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On Early Christianity
- Thread starter Sundance
- Start date
Given our texts and traditions, as well as the quality of what passes for evidence, is not our decision to view the messianic claims concerning Jesus as being dubious if not wholly baseless at least understandable?
Sort of like saying Christianity is flourishing now. Sure, millions still practice it, but it is overall in decline and everyone can feel and know it.
Yes. Excellent way to illustrate my point. Thanks.
@Mauricius Modestus
The previous responses have already provided sound and convincing explanations for the appeal of Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world (i.e. relative egalitarianism of the Christians versus Roman hierachalism, radical social values, poor relief and care for the sick during the great plagues etc.)
One element missing thus far - in terms of the early widespread conversions in key urban centres throughout the Empire from Thessalonica to Ephesus and Alexandria (which gave the new faith its base from which to grow in the following centuries) - is the role played by the "Theosebeis" or God-Fearing Gentiles.
This had been quite a burgeoning movement in the Roman Empire and consisted of Greek-speaking Gentiles who were deeply attracted to the God of Israel, the Hebrew Bible and to the ethical values of the Torah yet did not seek to become actual proselytes. They didn't want to bind themselves to the full observance of the mitzvot. For males - in particular - there was significant reservation about undergoing the rite of circumcision (due to a a strong social stigma against it in classical culture, arising from the fact that many of the gymnasiums mandated customary nudity and Greeks didn't like looking at the uncircumcised penises, for aesthetic reasons).
To varying degrees of association with Jewish practice, God-Fearers increasingly attached themselves to synagogues throughout the diaspora by the first century whilst God-sympathisers began reading parts of the Septuagint (the Tanakh translated into Greek) or at least entertained Hellenised Jewish concepts. They represented fertile 'recruitment' ground for the early Christian movement and a number of scholars believe that many of the first generation converts were in fact God-Fearers or God-sympathisers, rather than outright pagans:
God-fearer - Wikipedia
(continued....)
The previous responses have already provided sound and convincing explanations for the appeal of Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world (i.e. relative egalitarianism of the Christians versus Roman hierachalism, radical social values, poor relief and care for the sick during the great plagues etc.)
One element missing thus far - in terms of the early widespread conversions in key urban centres throughout the Empire from Thessalonica to Ephesus and Alexandria (which gave the new faith its base from which to grow in the following centuries) - is the role played by the "Theosebeis" or God-Fearing Gentiles.
This had been quite a burgeoning movement in the Roman Empire and consisted of Greek-speaking Gentiles who were deeply attracted to the God of Israel, the Hebrew Bible and to the ethical values of the Torah yet did not seek to become actual proselytes. They didn't want to bind themselves to the full observance of the mitzvot. For males - in particular - there was significant reservation about undergoing the rite of circumcision (due to a a strong social stigma against it in classical culture, arising from the fact that many of the gymnasiums mandated customary nudity and Greeks didn't like looking at the uncircumcised penises, for aesthetic reasons).
To varying degrees of association with Jewish practice, God-Fearers increasingly attached themselves to synagogues throughout the diaspora by the first century whilst God-sympathisers began reading parts of the Septuagint (the Tanakh translated into Greek) or at least entertained Hellenised Jewish concepts. They represented fertile 'recruitment' ground for the early Christian movement and a number of scholars believe that many of the first generation converts were in fact God-Fearers or God-sympathisers, rather than outright pagans:
God-fearer - Wikipedia
God-fearers (Greek: φοβούμενοι τὸν Θεόν, phoboumenoi ton Theon)[1] or God-worshippers (Greek: θεοσεβεῖς, Theosebeis)[1] were a numerous class of Gentile sympathizers to Hellenistic Judaism that existed in the Greco-Roman world,[2][3][4][5] which observed certain Jewish religious rites and traditions without becoming full converts to Judaism.[2][3][6][7][8] The concept has precedents in the proselytes of the Hebrew Bible.
