Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean

Podcast 7.7: 1 Enoch – Fallen Angels in Early Apocalypticism

Phil Harland — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:45:31 +0000

Here I examine the importance of the story of the fallen angels in 1 Enoch 1-36 for Judean apocalypticism, dealing with the literary genre of the otherworldly or cosmic journey apocalypse.

Podcast 7.7: 1 Enoch – Fallen Angels in Early Apocalypticism (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast7.7FirstEnochAndTheFallenAngels.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 7.6: 1 Enoch – An Introduction to the Earliest Apocalypse

Phil Harland — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:29:57 +0000

Here I begin to introduce our earliest example of the Judean apocalyptic worldview and our first example of an otherworldly journey apocalypse as a type of literature, 1 Enoch (which most likely dates to about 225-200 BCE). The next episode examines the so called “Book of Watchers” in 1 Enoch chapters 1-36 in more detail.

Podcast 7.6: 1 Enoch – An Introduction to the Earliest Apocalypse (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast7.6FirstEnochIntro.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 7.5: Origins part 3b – Israelite Prophets 2

Phil Harland — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 21:07:02 +0000

Here I continue to discuss the importance of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible for the subsequent development of apocalypticism, dealing with Zechariah and Isaiah 24-27 (sometimes known as the “Apocalypse of Isaiah”).

Podcast 7.5: Origins part 3b – Israelite Prophets 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast7.5OriginsPart3bProphetsZechariahAndIsaiah24-27.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 7.4: Origins part 3a – Israelite Prophets 1

Phil Harland — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 22:24:34 +0000

Here I discuss the importance of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible for the subsequent development of apocalypticism, beginning with a survey of important events in the history of Israel and discussion of a passage in Ezekiel (chs. 37-39).

Podcast 7.4: Origins part 3a – Israelite Prophecy 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast7.4OriginsPart3aProphetsEzekiel.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 7.3: Origins part 2 – Zoroastrian apocalypticism

Phil Harland — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:38:02 +0000

Here I turn to Persia (Iran) in order to examine Zoroastrian apocalypticism and its relation to Judean apocalypticism. This is part of series 6 (Visions of the End: Apocalypticism) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 7.2: Origins part 2 – Zoroastrian apocalypticism (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast7.3OriginsPart2Zoroastrianism.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 7.2: Origins part 1 – Ancient Near Eastern Combat Myths

Phil Harland — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:24:44 +0000

Here I go back to the earliest Mesopotamian mythologies (starting about 3000 BCE) about the gods in order to trace a recurring pattern — labelled the “combat myth” by scholars – that later came to play a role in Judean (Jewish) apocalypticism. This is part of series 7 (Visions of the End 1: Origins of Judean Apocalypticism) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 7.2: Origins part 1 – Ancient Near Eastern Combat Myths (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast7.2OriginsPart1AncientNearEasternCombatMyth.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Launch of Associations in the Greco-Roman World website

Phil Harland — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:59:36 +0000

With the November release of Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (book info), Ascough, Kloppenborg, and I have been busy preparing a companion website that I think you’ll find of some interest:

http://philipharland.com/greco-roman-associations/

Basically, users of the site can browse through hundreds of inscriptions (450 so far) involving guilds, immigrant groups, and other associations in the ancient Mediterranean. The user can browse by geography or by topics (including gods) using the right side bar. There is also a feature we called “selected exhibits” on (hopefully) interesting topics to a general reader (with about 10 inscriptions in each exhibit). There are many documents with English translations, and the user can choose to view just those (in selected exhibits). One of the selected exhibits is for Judeans (Jews) in the diaspora. The plan is to continue to expand the website with more inscriptions relating to these groups. There are already 100 inscriptions that do not appear in the sourcebook (marked with an asterisk).

The AGRW sourcebook itself goes beyond the inscriptions to include literary excerpts on associations (from, e.g., Philo, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Tertullian), descriptions of meeting-place excavations, and an extensive annotated bibliography (table of contents here). The book has been designed to be used as a text in courses as well.

Update: I should also add that I have previously released a podcast series on associations and you can access that all in one place here: Podcast series 6: Associations in the Greco-Roman World.

Richard sends the latest from the Society of Biblical Literature conference in Chicago:

Podcast 7.1: Visions of the End – What is Apocalypticism?

Phil Harland — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 07:10:55 +0000

In this first episode I begin to define apocalypticism with reference to (1) a worldview or ideology focused on an imminent end of the world, (2) social groups that live out that worldview, and (3) a type of writing or genre of literature (e.g. the book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible and John’s Revelation.in the New Testament).

This is the first of two series, with this one dealing with both the predecessors of apocalypticism and the period up to the writing of 1 Enoch and Daniel (ca. 160s BCE). The second series will come later and deal with later Judean and Christian apocalypticism, beginning with the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is part of series 7 (Visions of the End 1: Origins of Judean Apocalypticism) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 7.1: Visions of the End – What is Apocalypticism? (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast7.1WhatIsApocalypticism.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.14: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 2

Phil Harland — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 05:33:04 +0000

This final episode in the series continues the discussion of how negative ethnic stereotypes (including accusations of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and incest) impacted immigrant associations and cultural minorities, including groups of Jesus followers.

Podcast 6.14: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.14CulturalMinorityAssociationsAndEthnicStereotypesPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.13: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 1

Phil Harland — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:49:52 +0000

This and the following episode explore ethnic stereotypes as they impacted associations of Judeans and Jesus-followers, placing these groups within the context of ethnic rivalries. In this episode, I discuss common negative stereotypes about Judeans found within writings of the elites, particularly the Roman Tacitus and the Greek Egyptian Apion.

Podcast 6.13: Cultural Minority Associations and Ethnic Stereotypes, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.13CulturalMinorityAssociationsAndEthnicStereotypesPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.12: Jesus Groups as Associations and Cultural Minorities, part 2

Phil Harland — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 23:32:50 +0000

Here I continue to discuss groups of Jesus followers in Asia Minor with case studies of 1 Peter and Revelation (John’s Apocalypse), focusing on both indications of identity construction or maintenance and signs of assimilation or acculturation. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.12: Jesus Groups as Associations and Cultural Minorities, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.12JesusGroupsAsAssociationsAndCulturalMinoritiesPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.11: Jesus Groups as Associations and Cultural Minorities, part 1

Phil Harland — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:20:10 +0000

This episode introduces groups of Jesus-followers within the context of associations, Judeans, and cultural minority groups, setting the stage for case studies of Jesus groups in Asia Minor. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.11: Jesus Groups as Associations and Cultural Minorities, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.11JesusGroupsAsAssociationsAndCulturalMinoritiesPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.10: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 2

Phil Harland — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:14:31 +0000

This episode continues the discussion of Judean immigrant associations, turning to archeological evidence for assimilation and integration in the Roman era. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.10: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.10JudeanImmigrantAssociationsPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.9: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:21:46 +0000

This episode introduces Judean (Jewish) associations or synagogues in the Greek cities of the Roman empire and begins to consider evidence in Josephus’ Judean Antiquities regarding the first century BCE. This sets the stage for other episodes on the archeological and epigraphic evidence regarding Judean immigrant groups in the Roman era. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.9: Judean Immigrant Associations, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.9JudeanImmigrantAssociationsPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.8: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 2

Phil Harland — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:03:43 +0000

This episode continues the discussion of Syrian or Phoenician ethnic groups or immigrant associations, moving into the Roman imperial period. This includes a discussion of two inscriptions involving Israelites (or Samaritans) settled on Delos. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.8: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.8PhoenicianImmigrantAssociationsPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.7: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 1

Phil Harland — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:09:35 +0000

This episode involves a case study of Syrian or Phoenician ethnic associations in the ancient Mediterranean, preparing the way for a comparison with other immigrants from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, especially Israelites and Judeans (Jews). This episode deals primarily with the Hellenistic period in the second and first centuries BCE and the following episode continues on into the Roman imperial period. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.7: Phoenician Immigrant Associations, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.7PhoenicianImmigrantAssociations.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.6: Approaches to Studying Ethnic Associations and Identities

Phil Harland — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:02:26 +0000

Here I discuss concepts of identity, assimilation, and other sociological and anthropological tools for studying immigrant groups or ethnic associations in the ancient context, preparing the way for an investigation of Phoenician, Judean, and other immigrant groups or cultural minorities. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.6: Approaches to Studying Ethnic Associations and Identities (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.6ApproachesToStudyingEthnicAssociationsAndIdentities.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.5: Associations and the Roman Empire

Phil Harland — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:25:18 +0000

Here I discuss the relation between associations and the Roman empire, including Roman authorities and the emperors. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.5: Associations and the Roman Empire (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.5AssociationsAndGreco-romanSociety2empire.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

A couple more reviews of Dynamics of Identity

Phil Harland — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:15:36 +0000

There is a very well-written and thoughtful review of my book out in Journal of Religion by Joshua D. Garroway of Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion. It was rewarding to hear my arguments accurately explained by someone else, and in this case the reviewer also offers very carefully expressed criticisms of my approach. If your institution has a subscription to JSTOR, you can find the full review here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/661571.

Here are two excerpts:

“Harland does not deny the uniqueness of Christian or Judean groups, but to study them alongside associations—indeed, as associations—requires him to lay stress on similarities rather than differences. In his defense, this approach contrasts with much previous scholarship that emphasized—and, in light of Harland’s convincing studies, probably overemphasized—the uniqueness of Christians and Judeans.”

“Until recently, scholars of early Judaism and Christianity have generally pursued the differential quality. Harland’s effort to broaden that perspective by seeing what we might learn about Judeans and Christians by considering their similarities to other “cultural minority groups” in antiquity, even if it is overstated at times, therefore comes as a welcome alternative. The sharpness with which Harland presents that perspective makes it all the more rewarding.”

There is another somewhat less analytical review by Guy Stroumsa at the BMCR site: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-08-42.html.

Podcast 6.4: Associations and Greco-Roman Society – The City

Phil Harland — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:58:48 +0000

Here I discuss the relation between associations and Greco-Roman society with a focus on the Greek polis or city. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.4: Associations and Greco-Roman Society – The City (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.4AssociationsWithinGreco-romanSocietytheCity.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Another review of my Dynamics of Identity in Church History

Phil Harland — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:14:38 +0000

Catherine M. Chin (University of California, Davis) has now published a review of my Dynamics of Identity book in the latest volume of Church History 80 (2011), 371-73. She has some interesting observations on the book, as well as insightful critique. You can access the article through Cambridge journals online here if your university has a subscription. I also notice that findarticles.com has the full text of the review available for free at this point. I’ll be adding some excerpts from reviews to the companion site here.

For now, here is an excerpt:

“The primary contribution of the work to early Christian studies, and to the study of ancient religion more generally, lies in how few pages are actually spent on “early Christians,” and how many are spent on their world. Harland’s work is a social-historical analysis of ethnic, familial, and association identity markers in the Eastern Roman Empire, and his limited discussion of early Christian sources is firmly embedded in this context. Harland uses contemporary social-scientific models of identity theory, ethnic studies, and migration studies, and applies these models primarily to understudied inscriptional evidence, in order to explore the social and ideological contexts in which early Christian groups first came into being. This is important and enlightening work, and the focus on contemporaneous non-Christian identity markers and identity groupings is a welcome addition both to the literature on religion in the Roman world and, more indirectly, on the growth of the new Christian movement.”

Podcast 6.3: Judean and Christian Groups as Associations

Phil Harland — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:03:28 +0000

Using Josephus and Philo as a starting point, here I discuss how Judeans (Jews), Christians, and others in the ancient world could express the identities of Judean synagogues and Christian congregations in terms of association-life. Although peculiar cultural minorities in some respects, Judean and Christian groups can be studied alongside other associations in the Greco-Roman world. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.3: Judean and Christian Groups as Associations (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.3JudeanAndChristianGroupsAsAssociations.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.2: Social, Religious, and Burial Activities of Associations

Phil Harland — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:16:27 +0000

Here I explore the internal activities of associations, pointing to intertwined social, religious, and burial purposes that these groups served for their members. We take a close look at one particular association devoted to the god Zeus and the goddess Agdistis at Philadelphia in Asia Minor (LSAM 20). This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.2: Social, Religious, and Burial Activities of Associations (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.2InternalActivitiesOfAssociations.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 6.1: Introduction to Associations in the Greco-Roman World

Phil Harland — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 18:03:23 +0000

In this first episode of the series, I discuss our evidence for associations and guilds in the Greco-Roman world and outline the various types of these groups, including family-based, occupation-based, cultic-based, and ethnic-based groups. This is part of series 6 (Associations in the Greco-Roman World) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 6.1: Introduction to Associations in the Greco-Roman World (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).

Download audio file (Podcast6.1IntroductionToAssociationsInTheGreco-romanWorld.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 5.15: Jesus as a Messianic King?

Phil Harland — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:32:00 +0000

Here I discuss first-century Judean concepts relating to an anointed one, or messiah, particularly a kingly messiah, and discuss contemporary figures who were viewed as kings. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.14: Jesus as a Messianic King? (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.15JesusAsAnointedKingOrMessiah.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet

Phil Harland — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:58:56 +0000

Here I discuss first-century Judean concepts of the prophet and place Jesus within the context of other contemporary figures who were viewed as prophets. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.14JesusAsProphet.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Egyptian deities in the Greco-Roman world

Phil Harland — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:28:13 +0000

Temple of Isis at Pompeii:

Statue of Sarapis from the Capitoline museum:

Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist

Phil Harland — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 18:59:05 +0000

Here I investigate the historical Jesus within the context of contemporaries who were viewed as healers and exorcists in Galilee and Judea. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.13JesusAsHealerAndExorcist.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2: Present or Future Kingdom?

Phil Harland — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:12:56 +0000

This is the second of two episodes that consider the historical Jesus in the role of teacher. Here I discuss evidence regarding Jesus’ conception of the “kingdom of God” and the scholarly debates regarding Jesus’ present or (imminent) future focus. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2: Present or Future Kingdom? (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.12JesusAsTeacherPart2-PresentOrFutureKingdom.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1 – Method and Content

Phil Harland — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:09:58 +0000

This and the following episode consider the historical Jesus in the role of teacher. Here I discuss the form or method of his instruction, and begin to introduce the centrality of the “Kingdom of God” to his teachings. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1: Method and Content (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.11JesusAsTeacherPart1-FormAndContent.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer

Phil Harland — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:18:04 +0000

Here I consider evidence from Josephus and the Gospels regarding John the Baptist and his importance for studying the historical Jesus. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.10JesusAndHisMentorJohnTheBaptizer.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders

Phil Harland — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:01:50 +0000

In order to provide a context for Jesus in the role of a teacher, here I discuss contemporary educated Judean groups and leaders, including Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and the Dead Sea sect. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.9JesusAmongEducatedGroupsAndLeaders.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

I won the Norman E. Wagner Award!

