Peter Kirby

Koy, did you have any comment on the argument that Horsley makes about the meaning of this specific passage, that the 'render' saying is not pro-Roman propaganda?

best,
PEter Kirby

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, in the "speculation" post I made right after it; namely that such a statement serves a dual purpose (beyond the "entrapment" angle that Horsley discussed or the theological considerations he raised) and is part and parcel to the notion of marginallizing the Roman occupation; of shifting focus from being under Roman oppression to an indictment of orthodoxy as part of the polemic I contend is rampant throughout the NT agenda of destroying Judaism.

In other words, I take it as part of a whole, rather than as an individual statement of (necessarily) theological "wisdom." I would argue that if this were the only statement the authors of the NT attribute to Jesus in regard to the Roman occupation, Horsley's argument might stand on its own, but in connection with all of the other instructions of loving one's enemies and turning the other cheek (because oppression equals god's blessing and not because such actions will result in the end of oppression; the supposed purpose of the OT Messiah as found in Danial and Isaiah) sheds a different light on the statement.

As I argued before, the OT Messiah would be the first one to say (if he spoke at all) that paying Roman taxes are no longer a concern for the annointed Jewish people, since his very presence would mean (again, according to OT prophecy) that all enemies of the Jewish people (i.e., all enemies of god's chosen) are about to be destroyed by him and the oppression they are under will soon end.

For a statement like "render" to be a purely theological issue, it would necessarily mean that Jesus could not have been the Messiah of the OT prophecies, since it contradicts the supposed purpose of the Messiah's presence and would, arguably, never have been uttered by either Daniel's Messiah or Isaiah's. That Messiah's primary mission (had he come at that point in history) would be the destruction of the Romans because they are oppressing god's chosen, thus it makes no theological sense for such a Messiah to instruct god's chosen to give to Caesar that which is his and give to god that which is god's. If the Messiah had come, then there would (soon) no longer be a Caesar to give anything to.

The question of paying taxes would be a moot issue.

Peter Kirby

I don't even know what you're talking about with statements about the interpretation suggested making the matter a "purely theological issue," as if theology and politics were separated in the ancient Mediterranean as they are in the twenty-first century West. In any case, we can agree that the Jesus of the New Testament doesn't quite match up with the messianic expectations of the Hebrew Bible, or apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature of the first century. That seems rather orthogonal to the point made by Horsley, i.e., that Mark's Jesus is not presented as having a pro-Roman agenda--and that is working with the passage that is most commonly cited for imperialistic sympathies (as was blithely done in the posts to which I responded). The interpretation of GMark as a manifesto of non-violent resistance is carried through by Ched Myers in Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus as a socio-literary commentary on the whole book. It's one of many books that I own on my to-read list.

best,
Peter Kirby

Koyaanisqatsi

They would be if the authors of the NT were Roman operatives, as I contend, intent on shifting the focus away from railing against the occupying force and instead focusing on an indictment of the Jewish religion in general as a destabilization tactic.

I wasn't "blithely" doing anything. I was focusing on the whole of the messages as evidence for pro-Roman, anti-Judaism propaganda. GMark, for example, starts out with at least three chapters devoted almost exclusively to rewriting orthodoxy; of changing that which God allegedly commanded the Jews to do in the OT. It's a direct assault on Judaism and the ruling Jewish authorities. Mark 7 is all about changing dietary laws; Mark 10 a revision of divorce; etc.

In GMatthew we have the extention of the Sermon on the Mount from Mark, where Jesus instructs his followers to rejoice in their suffering because it means they are blessed in god's eyes and the meek shall inherit the earth, etc.

I haven't read it either, but I don't see anything in GMark that would necessarily make it a "manifesto of non-violent resistance," unless that resistance is against the Sanhedrin and chief priests and all? The Romans as an occupying force in the region are barely even mentioned; a very strange thing indeed if Jesus really is the fulfillment of OT prophecy. All I see in GMark is a systematic assault on orthodoxy; an indictment of the Sanhedrin and the elders and the keepers of the laws of the Jewish god by a miraculous "healer" Rabbi who some claim is Elijah, to which he responds, "Elijah has already come;" that the religion the Jewish people have been adhering to has been corrupted and it never was meant to be what they had been told, etc.

It's a direct assault on both the tenets of the religion and the chief priests and keepers of that religion (i.e., the ruling authority, since Jews didn't accept Roman rulers as their gods).

