dog-on

I am not referencing the 'Constantine Created Christianity' theory with this question.


Just trying to put this to bed, if possible.

What do you believe is the best argument against the possibility that Christianity was primarily a first/second century Roman created religion with no actual Jewish roots, other than the use of the LXX?

Thanks.

DCHindley

I suppose you could subdivide that into two answers:

Jesus parties in the agricultural areas and associated villages and towns (Galilee, Judaea): I do not think that the authors of the NT gospels were Jews by birth on account of their numerous allusions to Jewish ignorance of their own anointed savior, and that the consequence of that unbelief would be that faithful gentiles will ultimately receive the promises made to Abraham instead of his physical descendants (i.e., the Jews themselves). That being said, the authors of the NT gospels certainly do seem to know their Lxx pretty well, suggesting that they had some sort of close association with Judaism in the past. It didn't appear to have gone well, though. Something pretty serious would need to occur to separate these two groups - Jews by descent and faithful gentiles. I have proposed they were a kind of hangers-on to a messianic Jesus movement, maybe even putting all their eggs in the basket of a just earthly messianic kingdom, which of course didn't materialize and any hopes of which were crushed by the revolt of 66-70 CE. That revolt, though, also involved several attempts at ethnic cleansing by both Jews and Greeks, so you can imagine these "'tweeners" got a double whammy, but it must have been bitterest to have come from folks who they had considered to be their Jewish friends.

Jesus parties in metropolitan areas (Greek cities, Roman colonies, Egyptian nomes):

This is the Paul side. Here I think we were dealing with gentiles who were slaves or retainer/clients of well to do Jewish households (probably Herodian princes and princesses), and those gentiles who attended synagogue for a variety of reasons, who had contact with members of these house churches also attending synagogue. Social networks like these were immensely important to everyone, from patrons who needed to find capable people to get their pet projects done to clients looking for commissioned work (artisans, scribes, lower-level freehold and slave administrators and manager types), and while Judaism was generally looked down upon by Greeks, not all were totally against it, and some admired certain social and ethical aspects of it. Personally, I seriously doubt this kind of movement was associated with the Jesus movement at all at first. Only later, after the gentile associates of the Judaean/Galilean Jesus movement above split from Judaism proper and reinterpreted the messianism into a kind of savior cultus, and the war of 66-70 made close association with Jews a little dicier and less fruitful for many, a Jewish based savior cultus may have looked good as an alternative. Recognizing them as fellow travelers, members of the now much-evolved Jesus movement "hijacked" the Paul movement.

DCH

gentleexit

In the rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark proposes that Christianity remained a dominantly Jewish movement for a long time, growing within the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora which sought accommodation with its surroundings. While his other assertions about Christianity are an embarrassing mix of polemic and apology, this is grounded in research on the growth of Mormonism and the Moonies.

• Convert friends: the Jesus movement spreads out from Palestine to the cities of the east. Who do the evangelists stay with? Who will welcome us? Who will listen? Their fellows, of course. Fellow Jews, who hear their message … accustomed to receiving teachers from Jerusalem
• Convert to the familiar: Unlike their neighbors, diaspora Jews could understand the Christian message. It was drawn from their culture, would have been too alien for a pure Greek. The new testament is the book of Mormon of its time - building on an existing tradition (the bible in Greek, the Septuagint), resonant only for its followers.
• Convert the worldly: The diaspora were the emancipated Jews of their time, no longer accepted as Jews, and not truly assimilated Gentiles either. They were lost and open, prime for an accommodated Judaism.

The new testament really speaks to the second point. The gospels go through enormous efforts to ground their Christ in the Septuagint, which is the lore of the diaspora. If you were trying to convert Romans, you wouldn't make these books. You would do as you see Constantine do later in his Oration to the Assembly of Saints - draw in Virgil, draw in the Sibyl.

In sum, best argument is treat the gospels as advocacy. Who was the audience? What audience would they resonate with? The diaspora.

The next big question is when did Christianity grow beyond the diaspora in large numbers. Did this happen before Constantine?

Requia

Constantine was responding to large numbers to my understanding. A quick Google shows the Christian numbers at around 10% circa 300 AD when Constantine converted, not the majority, but far from insignificant. More importantly, the growth rate was around 4% a year.

Can't say how accurate those numbers are, the author of the paper says that they are consistent with the records, but that the records were very scarce.

