, intangible 'stuff' that binds all things together.

You can argue that the Jewish beliefs are all nonsense. I am not here to defend them. But they are what they are and in a sense it is what separates civilized people from primitive man.

I sometimes deal with people who were brought over to America from less developed countries and you can actually see how 'not being aware of this invisible fabric to the universe' can get people into trouble.

I see an attractive girl. I get an erection. It turns out she is sixteen. I am twenty five. Parents find out. Police come to get me. I go to jail. Or - I need to go somewhere fast. I jump in a car without a driving license. I see stop sign. Heart tells me I have to drive fast. Police pull me over. I go to jail.

Most of us intuitively know that the world is governed by this 'invisible fabric' so we learn to curb our impulses. One can argue that laws are human inventions but - as I was reminded watching Morgan Freeman in Bonfire of the Vanities last night - they are also what make us decent. We typically underestimate the degree to which the long process by which were are 'initiated' through education develops us into civilized people.

Now it is improper to think of the person who comes from a country with no little or no education to govern his impulses as an 'animal.' But I know first hand that within those traditional societies the educated portion of the population views the rest of the mass of idiots in exactly the way we hear ancients speak of the illiterate masses.

If man is likened to someone walking on a tight rope - to borrow an image from the philosophers - and the ape is on one end, the ancients imagined God to be on the other. Man is walking in between going from one end to the other.

As such it must have fascinated people in the ancient world to see this religion emerge which presented a eunuch priesthood. I am not talking about Christianity right now but the galli of the Syrian goddess and Attis. On some level it must have been argued that this represented a 'technological advancement' of the human race - no longer male or female. Here is the superman.

What do I see as new about the Christian approach to this pre-existent Syrian and Asian concept? I think the Alexandrian Christian priesthood (if it can be acknowledged to have been castrated) would have been less rowdy and in your face. It would have taken on philosophical notions of Stoic apatheia as well as Platonic mystical interests which distinguishes it from their retarded Syrian cousins.

The Jewish interest in a divine order to the cosmos. A rational logic that governed all things and a utopian social message - i.e. that these eunuch priests represented nothing short of angelic messengers governing the world by a higher standard than the despotic rulers of the Roman Empire. This is why they were a threat. The Alexandrian order wasn't just saying we're another religious order. The implicit argument is that all previous forms of religion are imperfect representations and understanding of our revelation - not just Judaism and Jewish law but even Roman rule and Imperial law.

The argument must have been WE SHOULD BE GOVERNING THE WORLD - our Pope, our priests. We would make it a perfect kingdom of God or divine kingdom. That's why we refuse to mix our beliefs with the imperfect beliefs of dirty religions all around us. We are cathari - or in Aramaic we are like Zacchaeans (a term found in Epiphanius).

Now our question is how do we prove that this Egyptian castrated priesthood ever existed? It is no small difficulty. The references cited at the beginning of this article are as close as we get to any reports about the original understanding. Unfortunately most of our arguments have to develop 'theoretically' - in others arguing what people must have believed.

I can only say that there can be no doubt that the Marcionites represent the missing link here. The Marcionites developed an understanding of the ritual of baptism which was preceded by either ritual castration or some other form of 'celibacy' which isn't exact clear in Tertullian's report.

I can also say that since Marcionitism always remains closer in spirit to tradition Jewish interpretation (i.e. it always makes rational arguments as opposed to the emphasis on 'faith' and 'belief' in a set of 'pronouncements' coming from authority which is what we see in the orthodox tradition since the very beginning) we can I believe construct a framework for how this argument must have been carried out.

As I noted before I come from a Jewish mystical tradition where if you reach the highest rung (the equivalent of the place in Scientology where you meet Xenu - lol) you see in ancient kabbala Jacob staring down at you from the top of the heavenly ladder.

Jacob wrestled with an angel. The angel pulled Jacob's 'thigh' which is clearly and unmistakably a symbol of castration. Jacob is transformed into an angel and takes the angel's name 'Israel' (the angel was originally called Sariel in the oldest Palestinian interpretations). This name has a direct relationship with Chrestos the name the Marcionites gave to Jesus.

This interest in Jacob becoming Israel must always have been central to the religion as people are self-centered and anyone claiming to be 'Israel' would naturally be drawn to the story that explains the name.

I can only offer one more explanation which references my interest in Agrippa. In the oldest reports of the rabbinic tradition we learn that Jews original understood that only the ten utterances (the ten commandments) came from God. The rest of the six hundred and three laws were understood to have been written on the authority of Moses.

The Samaritans retain this understanding saying that God's finger literally wrote out the ten utterances with fire on Sinai. The idea repeatedly appears in the writings of Marqe (Mark). The same emphasis shows up in the gospel of Mark where Mark has Jesus argue against the Torah's definition of divorce saying in effect that Moses wrote this on his own authority - i.e. it didn't come from God.

The rabbinic tradition also acknowledges that they had to bury this original belief because heretical Christians were using it to disprove Judaism.