Considering this was allegedly written at or around the time of the first Jewish War (a misnomer, since it was actually the Romans putting down a revolt), it makes perfect sense (if my contention is correct) that the beginning of the passion propaganda would be a direct assault on Judaism and the ruling Jewish authorities. Descension in the ranks at or around the time of sending in the troops to quell the uprisings. Destroy the religion and their minds will follow. Then ten years or so later (after the revolts have been put down), we have the teachings of Jesus shift to a love of being oppressed and a confirmation that Judaism as previously taught is all wrong.

In other words, the chronology of the propaganda and the manner in which it shifts is in perfect accord with my contention.

Peter Kirby

Koy, my initial response is (1) that the material you are reading as attempting to legitimate suppression of the masses could also be read as the masses trying to cope and reassure those being suppressed, and (2) that a splinter group of Judaism that quickly incorporated Gentiles and was ostracized by non-Jesus Jews could easily be anti-orthodoxy without also being pro-Roman. Perhaps when I have read a bit more, I can post some explorations on early Christian writings and the imperium.

best,
Peter Kirby

Koyaanisqatsi

You'll have to pardon me. I'm responding while intoxicated. Yes....I'm a sinner.

Agreed, but I would argue that such a dogma is not in keeping with the OT prophecies of "the Messiah" (if there is just one, which I don't think is clear depending on which OT prophet you read). I base this on Daniel and Isaiah, since they are the two primary OT prophets referenced in the NT as testimony to Jesus' divinity.

I would ask you to consider the following: once NT claims of divinity are ruled out, what is left and what is the purpose and what is the result? Once you rule out any divine presuppositions, you are left with several emerging cult stories that progressively lean toward not just acquiescence to the then current authorities, but downright instruction to love and accept oppression in general.

The "message" of the authors of the passion narratives, at least, are intent on imparting anti-orthodoxy; suspicion of the, until then, venerated Jewish elders, priests and Jewish lawmakers; acceptance of Jewish oppression by one's enemies; rejoicing in that oppression (since it results in god's blessing; something anathema to the OT Judaist dogma in which god strikes down all enemies of Judaism); and following a triune godhead, thus splitting up the fanaticism invoked by allegiance to a monotheist religion.

If one is pantheist, then one does not necessarily see any one god as the "One True God." There is a hierarchy and within a hierarchy there is room to manipulate; positing one god's powers against another. When there is only one god, however, there is no way to splinter that allegiance and therefore no way to manipulate one's beliefs in a favorable manner to the State. The Jews considered their one god to be not just the State, but the creator of the State, whereas the Romans claimed that among all of the gods out there that they believed in, Caesar was all powerful; i.e., a fragmentation of cognitive dissonant indoctrination. There were multiple gods, but one was primary due to fluctuating, human problems.

Caesars came and went; the Jewish god was eternal.

If one has multiple gods for various causes and attempts to unify them all under one higher god that is a man (and that man changes periodically), then you have tremendous fragmentation of belief. Very difficult to manipulate such fragmentation, if that is one's goal.

The lesson of the conquered Jews, therefore, is that a belief in just one central (and supreme) god--that is more powerful than any other implied "lesser" gods--is that the religious fervor can be more directly focused and the masses can be more directly controlled. There is only one god concept to deal with, so none of the more Romanesque problems of pantheistic allegiance apply.

This is, of course, assuming that one is dealing with a deliberate concoction, which, again, must be the case once one rules out actual divinity. Somebody, somewhere, came up with the Jesus mythology; either over time or directly.

If it were "organic" (i.e., the result of Essenes and Hellenistic Jews, etc.), then one would not expect such incredibly sloppy disregard for actual Jewish traditions and Jewish prophecy.

Agreed, as well. Again, as I pointed out earlier, the victors write the history and we have no idea what the actual Jesus mythology was; merely later interpolations. It could very well be that it all started with a simple Rabbi preaching radical new variations on Judaism that got perverted over the years into a whole new cult, but I would argue (ironically) that the rise of this new cult was so quick and so pervasive and so appealing that it must have been more the result of careful manipulation than an organic extension of theo-philosophical thought.

If this all came from the Essenes or the Mithra cults, then it just wouldn't have caught on (IMO). Think of the period and what was going on. There was an occupying force in the region that sought to incorporate (or digest, if you will) it's conquered citizens into the body politic. The Romans weren't just a peace-keeping force who had invaded and taken over the region in order to correct a corrupt government (like our propaganda tells us we are doing in Iraq); it was an enveloping force. If you were conquered by the Romans, then you were expected to become (eventually) Roman citizens. You were to behave and believe as the Romans did. You were to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

It was a process of intigrating cultures; of consuming them and augmenting them until the regions conquered became Roman.