Judaising Gentiles and God-fearers are considered by modern scholars to be of significant importance to the growth of early Christianity;[27][28] they represented a group of Gentiles who shared religious ideas and practices with Jews, to one degree or another.[6][8] However, the God-fearers were only "partial" converts, engaged in certain Jewish rites and traditions without taking a step further to actual conversion to Judaism, which would have required full adherence to the 613 Mitzvot (including various prohibitions such as kashrut, circumcision, Shabbat observance etc.) that were generally unattractive to would-be Gentile (largely Greek) converts.[6][8] The rite of circumcision was especially unappealing and execrable in Classical civilization[28][29][30] because it was the custom to spend an hour a day or so exercising nude in the gymnasium and in Roman baths, therefore Jewish men did not want to be seen in public deprived of their foreskins.[29][30] Hellenistic and Roman culture both found circumcision to be cruel and repulsive.[29][30]
The Apostle Paul in his letters fiercely criticized the Judaizers that demanded circumcision for Gentile converts,[31] and opposed them;[28][32][33][34] he stressed instead that faith in Christ constituted a New Covenant with God,[34] a covenant which essentially provides the justification and salvation for Gentiles from the harsh edicts of the Mosaic Law, a New Covenant that didn't require circumcision[28][32][33][34] (see also Justification by faith, Pauline passages supporting antinomianism, Abrogation of Old Covenant laws). Lydia of Thyatira, who became Paul's first convert in Europe, is described as "a worshipper of God" (Acts 16:14); the Roman soldier Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch are also considered by modern scholars as God-fearers.[27][35]
Judaising Gentiles and God-fearers are considered by modern scholars to be of significant importance to the growth of early Christianity;[27][28] they represented a group of Gentiles who shared religious ideas and practices with Jews, to one degree or another.[6][8] However, the God-fearers were only "partial" converts, engaged in certain Jewish rites and traditions without taking a step further to actual conversion to Judaism, which would have required full adherence to the 613 Mitzvot (including various prohibitions such as kashrut, circumcision, Shabbat observance etc.) that were generally unattractive to would-be Gentile (largely Greek) converts.[6][8] The rite of circumcision was especially unappealing and execrable in Classical civilization[28][29][30] because it was the custom to spend an hour a day or so exercising nude in the gymnasium and in Roman baths, therefore Jewish men did not want to be seen in public deprived of their foreskins.[29][30] Hellenistic and Roman culture both found circumcision to be cruel and repulsive.[29][30]
The Apostle Paul in his letters fiercely criticized the Judaizers that demanded circumcision for Gentile converts,[31] and opposed them;[28][32][33][34] he stressed instead that faith in Christ constituted a New Covenant with God,[34] a covenant which essentially provides the justification and salvation for Gentiles from the harsh edicts of the Mosaic Law, a New Covenant that didn't require circumcision[28][32][33][34] (see also Justification by faith, Pauline passages supporting antinomianism, Abrogation of Old Covenant laws). Lydia of Thyatira, who became Paul's first convert in Europe, is described as "a worshipper of God" (Acts 16:14); the Roman soldier Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch are also considered by modern scholars as God-fearers.[27][35]
(continued....)
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As the historian Tom Holland explains:
The equation is thus fairly simple for the early growth spurts (before late first century and second century outreach to 'pure' pagans entirely untouched by Judaism got into gear, with the likes of St. Justin Martyr): by the laws of supply and demand, there was a pressing 'demand' in the market of Graeco-Roman ideas for a socially radical (i.e. anti-elitist, anti-hierarchical, broadly egalitarian, welfarist) Hellenized-Jewish synthesis and the early Christians, like primitive venture capitalists (only of a Communist variety!), serviced that need to colossal success. They reaped the dividend.....
Most new religious movements don't have a base like that already prepared for them, so Christianity was real, real lucky. Right place, right time, right sales pitch. Bingo.
"...Among Greek intellectuals, the Jews had long been viewed as a nation of philosophers. Their presence in Alexandria, in the bustling streets that lay beyond the city’s library, rendered the story of how the Israelites had escaped Egypt – the Exodos, as it was called in Greek – a topic of particular fascination.
Moses was praised both for having forbidden the portrayal of gods in human form, and for having taught that there existed only a single deity. To scholars in the age of Augustus, he appeared a thinker fit for a rapidly globalising world. ‘For that which encompasses us all, including earth and sea – that which we call the heavens, the world and the essence of things – this one thing only is God.’72
That such an interpretation of Moses’ teachings owed more to the Stoics than to Torah did not alter a momentous truth: that the Jewish conception of the divine was indeed well suited to an age that had seen distances shrink and frontiers melt as never before. The God of Israel was a ‘great King over all the earth’.73 Author of the Covenant that bound him uniquely to the Jews, he was at the same time capable of promising love to ‘foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord’.74 Of these, in the great melting pot of the Roman Mediterranean, there were increasing numbers. Most, it was true, opted to lurk on the sidelines of the synagogue, and rest content there with a status not as Jews, but as theosebeis: ‘God-fearers’.