Phil Harland — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:42:25 +0000

I was recently attending the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (my favourite academic society) in Montreal. I was very happy to win the CSBS’s Norman E. Wagner award for the innovative use of technology relating to biblical scholarship (you can read more about the award here). This was awarded for my work here on my websites, including my podcast.

P.S. The award money disappeared quite quickly (that’s what happens when you say “Beer’s on me!” as your official acceptance speech).

Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean

Phil Harland — Sat, 15 May 2010 11:36:10 +0000

Here I discuss Jesus as a Galilean and a Judean. I do so by looking at cultural life associated with the Jerusalem temple in the first century and the relations between cultures in Judea and Galilee. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.8JesusTheGalileanAndJudean.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 – To the Time of Jesus

Phil Harland — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:15:47 +0000

Here I continue to place Jesus and Galilee within the broader context of Israelite history. This episode works through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, including the time of Jesus, and finishes with a discussion of social and economic life in first century Galilee and Judea. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 – To the Time of Jesus (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.7JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

BAR’s second handwriting expert goes the other way

Phil Harland — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:37:07 +0000

Timo S. Paananen’s blog now points us to the results for BAR‘s second handwriting expert. Apparently the expert failed to meet several deadlines and has not yet submitted a written report. Instead, through phone conversations he has communicated that he believes the Secret Gospel of Mark was forged by Morton Smith. One wonders whether we will ever have a sufficiently definitive answer regarding the Secret Gospel of Mark. This lack of clarity is very disappointing. I will need to wait and read the full written report from that handwriting expert (if he does indeed submit it). However, the reasoning of the expert as spelled out by Shanks in relation to phone conversations seems less than compelling as a definitive answer.

Approaching 250,000 visitors

Phil Harland — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:55:41 +0000

I just noticed that this blog is soon going to pass the 250,000 visitor mark. I’m glad that the site is still being used.

More on handwriting and the Secret Gospel of Mark: Probably not forged

Phil Harland — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:39:43 +0000

When it rains it pours. Biblical Archeology Review has hired an expert in Greek handwriting (Venetia Anastasopoulou) to offer her analysis of The Secret Gospel of Mark in relation to Morton Smith’s own handwriting. You can access the BAR article here and you can directly access the very substantial 39-page report here. Her main conclusion (p. 38) is as follows:

“OPINION

The following opinion is based upon an examination of the documents submitted to me for this purpose using the application of appropriate handwriting principles, and my experience and training as a forensic document and handwriting examiner. It is my professional opinion that the writers of the questioned document of “Secret Mark” on the document listed as Q1, Q2 an Q3 and Morton Smith’s handwriting on the documents listed as K1 – K27, are most probably not the same. Therefore it is highly probable that Morton Smith could not have simulated the document of “Secret Mark” .

QUALIFYING STATEMENT:

This opinion is based solely on the documents listed as having been examined. Due to the limitations imposed in examining document photographs, this opinion is highly probable. This opinion is subject to amendment if additional examinations are performed using additional exemplars which may exhibit evidence not observable in the documents upon which this opinion was based.”

As my review of Carlson’s book back in 2005 noted, the handwriting portion of his argument was among his strongest (the others seemed somewhat arbitrary to me). However, I felt there were some key shortcomings regarding Carlson’s handwriting analysis and I did not find his hoax theory convincing. Scott Brown and Pantuck’s recent post spelled out some other potential problems with Carlson’s approach, and now there is a properly trained expert in Greek handwriting who concludes that “it is highly probable that Morton Smith could not have simulated the document of ‘Secret Mark’” (p. 38).

Hopefully Stephen Carlson will offer his response to these developments, actively engaging the issues. Hopefully others who have invested interests in seeing this as a forgery will fully consider the evidence to the contrary.

I may post more once I’ve read through the whole report and through the recent article by Watson.

More on Stephen Carlson’s hand-writing analysis of the Secret Gospel of Mark

Phil Harland — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:23:03 +0000

Further to some of my comments back in 2005 (see my post: The Secret Gospel of Mark and Carlson’s The Gospel Hoax: Smoking gun?), Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck have now written a rather damaging critique of Stephen Carlson’s work on the handwriting analysis of the Secret Gospel of Mark.

Thanks to Tony Burke for pointing me to the post on Timo Paananen’s Salainan evankelista blog and to Allan Pantuck for sending me a copy of the article.

Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 – Until the Second Temple

Phil Harland — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:10:14 +0000

This and the following episode place Jesus and Galilee within the broader context of Israelite history. This episode begins with the Assyrian period (700s BCE) and concludes with the Persian period, with the construction of the second temple (ca. 500 BCE). This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 – Until the Second Temple (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.6JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 (Sanders)

Phil Harland — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:24:35 +0000

This is the second of two episodes that explore two contrasting scholarly portraits of the historical Jesus, those of John Dominic Crossan (Jesus as egalitarian peasant) and E.P. Sanders (Jesus as apocalyptic prophet). This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 (Sanders) (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.5ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart2sanders.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 (Crossan)

Phil Harland — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:23:03 +0000

This and the following episode explore two contrasting scholarly portraits of the historical Jesus, those of John Dominic Crossan (Jesus as egalitarian peasant) and E.P. Sanders (Jesus as apocalyptic prophet). This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 (Crossan) (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.4ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart1crossan.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 3

Phil Harland — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:39:39 +0000

This episode is the final of three that introduce key historical sources and problems in reconstructing the life of a peasant from Galilee, the historical Jesus. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 3 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.3StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart3.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 2

Phil Harland — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:16:58 +0000

This episode is the second of three that introduce key historical sources and problems in reconstructing the life of a peasant from Galilee, the historical Jesus. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.2StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 1

Phil Harland — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:19:54 +0000

This episode is the first of three that introduce key historical sources and problems in reconstructing the life of a peasant from Galilee, the historical Jesus. This is part of series 5 (The Historical Jesus in Context) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast5.1StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods

Phil Harland — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:29:06 +0000

Here I explain emperor worship and the various types of honours for the emperors as gods, including imperial cults at the provincial, civic, and local levels in Asia Minor. This is the final episode in series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.6HonouringTheEmperorsAsGods.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia

Phil Harland — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:05:24 +0000

Here I discuss the active role of the gods in punishing transgressors by focusing on indigenous practices in the region of Lydia, particularly the propitiation or confession inscriptions. This is part of series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.5JusticeFromTheGods-MenZeusAndOtherGodsInLydia.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Greco-Roman deities: Artemis of Ephesus 3

Phil Harland — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:29:57 +0000

Two of the statues I recently viewed in Italy really convinced me (as they have others such as Fleischer and LiDonnici) that the protuberances were usually understood not as breasts but as part of the costume which decorated the statue of Artemis Ephesia.

This is a statue you can now see in the Capitoline museum in Rome. This statue has many of the same characteristics that we found in the other statues in my series here (arrangement of arms and legs, decoration of Artemis’ outfit with animals) with one very important exception: the use of two different colours of stone in the carving of the statue. The artist that carved this statue, those who commissioned it, and likely many who viewed it considered the protrusions on Artemis’ front not as breasts (which would need to be black here to match the skin of her feet and arms) but as part of the clothing decoration. Clearly these are not breasts. As Fleischer and others note, it is likely that the artist was representing an earlier statue of Artemis Ephesia (perhaps a statue of dark wood) which was literally dressed in special garments on particular occasions (dressing and feeding statues was somewhat common in certain cultural circles in antiquity). The artist chose to distinguish the earlier statue itself from the clothing and paraphernalia that decorated that statue by using two different colours of stone, and the bumps on her front are part of the costume here.

That this understanding of the protrusions was not just an anomaly is confirmed by another artist’s rendition found in Neapolis, which is now preserved in the national museum in Naples (inventory no. 6278):

So although church fathers such as Jerome and Minucius Felix later tended to generalize about the “multi-breasted” Artemis (Minucius Felix, Octavius 22.5; Jerome, Commentary on the Epistle to Ephesus proem), this characterization in late antiquity arose less from common perceptions among worshippers of this goddess and more from Christian propaganda aimed at presenting “paganism” as ridiculous or bizarre. What exactly these objects are is at this point generally unanswerable, but what is clear is that they are part of Artemis Ephesia’s outfit, not her body.

Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods – Apollo at Claros and Didyma

Phil Harland — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:06:11 +0000

Here I discuss messages from the gods, or divination. One way in which the gods were thought to communicate with individuals, groups, and communities was through oracles such as those of Apollo at Claros and Didyma. This is part of series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods – Apollo at Claros and Didyma (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.4CommunicationsFromTheGods-ApolloAtClarosAndDidyma.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Greco-Roman deities: Artemis of Ephesus 2

Phil Harland — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:44:25 +0000

As you’ll see by comparing the photo here with my previous post on this Artemis, there are certain elements that repeat themselves in the images of Artemis Ephesia from about the mid-second century BCE on into the Roman era. She is pictured standing upright with legs together, with upper arms tight against the body, and with her lower arms outstretched. The statues have elaborate costumes decorated with animals, and there are those mysterious protuberances that have led to characterizations of this deity as the many-breasted goddess. As in the previous statue I posted, these elements are also evident in the statue above that is now housed in the Vatican museum in Rome. Here you find a crowned Artemis with garments decorated with lions on the upper arms and deer-like creatures lining the front. Mythological and other figures appear on her sides and on her upper chest.

Although far from conclusive, there are hints here that the artist of this piece (and those who viewed this Artemis) may not have thought of the protuberances as breasts, since they are considerably low (and another statue of Artemis Ephesia which is now in the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland has even more clearly low-hanging protuberances that miss the chest area altogether). The next statue photos will provide more conclusive suggestions regarding this issue. Stay tuned.

My discussions of the statues are informed by the important work of Robert Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos und verwandte Kultstatuen aus Anatolien und Syrien (EPRO 35; Leiden: Brill, 1973) and by Lynn R. LiDonnici, “The Images of Artemis Ephesia and Greco-Roman Worship: A Reconsideration,” Harvard Theological Review 85 (1992), 389-415.

Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods – Asklepios at Pergamon (Pergamum)

Phil Harland — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:50:15 +0000

Here I discuss the way in which people in Roman times believed that gods saved them in their daily lives, focusing on the case of the healing sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon (Pergamum). This is part of series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods – Asklepios at Pergamon (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.3SalvationFromTheGods-AsklepiosAtPergamon.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Greco-Roman deities: Artemis of Ephesus 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:41:56 +0000

Here is perhaps the best known statue of Artemis Ephesia (or Artemis of Ephesus) as preserved in the Selçuk Archeological Museum (room C, inv. 718) near the ancient site of Ephesus:

After my recent trip to the Naples archeological museum, I now have a number of depictions of Artemis Ephesia and other gods and goddesses in photo form. So I will be making a series of posts on Greco-Roman deities. As I discuss in the current series in the podcast (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire), there were many different local understandings and depictions of a particular god: in other words, there were many Dionysoses, Zeuses, and Artemises. Often one Zeus would be distinguished from another Zeus by an epithet: for example, there was a Zeus Soter (“Saviour Zeus”), a Zeus Brontos (“Thunderer Zeus”), and a Zeus Polieus (City-protecting Zeus). One local understanding of Zeus could be distinguished from another through art, in the depiction of the specific form of the god in statues.

Artemis of Ephesus is just one local way in which this goddess was understood. You can hear more about her in episode 4.2 of the podcast. This Artemis Ephesia is consistently depicted as associated with nature and the wild, as the animals integrated within her garb and the deer at her side indicate. And she is also always depicted with the strange protuberances which you will see in each of the photos I post.

There is some debate as to what these are. Are they multiple breasts? This may indicate notions of fertility and Artemis’ oversight over birth and life. Are they part of Artemis’ outfit here (perhaps a garment made using bull-testicles, as some scholars suggest)? Was this similar to an outfit worn by Artemis Ephesia’s main priestess and representative? Did interpretations of these objects vary even among ancient observers and sculptors? Actually, some of the photos I will show subsequently help to answer this mystery about the multiple breast-like objects.

More statues of this mysterious goddess to come!

My new book / website: Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians

Phil Harland — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:41:54 +0000

In case you hadn’t noticed, my forthcoming book on Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians: Associations, Judeans, and Cultural Minorities is now available on Amazon.com for preorder (due November) at under $20. I have also created a companion website (which may be expanded further in time) for the book. As usual, that subsite can be found in the pull-down menu for “My Other Websites”.

The book considers early Christian identities in relation to other associations, Judean groups, and immigrants in the Roman empire. Read more about it on the companion site. Here’s a look at the book cover:

Historical Jesus and miracles – of course historians have to address miracles

Phil Harland — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:47:31 +0000

Over on the new Duke Newt, Maxim Cardew has an interesting post discussing how and whether the issue of “miracles” can be addressed in historical Jesus studies. I won’t take the time to fully engage the many issues Maxim raises in connection with Hume, Strauss, and others. What I want to state simply and clearly is: of course an historian has to deal with “miracles.” Who cares if this has to do with Jesus or with some other person or persons in another time period.

What I mean by that is that the historian of any period is focussed on understanding that particular period and the worldviews and practices of those living in that period (I would hope). So, for instance, an historian studying relics in medieval England or Europe would have a hard time if she wasn’t permitted to discuss the notion of “miracles” or “healings” as though this was historically off-bounds. In some respects, a person would be at a loss to explain things without the acknowledgment that the historical subjects in the medieval period did indeed believe that “miracles” took place and that there were people and objects with access to miraculous powers. Similarly, if one is studying Lucian of Samosata’s critique of Alexander of Abonuteichos (in the second century), the historian has to face the fact that Alexander was viewed by some as performing “miracles” even though some contemporaries like Lucian (in a Hume like fashion) called it all bunk. It even seems that Lucian is in the minority in rejecting Alexander’s supposed “miracles” (methinks he dost protest too much). So there’s another “miracle-worker” from the perspective of the historian.

It is one thing to say people in a period believed that such and such could perform miracles (that he or she was a “miracle-worker” or “healer” or “god” by reputation among contemporaries) and quite another to say that the miracles did happen and can be confirmed historically (not at all what the historian can do, in my opinion). To turn to the modern period, would an historian of modern Christianity not be allowed to designate Benny Hinn (spelling?) a “miracle-worker” or “healer” or whatever insofar as his followers believe he can perform “miracles” and he is perceived to be a “miracle-worker” (or have access to miraculous powers from God, or whatever) by some of his contemporaries. However, this is not to say that the “miracles” are real and that they really took place (I don’t always compare Jesus to Benny Hinn, so don’t worry).

