outhouse

I think the diversity of Judaism before the temple fell is understudied.

It also explains the wide diversity of early Christianity


I think most of it boil's down to the socioeconomics within Judaism. Israelite born and raised rich Jews would have had open arms to Hellenism, wanting the best for their families and the education it could bring. We could really call this the ruling class. It was either love it, or lose it all.

Everyone else, it would have been severe oppression and a great burden filling their hearts with resentment and hatred.

And one group left us with very little writing.

stephan huller

After the temple is even more of a mystery. Why didn't the Jews continue to sacrifice? How didn't the Jews continue to sacrifice? This is the most basic question no one I think can even attempt an answer for.

aa5874

Not even in court trials is it ever expected for any juror to be absolutely certain.

Certainty is not the real objective just to present REASONABLE arguments for or against any proposal.

What is the evidence from antiquity that can be used to reasonably argue for the Jesus cult in the 1st century and before c 70 CE??

That is all.

Where is the evidence for the early Jesus cult?

It is so easy, so basic.

There is no evidence at all to present a reasonable agument for an early Jesus cult.

No author of the Canon even claimed they met Jesus or personally interacted with him.

No non-apologetic writer ever claimed they met Jesus or personally interacted with him.

Those who wrote about the origin of Jesus claimed he was the product of a Ghost and a Virgin.

There is no evidence from antiquity to support the argument that there was a character called Jesus who was the leader of a Jesus cult.

Even in the Canon, it is claimed that it was the Holy Ghost that caused the start of the Jesus cult.

See Acts 2. The disciples had to first wait for Jesus to resurrect, then to commission the disciples, then Ascend to the Father and still wait for the Promised Holy Ghost in Jerusalem.

There is no evidence.

The NT Canon is a compilation of Myth Fables and cannot support an argument for early Jesus cult of Christians before c 62 CE.

Toto

I thought most people agreed that Hellenistic Judaism flourished until after Constantine, when Christians put restrictions on Jewish conversions and Jewish expression. (Wikipedia seems to think that Hellenistic Judaism started to decline in the second century for unknown reasons, but its sources appear to be the Book of Acts and Catholic encyclopedias.)

Consider the Jewish synagogue unearthed at Dura Europos, dated to 244 CE, which would indicate some sort of large, active community. The synagogue was mistaken at first for a Greek Temple because of the wall paintings in Hellenistic style. (I have seen some of these in a local museum, and I noticed that the priest Aaron was depicted with his name spelled out in Greek letters.)

stephan huller

But I don't mean 'Jews that spoke Greek.' I mean specifically Jews that embraced Hellenistic culture. Yes the Dura Europos synagogue is important. The Alexandrian Jewish culture at Boucolis gets destroyed in the Trajanic revolt. But I think that there was this widespread Hellenistic (= embracing Hellenistic culture) until the bar Kochba revolt. Sure there may have been pockets here and there after that time. But the codifying of the Mishnah and the derogatory use of the term Epikoros as a catch all for 'Hellenizing' Jews:

Hellenizing Jews are cited in the Mishnah (= Elisha ben Abuyah) but look at what happens to his beloved student Meir (formerly Mayesha). The tides had already turned for the Jews living in the Roman Empire. It is curious that the Dura Synagogue lived on. But then it follows a general pattern of deviant forms (= Marcionitism, Mandaeanism) going to that region.

aa5874

It is imperative that on BC&H that the difference between "certainty" and an "argument" be clearly understood.

For example, when the Prosecution in a court claims the "defendant is guilty" or the Defense claims the "defendant is Not guilty" it is not really a matter of certainty but merely the argument which the Prosecution or Defense will attempt to maintain based on the evidence available during the trial.

The very same thing applies to any claim made about the Jesus cult in antiquity.

Some attempt to argue that there was a Jesus cult of Christians in the 1st century but do so without a shred of corroborative evidence.

Effectively, it can be argued that any claims there was a Jesus cult before c 62 CE is extremely weak because we have virtually zero non-apologetic references to Jesus of Nazareth and zero references to Jesus of Nazareth as a leader of a cult.

Based on the Canon itself we would expect that Jesus of Nazareth would have had a massive impact on Jewish society and traditions.

1. In the Gospels it appears that Jesus of Nazareth had thousands of people in Galilee following him on a daily basis.

2. In Acts, it appears that thousands of Jews converted to the teachings of the Jesus cult.

3. In the Canon, it is claimed Paul, a Jew, publicly preached Jesus crucified and resurrected to the Gentile world all over the Empire.

4. In the Gospels, it is implied Jesus correctly Predicted the Fall of the Temple.

5. In "Church History" 2.16 it is claimed a writer called Mark had already written his gospel during the time of Philo and preached it in Alexandria.

There is simple no corroboration and no sign at all of the Jesus cult before c 62 CE in any historical sources.

How is it possible for non-apologetics to write about Mad Men like Jesus the Son of Ananus and Carabbas but forget to write about Jesus of Nazareth who predicted the Fall of the Jewish Temple since c 30 CE?

The argument for an early Jesus cult is not supported at all by non-Apologetics.

outhouse

Gods house was destroyed, his dinner table and BBQ was trashed.


Judaism was lucky to survive after the temple for one, but took a serious hit after the revolt leaving itself to be reborn under new dogma,and political oppression.

Duvduv

Stephan, seeing as how Jews had already lived from North Africa to Persia by 70 CE and thereafter, how do you explain the nature of the coercive power that allegedly forced nearly all Jews in that wide expanse to follow the so-called "new dogma"??