Men in particular shrank from taking the ultimate step. Admiration for Moses did not necessarily translate into a willingness to go under the knife. Many of the aspects of Jewish life that appeared most ridiculous to outsiders – circumcision, the ban on eating pork – were dismissed by admirers of Moses’ teaching as much later accretions, the work of ‘superstitious tyrants and priests’.75 Jews themselves naturally disagreed; and yet there was, in the widespread enthusiasm for their prophets and their scriptures, a hint of just how rapidly the worship of their god might come to spread, were the prescriptions of the Torah only to be rendered less demanding....
The love felt by the Jewish god for his chosen people – so unlike anything displayed by the heedless gods of Galatia – had long aroused in Gentiles emotions of envy as well as suspicion. Now, by touring cities across the entire span of the Roman world, Paul set himself to bringing them the news of a convulsive upheaval in the affairs of heaven and earth...
The appeal of such a sentiment to those already sympathetic to the teachings of Jewish scripture was evident.
Now, with his preaching that Jesus was the fulfilment of God’s plans for the world, long foretold by the prophets, Paul had achieved a similar feat. A single deft stroke, and the tension that had always been manifest within Jewish scripture, between the claims of the Jews upon the Lord of all the Earth and those of everyone else, between a God who favoured one people and a God who cared for all humanity, between Israel and the world, appeared resolved. To an age which – in the shadow first of Alexander’s empire, and then of Rome’s – had become habituated to yearnings of a universal order, Paul was preaching a deity who recognised no borders, no divisions.
Paul had not ceased to reckon himself a Jew; but.... it was trust in God, not a line of descent, that was to distinguish the children of Abraham. The Galatians had no less right to the title than the Jews. The malign powers that previously had kept them enslaved had been routed by Christ’s victory on the cross. The fabric of things was rent, a new order of time had come into existence, and all that previously had served to separate people was now, as a consequence, dissolved. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’20 Only the world turned upside down could ever have sanctioned such an unprecedented, such a revolutionary, announcement.
In the churches that Paul had laboured so hard to establish across the span of the Mediterranean, his was the understanding of God’s purpose that was destined to prevail. Never before had Jewish morality and Greek philosophy been fused to such momentous effect. That the law of the God of Israel might be read inscribed on the human heart, written there by his Spirit, was a notion that drew alike on the teachings of Pharisees and Stoics – and yet equally was foreign to them both.
Its impact was destined to render Paul’s letters – the correspondence of a vagrant, without position or reputation in the affairs of the world – the most influential, the most transformative, the most revolutionary ever written. Across the millennia, and in societies and continents unimagined by Paul himself, their impact would reverberate. His was a conception of law that would come to suffuse an entire civilisation..."
Tom Holland. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Kindle Locations 1595-1601). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
Many today fail to appreciate the extent to which Christianity, as a fledgling offshoot sect from within Second Temple Judaism, had a ready-made and highly receptive audience throughout the Roman Empire before it had even started evangelising, thanks to the existence of the God-Fearers and the more loose 'God-sympathisers' who had at least some interest in these exotic, new-fangled Jewish ideas from the east.Moses was praised both for having forbidden the portrayal of gods in human form, and for having taught that there existed only a single deity. To scholars in the age of Augustus, he appeared a thinker fit for a rapidly globalising world. ‘For that which encompasses us all, including earth and sea – that which we call the heavens, the world and the essence of things – this one thing only is God.’72
That such an interpretation of Moses’ teachings owed more to the Stoics than to Torah did not alter a momentous truth: that the Jewish conception of the divine was indeed well suited to an age that had seen distances shrink and frontiers melt as never before. The God of Israel was a ‘great King over all the earth’.73 Author of the Covenant that bound him uniquely to the Jews, he was at the same time capable of promising love to ‘foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord’.74 Of these, in the great melting pot of the Roman Mediterranean, there were increasing numbers. Most, it was true, opted to lurk on the sidelines of the synagogue, and rest content there with a status not as Jews, but as theosebeis: ‘God-fearers’.
Men in particular shrank from taking the ultimate step. Admiration for Moses did not necessarily translate into a willingness to go under the knife. Many of the aspects of Jewish life that appeared most ridiculous to outsiders – circumcision, the ban on eating pork – were dismissed by admirers of Moses’ teaching as much later accretions, the work of ‘superstitious tyrants and priests’.75 Jews themselves naturally disagreed; and yet there was, in the widespread enthusiasm for their prophets and their scriptures, a hint of just how rapidly the worship of their god might come to spread, were the prescriptions of the Torah only to be rendered less demanding....