But the Romans hadn't dealt with the Middle Eastern mentality; hadn't dealt with fanatical devotion to one "true" God that exists above all other gods; above all other man made gods. The Jews were the first to envision a singular god that existed above everything and was the creator of everything. They had no gods of war; no gods of harvets; no gods of love; etc. They had only one god and that god was a vengeful motherf***er; the Jews his "chosen" among all men.

That's a powerful theology, borne out of slavery and oppression. So how to turn that against one's enemies? Turn oppression and slavery into the desired effect from god. The Talmud had been around for at least three thousand years prior to the Roman occupation. Copies of it would be easily confuscated and interpretations of it easily coerced.

The Romans weren't stupid. They weren't just brute force monkeys; they understood what it meant to conquer and convert hundreds of other regions into Roman citizens. Almost everything about their socio-political experience has been co-opted by our own nation (as well as our ancestor's).

They would intelligently assess their enemies, especially if their enemies were those they had conquered and were receiving no end of trouble from. Remember, the war of 80 C.E. was allegedly to put down a Jewish uprising; an uprising against the Roman occupation and not having anything to do with a supposed Jewish Messiah among them. After all and again, had the Jewish Messiah been present, then there would have been no uprisings. The Jews would have been too intent on getting their spiritual houses in order as the Messiah flooded the city and murdered all non-annointed ones and enemies of god's chosen.

That means this particular Jewish revolt was building for some time without any knowledge of their Messiah's coming; a time that conveniently corresponds to the authorship of the NT dogma.

Indeed, ask yourself why the Jews would have struck out against the Romans in 80 C.E. if the Messiah of Daniel and/or Isaiah had come. Both prophets make it abundantly clear that the Messiah's presence marks the destruction of all god's chosen's enemies (including those within the Jewish synagogue).

Jews should have been getting their own shit together and not rising up against their oppressors; that was the job of the Messiah.

I would enjoy and appreciate your critical analysis, since this is, of course, only my speculation, based on a presupposition of my own. In short, a theory.

I know it's not fully documented or confirmed, but it is based on one central premise (as I stated before): if not "truth," then deliberate fraud.

Granted that bypasses emergence, but with good reason (I hope and I think ).

Koyaanisqatsi

I should addend a corrollary to that one basic premise (for reiterative and clarification purposes): the manner in which the authors got so many things wrong about the Jewish dogma, IMO, betrays that the NT "message" could not have been merely an organic extension of a reformist Jewish faction.

Yes, the Essenes had their "righteous one" who many claim is the foundation of the Jesus character (and we are all familiar with the Mithras similiarities), but that would only account for an extension of precisely what their Elijah would be like, and not about the obviously false co-opting of OT prophecies, forced to apply (and poorly at that) to the Jesus character.

Any study of OT prophecies reveals the almost haphazzard, slipshod manner in which they are forced to apply to Jesus and any Jewish theologian of the time (either orthodox or reformist or radical) would have known this and seen right through it (as, indeed, the majority did and still do). So, for me, the question hinges not on whether or not the Jesus "righteous one" character may have been forming in the theology of splinter Jewish groups, but how those groups (if they were the authors of the Jesus mythology) could have gotten their own prophecies so wrong as to force the application in the manner we see it being done in the passion narratives.

It looks (again, to me) far more like a non-Jewish attempt at restructuring the OT to fit a different agenda, rather than a theological extension of OT dogma. If any Jewish people at that point in time actually thought that their Messiah had come because they heard and seen tails of "miraculous" healings, they might consider this person to be a messenger of god, but unless he started systematically destroying the enemies of god's chosen people, how could they possibly consider him the messenger of god, as allegedly prophesied by Danial or Isaiah?

And, remember too, that it is Jesus who affirms the veracity of the Danial and Isaiah prophesies repeatedly as a litmus test for his own legitimacy (or rather, it is the authors of the passion narratives who have Jesus repeatedly referring to these prophets as a testimony to his own legitimacy). Indeed, in GMark he even rehashes the "end times" claims of Isaiah and Daniel, yet, inexplicably leaves out the part where it is allegedly his own presence that marks these end times cleansings! The presence on earth of the messiah of Daniel meant an end (violently) to oppression of the Jewish people; not an acceptance of such oppression that will end at some other time. If the messiah has come, then the bloodbath begins and the annointed Jewish people are delivered out of their oppression. That's basic Jewish Messiah Dogma 101.