The historian needs to deal with the fact that some contemporaries of Jesus believed that Jesus was a “miracle-worker” or “healer” (and we need to clearly define what we mean by those terms). To avoid the subject because we (the modern historians) know or think we know that “miracles” don’t exist will lead us towards historical misunderstanding. This is not to say that “miracles” exist for the historian (so Hume and Strauss can give a sigh of relief). Nonetheless “miracle-workers” exist for the historian if historical subjects have the category (or one like it) and apply it to another historical subject we are studying (e.g. Jesus).

To clarify, I do not believe that the statement “Jesus was perceived as a miracle-worker” or “Jesus performed miracles from the viewpoint of some of his contemporaries” is in the least bit theological or problematic for the historian. Historical Jesus researchers, just like historians of the Venerable Bede or Alexander of Abonuteichos, must deal with what they find in their sources and place that in cultural context, developing categories that work best for the period in question.

(We’ll see if this makes any sense in the morning — listening to Van Morrison’s Saint Dominic’s Preview with beer in hand here).

UPDATE: Maxim Cardew now has a second post further delving into the issue and clarifying Maxim’s points. By the way, my post was never meant as a “refutation”; moreso these were my midnight ramblings in connection with the issue of miracles and Jesus;) You may have noticed how much I avoided talking about Hume — he reminds me too much of my logic and argumentation course in second year undergrad (not that I have anything against logic).

Pompeii 2: Rivalries among associations and a riot at Pompeii

Phil Harland — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:59:35 +0000

As I discuss at some length in my new book on Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians, members of associations could feel a real sense of belonging in the group, and at times this sense of identity could express itself in rivalries with other groups. Christians and Judeans were not the only ones involved in rivalries or tensions with other groups within society. In fact, alongside areas of cooperation, competition was an inherent aspect of life within cities in the Roman empire, and associations sometimes took part in this.

Among the more interesting examples of rivalries between different associations (or collegia) is a riot that took place in Pompeii in the first century (59 CE). This is one of those rare cases when we have more than one source regarding a violent incident involving associations, one of them being a painting from Pompeii.

One of the sources is the historian Tacitus, who relates an incident in which the tensions between different associations from two different cities (Nuceria and Pompeii) escalated into a mini-battle in the amphitheater at Pompeii. Here is Tacitus’ description:

About this time there was a serious fight between the inhabitants of two Roman settlements, Nuceria and Pompeii. It arose out of a trifling incident at a gladiatorial show . . . During an exchange of taunts — characteristic of these disorderly country towns — abuse led to stone-throwing, and then swords were drawn. The people of Pompeii, where the show was held, came off best. Many wounded and mutilated Nucerians were taken to the capital. Many bereavements, too, were suffered by parents and children. The emperor instructed the senate to investigate the affair. The senate passed it to the consuls. When they reported back, the senate debarred Pompeii from holding any similar gathering for ten years. Illegal associations in the town were dissolved; and the sponsor of the show and his fellow-instigators of the disorders were exiled (Annals 14.17; trans. by Michael Grant, The Annals of Imperial Rome [London: Penguin Books, 1973], 321-22).

Tacitus’ account shows us that rival associations from the two different cities played an instrumental role in the conflict. So both civic and group identity played an important role here. Such rivalries would not always lead to violent conflict, however.

The second piece of evidence is a painting that can now be seen in the National Museum of Naples. In the painting is pictured people fighting in and around the amphitheater. Why exactly someone would have this painting commissioned is not completely clear. Were they proud of the incident since their fellow Pompeiians had gained the upper hand in the rivalry? Did they know some members of the associations involved? Or is the painting reaffirming the action of the authorities in quelling and preventing such civic disturbances? Was it made to celebrate the re-opening of the amphitheater after the imperial prohibition was lifted?

From the Casa della Rissa nell’Anfiteatro, or house of Actius Anicetus (inventory no. 112222). Inscriptions depicted on the walls of the palaestra (to the right of the amphitheatre) proclaim: “Good fortune to D. Lucretius” (in Latin) and “Good fortune to Satrius Valens, Augustus Nero” (in Greek). Photo by Phil. Full Italian description in Bragantini and Sampaolo, La Pittura Pompeiana, p.512-13.

Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity – Artemis of Ephesus

Phil Harland — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:34:24 +0000

Here I discuss civic cults in Asia Minor and Ephesus with a focus on the relationship between a city and its patron deity (in this case Artemis Ephesia). This is part of series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity – Artemis of Ephesus (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.2ACityAndItsPatronDeity-ArtemisEphesia.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods

Phil Harland — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:41:08 +0000

This is the introductory episode for a series that explores the various ways in which people in the Roman empire, especially in Asia Minor, honoured and communicated with their gods. This is part of series 4 (Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast4.1IntroductionToHonouringTheGods.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast series 5: The Historical Jesus in context

Phil Harland — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:46:32 +0000

All episodes and series in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here. This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

Here are the half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in “The Historical Jesus in context” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Download audio file (Podcast5.1StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart1.mp3)
Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 1
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Download audio file (Podcast5.2StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart2.mp3)
Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 2
Download

Download audio file (Podcast5.3StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart3.mp3)
Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 3
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Download audio file (Podcast5.4ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart1crossan.mp3)
Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 – Crossan
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Download audio file (Podcast5.5ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart2sanders.mp3)
Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 – Sanders
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Download audio file (Podcast5.6JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart1.mp3)
Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 – To the Second Temple
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Download audio file (Podcast5.7JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart2.mp3)
Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 – To the Time of Jesus
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Download audio file (Podcast5.8JesusTheGalileanAndJudean.mp3)
Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean
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Download audio file (Podcast5.9JesusAmongEducatedGroupsAndLeaders.mp3)
Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders
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Download audio file (Podcast5.10JesusAndHisMentorJohnTheBaptizer.mp3)
Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer
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Download audio file (Podcast5.11JesusAsTeacherPart1-FormAndContent.mp3)
Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1 – Method and Content
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Download audio file (Podcast5.12JesusAsTeacherPart2-PresentOrFutureKingdom.mp3)
Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2 – Present or Future Kingdom?
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Download audio file (Podcast5.13JesusAsHealerAndExorcist.mp3)
Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist
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Download audio file (Podcast5.14JesusAsProphet.mp3)
Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet
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Download audio file (Podcast5.15JesusAsAnointedKingOrMessiah.mp3)
Podcast 5.15: Jesus as Messianic King?
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For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

Podcast series 4: Honouring the gods in the Roman Empire – Asia Minor

Phil Harland — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:36:59 +0000

All episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here. This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

This series has not yet been released in the official podcast feed and is not yet complete (more episodes to come). Here are the available episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Honouring the gods in the Roman Empire: Asia Minor” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Download audio file (Podcast4.1IntroductionToHonouringTheGods.mp3)

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods

Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Download audio file (Podcast4.2ACityAndItsPatronDeity-ArtemisEphesia.mp3)
Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity – Artemis of Ephesus
Download

Download audio file (Podcast4.3SalvationFromTheGods-AsklepiosAtPergamon.mp3)
Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods – Asklepios at Pergamum
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Download audio file (Podcast4.4CommunicationsFromTheGods-ApolloAtClarosAndDidyma.mp3)
Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods – Apollo at Claros and Didyma
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Download audio file (Podcast4.5JusticeFromTheGods-MenZeusAndOtherGodsInLydia.mp3)
Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia
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Download audio file (Podcast4.6HonouringTheEmperorsAsGods.mp3)
Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods
Download

Series not yet released in the official podcast feed.

More episodes to come!

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

Podcast series 3: Diversity in early Christianity: “Heresies” and struggles

Phil Harland — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:12:12 +0000

Here are all half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Diversity in early Christianity: “Heresies” and struggles” series (covering the early Christian apocrypha, Nag Hammadi documents, and other non-canonical materials) in playable and downloadable formats:

Download audio file (Podcast3.1DiversityAndJohnsOpponentsPart1.mp3)
Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity – A Schism in John’s Community, part 1
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Download audio file (Podcast3.2JohnsOpponentsPart2.mp3)
Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2
Download

Download audio file (Podcast3.3IgnatiusOpponentsPart1.mp3)
Podcast 3.3: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius
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Download audio file (Podcast3.4IgnatiusOpponentsPart2.mp3)
Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2
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Download audio file (Podcast3.5Diversity-CaseStudyOfAsiaMinor.mp3)
Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor – A Regional Case Study
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Download audio file (Podcast3.6IntroductionToTheSourcesForDiversity.mp3)
Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity – Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic
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Download audio file (Podcast3.7JudeanFollowersOfJesusPart1-Ebionites.mp3)
Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 – Ebionites
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Download audio file (Podcast3.8JudeanFollowersOfJesusPart2-Pseudo-clement.mp3)
Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 – Pseudo-Clement
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Download audio file (Podcast3.9MarcionitesAndTheUnknownGod.mp3)
Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God
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Download audio file (Podcast3.10IntroducingGnosticWorldviews.mp3)
Podcast 3.10 Introducing Gnostic Worldviews
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Download audio file (Podcast3.11ApocryphonOfJohnPart1.mp3)
Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 – The Spiritual Realm
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Download audio file (Podcast3.12ApocryphonOfJohnPart2.mp3)
Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 – Salvation from the Material Realm
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Download audio file (Podcast3.13PlatonismAndTheSophiaOfJesusChrist.mp3)
Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism
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Download audio file (Podcast3.14GospelOfPhilipPart1-IdeasOfSalvation.mp3)
Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 – Ideas of Salvation
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Download audio file (Podcast3.15GospelOfPhilipPart2-InitiationRituals.mp3)
Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 – Ritual Enactments of Salvation
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Download audio file (Podcast3.16GospelOfMary.mp3)
Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary – Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple
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For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

Podcast series 2: Early Christian portraits of Jesus

Phil Harland — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:38:06 +0000

Here are all half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Early Christian portraits of Jesus” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Download audio file (Podcast2.1Introductiontothegospels.mp3)
Podcast 2.1: Introduction to the Gospels as Portraits of Jesus
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Download audio file (Podcast2.2MarkPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)
Podcast 2.2: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son (part 1)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.3MarkPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)
Podcast 2.3: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son (part 2)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.4MatthewPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)
Podcast 2.4: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses (part 1)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.5MatthewPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)
Podcast 2.5: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses (part 2)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.6LukePortraitJesuspart1.mp3)
Podcast 2.6: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah (part 1)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.7LukePortraitJesuspart2.mp3)
Podcast 2.7: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah (part 2)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.8JohnPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)
Podcast 2.8: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word (part 1)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.9JohnPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)
Podcast 2.9: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word (part 2)
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Download audio file (Podcast2.10-HebrewsPortraitOfJesusPart1.mp3)
Podcast 2.10: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Melchizedek, part 1
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Download audio file (Podcast2.11-HebrewsPortraitOfJesusPart2.mp3)
Podcast 2.11: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Melchizedek, part 2
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For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

Podcast series 1: Paul and his communities

Phil Harland — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:48:58 +0000

All of the episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.

As usual, Mark Goodacre has good ideas. Mark has pointed out that it would be good to have a way of linking to all of the episodes of a particular series in my podcast (rather than the podcast as a whole). This way someone that is wanting to link to historical Jesus material only, but not to Paul or some other topic, would be able to link to a page with just my historical Jesus series. (This would also help those who are attempting to integrate a particular series in the podcast into a course — I’m talking to you, AKMA). So what I’ll do is create a single blog post for each of the series which contains all of the episodes in that series in playable and downloadable formats.

To begin with here are all of the half-hour episodes (in MP3, about 40MB each) from series 1, “Paul and his communities”:

Download audio file (podcast1Paulinhisownwords.mp3)
Podcast 1.1: Paul in his own words
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Download audio file (Podcast1.2PaulandtheThessaloniansTheSituationHarland_vbr.mp3)
Podcast 1.2: The Situation at Thessalonica
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Download audio file (Podcast1.3PaulsresponsetotheThessaloniansHarland_vbr.mp3)
Podcast 1.3: Paul’s response to Jesus-followers at Thessalonica
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Download audio file (Podcast1.4PaulandtheCorinthianspart1Harland_vbr.mp3)
Podcast 1.4: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 1
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Download audio file (Podcast1.5PaulandtheCorinthianspart2Harland.mp3)
Podcast 1.5: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2
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Download audio file (Podcast1.6paulAndTheCorinthianspart3harland.mp3)
Podcast 1.6: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 3
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Download audio file (Podcast1.7PaulandtheGalatianspart1Harland.mp3)
Podcast 1.7: Paul and the situation in Galatia
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Download audio file (Podcast1.8PaulandtheGalatianspart2Harland.mp3)
Podcast 1.8: Paul’s response to the Galatians
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Download audio file (Podcast1.9TheSituationatRomeHarland.mp3)
Podcast 1.9: Paul and the situation at Rome
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Download audio file (Podcast1.10PaulsresponsetoJesus-followersatRomeHarland.mp3)
Podcast 1.10: Paul’s response to the Romans
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Download audio file (Podcast1.11LegaciesofPaul-WomenandLeadershippart1.mp3)
Podcast 1.11: Legacies of Paul – Women’s leadership, part 1
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Download audio file (Podcast1.12LegaciesofPaul-WomenandLeadershippart2.mp3)
Podcast 1.12: Legacies of Paul – Women’s leadership, part 2
Download

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

Paintings of Pompeii 1: Villa of the Mysteries of Dionysos (Villa Item)

Phil Harland — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:04:48 +0000

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum a few weeks back in connection with the Society of Biblical Literature conference in Rome (where I presented a paper from my upcoming book). The populations of both of these ancient towns were wiped out by the volcanic eruption of mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, and no subsequent building was done over the ruins. So these are among the best preserved ancient cities to see. One major result of the trip is that I now have about 1000 new photos relating to artifacts from the Roman era. Among these are many photos of mosaics and paintings or frescoes from Pompeii (and some from Herculaneum). So I’ll have a series of posts on some of these paintings (also drawing on some information found in Irene Bragantini and Valeria Sampaolo, La pittura pompeiana Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, 2009).

The majority of paintings from Pompeii are now removed from Pompeii and preserved in the National Archeological Museum of Naples (Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli). However, some are still in their original find-spots (in situ). One of the most incredible wall-paintings from antiquity can still be found within a rather large home on the outskirts of the original town of Pompeii.

Mysteries of Dionysos

This home is known as Villa Item or Villa of the Mysteries, due to the paintings that decorated one of its banqueting halls. This banqueting hall may also have been used in connection with initiations in the mysteries of Dionysos (Bacchus). I have discussed the mysteries and Dionysos’ mysteries specifically on one of my websites, so I would suggest you read that first. Right now I’d like to supplement my earlier discussion of the mysteries by supplying photos of the paintings which seem to depict stages in the initiation process and related mythological scenes.

The paintings seem to depict both the devotees of Dionysos in various stages of participation in initiation rites and mythological scenes which intersect with the progress of initiation itself. The exact interpretation of these paintings is, of course, debated, but I will give a basic description with some consultation of M.P. Nilsson (The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistics and Roman Age [Lund: Gleerup, 1957], 66-78) and Walter Burkert (Ancient Mystery Cults [Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987], 95-96).