The love felt by the Jewish god for his chosen people – so unlike anything displayed by the heedless gods of Galatia – had long aroused in Gentiles emotions of envy as well as suspicion. Now, by touring cities across the entire span of the Roman world, Paul set himself to bringing them the news of a convulsive upheaval in the affairs of heaven and earth...
The appeal of such a sentiment to those already sympathetic to the teachings of Jewish scripture was evident.
Now, with his preaching that Jesus was the fulfilment of God’s plans for the world, long foretold by the prophets, Paul had achieved a similar feat. A single deft stroke, and the tension that had always been manifest within Jewish scripture, between the claims of the Jews upon the Lord of all the Earth and those of everyone else, between a God who favoured one people and a God who cared for all humanity, between Israel and the world, appeared resolved. To an age which – in the shadow first of Alexander’s empire, and then of Rome’s – had become habituated to yearnings of a universal order, Paul was preaching a deity who recognised no borders, no divisions.
Paul had not ceased to reckon himself a Jew; but.... it was trust in God, not a line of descent, that was to distinguish the children of Abraham. The Galatians had no less right to the title than the Jews. The malign powers that previously had kept them enslaved had been routed by Christ’s victory on the cross. The fabric of things was rent, a new order of time had come into existence, and all that previously had served to separate people was now, as a consequence, dissolved. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’20 Only the world turned upside down could ever have sanctioned such an unprecedented, such a revolutionary, announcement.
In the churches that Paul had laboured so hard to establish across the span of the Mediterranean, his was the understanding of God’s purpose that was destined to prevail. Never before had Jewish morality and Greek philosophy been fused to such momentous effect. That the law of the God of Israel might be read inscribed on the human heart, written there by his Spirit, was a notion that drew alike on the teachings of Pharisees and Stoics – and yet equally was foreign to them both.
Its impact was destined to render Paul’s letters – the correspondence of a vagrant, without position or reputation in the affairs of the world – the most influential, the most transformative, the most revolutionary ever written. Across the millennia, and in societies and continents unimagined by Paul himself, their impact would reverberate. His was a conception of law that would come to suffuse an entire civilisation..."
Tom Holland. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Kindle Locations 1595-1601). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
The equation is thus fairly simple for the early growth spurts (before late first century and second century outreach to 'pure' pagans entirely untouched by Judaism got into gear, with the likes of St. Justin Martyr): by the laws of supply and demand, there was a pressing 'demand' in the market of Graeco-Roman ideas for a socially radical (i.e. anti-elitist, anti-hierarchical, broadly egalitarian, welfarist) Hellenized-Jewish synthesis and the early Christians, like primitive venture capitalists (only of a Communist variety!), serviced that need to colossal success. They reaped the dividend.....
Most new religious movements don't have a base like that already prepared for them, so Christianity was real, real lucky. Right place, right time, right sales pitch. Bingo.
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Jesus was Galilean. Jesus's people were Galilean. Kind of sort of Jews, not as politically Jewish as the Judeans. Early on Jesus went among the Galileans so maybe got a number of followers from people who weren't as strictly Jewish as the Judeans.
I suspect the story of a half-man half God would appeal to the likes of the Romans/Greeks. People whos culture accepted myths like Hercules.
Lay Jews, essentially.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Yeah, but Galilean rabbis had a reputation as charismatic miracle-workers, ala Honi the Circle Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa
There is a debate amongst scholars regarding the cultural homogeneity versus heterogeneity of Galilee in the 1st century CE. On the one hand, you have Professors John Dominic Crossan, Robert W. Funk, Marcus J. Borg and Burton Mack who argue for a Galilee that was rather Hellenized.
Undoubtedly, there was some ethnic prejudice towards the Galilean Jews on the part of the Judeans and this comes across in the gospel narratives themselves. The Talmud provides us with an illuminating anecdote in this respect, in which Yohanan ben Zakkai, a Pharisee of the first century, found himself assigned to a postion in Galilee for eighteen years, in which he was asked only two questions of Jewish law, causing him to cry out, "O Galilee, O Galilee, in the end you shall be filled with wrongdoers!"
However, a lot of this might be unfair slander from the more elitist Judeans. There is abundant archaelogical evidence attesting to the fact that Galilean Jews adhered to the purity laws. Stone vessels are common and mikvehs, for water purification after a woman has a period or a man has a seminal emission, have been discovered in in most Galilean sites, particularly around synagogues and even domestic dwellings.
