Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 7:58 am
I know we have many imaginative people here who think Christianity could be about all sorts of things. But is there any evidence for Christianity being anything but an ascetic religion or at least a structure developed to support monasticism? If so, what sort of models are there from actual historical testimonies besides this 'take money from regular folks to support a (celibate) ecclesiastical body?' What evidence do you find? Point to actual attested Christian sources ...
I presume you are referring to the development of what became Christianity ie. 100-1230
AD/CE to 500
AD/CE.
I think it is a syncretic religion arising out of a merging of theologies in the post Second Temple period. Of course Christianity is mostly Jewish but it has elements of other religions and also aspects reflect Roman imperialism, even if including elements of antagonism to it.
The main Jewish elements include, of course, the books of Isaiah Daniel, and others, but I think Judaic aspects of Christianity are likely to reflect the deliberations that led to the Tosefta and Mishna and other perhaps less clear deliberations around them.
- eg. Merkabah/Merkavah mysticism, a school of early Jewish mysticism that started c. 100 BC/BCE that produced exegetical expositions of the prophetic visions of God in the heavens and stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces and the Throne of God that included a divine retinue of angels, hosts, and heavenly creatures surrounding God (it centered on visions such as those found in Ezekiel 1, and the hekhalot [visits to the heavenly"palace/s"] literature arose out of Merkabah/Merkavah mysticism eg. Maaseh Merkabah).
Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai (d. c. 80 CE) and later, Rabbi Akiva (d. 135) were deeply involved in merkabah exegesis. Rabbi Akiva and his contemporary Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha are most often the protagonists in later merkabah ascent literature.
Beyond the early- or even pre- rabbinic community, Jewish apocalyptists also engaged in visionary exegeses concerning the divine realm and the divine creatures which are remarkably similar to the rabbinic material. A small number of texts unearthed at Qumran indicate that the Dead Sea community also engaged in merkabah exegesis. Jewish mystical texts also evidence a deep affinity with the rabbinic merkabah homilies.
There is a significant dispute among historians over whether these ascent and unitive themes were the result of some foreign, usually Gnostic, influence, or a natural progression of religious dynamics within rabbinic Judaism.
Some or all of the Johannine literature has been said to be an an early example of Merkabah mysticism.
Daniel Boyarin and Alan Segal regard Paul the Apostle's accounts of his conversion experience and his ascent to the heavens as the earliest first person accounts of a Merkabah mystic in Jewish or Christian literature.
The philosophies of Philo probably influenced many.
I think there are aspects of the Hermetic literature in Christianity eg. the focus on Father and Son.
There are probably other lost texts that contributed to the development of early Christianity.
The assertions of Jörg Rüpke that there was a lot of competing propositional and philosophical, theological early literature in the second century and that a lot of that literature preceded definitive communities is interesting eg.
The formation of a community based on a common text was, however, no simple process. It rested on long-term reading in common, and the formation of common modes of interpretation shaped by that reading.
19 It began with the basic elements, texts themselves in their material form, and their mediation within a communicative process.
In the scriptographic cultures of antiquity, where the only means of duplication was copying by hand, each book was a unique entity. There is no doubt that there was commercial production and distribution of books from the early Imperial Age onward, relying on dictation to a number of slaves writing simultaneously, and that there was a book trade. The percentage of texts disseminated in this way may, however, have been negligible, perhaps confined to a few fashionable authors.
20 More vital was dissemination by means of dedications, and subsequently by the dedicatees themselves, and within circles of acquaintanceship,
21 potentially making available the entire libraries of participants in such circles.
Any collector, publisher, or mere writer of letters would not be interested purely in personal recipients. He would more likely be aiming at an anonymous public, or at delivery aloud to a particular circle of recipients. In the early second century AD, the so-called second and third Epistles of John point to the problems involved in controlling the recitation space, perhaps by forbidding visitors to read aloud. While the second epistle portrays the good group, which effectively communicates its faith, the third, formally addressed to only a single member, Gaius, describes the bad group:
- I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.28
Finally there were intellectual contests, debates between professionals who lived by public polemic. Antagonists both male and female
29 confronted one another in Rome, Athens, Antioch, and Alexandria, the Empire’s chief intellectual centers,
30 and the subjects of their debates included religious knowledge as a sub-section of philosophical discourse. Rhodon, a pupil of Tatian, illustrates this when, in works subsequently cited by Eusebius, he gives an exhaustive account of a discussion with Apelles.
31 Galen compared the arguments of Moses and Plato as if they were known to all present.
32 The new texts that recorded these intense debates were perhaps a pot pourri of earlier materials.
Rüpke, Jörg.
Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (pp. 327-332). Princeton University Press.
Prior to that passage Rüpke had written -
... often sheer rivalry and an uncomfortable convergence of opinion that led [heresiographical authors] to manufacture the profound disagreements described in these texts.17 Some processes of systematic rhetorical exclusion often had social consequences. This was the case with the entourage of the visionary Montanus in Asia Minor in the second century AD, characterized by the label “Montanist” and then treated accordingly in terms of exclusions and polemics.18
Besides Marcion, Rüpke comments on Hippolytus and the Shepherd of Hermas as key players and texts (and it's interesting he notes that, as with Clement and a few other names, there were two Hippolytuses, though he doesn't specify: he's probably referring to Hippolytus of Thebes, fl. 7th-8th century).