In other, more succinct words, the NT authors have their messiah affirm the veracity of the OT prophets in order to legitimize the NT claims of messiah; yet even the most cursory analysis of Danial or Isaiah proves conclusively that Jesus could not have been the one they prophesied; a fatal flaw catch-22 .

And since the NT is supposed to be the fulfillment of Judaism, then only Jews would care about it, yet we have the GMark (supposedly the first of the PN) clearly not written by a Jew even remotely familiar with Jewish dogma. Why would a non-Jew write the story of the fulfillment of the Jewish covenant? And in such a way as to indict the venerated Jewish priests and rabbis and elders and such, while at the same time destroying the central premise of Judaism (i.e., monotheism) and contravening everything the OT prophecies state will happen once the messiah comes? It is almost the complete opposite (theologically speaking) of the OT dogma, if not its deliberate and calculated destruction and clearly not written by people that have even the most basic theological understanding of actual OT prophecy.

Again, it's my speculation and it is certainly possible (as I mentioned previously) that this was a sort of theological coup by some splinter faction of pantheistic, "Hellenized" Jews, or what have you, but, again, if that were the case, wouldn't one expect a much better understanding and application of Jewish dogma in this "new covenant" instead of almost the complete, systematic destruction of Judaism?

Reforming dietary, hygiene and marital laws is one thing (well, three actually ), but effectively assailing monotheism by presenting a messiah/god who instructs god's chosen to rejoice in their oppression is quite another, IMHO.

Metacrock

Meta: The reason I ignore this question, not to speak for other Christians, is because it really does stem from a misunderstanding of the nature of religious faith itself; and especially from a misunderstanding of the Christian concept of God.

Nowhere does the Bible say "we have our God and they have theirs." It speaks of the "true and living God" and of "false gods." But it never says that "the god of another faith is false." That's because what it calls "flase gods" are idols. It does not call the basic conception that other groups have of God as false, because it recognizes that God is bigger than any one human conception can understand, and that God is working in all cultures.

Read Acts 17 and Romans 2 and you will see this. It is not a matter of "their God vs ours" it is ony a matter of what the one true God that has to be and cannot be otherwise, really wants of us. That means that the comparision is between religious traditions and not between "different Gods."

In the Christian tradition, not so much the Bible per se but the great theologians, God is called 'taht which nothing greater than can be concieved." God is also called "on the order of Beint itself." God is not just a big guy with a beard and neat powers like Zeus, God is the basis of all reality. God is bigger than anything any human can understand; that's why the ancient Heberws were forbidden to make images of God!

So it is not a matter of competing characters of god, it's a matter of understanding which tradition best mediates the transformative power of belief.

B. H. Manners

I'm not to sure I can agree with what you said about "false gods" completely, Metacrock.

Sure, idols were thought of as "false gods" when they were worshiped as such. However, not all ancient cultures worshipped the idol per see as "the" god or goddess but thought of the idol as a representation of the god or goddess.

Metacrock

Meta: That's what i said. I'm saying that the Bible does not make it a contest between gods. It speaks of the false gods of the people with whom Israel contended, but it does not say that people of other faiths are wrong per se just because they are people of other faiths.

In fact Jews today do not believe that people of other faiths are going to hell. It's unfortunate that the chruch came to confusse the distinction between the religious tradition and the faith itself.

So what I'm saying is this; God is out there, and is beyond our understanding, and people of other faiths have their notions of God. They are not necessarily wrong. But what you have to look at is the nature of the tradition itself. Which one best mediates transformation?

For me that is Christianity because of Jesus was.So that's the real issue for me--not what's "wrong" with other faiths, but who Jesus actually was.

Paul implies that people of other faiths can be saved--but why take a half truth? If Jesus is the whole truth then take Jesus. But in Romans 2 he says "honr and glory and peace to anyone who is seeking the good, in this age and in the age to come" (that's a praphrase form memory). Then he says the moral law is written on the heart and that gentiles who do what is on the heart are following the law that is written on the heart. "When gentiles not born under the law do the things in the law they follow the moral law written on the heart." He goes on to say that their hearts "will condemn or perphas exuse them."