For this reason, we have another and larger cohort of scholars - including E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994) and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (New York: Continuum, 1994) - who have stressed the strongly and strict Torah-observant frontier culture of Galilee. Gentiles were not a particularly big or influential demographic. It needs to be remembered that Galilee, unlike Judea, was not a Roman province - it was a client state with semi-autonomy from Rome under the Herodian Tetrarchs, effectively a Jewish monarch. Galilee’s population included some Gentiles, of course, but their numbers appear to have been negligible.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
That is actually a good question.
Personally I think one have to read between the lines and simply assume that what happened before somehow give credibility to Jesus. To explain it in more details. If you read Matthew, the way Jesus gets his first disciples is extremely vague and makes no sense at all:
Matthew 4:18-22
18 While Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon (also called Peter) and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, because they were fishermen.
19 "Follow me," he told them, "and I will make you fishers of people!"
20 So at once they left their nets and followed him.
21 Going on from there he saw two other brothers—James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee repairing their nets. When he called them,
22 they immediately left the boat and their father and followed him.
This is the first time he meets them and basically just say follow me, because I say so
Logically anyone would look at him and tell him to F.. off.So one has to assume that Jesus is already established as being special at this point, for it to make sense. Which he is if you go a bit further back in Matthew, where his special status is acknowledged by John the baptist.
Matthew 3:13-17
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.
14 But John tried to stop him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me?"
15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be this way for now, because this is the proper way for us to fulfill all righteousness." At this, he permitted him to be baptized.
16 When Jesus had been baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens opened up for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.
17 Then a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love. I am pleased with him!"
John the baptist is portrayed as a very important person, so having him say to Jesus that he ought to baptize him and not the other way, make Jesus special. Which is obviously followed up by God speaking well of him as well.
But neither of the disciples witness this, so it makes no sense why they would follow him, just because he say so. At least to me it only make sense if you read between the lines and just accept that Jesus is special, because the bible say so and everyone knows it.
Then you will have people doubt Jesus throughout the whole story, primarily the Pharisees and the lawmen, which Jesus clearly doesn't like.
But people keep seeing the miracles that Jesus perform in the name of God, so again you just sort of have to run with him already having been established as the king of Jews before hand.
And finally you have the resurrection:
Matthew 28:16-20
16 The eleven disciples went into Galilee to the hillside to which Jesus had directed them.
17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, though some had doubts.
18 Then Jesus came up and told them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore, as you go, disciple people in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. And remember, I am with you each and every day until the end of the age."
Again it doesn't really explain why, just that its the way it is, because Jesus say so.
Not sure, maybe Constantine the great simply got convinced that it was true or maybe it was seen as an opportunity to unite the roman empire under one rule and one God, but that is purely me guessing and is likely to be wrong
In fact, the latest archaeological evidence on Nazareth itself surfaced only three days ago:
New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus
New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus
Remarkable new archaeological discoveries in Israel are revealing important details about the religious and political environment in which Jesus is said to have grown up, and which are likely to have influenced his own religious and political outlook.
Detailed new research suggests that Nazareth, which according to Christian tradition is where Jesus grew up, was substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman.
The archaeological work, directed by a British archaeologist, Dr Ken Dark of the University of Reading, suggests that there was a very substantial difference between the religious values adhered to by Jews living in Nazareth and those living in a neighbouring town called Sepphoris.
Detailed examination of archaeological finds from Nazareth reveals that they only used ceramic and other artefacts regarded as ritually pure, while in neighbouring Sepphoris such religious rules appear to have been less strictly applied.
Furthermore, archaeological survey work, carried out on agricultural land between the two towns, has revealed that the ancient inhabitants of Nazareth seem to have kept very strictly to what appears to have been a religiously generated prohibition on the use of human excrement to fertilise fields; while their neighbours just four miles away in Sepphoris seem to have had no such ban.
It’s known that the people of Sepphoris, including much of its substantial Jewish population, led lives that were highly influenced by Greek and Roman culture. By contrast, the new evidence suggests very clearly that the people of Nazareth lived purely Jewish lives – and kept to all the major ritual laws.
The area seems to have been actively anti-Roman. In the year 4BC, an anti-Roman revolt is known to have broken out in the area – and rebels attacked the military arsenal and government treasury in the centre of nearby Sepphoris.