Link below for anyone who wants to check the guys sources, it should be noted he uses the bible as his source for the earliest years.

http://books.google.com/books?id=IgL...sult#PPA296,M1 *

* mod note: [reference to The Early Christian World (or via: amazon.co.uk) on google books p 296]

gentleexit

Or non existent. The logic for all ten-percenters is ...
- I don't like Constantine so I don't want to attribute any great importance to him. He didn't choose the Church. It was forced on him by weight of numbers
- what number is weighty enough? Oh 10%.

This "logic" is also followed by Rodney Stark.

He claims to be a social scientist and that you can follow method to fill in the blanks of history and archeology when it comes to Christian growth.

And he does follow method and modern parallels when he argues that Christianity grew and continued to grow within the Jewish diaspora - the Christians were the mormons of their time.

The reason his book breaks down as he leaves the diaspora is that no cult in modern times has ever made a leap beyond its own kind. Picture Christians trying to convert Hindus.

His science can't get the Christians to 10% of the population as a whole and so he tries apology and polemic (Pagans were horrible people and Christians were kindly and fertile). And it's trite.

Ten percent is a wish, a "must be" if Constantine is not to matter. But it has no legs. Not that I've read.

Didymus

Perhaps these were the "god-fearers" that Stark mentions - Gentile converts to Judaism. Like most converts, they would have known their new faith better than those who were born to it, so their knowledge of the Septuagint would not come as a surprise.

By "faithful gentiles," do you mean those who had taken on conventional Jewish practices, or god-fearers who moved to the "next level" and come to believe in the messiah Jesus? When their numbers became great, either sort would have been greeted with natural suspicions of insincerity and faddism. Like Madonna, they would have alarmed traditional Jews.

A little too cynical? Seems to me the break began before 70 (assuming the consensus view of Paul's dates is correct). Regardless, it would have been greatly exacerbated by the destruction of the Temple by, sure enough, gentiles.

As I recall, Paul did use the term "Jews" with regard his diaspora congregations, and made the distinction between them and "Greeks," but could he have been using the term "Jews" as an honorific? Paul obviously wanted his theology to be thought of as Jewish (and therefore high-minded and ancient); to call his gentile congregants "Jews" may have been given and received as a compliment.

This is not to say that there weren't some Jews in those congregations, but I suspect very few. People in the diaspora cling to the homeland traditions even more tenaciously than the stay-at-homes. V.S. Naipaul offers some excellent insights on that subject.

Ddms

Sheshbazzar

I believe the "Christians" (not originally known by that name) arose out of the gentile "ger toshav" who had always existed on the fringe of Judaism, yet operated under a different, and more lenient set of rules than proselytes (full converts).
The ger toshav were well acquainted with all of the Jewish Laws, and did, with some restrictions, participate in the observances of The Jewish Feasts and Sabbaths, and "serve" The God of The Jews, honoring His Temple.
Although some consider "ger toshav" to be no more than a transitional stage to a full conversion to Judaism, many happily lived out their lives without ever fully converting.
In the Diaspora, these would have been those "Gentiles" present within the various synagogues (proselytes were considered "Jews")
They would have been a prime audience for a Messiah ("christos" LXX) that promised to "save" the Gentiles, without them ever having to place themselves fully "under The Law".
I believe that these Gentiles with LXX in hand, had been slowly developing their own "gentile" interpretations of The Scriptures for generations, and it only took the arrival of the right political environment for it to blossom into a full-blown Messianic (christos) religion in opposition to, and rebellion against The Jewish Temple form of religion, it was also attractive to the many sects of disaffected Jews.
And "Paul" became the mouthpiece of a quite complex and developed soterology that seemed to have appeared almost overnight.

Requia

[QUOTE=gentleexit;5804184]Do you know of a competing figure?

dog-on

Hmmm, not much argument against a Roman origin, so far.

Maybe too general a question. Try this.

What, besides the use of the Jewish Scriptures, are the similarities between Christianity and Judaism?

What are the main differences?

vid

1. No John the Baptist in LXX. Why would completely gentile religion pick up one random guy and associate with him?

2. What about slowly vanishing sects of christianity, that are strongly obeying jewish laws? Such as mentioned in Paul letters (where they seem to be important sect), or later "Ebionites" (who seem to be much less successful than more gentile forms of christianity).