*****

Scene 1 – Preparations (north wall, on your left as you enter):

A naked boy reads from a papyrus scroll as two women of the house listen and a third woman carries a dish towards the next scene.

*****

Scene 2 – Preparations and segue to mythical or revelation scenes (north wall, on your left as you enter):

A seated woman (with back facing us) uncovers a tray with her left hand while receiving liquid into a dish with her right hand, perhaps cleaning her hands (Burkert) or making an offering to the god (Nilsson). To her right is a mythical scene depicting a silenos playing the lyre, a boy playing a flute, and a girl suckling a goat. Further to the right, a partially clothed woman runs in fear (perhaps running from the flogging scene on the opposite side).

*****

Scene 3 – Mythical scene with Silenos, Dionysos, and threatening winged female figure (east wall, straight ahead as you enter):

This may be a depiction of the revelation of the god Dionysos to the initiate. A drunken and scantily clad god Dionysos, accompanied by Ariadne, is seated in the centre as a Silenos shows something (or offers a drink) to a boy (satyr?) while another boy holds up a theatrical mask. To the right, a partially clothed woman lifts a veil to reveal the contents of a basket, likely the phallic symbol associated with initiation into the mysteries of DIonysos. A threatening mythical figure appears on the far right (see next photo).

*****

Scene 4 – Flagellation and dancing woman (east and south walls):

A winged, mythical figure winds up to flog a woman (initiate-to-be?) with a rod or wand (thyrsos). The woman lays her head in the lap of another woman for protection from the threatening figure. To the right, a woman (same initiate who was previously flogged?) dances naked while playing finger-cymbals over her head and another woman holds a reed or wand (thyrsos), a symbol of the god Dionysos.

*****

Scene 5 – Seated woman being adorned by cupids

Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary – Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple

Phil Harland — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:44:29 +0000

Here I discuss this dialogue gospel in which Mary Magdalene is presented as Jesus’ favourite disciple and the instructor of true knowledge. I explore notions of salvation in terms of the ascent of the soul, as well as the way in which this writing reflects struggles among different groups of Jesus-followers. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary – Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.16GospelOfMary.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 – Ritual Enactments of Salvation

Phil Harland — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:47:22 +0000

Here I finish the discussion of the Gospel of Philip by focusing on the way in which notions of salvation were enacted in the practices of the followers of Jesus who used this writing. In particular, rituals such as the “bridal chamber” illustrate the connections between sex (as a metaphor) and salvation in the mindset of this author. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 – Ritual Enactments of Salvation (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.15GospelOfPhilipPart2-InitiationRituals.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 – Ideas of Salvation

Phil Harland — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:42:25 +0000

Here I discuss the Gospel of Philip (perhaps best known in connection with the Da Vinci Code). This episode deals with the author’s worldview and ideas about the condition of humanity, preparing the way for a second episode on the practices and rituals that enacted salvation. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 – Ideas of Salvation (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.14GospelOfPhilipPart1-IdeasOfSalvation.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire – new podcast series

Phil Harland — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:19:01 +0000

I have been busy creating a new podcast series, titled Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire. This series is somewhat different in style. Usually I am adapting and editing my recorded lectures (that are performed from point form notes). Instead, this series involves me sitting down at the computer and microphone for a half-hour or so after I meet with my graduate class on Honouring the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean (course outline, discussion notes). I then spontaneously discuss some important issues and sources regarding the topic of the week. This series is already partially available on my podcast archive.org page (but will be officially released in the podcast feed next Fall, before I release the historical Jesus series, which is also available on archive.org now).

Here are the episodes I have created so far, which you will find on my podcast archive.org page, where you can click on browse episodes starting with recent additions:

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods
Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity – Artemis of Ephesus
Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods – Asklepios at Pergamum
Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods – Apollo at Claros and Didyma
Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia
Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods

Please let me know what you think of this experiment (I notice about 25 people had already found and listened to several episodes before I mentioned its existence).

Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism

Phil Harland — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:38:12 +0000

Here I use two related Nag Hammadi writings — Eugnostos the Blessed and The Sophia of Jesus Christ — as a window into forms of Christianity that were heavily influenced by Middle Platonic philosophy, particularly in regard to cosmology and the divine Triad. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.13PlatonismAndTheSophiaOfJesusChrist.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 – Salvation from the Material Realm

Phil Harland — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:58:55 +0000

Here I continue to explain the worldview of the Apocryphon of John, particularly its notions regarding the material realm, the inferior creator god (demiurge), and salvation from this realm. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 – Salvation from the Material Realm (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.12ApocryphonOfJohnPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 – The Spiritual Realm

Phil Harland — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:22:26 +0000

Here I begin to explain the worldview of the Apocryphon of John, one of the Nag Hammadi writings (part 1 of 2). Like other writings in that collection, this author makes a clear distinction between the perfect spiritual realm, also known as the “fullness”, and an inferior material realm created by a jealous god or “ruler” (archon). In this episode I describe the perfect spiritual realm and the process of emanations from the perfect “Invisible Spirit” or “Father”. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 – The Spiritual Realm (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.11ApocryphonOfJohnPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.10: Introducing Gnostic Worldviews

Phil Harland — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:04:58 +0000

Here I set the stage for the study of specific Nag Hammadi and related writings by outlining in broad terms some common denominators in the worldviews traditionally labeled “gnostic”. This includes discussion of the Middle Platonic assumptions of many authors. I also deal with the importance of knowledge (gnosis) in the understanding of how salvation from the material realm, which was created by an inferior god, takes place. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.10: Introducing Gnostic Worldviews (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.10IntroducingGnosticWorldviews.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God

Phil Harland — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:40:23 +0000

Here I explore Marcionite forms of Christianity, which contrast significantly to the Judean forms discussed in the previous episode. Followers of Marcion believed that the legalistic God of the Hebrew Bible was to be distinguished from the loving, unknown Father-God who sent Jesus, and that Law was opposed to Gospel. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.9MarcionitesAndTheUnknownGod.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 – Pseudo-Clement

Phil Harland — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:58:03 +0000

Here I continue to explore Jewish followers of Jesus by examining key passages in an apocryphal novel attributed to Clement of Rome, also known as the Pseudo-Clementine writings. In particular, an opening letter claiming to be written by Peter to James and the story of Peter’s debates with Simon Magus (a cipher for Paul) provide glimpses into struggles between Jewish followers of Jesus and others, including Pauline forms of Christianity. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 – Pseudo-Clementine Writings (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.8JudeanFollowersOfJesusPart2-Pseudo-clement.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

“The Historical Jesus in Context” podcast episodes and the strike

Phil Harland — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:16:39 +0000

A very long strike has come to an end and my students have a test to be written soon after they return (the second week back, Thursday February 12 at 8:30am, to be precise). A proposed revised syllabus for HUMA 2830 is now posted for discussion.

In an effort to help them in preparing for that and in refreshing their memories, I have been working hard on preparing as many podcast episodes as possible based on the lectures earlier this Fall, and have made only minor progress (it takes some time in editing and introducing each episode). I am not completely happy with the shape of these episodes, but they are at least something. One thing I do really like for sure is the opening music I am using, which is “Paradise Lost” by Namgyal Lhamo of Tibet (used under a creative commons-type license from “Podsafe audio”).

The podcast series will be “The Historical Jesus in Context” and below is a preview of the first 13 six, ten or so episodes, each of them about 30 minutes long (to be officially released in 2010 — I’ll see if I can prepare more and add them to this post soon):

Download audio file (Podcast4.1StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart1.mp3)
Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 1

Download audio file (Podcast4.2StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart2.mp3)
Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 2

Download audio file (Podcast4.3StudyingTheHistoricalJesus-SourcesAndProblemsPart3.mp3)
Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus – Sources and Problems, part 3

Download audio file (Podcast4.4ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart1crossan.mp3)
Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 – Crossan

Download audio file (Podcast4.5ScholarlyPortraitsOfJesusPart2sanders.mp3)
Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 – Sanders

Download audio file (Podcast4.6JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart1.mp3)
Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 – To the Second Temple

Download audio file (Podcast4.7JesusGalileeAndIsraeliteHistoryPart2.mp3)
Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 – To the Time of Jesus

Download audio file (Podcast4.8JesusTheGalileanAndJudean.mp3)
Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean

Download audio file (Podcast4.9JesusAmongEducatedGroupsAndLeaders.mp3)
Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders

Download audio file (Podcast4.10JesusAndHisMentorJohnTheBaptizer.mp3)
Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer

Download audio file (Podcast4.11JesusAsTeacherPart1-FormAndContent.mp3)
Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1 – Method and Content

Download audio file (Podcast4.12JesusAsTeacherPart2-PresentOrFutureKingdom.mp3)
Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2 – Present or Future Kingdom?

Download audio file (Podcast4.13JesusAsHealerAndExorcist.mp3)
Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist

Download audio file (Podcast4.14JesusAsProphet.mp3)
Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet

UPDATE: There is just one more episode to edit in this series (on the role of Messiah). I have changed this to series five (rather than four), since series four will be “Honouring the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean” (on Greco-Roman religions generally).

An ancient Sugar Ray Leonard, a deceased Cynic philosopher, and a colleague of Marcion at Sinope

Phil Harland — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:41:25 +0000

I’ve been making my way through The Inscriptions of Sinope, the latest in the series on Greek inscriptions of Asia Minor (bibliography below). Sinope was a Greek city on the northern coast of Turkey. Its location on the Black Sea made it important for sea trade, and the sailor and “heretic” Marcion was from this city. A few of the inscriptions stood out to me and I thought I’d share them with you.

The first is a very successful boxer of the first or second century who may well match or beat Sugar Ray:

M(arcus) Iutius Marcianus Rufus, outstanding boxer of Sinope, who won victories in the sacred triumphal competitions: at Rome in the Capitoline, 3 times in succession — at Neapolis, twice — at the Actian (games), twice, the first and only Sinopean (to do so) – at the Nemean (games), twice – at the Isthmian (games), twice – at the Pythian (games) – at the Olympic (games) – at the Panathenaic (games), the first and only Sinopean (to do so) – at Antiocheia (in Syria), 3 times, the first and only ever of the youth and men’s classes in one day, in the men’s class – in the Pythian games at Antiocheia – at Nicomedia, 3 times, the first and only ever in the under-age, youth and men’s classes – at the (Provincial) Community of Asia games at Smyrna, Pergamum, and Ephesus – at the Aspis at Argos, twice – at the (Provincial) Community of Asia games at Sardis, twice, at Philadelphia, twice, at Traelles, twice, at Hierapolis, twice, at Laodiceia, twice, at Thyateira, twice, at Mytilene, twice – at the (Provincial) Community of Pontus games, twice – at the (Provincial) Community of Galatia games, twice – at the (Provincial) Community of Macedonia games – at the (Provincial) Community of Bithynia games at Nicaea, twice – at the (Provincial) Community of Cappadocia games – and at other competitions in the half-talent class, 110 times. (In all) 150 victories. By decision of the Senate (ISinope 105; trans. by French with adaptations, see below).

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” I guess.

The second is the grave of a Cynic philosopher of the second or third century. This is the first grave of such a philosopher I have encountered, but there may well be others:

This then is (the) stone of a man whom, moreover, — an expounder of wisdom — this city has produced, [ - - ] of [ - - ] Perseus. Why does he have the name “wing”? Tell us! Because a raised wing too drew (him) through the air of Greece. This Perseus (was) [inclined] too towards Cynic thought, since he carried a wallet (and) a scimitar (small sword) in the place of a staff . . . (ISinope 171; trans. French, with adaptations).

The third involves the grave-stone of a shipper from Sinope (first-third century CE), the hometown of another more renowned shipper, named Marcion:

Hail, O passer-by! (I), Callinicus, having sailed (over) many waves, sailed (on) the last voyage of Lethe, (I) whom the sea in the deeps did not extinguish, but the earth destroyed by a heavy sickness; having lived two and thirty years, eager to come to (the) fate of (my) younger brother Calligonus, long dead, having lived nobly for fourteen years; thus are the plans of (the) fates arranged. Iulius Callinicus, ship-master (naukleros), lies here (ISinope 169).

This inscription also points to another reality of life in the ancient world, namely, the short life expectancy: Callinicus lived to the age of only 32 and his brother had died when he was only 14.

I plan to do more posts on interesting inscriptions I encounter.

David H. French, ed., The Inscriptions of Sinope (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, vol 64; Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 2004).

Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 – Ebionites

Phil Harland — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:51:15 +0000

Beginning with James the brother of Jesus and the Jerusalem church, here I trace evidence for Judean followers of Jesus and discuss their gradual marginalization. In particular, I focus attention on Jewish-Christian groups that the patristic sources (e.g. Irenaeus, Epiphanius) label “the Ebionites”, or “poor ones”. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 – Ebionites (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.7JudeanFollowersOfJesusPart1-Ebionites.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Some ancient education-related jokes (Jokes 4)

Phil Harland — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:29:02 +0000

When MSNBC links to your blog, the smartest thing to do is find out why, and then post more on the same.

Quite some time ago I started a series on ancient humour and it’s time to revive it again. See:

Ancient jokes: Humour now and then
Regional rivalries and humour in the Greco-Roman world
A few more ancient jokes, or selling your textbooks is not that impressive (also some haunting humour here).

The Philolegos, or Laughter-Lover is a treasure trove of ancient humour. As I wait anxiously for the strike to end at York University, here are some ancient education-related jokes:

“An egghead elementary school teacher suddenly darted a glance at the corner and shouted, ‘Dionysius is misbehaving in the corner!’ When one of the other boys pointed out that Dionysius had not yet arrived, he rejoined, ‘Well, he will be when he gets here’ (Laughter-lover, no. 61)

“An egghead was writing a letter from Athens to his father. Wanting to show off over how well his studies were going, he added this postscript: ‘I pray that when I come home I shall find you on trial for your life, so that I can show you how great an advocate I am’” (no. 54).

“A professor from [the city of] Sidon (see post here) asked a schoolteacher how much a five-litre flask holds. ‘That all depends on whether you mean oil or wine” (no. 136).

“A gluttonous teacher called up to a loaf of bread he saw on a high shelf, ‘Come down and recite your lesson or I’ll come up there and teach you another one’ (no. 220).

“An egghead gym instructor was told first that his pupil was not feeling well, next that he had a fever, and finally that he was dead. ‘If you keep giving him all these excuses to miss class, he’ll never have a chance to learn’ (no. 258).

Now even I would accept that last excuse for missing classes.

Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity – Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic

Phil Harland — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:32:50 +0000

Here I sketch out our main sources for the study of various Christian groups or “heresies” in the second and third centuries, including discussion of the early Christian Apocrypha, the Nag Hammadi writings (associated with “gnosticism”), and the Church Fathers. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity – Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.6IntroductionToTheSourcesForDiversity.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor – A Regional Case Study

Phil Harland — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:53:50 +0000

Here I use the region of Asia Minor (Turkey) as a case study that allows me to outline various strands and styles within Christianity in the first and second centuries. I then go on to outline our approach to studying the worldviews and practices of Christian groups and “heresies”. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor – A Regional Case Study (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options ).
Download audio file (Podcast3.5Diversity-CaseStudyOfAsiaMinor.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Beate Dignas, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (2002)

Phil Harland — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:03:39 +0000

I had been planning to read Beate Dignas’ book on the economics of sanctuaries in Asia Minor for some time, and I have finally done so: Beate Dignas, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: OUP, 2002). Here I’ll merely provide some highlights from my reading; this will not be a formal review.

Dignas argues that many studies of sanctuaries of Asia Minor in both the Hellenistic and Roman periods have been working with problematic assumptions. The main assumption that Dignas challenges throughout the work is that concepts such as “polis religion” (in other words “city-state run religion”) or “state cults” or “public cults” are the most appropriate concepts when describing cults in Asia Minor. In other words, she suggests that the common identification of cult with city (polis) and the notion that the sanctuaries were utterly dependent on civic government is not correct. Dignas also feels that past attempts to categorize sanctuaries and to deal with the different categories in isolation do not find a basis in the ancient evidence. In particular, she challenges a stark differentiation between urban and rural cults, or between Greek and so-called indigenous sanctuaries, or between regular sanctuaries and “temple-states”. Here Dignas would stress similarities more than differences among these previously common categories.

Instead, Dignas emphasizes inscriptional evidence which points to the independence of certain cults from the cities with which they have been associated. She also highlights cases when those in charge of a sanctuary (priests or what have you) sought to assert the interests of the sanctuary over against the city’s interests, usually by means of diplomatic relations with Hellenistic, Attalid, or Roman rulers. The relationship between the cult of Zeus at Labraunda and the polis of Mylasa serves as the ongoing illustration of this point, alongside other examples. The advantage of this particular case is that we possess epigraphic evidence from various points in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Dignas’ focus is on the economic management of the sanctuaries, with issues of administration, land, and income.

Dignas proposes a triangular understanding of the relation between city, cult, and ruler, with cases of rulers siding with cults being an important factor in her argument. Hellenistic or Roman rulers and governors served a mediating role in these conflicts of interest, sometimes siding with a sanctuary’s leadership against the polis’ stance, and sometimes with the polis. This approach rightly emphasizes the request-response and ad hoc nature of both Hellenistic and Roman rule. She suggests that the motivations of these rulers in supporting the requests of specific cults may well have been related to concerns to honour the gods and ensure the ongoing welfare of the sanctuaries (rather than mere political interests).

Built into Dignas’ approach is an emphasis on continuity in the administration of sanctuaries from the Hellenistic to the Roman periods, with little change in the overall dynamics of this triangular relationship. She also suggests the ongoing economic stability of many sanctuaries over this period. In doing so, she is correctly arguing against a far more common scholarly tradition which emphasizes the decline of traditional cults in the late Hellenistic and, especially, in the Roman periods. She is definitely on the right track in deconstructing that older, previously dominant view. For my own views on such theories of decline, you can check out my article: The Declining Polis? Religious Rivalries in Ancient Civic Context.

Although I feel that Dignas has a legitimate point to make regarding evidence for the independence of some sanctuaries at certain times, she sometimes tends to substitute repeated assertions regarding independence for actual evidence. At times the rhetoric of these assertions or claims is problematic as well. On one occasion, her confidence in her own claims approaches prophetic status: “future studies will confirm” what I [Dignas] am saying (p. 242). In cases when the evidence is minimal or difficult to interpret, she nonetheless proceeds full steam ahead with assuming or asserting a high level of independence. Although I think she is right about some level of continuity in sanctuary life from the Hellenistic to the Roman period, the strength with which she asserts this continuity is not necessarily consonant with the fragmentary nature of the evidence she presents. Strong claims of either continuity (Dignas’ point) or discontinuity (far more common in previous studies) are based on very partial evidence, and it is important to be very clear about that situation. More nuanced statements are called for. Still, she is right to suggest that the evidence does point to the ongoing vitality of many cults in Asia Minor.

Another conceptual difficulty with somewhat far-reaching implications is Dignas’ repeated contrast between “secular” and “profane” with the modern notion of the separation of “church” and “state” as a loose analogy (e.g. p. 13). This is based, in part, on Dignas’ attempt to assert the independence of sanctuaries (the sacred) from the polis or civic control (profane). Dignas is here working against a now common claim that what we as moderns label “religion” was in fact embedded within various other dimensions of life in antiquity. So that what we as moderns might label a “political” factor or an “economic” factor was, in the Greco-Roman world, bound up in what we would tend to call a “religious” sphere, and vice versa. In other words, some scholars (including myself) would emphasize the relative inadequacy of these categories for studying cultural life in antiquity. On the other hand, Dignas can conclude with the claim that “a religious sphere can be distinguished within any context of life in ancient Anatolia” (p. 223). I find Dignas’ attempt to go back to a clear differentiation between religion and politics or the sacred and the profane quite odd. In reading her theoretical comments on such matters it becomes clear that Dignas is not exactly up to date on the academic study of religion generally. Nor does she actually engage such theoretical issues in a direct way. This is problematic when dealing with the subject of sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman world. And yet it’s important to recognize that this book began as a dissertation in a Classical Studies department, not a Religious Studies department. And, in an overall way, Dignas’ assertions that an independent “religious sphere” existed is based less on any theoretical consideration of the issue than it is based on her attempt to argue for the independence of many sanctuaries from the cities (which to me does not require a claim that religion was separate from other aspects of life).

Despite these theoretical problems, I nonetheless found Dignas’ work very useful, particularly since we generally lack monographs on the topic of cults in Asia Minor.

Resurrecting EarlyChristianWritings.com and EarlyJewishWritings.com

Phil Harland — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:50:29 +0000

A reader of this blog (whose comment I by accident deleted rather than approved) recently reminded me that we can still access both earlychristianwritings.com and earlyjewishwritings.com using the Way Back Machine on Archive.org. There are various snapshots of the sites to choose from, with the most successful and complete ones for me being:

http://web.archive.org:80/web/20060131092132/http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

http://web.archive.org/web/20070611063719/http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/

This will certainly help since I included some readings from these sites in my course outline for the upcoming Winter term (assuming that the York U. strike gets solved before January!).

Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2

Phil Harland — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:21:03 +0000

Here I discuss Ignatius’ Judaizing opponents, who advocated certain Jewish beliefs and practices. I also deal with Ignatius’ strategies in combating groups he considered heretical. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.4IgnatiusOpponentsPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Angel-loving association cancelled – A new reading of an often cited inscription from Asia Minor

Phil Harland — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:19:52 +0000

The availability of the journal Epigraphica Anatolica online is already paying off! There you will find a new article which has some notable repercussions not only for the study of associations in Asia Minor but also for the study of the opponents of Colossians: Hasan Malay, “ΦΙΛΑΝΠΙΛΟΙ in Phrygia and Lydia,” Epigraphica Anatolica 38 (2005) 42–44.

Back in 1980/81, A.R.R. Sheppard published a little inscription (from near Kotiaion) involving Holiness and Justice, two personifications that were commonly honoured in certain areas of Phrygia and Lydia (“Pagan Cults of Angels in Roman Asia Minor,” Talanta 12-13 [1980-81]: 77-101 = SEG 31 1130). The more exciting element in the inscription was the apparent reference to non-Christians or non-Judeans who devoted themselves in some way to “angels”, which was based on Sheppard’s reading: ΦΙΛΑΝΓΕΛΩΝ (“Friends-of-angels”). Sheppard’s translation of the inscription was as follows:

“Aur(elius) … the Association of Friends of the Angels (made) a vow to Holiness and Justice”.

Sheppard suggested that this involved “pagans” who had some contact with the Jewish notion of angels. Sheppard’s reading of the inscription was also discussed in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol. 6, number 31.

This idea that there were “pagans” devoted to divine messengers or “angels” then became background for some New Testament scholars who were sorting out the “philosophy” combated by the author of Colossians (2:8-23), particularly the reference to the “worship of angels” (2:18). Clinton Arnold’s theory regarding the opponents of Colossians, for instance, drew attention to the importance of angels in Asia Minor not only among diaspora Judeans but also among pagans, such that we could speak of a common folk practice in this region. He suggested that the opponents were practicing the (magical) invocation of angels for protection and that this reflected both the Judean and pagan devotion to angels in Asia Minor specifically (see Clinton Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996]).

However, Malay’s recent study of this particular inscription has shown that Sheppard likely misread a key letter here (what a difference one letter can make). What Sheppard read as a “gamma”, Malay now says is surely a “pi”, which leaves us with ΦΙΛΑΝΠΙΛΟΙ, “Friends-of-the-vine” or “Vine-lovers”, and no angels at all in this inscription.

Malay publishes another inscription which confirms the existence of associations devoted to the vine, in other words relating to wine production and/or consumption, in the same region (in this case from nearby Katakekaumene, now in the Manisa Museum, dating 161/2 CE):

“To the Good Fortune! In the year 192, on the fourth day of the month Peritios, New Lovers of Vine (φιλάνπιλοι) set this up as a vow to Mother Leto on account of their own salvation.”

The meeting of the association of friend-of-angels is apparently canceled.

Consulting the gods about your favourite blanket

Phil Harland — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:43:30 +0000

Oracles were an important part of life in Greek cities of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Individuals, groups or communities went to locales such as Delphi, Didyma, and Claros to consult a god — in these cases the god Apollo — and to ask for guidance on various dilemnas or problems faced in their lives. The questions asked could range from what we would consider quite important political decisions (should be go to war with this or that power?) or important health concerns (how can we conceive?) to what we would consider more mundane matters. In reading Pierre Bonnechere’s chapter on “Divination” (A Componanion to Greek Religion, p. 157) today I came across this inscriptional gem in which a man consults Zeus and Zeus’ wife, Dione, about some missing bedding:

“Agis asks Zeus Naios and Dione about his blankets and pillows, whether he has lost them or whether someone else has stolen them” (SIG, 3rd edition 1163).

Sounds a bit like me consulting the local oracle on a wintery day: “Alright, who stole my gloves. Cheryl, have you seen my gloves?”

Haunted house for sale in Athens — belated Halloween post

Phil Harland — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:32:00 +0000

Usually I like to post some scary stuff from antiquity in connection with Halloween (see earlier ones about talking, decapitated heads and such here and here), but I’m a bit behind. Here is a somewhat entertaining tale of a haunted house preserved by Pliny the Younger (Roman governor of Bithynia-Pontus in the early second century). This ghost sounds a bit like a double for Jacob Marley. Pliny seems to believe the tale:

There was at Athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees. Immediately afterward a phantom appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and filthy appearance, with a long beard and messy hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terror grew upon them, and death ensued. Even in the day time, though the spirit did not appear, the impression nonetheless remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the house was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable, so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this very alarming circumstance, a sign was put up, giving notice that it was either for rent or sale.

(Pliny the Younger, Letters 7.27.5-6; adapted from the translation by William Melmoth, Letters of Pliny [Boston: Greenough and Stebbens, 1809], online at Project Gutenberg).

Moral of the story: Always ask if a place is haunted before you buy or rent.

(I came across the tale while reading D. Felton, “The Dead,” in A Companion to Greek Religion [edited by D. Ogden; London: Blackwell, 2007], 86-99.)

Podcast 3.3: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 1

Phil Harland — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:31:57 +0000

There are two main groups of opponents combated by Ignatius of Antioch in his letters to followers of Jesus in Asia Minor: Docetic and Judaizing opponents (part 1 of 2). This episode introduces Ignatius (who wrote in the early second century) and explains the position of his docetic opponents, who thought that Jesus only appeared to be human when in fact he was a divine being. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.3: Docetic and ‘Judaizing’ Opponents of Ignatius, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.3IgnatiusOpponentsPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2

Phil Harland — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:46:55 +0000

Here I continue to consider the opponents in John’s epistles (part 2 of 2). These epistles provide evidence of an early Christian schism over how to view Jesus’ humanity. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.2JohnsOpponentsPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

Ballparking the historical Jesus – The importance of context

Phil Harland — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:53:16 +0000

In my previous posts on the historical Jesus, I have stressed the difficulties modern historians face in reconstructing this first century peasant or in being precise about what exactly the peasant of Galilee did or said. The limits of historical method and the scholarly choices that are involved every step of the way help to explain why solid scholars such as E.P. Sanders and John Dominic Crossan come up with quite different results in their attempts to say something about the historical Jesus. (I hope to return to these guys in another post).

When it comes down to it, one could say that what we know with a relatively high level of probability using historical approaches are two specific things: that there is a very high likelihood that Jesus was executed by crucifixion under Pilate and that Jesus was probably baptized by John the immerser. There are, of course, important corollaries to these two items that allow us to go further. Yet, beyond such historically secure statements, it is difficult to be precise about sayings and actions of Jesus from an historical perspective. Some things may be more securely probable or likely than others, but we are dealing with less secure items the rest of the way in the search for the historical Jesus. What one scholar considers to be a more likely case of an authentic saying or action of Jesus, another will consider probably a product of an early Christian author, and therefore inauthentic. Modern historical methods are limited in what they can tell us about a specific person living two thousand years ago, and our ancient sources have interests other than historical reporting.

As the title to my post puts it, we are in some sense better off admitting that we can only (carefully) ballpark it when it comes to evaluating many aspects of the historical Jesus. What I mean by “ballparking it” here is that we can gain a relatively good picture of some aspects of the social, economic, and cultural contexts in which the peasant Jesus was active, and we can know with some degree of likelihood about some of Jesus’ contemporaries in the context of Galilee and Judea. We can construct a likely picture of the overall ballpark or range of possibilities within which to place the figure of Jesus — a first century Galilean ballpark set within the Roman empire.

View Larger Map
(The Galilean ballpark)

A typical student in a second year course or your average Jane-blog-reader may know very little about ancient history. They may know even less about the Mediterranean world as a whole in that ancient period. They may know even less about what was going on in Israel in the first century, and still less about what it was like in the region of Galilee or in some village like Nazareth. Then there’s the question of whether one’s limited knowledge is focussed on what we moderns distinguish as geography, politics, economics, society, or culture. The thing to teach here, I would suggest, is the ballpark (itself hard to recreate using historical methods) in which to plot out the various possibilities for a peasant like Jesus. If we spend considerable time studying the world in which Jesus lived, through both literary and archeological evidence, and focus our attention on studying other near-contemporaries of Jesus who produced writings or who left behind artefacts, then we can get quite a bit closer to the ballpark in which Jesus played.

Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity – A Schism in John’s Community, part 1

Phil Harland — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:34:07 +0000

Here I delve into the issue of diversity in early Christianity by using the opponents in John’s epistles as a starting point (part 1 of 2). These epistles provide evidence of an early Christian schism over how to view Jesus’ humanity. This is part of series 3 (“Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and Struggles”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity – A Schism in John’s Community, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast3.1DiversityAndJohnsOpponentsPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music.

New “heresy” podcast series – Diversity in early Christianity: “Heresies” and struggles (series 3)

Phil Harland — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:21:07 +0000

Starting in October (this coming week), the third series in the podcast will begin. This series looks at the variety of Christian groups that existed in the first to third centuries, especially marginalized groups and those traditionally labelled “heresies” (e.g. Gnostics, Marcionites, Ebionites, etc). This series is more advanced and assumes some knowledge of the history of early Christianity, so it is suggested that you first listen to series one (Paul and his communities) and two (Early Christian portraits of Jesus).

For those who would rather not wait for the staggered release of episodes over the next few months (through iTunes or the feed), I should remind you that all episodes are currently accessible on my archive.org podcast page (click on “Browse episodes starting with recent additions”).

Here is an overview of the episodes:

Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity – A Schism in John’s Community, part 1
Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2
Podcast 3.3: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 1
Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2
Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor – A Regional Case Study
Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity – Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic
Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 – Ebionites
Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 – Pseudo-Clement
Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God
Podcast 3.10: Introducing Gnostic Worldviews
Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 – The Spiritual Realm
Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 – Salvation from the Material Realm
Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism
Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 – Ideas of Salvation
Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 – Ritual Enactments of Salvation
Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary – Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple

A second highly probable thing about the historical Jesus: Immersion by John the Baptizer

Phil Harland — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:05:57 +0000

My previous discussion of Tacitus and Josephus concluded with the observation that the execution of Jesus under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate is one of the most secure things we can know about the peasant from Nazareth with a high degree of probability using modern historical methods. This is because reference to the execution is attested in multiple, independent sources (criterion of multiple, independent attestation), including sources which refer to Jesus only incidentally, as an aside. Historical methods are limited in what they can reveal to us, particularly in the case of ancient history and especially in the case of studying an obscure Galilean villager who lived two thousand years ago (our knowledge of Galilee is quite limited, let alone our knowledge of an individual living there). When historical approaches can reveal something to us, it is only with certain levels of likelihood or probability, not certainty or “truth.” So cases of “high probability” that x or y happened are the best you can get in doing history (in the modern sense).

(Joachim Patenier, The Baptism of Christ [1515; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna])

A second highly probable thing about Jesus accessible through historical methods is his immersion or baptism by John the Baptist. Scholars of early Christianity have developed a set of criteria for establishing the historical “authenticity” of particular activities or sayings attributed to Jesus in our sources, and multiple attestation is an important one. Another is known as the criterion of embarrassment. The principle here is: if a source reports some incident or saying even though the author of that source was hesitant about reporting it and somewhat embarrassed by the incident or saying, that author is not likely to have completely made up that incident or saying. On the other hand, the author in question could have simply omitted it to avoid any difficulty. In other words, when our sources report something in a round about way that reveals some embarrassment, there is a higher likelihood that it actually did happen.

One of the most illustrative cases in which this criterion plays a key role relates to the immersion of Jesus by John the Baptizer. The actual incident of Jesus being baptized in this case is attested in the gospel of Mark and in both Matthew and Luke. However, if one is using the two-source hypothesis, this would entail only one independent source for the incident, since Matthew and Luke are here drawing their material from Mark, the earliest ancient biography of Jesus. The Gospel of John completely omits the baptism itself and the Q-sayings source may or may not have included the actual baptism (Q did have material about John the Baptist and Jesus interacting). The so-called Gospel of the Hebrews and Gospel of the Nazoreans each report the immersion, so they may or may not (depending on their reliance on the synoptic traditions) supply further independent attestation. So the criterion of multiple attestation is not much help here.

This is where evidence of embarrassment comes in handy for the historian. The way that New Testament scholars explain this is that the embarrassment arises from the implications of a superior teacher or mentor in relation to an inferior student or protégé. At the time when the authors of the synoptics were writing (late first century) there were apparently still groups of followers of John the Baptizer (cf. Acts 19:1-7), which might raise the question: why not join a movement devoted to the superior baptizer rather the inferior baptized one. An early follower of Jesus might be concerned to assert that Jesus is superior to John the Baptist, even though Jesus’ baptism by John might imply otherwise.

Each of the gospels deals with this in different ways. The earliest, Mark, presents a saying in which John explicitly identifies his inferiority to Jesus, in terms of not being worthy to even undo Jesus’ sandals, and a dove, interpreted as the Spirit, confirms Jesus special status (Mk 1:7-11). Mathew uses Mark but adds in a further interchange in which John tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized by him, which would imply Jesus’ inferiority, but Jesus gives the green-light in terms of “fulfilling righteousness” (Mt 3:13-15). Luke goes about dealing with the embarrassment in an interesting way. Mark, Luke’s source, has that Jesus was “baptized by John in the Jordan” but Luke takes out John here and changes the phraseology so that there’s an ambiguity about who exactly baptized Jesus: “when Jesus also had been baptized… ” (Lk 3:21-22).

Finally, the Gospel of John (1:29-34) is usually out in left-field in comparison to the synoptic gospels, but the material on John the Baptist and Jesus is one of the very few cross-overs. How does the author of the gospel of John show what scholars call “embarrassment” here? The gospel of John omits the baptism of Jesus altogether but still presents John’s proclamations about the superiority of Jesus (e.g. the “Lamb of God” that takes away the sins of the world) and the descent of the dove indicating Jesus’ special status.

So all of our sources for the relation between John the Baptist and Jesus reveal what could be called an embarrassment at the implications of the baptism itself, one gospel to the point of omitting the immersion altogether. Mark, Matthew, and Luke could have likewise simply omitted this incident to avoid having to explain, but they included it despite their embarrassment. It is highly unlikely that the authors of these sources made up the baptism, and in historical terms it is highly probable that Jesus was actually baptized by John the Baptist. There are important corollaries of this piece of information, particularly relating to the apocalyptic worldview of John the Baptist, but I’ll have to save those for another post.

Quote of the day

Phil Harland — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:13:59 +0000

“If the devil were to explode and evil were gone forever, what sort of party would you have?” (Michael Scott, The Office, in reference to throwing a farewell party for a departing employee).

The answer involves anti-gravity machines, naturally.

Non-Christian sources for the study of the historical Jesus: Josephus and Tacitus on the execution of Jesus

Phil Harland — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:12:15 +0000

One of the frustrating things about studying ancient history is the very limited nature of our sources, both in terms of quantity (only bits and pieces have come down to us) and in terms of quality. What I mean by quality is reliable and verifiable historical information (in a modern historian’s terms) regarding the figures and incidents literary sources describe. What the ancients were interested in telling us is seldom what a modern historian wants to know.

This also holds for the study of the historical Jesus, an obscure peasant from Nazareth in Galilee. Archeology is indispensable in providing insights into the cultural context of that peasant, but does little for solving details about what that figure said or did. When it comes down to it, the ancient biographies known as the gospels (e.g. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) remain our principal source of evidence, along with other more recently discovered writings (e.g. The Gospel of Thomas). Yet the authors of ancient biographies, or “lives” (bioi), had very little interest in what a modern historian looks for in studying a figure of the past. The ancient “lives” of Jesus were instead very interested in explaining what they thought the meaning of Jesus was for those who wished to follow him, and in promoting their own particular takes on that figure’s significance.

What would help in this situation would be some non-Christian sources regarding Jesus which could be carefully compared with these ancient, insider “lives” of Jesus in order to assist the historian in reconstructing with some level of probability a picture of the historical Jesus or of certain aspects of his life. Such sources are few and far between, so it’s important to note the ones we have.

There are two main sources which I want to mention, one by a Judean author from a priestly family in Jerusalem (Josephus) who wrote in the last decades of the first century, and another by an upper class Roman imperial official (Tacitus) who wrote in the early second. Neither author cared much about Jesus, but each happens to mention something about Jesus nonetheless.

SOURCE 1: Josephus wrote several works, the most important of which were the Judean War (written in the decade following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE) and Judean Antiquities (written in the 90s CE). Josephus’ works (as well as some scholarly studies) are available online at the Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement (PACE) site. Figures related in some way to Jesus incidentally get mentioned three times in Judean Antiquities, including John the Baptist (Ant. 18.116-119), James (Ant. 20.200-201), and Jesus himself, who gets mentioned in one of the most important and controversial passages in all of Josephus’ writings (Ant. 18.63-64).

This passage is controversial because virtually all scholars agree that the text as it now stands (see below, including the strike-throughs) does not make sense as something Josephus would write: namely, there are no other signs anywhere in Josephus that suggest that he believed Jesus was an anointed one sent by God (“messiah”). Josephus is actually averse to any claims that average peasants or anyone other than a member of the elite was a messiah or king or worthy of some leadership position.

A very few scholars suggest that the whole passage was later inserted into a copy of Josephus which then got re-copied and ended up in copies that have survived into the modern period. Many other scholars would suggest that the passage was originally in Josephus’ book, but that someone (a Christian scribe) tampered with the passage and tweaked it significantly to make it sound like Josephus thought Jesus was absolutely wonderful, as though Josephus were actually a follower of Jesus. John P. Meier has done a good job of assessing the passage and in offering what seems a likely scenario of what was added in and what, therefore, should be struck-out in using the passage to study the historical Jesus :

At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out. (Ant. 18.63-64; translation by John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus [New York: Doubleday, 1991], vol. 1, p. 60; bold and strike-throughs mine).

This scenario is also supported by an Arabic version of this same passage in Josephus, which does not have the struck-through material and instead has similar material grouped at the end of the passage, suggesting that the Christian-sounding material is not original.

(Peter Paul Rubens, The Raising of the Cross (1620; Louvre)

SOURCE 2: Much more could of course be said about this passage in Josephus, but for now let’s move on to the second important non-Christian source pertaining to Jesus. Tacitus was a member of the imperial elite and senator, active in Rome, whose official positions included Roman governor of the province of Asia at one point (in 112-113 CE). In the early second century, Tacitus wrote a history of the Roman emperors of the first century, known as Annals (written in the early second century). There he deals with Nero’s time as emperor (54-68 CE). Tacitus, by the way, does not like Nero at all, but he’s safe since Nero died several decades earlier, and few of the imperial elite of Tacitus’ time looked back fondly on Nero. Tacitus’ works are available online on the Project Gutenberg site. There’s a short biography here.

Tacitus mentions that a fire engulfed a particular neighbourhood of the city of Rome, a neighbourhood that was slotted for heavy rebuilding by Nero. So, rumours began to spread that Nero himself had his men set the fire to clear the area and speed up the renovations. Nero’s response? Find someone to blame and quickly. He chose followers of Jesus since, he heard through some source, they were sometimes disliked and viewed as anti-social. Here is the passage from Annals 15.38 and 44:

(15.38) A disaster followed, whether accidental or treacherously contrived by the emperor, is uncertain, as authors have given both accounts, worse, however, and more dreadful than any which have ever happened to this city by the violence of fire. . . (15.44) But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed (Tacitus, Annals, 15.38-44; trans. by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, The Annals by Tacitus [London, New York: Macmillan, 1877]; public domain; bold mine).

SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS: There are many historical issues that could be explored both in Josephus and in Tacitus. (On Tacitus and persecution, see my earlier post on the atheistic Christians). But what is the primary significance of these passages for study of the historical Jesus? These sources coincide with a claim made in the gospels, the claim that Jesus was executed in Judea with the most severe form of punishment available for criminals, crucifixion, and that this took place in connection with the Roman imperial official Pontius Pilate. So we have multiple sources, some non-Christian, that confirm this aspect of what happened to the peasant named Jesus. Multiple attestation is always a key criterion in historical reconstructions (and in gospel studies, by the way). This is the most reliable thing we know — using limited, modern historical methods — regarding that figure, Jesus.

I will soon return to a second key item that scores high on the scale of probability for modern historians: the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, which has other significant corollaries regarding the peasant Jesus.

UPDATE: For those interested in reading further on some debates regarding the Josephus passage (the so called Testimonium Flavianum) on other blogs, see Stephen Carlson’s Testimonium Flavianum Series.

Did the peasant Jesus ignore Judean ritual laws? Crossan’s answer

Phil Harland — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:37:46 +0000

As I’m preparing to introduce second year students to the study of the historical Jesus, I am trying to pinpoint key issues and differences among scholars in order to highlight the problems in getting at that Galilean peasant. Soon enough, I’ll come to scholars (e.g. E.P. Sanders) who might point to the ways in which the Galilean Jesus was concerned to observe the Judean (Jewish) practices outlined in the Torah or Law, including some or most of its ritual observances. The proposal there would be that the difference between Jesus and many of his contemporaries was in the interpretation or application of those ritual laws, not in whether they were valid or not.

As I’m re-reading John Dominic Crossan’s book, however, I am starkly reminded of where his peasant Jesus diverges from some other portraits. For Crossan, Jesus significantly diverged from the apocalyptic message of his mentor, John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s warning of the imminent end and the impending kingdom of God in the near future was replaced by Jesus’ message focussed on transforming present arrangements in a way that acknowledged the kingdom of God in the present.

The central point of what Jesus was all about is centered on the implications of Jesus’ call for “open commensality” (meal practices open to anyone) in this present kingdom of God and it is related to the charge that Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard. Crossan’s claim to find in Jesus an egalitarian view on gathering together at the meal and a randomness in Jesus’ notion of the gathered community that will have a part in the kingdom or reign of God (e.g. parable of the feast in Gospel of Thomas 64 // Luke 14:15-24) becomes the interpretive key for all other aspects of the historical Jesus.

Crossan’s focus on this issue has implications regarding the degree to which Jesus was an observer of Judean customs and ritual ways as outlined in the Torah. You could even say that Crossan’s approach here determines the question of Jesus’ observance or non-observance of ritual requirements (apart from any other evidence or lack thereof):

it was obviously possible for the first Christian generations to debate whether Jesus was for or against the ritual laws of Judaism. His position must have been, as it were, unclear. I propose, from those preceding complexes [themes that converge in sayings of Jesus that center on open or egalitarian notions of meal practices, including the view that Jesus ate with sinners and was a glutton/drunkard], that he did not care enough about such ritual laws either to attack or to acknowledge them. He ignored them, but that, of course, was to subvert them at a most fundamental level. Later, however, some followers could say that, since he did not attack them, he must have accepted them [e.g. Crossan may be thinking of Matthew]. Others, contrariwise, could say that, since he did not follow them, he must have been against them [e.g. Crossan may be thinking of Mark]. Open commensality profoundly negates distinctions and hierarchies between female and male, poor and rich, Gentile and Jew. It does so, indeed, at a level that would offend the ritual laws of any civilized society. That was precisely its challenge (Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant [New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992], 263).