Indeed, the archaeological investigation revealed that in Nazareth itself, in the middle of the first century AD, anti-Roman rebels created a sizeable network of underground hiding places and tunnels underneath the town – big enough to shelter at least 100 people.
Religious Jews saw Roman and Greek influence as a serious and direct threat to their faith. Thus pious religiosity and anti-Roman politics often went together.
The new archaeological investigation – the largest ever carried out into Roman period Nazareth – has revealed that Jesus’s hometown is likely to have been considerably bigger than previously thought. It probably had a population of up to 1,000 (rather than just being a small-to-medium sized village of 100-500, as previously thought).
“Our new investigation has transformed archaeological knowledge of Roman Nazareth,” said Dr Dark, who has just published the results of his research in a new book Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland.
"By examining in detail all the archaeological evidence, gained from recent landscape-survey work and from a detailed re-analysis of previous excavations, we are now beginning to learn about the cultural and economic environment in which Jesus grew up."
The discovery is significant because different Jewish groups took very different attitudes to human excrement. Mainstream religious Judaism took the view that such excrement was unpleasant, rather than ritually impure. Their only prohibition on the subject was that people should make sure that human excrement should be at least four cubits (almost 2 metres) away when prayers were being recited.
However, an ultra-religious Jewish sect called the Essenes (and potentially, therefore, other extreme groups) did regard excrement as ritually/spiritually impure and unclean, as well as being merely physically unclean and unpleasant
The fact that the people of Nazareth seem to have had a strict prohibition on the use of human excrement as a crop fertiliser implies therefore that they too regarded it as ritually impure, rather than simply unpleasant.
It therefore suggests that they were, in some ways, either aligned with aspects of Essene thinking or with the thinking of another similarly hard-line religious movement within Judaism of the first century AD.
However, in other aspects of their material culture, the people of Nazareth were totally in line with other, more mainstream forms of pious Judaism.
The archaeologists have found numerous fragments of stone bowls and cups in and around Nazareth: a fact that strongly suggests a high degree of traditional religiosity in the town.
So it now looks like Jesus would have an ultra-ultra strict Jewish upbringing and a vociferously anti-Roman one too.Detailed new research suggests that Nazareth, which according to Christian tradition is where Jesus grew up, was substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman.
The archaeological work, directed by a British archaeologist, Dr Ken Dark of the University of Reading, suggests that there was a very substantial difference between the religious values adhered to by Jews living in Nazareth and those living in a neighbouring town called Sepphoris.
Detailed examination of archaeological finds from Nazareth reveals that they only used ceramic and other artefacts regarded as ritually pure, while in neighbouring Sepphoris such religious rules appear to have been less strictly applied.
Furthermore, archaeological survey work, carried out on agricultural land between the two towns, has revealed that the ancient inhabitants of Nazareth seem to have kept very strictly to what appears to have been a religiously generated prohibition on the use of human excrement to fertilise fields; while their neighbours just four miles away in Sepphoris seem to have had no such ban.
It’s known that the people of Sepphoris, including much of its substantial Jewish population, led lives that were highly influenced by Greek and Roman culture. By contrast, the new evidence suggests very clearly that the people of Nazareth lived purely Jewish lives – and kept to all the major ritual laws.
The area seems to have been actively anti-Roman. In the year 4BC, an anti-Roman revolt is known to have broken out in the area – and rebels attacked the military arsenal and government treasury in the centre of nearby Sepphoris.
Indeed, the archaeological investigation revealed that in Nazareth itself, in the middle of the first century AD, anti-Roman rebels created a sizeable network of underground hiding places and tunnels underneath the town – big enough to shelter at least 100 people.
Religious Jews saw Roman and Greek influence as a serious and direct threat to their faith. Thus pious religiosity and anti-Roman politics often went together.
The new archaeological investigation – the largest ever carried out into Roman period Nazareth – has revealed that Jesus’s hometown is likely to have been considerably bigger than previously thought. It probably had a population of up to 1,000 (rather than just being a small-to-medium sized village of 100-500, as previously thought).
“Our new investigation has transformed archaeological knowledge of Roman Nazareth,” said Dr Dark, who has just published the results of his research in a new book Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland.
"By examining in detail all the archaeological evidence, gained from recent landscape-survey work and from a detailed re-analysis of previous excavations, we are now beginning to learn about the cultural and economic environment in which Jesus grew up."
