Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ken Olson wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 5:12 pm Yes, Stuart said Asia Minor. I just wanted to clarify that you meant not Syria when you said that. I know many think some of the Pauline epistles and the Johannine literature (Revelation almost certainly) were written in Asia Minor. Matthew and Luke are frequently placed in Antioch (but it would seem difficult to imagine their independence if they both were).

But sorry to distract from the topic of Zebedee/Sabazios.

Ken,

I would not be willing to stand on any specific location, only general. But if you put a gun to my head, I would speculate (key word "speculate", not fact, not certain) that the Marcionite version of Luke was written somewhere in Asia. Matthew was probably written in Bithynia, as this seems to have been the Petrine stronghold. The first version of John was also likely from Asia. Asia in particular was a battle ground between the Pauline and Johannine sects. Mark I suspect was written in Patras, a Greek city with heavy Roman/Latin influence, on the west coast of Greece, but still within reach of Corinth. The Pauline letter addresses suggest Greece and Asia Minor. 1 Peter somewhere ii that region, Bithynia.

Again this is a digression, and not something I'll vigorously defend here. A lot of it is my best guess, nothing more.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 1:17 pm

davidmartin wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 1:14 pm I don't make too much of a Zeus connection, its all earliest church politics here
Sons of Thunder - original
Zebedee - a round-about corruption into Greek then back to Hebrew for the same thing

Can you expand on the highlighted part? I am not following.

I was thinking:
Thunder got interpetted as Sabaioz when translating to Greek then someone later translated Sabaioz on to Zebedee

davidmartin wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:24 amI was thinking:
Thunder got interpetted as Sabaioz when translating to Greek then someone later translated Sabaioz on to Zebedee

I was thinking in exactly the opposite direction: the original idea being "sons of Zeus," for which "sons of thunder" would be a descriptive substitute. "Sons of Sabazios" would be one culturally specific way of saying "sons of Zeus."

Zeus? Even the Gnostics never went that far off the rails! Judaism already has an excellent father figure
I can't imagine any non-Semitic religion creeping into Christianity that early, i think it was pure Jewish and the gospels are the most Jewish bit of the NT.

davidmartin wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:09 pm Zeus? Even the Gnostics never went that far off the rails! Judaism already has an excellent father figure
I can't imagine any non-Semitic religion creeping into Christianity that early, i think it was pure Jewish and the gospels are the most Jewish bit of the NT.

You and Joseph D. L. need to get together over coffee sometime and hash out the idea of syncretism. He is all about it, and for you the very notion seems "off the rails."

It has been pointed out in this thread that an epitome of Valerius Maximus accused the Jews of infecting Rome with rites for Jupiter Sabazius; Jupiter = Zeus, so there is that. Now, I am not sure how much authority to grant either an outsider like Maximus or an epitome of his work, but the idea is there to be considered.

I would add that 1 Maccabees 1.43 states of Antiochus Epiphanes that "many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath." Meanwhile, 2 Maccabees 6.2 states that part of this religion involved converting the temple in Jerusalem into a shrine for Zeus. Put these two data together and you have "many" From Israel adopting the worship of Zeus. Another idea to be considered.

But I am actually pursuing this line of inquiry for purposes which do not even require such a robust equivalence, in the mind of at least some Jews, between Zeus/Sabazios and Yahweh/God. I am following up on a suggestion by Dennis R. MacDonald that the Zebedee brothers, James and John, were nicknamed the "sons of thunder" (= sons of Zeus) metaphorically, after Castor and Pollux, not because (as is often supposed) of some personality trait they shared (Luke 9.54), but rather because one of them, like Pollux, was never supposed to die according to some (John 21.23), while the other, like Castor, was definitely mortal because he had already been slain (Acts 12.2). It is an interesting hypothesis, and I am testing it as best I can; in the meantime, I am also interested in just how prevalent, if at all, Jewish worship of Zeus might have been, because if it existed it would obviously be of no small importance to the matter at hand.

davidmartin wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:09 pm Zeus? Even the Gnostics never went that far off the rails! Judaism already has an excellent father figure
I can't imagine any non-Semitic religion creeping into Christianity that early, i think it was pure Jewish and the gospels are the most Jewish bit of the NT.

Are you serious? The second century bc Epistle of Aristeas outright calls YHWH Zeus. And if you take Acts of the Apostles as an authority, there was already a concentrated effort to conflate the Greeco-Roman Zeus/Jupiter with the Christian view of God.

Gospels the most Jewish? You need to be more specific. Mark and Luke are definitely not as Jewish as Matthew and John.

Actually make an effort next time.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:50 pm

You and Joseph D. L. need to get together over coffee sometime and hash out the idea of syncretism. He is all about it, and for you the very notion seems "off the rails."

Please Ben. You give me too much credit. lol

Joseph D. L. wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:52 pmThe second century bc Epistle of Aristeas outright calls YHWH Zeus.

Good one. Here it is:

You and Joseph D. L. need to get together over coffee sometime and hash out the idea of syncretism. He is all about it, and for you the very notion seems "off the rails."

It depends which direction the syncretism is!
I could accept a Jewish view of God being put onto Zeus's name maybe, but with all the attributes and so on coming from the Jewish side, and no doubt this happened somewhere/time and by Christians too

There's even that funny syncretism preserved by.. (Rhufinus i think) that mentions an appeal to a temple to Hera
"Mistress Pege, the great Sun has sent me to make the announcement to you, and at the same time to serve you in your giving birth—as he produces blameless offspring with you, who are becoming mother of the first of all ranks of being, bride of the single divinity with three names. And the child born without seed is called the Beginning and the End: the beginning of salvation, and the end of destruction"
"The females say to the males, disparaging the matter, Pege is she who was loved; for it was not Hera, was it? She espoused a carpenter.' And the males say, 'She has rightly been called Pege, we admit. But her name is Myria; for she bears in her womb, as in the sea, a vessel conveying a myriad. And if she is also Pege, let it be understood thus: This stream of water sends forth a perennial stream of spirit; it contains but a single fish, taken with the hook of divinity, and with its own flesh sustaining the whole world, while it dwells there as though in the sea. You have well said, "She has a carpenter"—but not a carpenter whom she bears from a marriage-bed. For this carpenter who is born, the child of the chief carpenter, framed by his most sagacious skill the triple-constructed celestial roof, and established by his word this dwelling with its triple habitations"

This is syncretism going to and not from the greco/roman pantheon

What i'm doubting is that the original, first Christians were anything to do with worshipping Zeus with the syncretism going the other way. Especially not Zeus, that men sacrificed chickens thinking he'd make their phallus grow longer

Also remember the bit from 2 Maccabees that the Samaritans named their temple or holy place - Zeus Xenios hospitable because the people are hospitable. It's easy to write this off as some 'forced' adaptation. But there seems to be a lot of hospitality around Gerizim in the Pentateuch. Melchizedek the priest of Salem is identified by Eupolemos as 'getting the party started' and then Abraham reciprocates when he returns as the leader of the three anashim. The god of Gerizim was a xenos according to Philo's exegesis of Genesis 18.