Are the sayings of Jesus pertaining to meals and eating the primary (or only) means by which his relation to Judean ritual customs can be determined? may be a question to ask. There will be more to come on such things in future posts.

Podcast 2.11: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Melchizedek, part 2

Phil Harland — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:14:03 +0000

Here I discuss the way in which the book of Hebrews portrays Jesus both as highpriest Melchizedek and once for all sacrifice (part 2 of 2). In particular, I explore the ways in which this author is saturated by the Hebrew scriptures and influenced by Platonic philosophy. This is the final episode in series 2 (“Early Christian Portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.11: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Mechizedek, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.11-HebrewsPortraitOfJesusPart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.10: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Melchizedek, part 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:06:26 +0000

Here I discuss the way in which the book of Hebrews portrays Jesus both as high-priest Melchizedek and once for all sacrifice (part 1 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian Portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.10: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus – Highpriest Mechizedek, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.10-HebrewsPortraitOfJesusPart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

On Sexual Indulgence: Paul and contemporaries like Musonius Rufus

Phil Harland — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:31:53 +0000

Quite well-known are the moral exhortations of early Christian authors such as Paul, which include a fair bit of advice on how to conduct oneself sexually. Thus, for instance, Paul objects to a follower of Jesus at Corinth who was sleeping with his step-mother (the father was not likely around anymore) (1 Corinthians 5). Quite well known and controversial these days are Paul’s comments about Greeks and Romans (“gentiles” = non-Judeans) who engage in what Paul considers “degrading passions”: “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men. . . were consumed with passion for one another. . . ” (Romans 1:26-27 [NRSV]). And Paul speaks to the followers of Jesus at Thessalonica and advocates that “you abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to control your own body [vessel] in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion, like the gentiles [non-Judeans] who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). In some ways, Paul is reflecting quite typical stereotypes about Greeks and Romans from a Judean perspective here.

Yet such perspectives on sexual morality and modes of moral exhortation were not necessarily specifically Judean or “Christian” in Paul’s time. Some of Paul’s “lustful” gentiles advocated similar moral choices when it came to sex. In many ways, the instructional techniques and lifestyle choices advocated by Paul have parallels in contemporary philosophers (see also my early post on the “Golden Rule” among the ‘pagans’).

Musonius Rufus is one of these contemporary philosophers, a Greek philosopher who combined elements from both the Stoic and Cynic schools. As I was designing my introductory Christian origins course this week, which this year focuses on placing Jesus, Paul, and other early Christian founders in the context of contemporaries, I re-read Musonius’ advice “On Sex”. There he includes the following advice addressed primarily to men:

Not the least significant part of luxury and self-indulgence lies also in sexual excess. For example those who lead such a life crave a variety of loves not only lawful but unlawful ones as well, not women alone but also men. Sometimes they pursue one love [women] and sometimes another [men], and not being satisfied with those which are available, pursue those which are rare and inaccessible, and invent shameful intimacies, all of which constitute a grave indictment of manhood. Men who are not wantons or immoral are bound to consider sexual intercourse justified only when it occurs in marriage and is indulged in for the purpose of begetting children, since that is lawful, but unjust and unlawful when it is mere pleasure-seeking, even in marriage. But of all sexual relations those involving adultery are most unlawful, and no more tolerable are those of men with men, because it is a monstrous thing and contrary to nature.

Trans. by Cora E. Lutz, “Musonius Rufus: ‘The Roman Socrates’,” Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947) 85-87, with adjustments to punctuation.

To modern ears, this may sound wonderful or ridiculous, or a bit of both, depending on who’s listening. Here one of my points is that Paul had more in common with a guy like Musonius than Paul’s condemnation of the morally bankrupt non-Judeans would imply.

Human sacrifice and cannibalism again — oh, and sexual perversion too

Phil Harland — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:37:52 +0000

I am in the midst of writing a book on Dynamics of Identity and Early Christianity (for Continuum) which tries to shed some new light on the question by looking to associations, cultural minorities, and ethnic groups in the world of the early Christians. “Identity” has to do with the way in which individuals and groups answer the questions “who am I” or ‘who are we in relation to others?” Social scientists emphasize that there are two main processes in identity-construction and re-negotiation: internal self-definitions and external categorizations. External categorizations involve outsiders’ perspectives on who a group is and stereotypes about that group, and they can play a role in how members of the evaluated group re-negotiate and express their own identities internally.

In previous posts (click here), I have noted a common set of ethnographic stereotypes that were used to categorize other peoples or groups as “barbarous” and dangerous to society, particularly cultural minority groups or ethnic groups. The early Christians, for instance, were charged with Thyestan feasts (cannibalism) and Oedipean unions (incest), and similar charges went back and forth between social and ethnic groups in antiquity. Judeans, too, were stereotyped and charged with the same sort of activities when a particular Greek or Roman author disliked them.

Yet, as I said, the charges go both ways. A good example of this is offered by a passage in the Wisdom of Solomon (first century BCE or CE — in the so called Apocrypha of the Bible) which characterized ‘pagans’ as dangerous and barbarous. This author describes the ‘detestable’ activities of those who inhabited the ‘holy land’ before the arrival of the Israelites. This gives this Hellenistic Judean author opportunity to critique contemporary associations or ‘societies’ of ‘initiates’ outside of the Judean sphere in the process, calling on the same sort of stereotypes we have seen in Greek or Roman slander against Judeans. God ‘hated them for practicing the most detestable things – deeds of sorcery and unholy rites (τελετὰς ἀνοσίους), merciless slaughters of children, sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood – those “initiates” from the midst of a “society” (ἐκ μέσου μύστας θιάσου) and parents who murder helpless lives, you willed to destroy. . .‘ (Wis 12:4-5; cf. Wis 14:15-23 [NETS]).

At the same time, personified Wisdom herself is an ‘initiate’ of another, superior kind, an ‘initiate (μύστις) in the knowledge of God’ (Wis 8:4). Elsewhere the author critiques the ‘idolatry’ of Greeks generally, the ‘impious ones’ (άσεβοῦς) who do not know such ‘divine mysteries’ (2:22) and who instead establish their own inferior ‘mysteries and rites’ (μυστήρια καὶ τελετάς; 14:15): ‘For whether performing ritual murders of children or secret mysteries or frenzied revels connected with strange laws, they no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure, but they either kill one another by treachery or grieve one another by adultery’ (Wis. 14:23-24). Once again, ritual murder and sexual perversion converge in this characterization of the associations of another ethnic group.

The process of defining the ‘other’ as dangerous barbarians who will kill and eat you if they can is in fact the process of defining one’s own group as well. This is the boundary-constructing process of distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’, and virtually all groups in antiquity engaged in such modes of external categorizations and self-definition that are at the heart of identity.

(Sure this post is somewhat long, but at least I’m trying — I’ve lost the knack for short and sweet, it seems, if I ever had it).

A computer in 100 BCE?

Phil Harland — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:43:44 +0000

I just received an email from Harold Remus who pointed me to an interesting article on a mechanism designed to compute solar eclipses and to arrange the calendar in connection with the cycles of the Olympiad (ancient Olympics). The New York Times article explains:

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.

The full article is available here: Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.

Podcast 2.9: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word, part 2

Phil Harland — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:03:49 +0000

Here I continue to discuss how the gospel of John portrays Jesus as both the Word of God and the Son sent by the Father (part 2 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian Portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.9: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.9JohnPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.8: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word, part 1

Phil Harland — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:04:40 +0000

Here I discuss how the gospel of John portrays Jesus as both the Word of God and the Son sent by the Father (part 1 of 2). I also deal with this gospel’s stress on the importance of “signs” pointing to Jesus’ identity and the way in which Jesus (“Lamb of God”) is viewed as a fulfillment of Jewish festivals, especially Passover. This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.8: John’s Portrait of Jesus – Son and Word, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.8JohnPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.7: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah, part 2

Phil Harland — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:41:38 +0000

Here I continue to discuss how the gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as a prophet like Elijah, which also entails presenting Jesus as a saviour to the poor and marginalized of society (part 1 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.7: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.7LukePortraitJesuspart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.6: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah, part 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:37:08 +0000

Here I discuss how the gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as a prophet like Elijah, which also entails presenting Jesus as a saviour to the poor and marginalized of society (part 1 of 2). In this first part, I provide some important background for understanding this two volume work, Luke-Acts, both as ancient biography and as ancient history-writing. This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.6: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus – Prophet Elijah, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.6LukePortraitJesuspart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.5: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses (part 2)

Phil Harland — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:04:36 +0000

Here I continue the discussion of Matthew’s portrait of Jesus as the new David and new Moses (part 2 of 2). I also delve into tensions between Matthew’s community and other groups of Jews or Judeans in the late first century. This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.5: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.5MatthewPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Jesus said, “You’re all evil. There is no hope. That’s it. Thank you.”

Phil Harland — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:38:09 +0000

Hat tip to one of the pastors at The Meeting House (Joel Percy), who showed the following mash-up video in connection with his talk on common Christian notions of sin. I laughed till I cried, despite the fact that most others were slightly less amused or perhaps less aware of what was being critiqued via the presentation of Jesus:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Podcast collection page now on archive.org – Advance auditions

Phil Harland — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:40:35 +0000

I am enjoying creating the podcasts and have found that subscriptions and downloads are more than enough to continue (about 400 ongoing subscribers and over 1000 downloads for certain episodes). What began as a mere experiment at the prodding of my web-savvy wife, is now what I would consider a relative success. Thanks to those who are listening and making my preparation of material seem even more worthwhile. I love to teach, so it’s great to have a larger audience (even though it would be nice to interact more in person with the listeners — and you don’t get to hear all the jokes, or the “ah’s” and “um’s” which are edited out).

I have been hosting the individual audio mp3 files for my podcast on archive.org all along. Now the people over at archive.org have been nice enough to establish a “collection” page which gathers together all of my podcast audio into its own independent sub-section on archive.org: Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean Podcast collection page (accessible from archive’s “Podcasts” and “Religion and Spirituality” sections under “Audio”). This does not change anything about the main feed for my podcast and the access through iTunes, which still remain the same (with a new half-hour episode being released bi-weekly).

There are some advantages to this added venue for my podcasts. Let me explain. Currently, I stagger the release of episodes (organized into series) which are broadcast twice a month through my blog and feed (which also gets sent to iTunes). So far I have been releasing series 1 on “Paul and his communities” (completely released) and series 2 on “Early Christian portraits of Jesus” (part way through). Sometime next Fall, I will officially begin posting series 3 on “Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles” (which deals with things like the Ebionites, Marcionites, “gnostics”, Nag Hammadi writings, and early Christian apocrypha). All of the episodes that have been officially released so far are of course also accessible here on this site under the podcast category.

The advantage of the archive collection page is that it leaves it up to you, the (potential) listener, to get episodes when you want them and to jump ahead a series if you would rather. You can now access some episodes (or series) of my podcast before they are officially released on my blog (in the event that I have them ready and uploaded to archive.org — I’m not a machine;). This means that if you know quite a bit about Paul or the Gospels, and therefore haven’t been listening to the first two series, you can now jump forward (on archive.org) to a future, more advanced series on “Diversity in early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles”. This also means that if you happen to be finding the bi-weekly process too slow and are often waiting for a podcast to listen to during the commute, then you can move ahead and get them now in some cases. But if you do jump ahead, you may use a couple of years worth of releases up in no time (I won’t be able to officially release new ones any faster than twice a month to ensure consistency over large spans of time).

Another nice thing about my archive.org collection is that it tells you the number of downloads and which episodes were downloaded most in the last week, in the past month, and since the beginning of the podcast (look at the right column on that page and scroll down).

I hope some of you find this helpful. Let me know what you think, or if you have other suggestions.

Podcast 2.4: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses, part 1

Phil Harland — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:45:04 +0000

Here I discuss the Judean portrait of Jesus as the new David and new Moses in the Gospel of Matthew (part 1 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.4: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus – New Moses, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.4MatthewPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 2.3: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son, part 2

Phil Harland — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:34:39 +0000

This continues the discussion of how Jesus is portrayed in the narrative of the gospel of Mark, namely as the secretive and suffering Son of God (part 2 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.3: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.3MarkPortraitJesuspart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Thessalos’ travels and his “magical” cures

Phil Harland — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:28:06 +0000

Seldom in ancient sources does one encounter extensive autobiographical statements about a person’s supposed journeys and communications with the gods (with the exception of novels like the Golden Ass). For this reason, the first century letter of Thessalos, which served as a preface for an astrological guide-book on medical materials, provides an important glimpse into ancient expectations regarding travel and religion. Yet this letter is not readily available in English. In connection with the Travel and Religion in Antiquity website, I have now created a webpage on Thessalos which provides a translation (along with the Greek text) of this seldom studied document. I’ve been working on an article that looks at Thessalos’ story within the context of Greek expectations regarding such journeys in pursuit of wisdom from the gods, and so the webpage will likely expand with time.

The letter attributed to Thessalos, which was only rediscovered and published by Charles Graux in 1878, relates the story (however fictional) of Thessalos’ early life and education in Asia Minor. There he demonstrates extraordinary abilities that lead him to pursue a medical education in Alexandria in Egypt. Towards the end of his education as a physician, Thessalos discovers an ancient book by king Nechepso which promises twenty-four medical cures according to the signs of the Zodiac. Thessalos rashly believes that the treatments will work and spreads word of the amazing cures to both his family in Asia and his colleagues in Alexandria, only to discover that he cannot make the prescriptions work. This leads him to thoughts of suicide. Thessalos then wanders through Egypt in search of a solution that is only satisfied after meeting an Egyptian priest at Diospolis (Thebes), who reluctantly prepares Thessalos to communicate with a god. After attaining purity, the story culminates in Thessalos meeting the god Asklepios “face to face”. Thessalos receives from Asklepios secret knowledge concerning the connections between effective healing, plants, and the stars.

Podcast 2.2: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son, part 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:13:25 +0000

Here I consider how Jesus is portrayed in the narrative of the gospel of Mark, namely as the secretive and suffering Son of God (part 1 of 2). This is part of series 2 (“Early Christian portraits of Jesus”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 2.2: Mark’s portrait of Jesus – Suffering Son, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.2MarkPortraitJesuspart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Fripp on suffering in this life and the apocalyptic suffering to come

Phil Harland — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:20:15 +0000

On my music blog, I have posted a piece on Robert Fripp’s album Exposure (1979) which may be of interest to readers of this blog since it deals with some religious themes, including human suffering and apocalypticism.