The discovery is significant because different Jewish groups took very different attitudes to human excrement. Mainstream religious Judaism took the view that such excrement was unpleasant, rather than ritually impure. Their only prohibition on the subject was that people should make sure that human excrement should be at least four cubits (almost 2 metres) away when prayers were being recited.
However, an ultra-religious Jewish sect called the Essenes (and potentially, therefore, other extreme groups) did regard excrement as ritually/spiritually impure and unclean, as well as being merely physically unclean and unpleasant
The fact that the people of Nazareth seem to have had a strict prohibition on the use of human excrement as a crop fertiliser implies therefore that they too regarded it as ritually impure, rather than simply unpleasant.
It therefore suggests that they were, in some ways, either aligned with aspects of Essene thinking or with the thinking of another similarly hard-line religious movement within Judaism of the first century AD.
However, in other aspects of their material culture, the people of Nazareth were totally in line with other, more mainstream forms of pious Judaism.
The archaeologists have found numerous fragments of stone bowls and cups in and around Nazareth: a fact that strongly suggests a high degree of traditional religiosity in the town.
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The article concludes (after discussing many other interesting archaeological findings):
Another version of the news story, this one out today:
People of Nazareth rejected Jesus but also turned away Roman influences | Daily Mail Online
Regardless, it must have been a fascinating place to have been brought up - literally like polar, siege-mentality communities within a couple of miles of one another, engaged in a kind of culture war, one being a community of very hardline traditionalists (Nazareth) and their Hellennized (in modern terminology) "liberal" neighbours across in Sepphoris.
The newly emerging picture of Roman-period Nazareth as a place of substantial religiosity does, however, resonate not only with the emergence of its most famous son, Jesus, but also with the fact that, in the mid-first or second century, it was chosen as the official residence of one of the high priests of the by-then-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, when all 24 of those Jewish religious leaders were driven into exile in Galilee.
Indeed, what are probably priestly tombs have been discovered by archaeologists in and around Nazareth. Remarkably, some of them were even equipped with extremely rare life-size glass versions of the goats’ horn musical instruments – the shofarot, or shofars, that had been used during religious services in the Temple in Jerusalem and which are still blown today during the two most important religious events of the Jewish calendar.
Significantly, after the fall of Jerusalem in AD70, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple there, the shofar came for a period to be seen, and blown, as an expression of mourning for the Temple’s destruction.
The archaeological investigation in Nazareth will help historians to better understand the ways in which Jesus’s hometown may have helped shape his religious outlook. The gospels of St Mark and St Luke suggest that his views were not popular there – and it may be that what seems to have been the ultra-strict nature of Nazareth’s religiosity had actually pushed Jesus towards a perspective that would perhaps have been more acceptable to less strictly religious Jews, such as many of those living in places like neighbouring Sepphoris.
Indeed, what are probably priestly tombs have been discovered by archaeologists in and around Nazareth. Remarkably, some of them were even equipped with extremely rare life-size glass versions of the goats’ horn musical instruments – the shofarot, or shofars, that had been used during religious services in the Temple in Jerusalem and which are still blown today during the two most important religious events of the Jewish calendar.
Significantly, after the fall of Jerusalem in AD70, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple there, the shofar came for a period to be seen, and blown, as an expression of mourning for the Temple’s destruction.
The archaeological investigation in Nazareth will help historians to better understand the ways in which Jesus’s hometown may have helped shape his religious outlook. The gospels of St Mark and St Luke suggest that his views were not popular there – and it may be that what seems to have been the ultra-strict nature of Nazareth’s religiosity had actually pushed Jesus towards a perspective that would perhaps have been more acceptable to less strictly religious Jews, such as many of those living in places like neighbouring Sepphoris.
Another version of the news story, this one out today:
People of Nazareth rejected Jesus but also turned away Roman influences | Daily Mail Online
Jesus's hometown of Nazareth that rejected him was home of hard-line Jews who also shunned Roman influence
The people of Nazareth may have forced Jesus out of town because of their intolerance to new ways of thinking and resistance to change, a new book suggests.
This was driven by a staunch adherence to Jewish law and is also the reason the city wholly rejected Roman culture and influence.
Nazareth is the biblical home of Jesus Christ and it is written in the Bible that he was expelled from the city due to his teachings.
However, academics studying the area now believe this was not a personal vendetta, but rather the result of a deeply-ingrained way of thinking among the locals.
Items found at the site of modern-day Nazareth indicate its ancient residents rejected all external culture, which included Roman objects, religion and language.
