Toto

I used the word "claimed" because I don't have the time to look up the reference right now. It might even have been a previous article by Steve Mason.

The concept is that Christianity was the only religion defined by its beliefs. All other religions were defined by rituals and practices. But when Christianity established itself, Jews had to distinguish themselves from those upstarts because they didn't share those beliefs.

Clivedurdle

I have posted here about this huge change from one takes up the gods of the town you are in to religion defining yourself.

Judaism may be a back story by xians to give themselves legitimacy.

Might fire brigades and voluntary organisations be the real roots of xianity?

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=265803

mountainman

And also - paradoxically - with the fabrication of the new testament, the christians appear to have invented christianity itself - IMO. The fourth century was the age of invention. Not only do we have the invention of christian ecclesiatical historiography in Eusebius, and the invention of christian hagiography in Athanasius, but we have in the 4th century the appearance of the earliest codices of the manuscript tradition for the Greek NT

DCHindley

Steve Mason would be distinguishing between IOUDAIOS (Natives of Judea, members of the Jewish EQNOS, something pertaining to Jews) and IOUDAISMOS (The Jewish way of life as represented in their beliefs and practices Judaism, Jewish religion).

In the first case, when an author was referring to particulars of the worship or special customs of the Jews, he would have to somehow specify this in the sentence. What Mason is saying is that Christians latched onto the word IOUDAISMOS from 2 & 4 Maccabees, apparently a not very often used word, and started to used it extensively.

There is a movement going on for several years to emphasize that ancients of the 1st century CE didn't think of "religion" (a belief system) but of particulars of practice that distinguished someones beliefs. Its a "fine" difference between the two, maybe too fine, if you ask me. It may only be that Christians popularized that latter word because you could indicate all the practices of the Jews in one word rather than a sentence.

It is true that religio licita only shows up in the late 2nd or arly 3rd century. Josephus said (Antiquities 14.211-28) that Julius Caesar ruled that members of the Jewish ethnos could assemble in each town to practice their peculiar form of worship unmolested by the authorities, who might normally shut down assemblies like that as illegal voluntary associations. I think it is probably true, or Josephus' patrons (At first Vespasian, then Titus but by the time of Antiquities it would be Epaphroditus, an influental freedman of the Flavian household) wouldn't have tolerated him claiming a privilige for Jews that they did not in fact have.

DCH

mountainman

From Photius on Philostorgius on the Books of the Maccabees ...

EPITOME OF BOOK I

CHAP. 1.

Philostorgius says that he cannot tell who was the author of the two books which are commonly called those of the Maccabees. But he is especially loud in the praise of their unknown author, inasmuch as the events which he narrates in them are found to correspond exactly with the prophecies of Daniel: and also because of the skill which he shows in explaining how the evil deeds of men reduced the condition of the Jewish people to the lowest depths, just as afterwards it was the valour of other men that retrieved it again; when the Jews resuscitated the spirit in which they had met their enemies of old, and had seen their temple purged of foreign superstitions.

The Second Book of Maccabees, however, according to Philostorgius, would seem to be the work of a different writer from the First; and is a mere compendium of what Jason of Cyrene related at length in five books. It gives an account of the war carried on by Judas Maccabeus against Antiochus Epiphanes, and his son named Eupator.

But as to the Third Book of the Maccabees, Philostorgius utterly rejects it as monstrous, and as bearing no resemblance to the two former ones.

The Fourth Book he asserts to have been the work of Joseph, and to be regarded rather as an encomium upon Eleazar and his seven sons, the Maccabeans, than as a regular history of events.


CHAP. 2.

Though Philostorgius praises Eusebius Pamphilus as well on other grounds as on account of his Ecclesiastical History, yet he accuses him of erroneous opinions in matters relating to religion.

No Robots

Du hast Recht!

Clivedurdle

Ruin of Rome notes it to be a critical turning point, not too fine a point at all