In any event one specific spin off of this argument emerges with regards to Agrippa (in some manuscripts 'Aquila' which is Latin for 'eagle' and might well represent the same historical person filtered through a symbol of Roman authority) arguing that circumcision can't be legally binding because it doesn't appear in the ten utterances. This must have been the argument that Apostle used to argue against circumcision too.

While it is never said in Jewish sources what the heretical Christian position argued in place of this 'circumcision' introduced only on Moses authority, the answer must clearly come from what happened to Jacob. The argument must have been that what Moses introduced was only a shadow of the perfection which was to come. This is the argument of the Apostle (2 Corinthians chapter 3 especially). I demonstrate in my book the Real Messiah how Agrippa's thoughts were the basis for this interpretation.

There is much more but oh so little time ...

popgoestheweasel

Hey, this is all very interesting and I sure you have your reasons for saying all this but this particular paragraph:

seems highly imaginative and unsupportable. I can't believe you have any evidence to support these claims. I think this seems like you are engaging in myth-making.

stephan huller

I will explain everything later. It is all based on a historical perspective. Whether or not you agree with it is up to you.

Just another thought that someone else brought up in their post. The business about circumcision and uncircumcision in the Apostolikon. There really is a great difference and range in meaning depending on whether you think that the original text was written in Aramaic or Greek.

In the Peshitta the distinction between 'circumcision' and 'uncircumcision' is gzwrtk - ܓܙܘܪܬܟ and ´wrlwt` - ܥܘܪܠܘܬܐ. In Aramaic the roots are pretty much the same גזר 'to cut' and ערל 'foreskin.' But who the question of course is who is the Apostle's audience. Are they Jews? Then clearly גזר means 'to circumcize.' But what was written in the original Aramaic? This is the million dollar question.

If we imagine that Origen and the Alexandrian tradition got their idea that the NT speaks 'allegorically' or at least with a deliberate poetic allusions and double entendres it is not difficult to see that the Apostle originally stopped at the vaguest possible meaning - i.e. the distinction between those 'cut' גזר and those who still had their 'fruit' ערל.

Depending on the audience and the specific terminology used the Apostle might even have been understood by the Marcionites to be distinguishing between those who underwent castration and those who retained their 'fruit.'

I don't want to get into all the various possible terms that could have been used here but here is a sampling:

GZR can mean 'to castrate'

http://books.google.com/books?id=wrg...strate&f=false

or the original word may well have been the root GZ from which 'eunuch' is derived

http://books.google.com/books?id=wrg...strate&f=false

As Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "Note that although most roots in Hebrew seem to be tri-radical, many of them were originally bi-radical, cf. the relation between גזז √ g-z-z ‘shear’, גזמ √ g-z-m ‘prune’ and גזר√ g-z-r ‘cut’"

mountainman

We might begin with Buddhism and its adoption by Ashoka.
This combination was the foundation of a great influence in (more recent) antiquity.

A second wave of this is evidence with the letters and the books of Apollonius of Tyana and his influence on some Roman Emperors.

A third wave (first Persian then in the Roman Empire) by Manichaenism
and a fourth wave with the rise of Plotinus and his imperial influence.

The cleanup set of waves arrived with Constantine.
But the ascetics fled to Nag Hammadi and the deserts of Syria (with Arius).
The new testament was all about partial asceticism.
It made many allowances to the eightfold path of full asceticism:

The Eightfold Path of "Partial Asceticism" in the New testament

(1) "Noble Silence": fundamental to all other ancient (and modern) ascetic practices is passed over in silence.
(2) Eating meat: not the promotion of vegetarian practices (See Porphyry)
(3) Drinking Wine: not the avoidance of alcohol.
(4) Hanging out in the Pub after work: Consorting (where did Jesus often kiss Mary?)
(5) Fasting not necessary! Direct link to God through "Prayer" alone. (dispensation of miracle cures)
(6) Healing practices: fasting not required for doctor! "Prayer power"!
(7) Monastic Customs: The Politics of Tax policy statements - eg: "Render unto Caesar that tax which is the Boss' already ..."
(8) Nonviolence: "Then would my servants fight" --- is both conditioned and disclaimed.

The preservation of literature about the ascetic path is extremely important Clive. One may read "The Hymn of the Pearl" as an ascetic allegory inserted into the mouth of Jesus' sold slave Thomas, who point blank refused to travel to India and to try and teach the Indians the concept of truth.

This tract was "buried" by the Gnostic author of the "Acts of Thomas" within the narrative.
These Gnostics were very clever people, but I do not for one minute suspect they were "christian".
Because they mercilessly and relentlessly satired the twelve apostolic boneheads.

mountainman

We also have the great irony of Momigliano who below relegates Barnes' opinion and in concluding his review cites the work of another author in this matter of the assessment of the sorts of historical facts we should be expected to know about this possibly historical Tertullian .... the opening and conclusion are only shown below


My bolding.