However, the neighbouring town of Sepphoris was the polar opposite, wholly accepting Romans and even siding with them in times of conflict.
- City of Nazareth was not receptive to any form of external Roman influence
- The town instead adhered to its traditional Jewish beliefs and customs
- This is in stark contrast to the city of Sepphoris just four miles away which wholly embraced Roman culture
The people of Nazareth may have forced Jesus out of town because of their intolerance to new ways of thinking and resistance to change, a new book suggests.
This was driven by a staunch adherence to Jewish law and is also the reason the city wholly rejected Roman culture and influence.
Nazareth is the biblical home of Jesus Christ and it is written in the Bible that he was expelled from the city due to his teachings.
However, academics studying the area now believe this was not a personal vendetta, but rather the result of a deeply-ingrained way of thinking among the locals.
Items found at the site of modern-day Nazareth indicate its ancient residents rejected all external culture, which included Roman objects, religion and language.
However, the neighbouring town of Sepphoris was the polar opposite, wholly accepting Romans and even siding with them in times of conflict.
Regardless, it must have been a fascinating place to have been brought up - literally like polar, siege-mentality communities within a couple of miles of one another, engaged in a kind of culture war, one being a community of very hardline traditionalists (Nazareth) and their Hellennized (in modern terminology) "liberal" neighbours across in Sepphoris.
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Jewish superstition caused God's name (Tetragrammaton YHWH) to be taught as too sacred to use.
Jesus taught otherwise ( hallowed be thy name YHWH ) and please see John 17:6; John 17:26
Especially when unfaithful Jews began mixing with the Greeks they mixed non-biblical with biblical.
The people wanted a political Messiah and when Jesus proved Not to be a political Messiah they gave up on him.
They wanted to be freed from Roman oppression right then and there and Jesus taught otherwise at Luke 19:11-15.
Regiomontanus
Ματαιοδοξία ματαιοδοξιών! Όλα είναι ματαιοδοξία.
It is growing quite rapidly in Africa and somewhat in S. America, but yes in Western counties there is a decline.
The rapid growth of Christianity in Africa | Catholic Star Herald
It's Pentecostal denominations that are mainly growing, displacing Catholicism and mainline Protestantism in Latin America, Africa and spreading to East Asia. This isn't a good sign, imo.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
How come Jesus always uses circumlocutions when he refers to God then? He never ONCE used the tetragramaton.
Eyes to See
Well-Known Member
This is not correct. There are extant fragments of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) dating back to as early as the 2nd Century C. E. and they have the tetragramaton (the four Hebrew consonants where God's name Jehovah was originally written in Hebrew.)
Jesus read from the Greek Septuagint at the synagogues. He would have pronounced the divine name while reading from it.
For example here:
“Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind, to send the crushed ones away free, 19 to preach Jehovah’s acceptable year.” With that he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were intently fixed on him. Then he began to say to them: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.”-Luke 4:18-21.
He was reading the text from Isaiah 61:1, 2. With proof that the Divine name was in use in the Greek Septuagint, Jesus would have pronounced the Divine name Jehovah while reading from the scroll. He would have have kept to Jewish tradition to keep his Father's name hidden. As God's son he did not adhere to scriptural and silly superstitions. Jesus said one of the reasons he came into the world was to make God's name known.
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Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
This is not correct. There are extant fragments of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) dating back to as early as the 2nd Century C. E. and they have the tetragramaton (the four Hebrew consonants where God's name Jehovah was originally written in Hebrew.)
Jesus read from the Greek Septuagint at the synagogues. He would have pronounced the divine name while reading from it.
For example here:
“Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind, to send the crushed ones away free, 19 to preach Jehovah’s acceptable year.” 20 With that he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were intently fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.”-Luke 4:18-21.
He was quoting the text from Isaiah 61:1, 2 where the tetragramaton was also used in the original text.
Lots of assertions, no evidence.
He would have used an Aramaic targum. Jews do not consider Greek a language appropriate for Torah reading.This is not correct. There are extant fragments of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) dating back to as early as the 2nd Century C. E. and they have the tetragramaton (the four Hebrew consonants where God's name Jehovah was originally written in Hebrew.)
Jesus read from the Greek Septuagint at the synagogues. He would have pronounced the divine name while reading from it.
For example here:
“Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind, to send the crushed ones away free, 19 to preach Jehovah’s acceptable year.” 20 With that he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were intently fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.”-Luke 4:18-21.
He was quoting the text from Isaiah 61:1, 2 where the tetragramaton was also used in the original text.