Did they use weapons? Did they control the government? What are the sources of power that enabled these disparate communities to fall under the control of the new rabbinical dogma that did not exist previously? Was it done by magic?

stephan huller

I don't know. This is something which no one can be exactly certain of. What I am relatively certain of is that there were at least a few discernible stages to the transformation of Judaism into what we might call proto-Mishnaic orthodoxy in the early to middle second century. The first step is to recognize that there were of course a plurality of sects in the late Second Commonwealth period. Something caused the revolt. I am not so sure that Josephus's narrative really assists us in understanding the actual causes because - it would seem - Josephus was a lead player in, what was an unsuccessful revolt against the Empire. Also the role of the synergoi is not very well understood in reshaping whatever the Aramaic hypomnema from the real Josephus (cf. Shaye Cohen's work on this topic).

So we don't know why there was a Jewish revolt. Then we don't really have a good idea what the Roman policy was toward the Jewish religion post 70 CE. We know that there was a 'Jew tax,' we know that they enacted laws regarding property holdings (from rabbinic sources). We know that they maintained the status quo with respect to the Herodian rule in at least some parts of Palestine. But no one knows with any certainty how Jerusalem was governed in the period immediately following the revolt, how the religion was allowed to reorganize itself (the Jamnia myth is a legend) etc.

All that is clear from the earliest rabbinic sources is that Judaism seems to have gone 'underground' in some sense. The 'benediction concerning heretics' indicates to me at least that Christianity was viewed as a threat. When these benedictions arose is a hotly debated question although it is clear that they are in the rabbinic sources themselves connected with Shmuel the small who lived in the last decades of the first century.

If the sources are allowed to stand, it would appear that Christianity was already quite influential in the late first century. Indeed this when coupled with other statements in the rabbinic literature, could be read as indicating that the religion was being used to justify certain legal rulings in Palestine (cf. tractate Shabbat 116). Beyond this all that can be said for certain is that the adoption of the birkat ha minim was quite complex with Shmuel and others adopting and then recanting the benediction (under Imperial persuasion?)

All that is clear to me again is that the evidence seems to suggest that there was an influential form of Christianity (perhaps what we might want to call 'proto-Christianity') which was used to justify certain Imperial legal decrees (i.e. the division of property, the ban on circumcision, the end of sacrifices?). This doesn't mean that Christianity was formed by the state in any way only that the state may have favored pre-existing sectarian groups which justified the abolition the traditional interpretation of the 613 commandments of Moses or the 'shrinking' of obligations to the ten commandments inscribed by the finger of God with fire on Sinai especially for proselytes.

Whatever the case may be, the only other sign that I get from the period is that a highly Hellenized form of Judaism seems to have been very influential in Palestine in the period between the destruction of the temple and the bar Kochba revolt. The examples of Justus of Tiberias (the secretary of Agrippa who was also an authority on both scripture and Plato and their synthesis), Elisha ben Abuyah (who even though a 'heretic' was influential enough to have his halakhah preserved in the Mishnah), Aquila (who originally held a position that circumcision was unnecessary because it wasn't included in the ten commandments) and the repeated testimony of seemingly endless 'debates' between a form of Judaism supported by the 'state' and the 'good' Sages quoted in the rabbinic literature as 'saints' over the halakhic questions in the period (70 - 135 CE).

I think the bar Kochba revolt was the twilight of this 'other' form of Hellenized Judaism. Everything else moves toward a faux neo-conservative Judaism which pretends to be the traditions of the ancients but is really also Imperial co-opted religion under a different regime (i.e. the Antonine Emperors). Nevertheless we know the 'other' Judaism lived on and carried on as a minority position (to some decree co-opted by the new orthodoxy) through the person of Meir who was Abuyah's beloved disciple and protege.

stephan huller

An example of the practical interest of the state in proto-Christianity. If we acknowledge that Jews and Samaritans were divided over the question of where the sanctuary of God should be placed (i.e. Gerizim vs. Jerusalem), the Dosithean position would naturally suit a political reorganization of post-destruction Judea insofar as the followers of Dositheus recognized no traditional holy place as holy any longer (cf. the discussion between Jesus and the Dosithean woman Foti in John chapter 4). Since (a) the Dosithean position pre-dated the revolt, (b) the revolt resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple and (c) the Roman state, like all governments preferred order over chaos, it would have been natural to favor a sectarian group which adopted or had similar views to the Dosithean rejection of holy places (or at least their acceptance that all traditional holy places were now profane in the era of disfavor). It's like governments in times of economic downturn encourage 'belt tightening' even though the state normally wants people to spend. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Look at the rabbinic reports of 'those who say we can't eat meat or drink wine' because of the destruction of the temple. It is not surprising these views show up in proto-Christianity in the period (= Marcionitism). People generally underestimate how radical all solutions to the destruction must have seemed to people who survived from the twilight of the Second Commonwealth period. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Someone was preventing the Jews from naturally reasserting Jerusalem altar as the true sanctuary of God. I don't think it was the Jews themselves (look at the birkat in the context of the Amidah). It was the Roman state and its puppet government(s) in the period. The gospel was likely encouraged in this period also because it (a) offered some degree of political stability and (b) accepted and embraced the end of Jerusalem as the will of God, something foretold by the prophets, and a sign of God's displeasure with the Jewish people. This seems to have been the Roman policy in the period. Jerusalem was not to become the center of Jewish life as it had been before 70 CE.