Podcast 2.1: Introduction to Early Christian Portraits of Jesus

Phil Harland — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:14:54 +0000

Here I discuss some introductory issues regarding the gospels, including their status as ancient biographies or portraits of Jesus and the literary relationships among the synoptic gospels (approx. 45 minutes). This sets the stage for an historical and literary study of portraits of Jesus in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, as well as the book of Hebrews. This episode is part of series two (“Early Christian Portraits of Jesus”) of the podcast.

Podcast 2.1: Introduction to Early Christian Portraits of Jesus (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast2.1Introductiontothegospels.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Sex and salvation in the Gospel of Philip

Phil Harland — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:18:42 +0000

The Gospel of Philip has more to do with sex than you might imagine. This is one of the writings that was found near the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi in 1945, a third century work that is among those traditionally considered “gnostic”.

Sure, there’s the fact that this writing is cited in conspiracy theories regarding the supposed sex life of Jesus. The Da Vinci Code‘s use of the Gospel of Philip illustrates this approach. The (incomplete) passage that is used in the book and movie is the one that refers to Jesus, a companion, and Mary Magdalene, and then goes on to refer to some kisses and the jealously of other disciples because Jesus apparently loved Mary most (but the “translation” in the movie–unlike the one here–fills in the blanks):

And the companion of the [ . . . ] Mary Magdalene. [. . . loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [ . . . ]. The rest of [the disciples . . .]. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The savior answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you like her?. . . When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness (Gospel of Philip 63.30-64.9).

The passage is, in fact, less than clear on any claim that Jesus was the companion, in the sense of sexual partner or lover, of Mary Magadelene. (I’ll also add that none of the second or third century Gospels tell us much at all about the first century peasant Jesus; rather they tell us about how later Christians understood Jesus centuries later). Instead, this is one further instance of what we find in other early Christian writings, namely, the claim that Jesus favoured a particular disciple (a disciple who “saw the light”, in this case) and may have offered that special disciple some secret or important information. The point is that a particular community that uses that gospel is claiming some direct and special access to Jesus’ teaching, and claiming that they have the truth more than some other group (compare the Gospel of Mary Magadalene, The Coptic Gospel of Thomas,or the Gospel of John, with its “beloved disciple”– I won’t go into any other inventive theories around the beloved disciple, or the scantily clad guy in the Gospel of Mark, Secret, Elongated, or otherwise).

Not to steal Hollywood’s excitement, but the kisses in question in the Gospel of Philip are best understood not as sexual ones but as further examples of the “holy kiss” greeting among members of Jesus groups as early as the mid-first century (see Rom 16:16, for instance). The followers of Jesus who used the Gospel of Philip also apparently attached an even more important significance to this kiss (59.1-5 and 58.30-59.6) and to breath (63.6-10; 70.23-24) in connection with their understanding of how the spiritual spark in some human souls is connected with the spiritual realm as a whole . It is true, however, that some outsiders–both Greeks and Romans– accused early followers of Jesus of incest (as well as cannibalism), but that had less to do with any knowledge of Christian “holy kisses” or their tendency to call one another “brothers” or “sisters” than it had to do with common mud-slinging in characterizing foreign peoples or minority groups as dangerous barbarians (see my posts here and my article here).

Nonetheless, there is some sex, quite a bit in fact, in the Gospel of Philip. I’m talking about the consistent way in which the author of the materials gathered in this writing uses sexual union as a METAPHOR for salvation itself. And the way in which the community of Christians that used this gospel enacted this salvation in a ritual known as the “bridal chamber”. So this is not sex of the usual type and is a little more tame than Hollywood likes–sorry to disappoint.

This writing expresses the poor condition of humanity, our present fallen state, using the metaphor or analogy of the separation of the genders and speaks of salvation in terms of the reuniting of the male and female: “When Eve was still in Adam death did not exist. When she was separated from him death came into being. If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more” (68.22-25). Further on it explains this “separation” again and refers to the reparation that the saviour figure, Christ, brings: “If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation and unite them” (70.9-18).

The Gospel of Philip presupposes a particular mythological and cosmological worldview that I have discussed in many other posts on “gnosticism” and related literature (browse some posts in my “gnosticism” and apocrypha category to understand this a bit better). Here Christ is the Saviour figure who brings salvation not by dying on a cross but by bringing the knowledge (gnosis), knowledge of the fact that an element within humans (certain spiritual humans) ultimately belongs in the perfect spiritual realm, not this inferior material realm framed by the creator god (the demiurge) of the Hebrew Bible.

So, for this follower of Jesus, salvation is about reunification. But how is this reunification understood and completed. Well, there is a specific ritual or process of initiation that this group felt was a way of enacting the process of gaining knowledge that brings reunification with the perfect spiritual realm: the bridal chamber, which was preceded by baptism and anointing (“chrism”). So once again, sexual union is the prominent metaphor for salvation, in this case within the ritual context. To be clear, it is not a real man and woman that unite in the ritual context of the “bridal chamber”. Rather, it is “the image” (here conceived as “male”) that unites with “the angel” (65.20-24). It is the image within man that unites with its female angelic counterpart in the bridal chamber. It is the spiritual element within certain people that reunites with its spiritual consort, thereby returning to where it belongs, namely ascending above to the perfect spiritual realm or “fullness” that is one and the same with the Father God (not the creator of this material realm).

So despite the sort of thing you’ll read in church fathers like Epiphanius (see here), the followers of Jesus that used the Gospel of Philip did not engage in actual sex for this ritual; instead it is a metaphorical way of expressing and enacting salvation. But did such Jesus-followers have sex at all? There’s a scholarly debate on precisely this matter. April DeConick is among those scholars who suggest that the Gospel of Philip reflects Christians with a relatively positive view of marriage and sexual union within marriage (article title to come soon). Scholars like this point to the positive use of the analogy of sexual union in the discussion of the bridal chamber ritual, when the author speaks of “marriage in the world” to explain the other “spiritual” marriage of the chamber (82).

Other scholars would suggest that this author of the Gospel of Philip, like many other Nag Hammadi authors, had a less positive or quite negative view of bodily matters and would suggest that “it is proper to destroy the flesh” (82.25-29), including sexual activity even within marriage. In other words, the followers of Jesus who used this Gospel filled with sex (in the metaphorical sense) may well have been sexually ascetic and refrained from the real thing in any context, (real) bridal chamber or otherwise.

Podcast 1.12: Legacies of Paul – Women’s leadership, part 2

Phil Harland — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:51:27 +0000

This concludes the discussion of the Acts of Paul and Thecla in relation to the Pastoral epistles, addressing the ways in which Paul was used within debates about women’s leadership in second century groups of Jesus-followers. This is the final episode in series 1 (“Paul and his Communities”). Series 2 (beginning in March) will take an historical and literary look at “Early Christian Portraits of Jesus”, including the gospels.

Podcast 1.12: Legacies of Paul – Women and leadership, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here). approx 32 minutes
Download audio file (Podcast1.12LegaciesofPaul-WomenandLeadershippart2.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 1.11: Legacies of Paul – Women’s leadership, part 1

Phil Harland — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:29:46 +0000

Here I look at legacies and interpretations of Paul after his death. In particular, I use several letters written in the name of Paul (the Pastoral epistles) and a novelistic story about Paul and a woman named Thecla (Acts of Paul and Thecla) as a window into debates about leadership of women in groups of Jesus-followers in the second century. This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.11: Legacies of Paul – Women and leadership, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.11LegaciesofPaul-WomenandLeadershippart1.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Marcion’s Stranger God (also “strange”)

Phil Harland — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:04:46 +0000

For students who are familiar with Christianity in some way (and most are regardless of what their religious backgrounds may be), it is hard to get their minds around a variety of people that called themselves “Christians” or followers of Jesus back in the first couple of centuries. These other Christians sometimes had quite different worldviews and practices than the ones we associate with Christianity today, and they can come across as “strange”.

One reason these other followers of Jesus come across as “strange” is because the varieties of Christianity we are familiar with today (despite the diversity there too) all stem, in some way, from the winners who established their positions as “orthodox” (true-belief) in antiquity. The result was that, in the long run, many others who felt they followed Jesus got left out the picture, with the exception of other Jesus-followers speaking negatively about them as “heretics”.

Once in a while, we are lucky to actually find writings from the perspectives of the ones who lost out (the “heretics”) as history moved forward, as when a group of writings like the Nag Hammadi documents are found. However, with most others it is only indirectly that we can get a sense of the diversity of groups that followed Jesus.

One such form of Christianity that comes across as “strange” at first is Marcion’s style of following Jesus (he was especially active in the 130s and 140s CE). We only know about Marcion’s views from those who disliked him, from certain patristic writers like Tertullian, who wrote a five-volume work condemning Marcion’s views (Against Marcion online here). I have already discussed the sort of name-calling you might expect from the likes of Tertullian in a previous post on the “savage” Marcion here. We have to carefully reconstruct the views of Marcion from writers of the late-second and third centuries like Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Hippolytus (see some of the passages quoted here).

In the 150s CE, for instance, Justin writes:

one Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even now alive, teaching those who believe him to pay honour to a different god, greater than the Creator: and this man has by the assistance of those demons caused many of every nation to utter blasphemies, denying the God who made this universe, and professing that another, a greater than he, has done greater things (Apology 1.26 as cited in Evans).

From such sources, it seems that Marcion believed that the God who sent Jesus was not the same god familiar from the stories of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament). Reading these stories quite literally, Marcion saw the creator god in the Hebrew Bible as rather impulsive, unpredictable, warlike, and primarily interested in having humans follow his rules or in judging those who did not. Marcion felt that Jesus’ message and behaviour was not compatible with the sort of behaviour Marcion found in the creator god.

This is where the stranger God comes into the picture, and I mean strange in the sense of previously unknown. Marcion proposed that Jesus had no direct relation to the Judean (Jewish or Israelite) creator god of the Hebrew Bible and that he was not that god’s messiah. Rather, Jesus was sent from a previously unknown, stranger God whose character was centred not on war and justice but on love. There is a sense in which the creator god of the Bible was the antithesis of the God who sent Jesus, in Marcion’s view.

Marcion wrote a whole book, which is now lost, on the Antitheses or “Oppositions” between the two. Marcion also expressed this opposition in terms of the opposition between Law (enforced by the creator god) and Gospel (brought by Jesus from the loving Father). He drew this contrast between gospel and law from his own interpretation of Paul’s letters, which he edited to remove connections with the Judean god. Marcion thought that Paul got things right and that the other apostles mis-interpreted Jesus. The loving Father sent Jesus to free us from the legalistic enforcement of the Judean god, Marcion believed. Although the Judean creator god was just in a legalistic sense (he punished humans based on the law he established), the Father God who sent Jesus was far superior and loving.

In order to further bolster this interpretation, Marcion also was among the first to gather together a collection of authoritative writings. The Hebrew Bible was quite clearly excluded from scripture in Marcion’s mind, since it had nothing to do with either Jesus or the previously unknown, loving God. Rather, Marcion proposed as authoritative ten of Paul’s letters together with a version of the gospel of Luke with parts removed that implied a connection between Jesus and the Judean god. Marcion, it seems was among the first to propose a canon of scripture of sorts. On that, see my post: Breaking news: Early Christians had no New Testament.

That, in brief, is some of the limited amount we know about Marcion, whose brand of Christianity was considerably successful in various parts of the Roman empire from North Africa and Rome to Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, at least into the fourth and fifth centuries.

UPDATE (moments later):

As if the result of some alignment of the planets, Stephen Carlson has just posted on an interesting (though certainly questionable) theory regarding the synoptic problem that involves a Marcionite gospel: Klinghardt’s New Solution for the Synoptic Problem.

Podcast 1.10: Paul’s response to the Romans

Phil Harland — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:40:41 +0000

This episode considers Paul’s response to the ethnic divisions that existed among groups of Jesus-followers at Rome. Here I discuss Paul’s main arguments regarding the equally condemnable and equally save-able status of both Greeks (or Gentiles) and Judeans, as well as Paul’s view that “all Israel will be saved”. This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.10: Paul’s response to the Romans (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.10PaulsresponsetoJesus-followersatRomeHarland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

The Jesus Ultimatum: Action and suspense in Mark’s gospel

Phil Harland — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:55:45 +0000

I joked to my students the other day that, of the portraits of Jesus in the gospels (on which also see my earlier post on “Who is this guy?”: The Gospel of Mark on the identity of Jesus), Mark’s would be the closest to a Bourne flick in terms of action and suspense.

True, the action in Mark may not be as intense as a car-chase through the streets of Moscow, but there is certainly some speed in the narrative. Jesus does just about everything “immediately” and the reader is brought from one episode to the next at almost lightning speed. In chapter one alone, Jesus appears, is baptized, goes out to the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan, collects together some students, teaches in the synagogue, has run-ins with authorities, casts out a couple of very vocal unclean spirits, heals both a woman and a leper as well has “many who were sick with various diseases” or possessed by demons. Hearing this gospel, you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what Jesus is going to do next.

Beyond the action, suspense is also built into Mark’s story of Jesus. Sometimes the author slows things down quite deliberately in order to build suspense of another kind, as in the section that deals with Jesus’ authority as healer. So, for example, Mark’s story-telling abilities come to the fore when he gets us quite worried about a poor girl on the verge of death: “Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw [Jesus], fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’” (Mark 5:22-23 [NRSV]).

With Mark’s record for having Jesus do just about everything in a flash, this time things go very slow despite the fact that a little girl is about to die. The narrator or story-teller is quite deliberately building suspense here, as many scholars note. Instead of flashing ahead to Jesus healing the girl in the nick of time, Mark goes on to relate Jesus’ healing of another woman with internal bleeding, and the author of Mark doesn’t do this quickly. The hearer of this story is left wondering: “What happened to the poor little girl! She’s going to die! Hurry up!!”

Then, after this story of the healing of the older woman, the hearer’s worries are confirmed. The little girl is indeed dead. Jesus is too late: “While [Jesus] was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’” (v. 35). This is when the panic of the hearer is alleviated as the story of Jesus going to the girl and raising her from the dead is narrated: “He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum,’ which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement” (vv. 41-42) — as are the hearers of this story. At last, things are happening “immediately” again.

The “savage” Marcion: Ethnographic stereotypes in attacking “heretics”

Phil Harland — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:57:12 +0000

On a number of occasions I have discussed ancient ethnography (posts here), namely the ways in which ancient authors describe the practices and beliefs of other peoples. These descriptions of “foreign” peoples are often heavily laden with stereotypes and, to put it bluntly, nasty characterizations. As minority cultural groups, Judeans and followers of Jesus could be on the receiving end of such ethnographic stereotypes of “barbarous” peoples, as when some Greeks or Romans charged Christians with incest and cannibalism (see a full article on the topic here). I have discussed Tertullian’s defence of Christians against such stereotypes, including the notion that followers of Jesus regularly sacrificed little children: ‘Come! Plunge the knife into the baby’: Tertullian’s not-so-subtle retort.

But this church father, Tertullian, could also dish it out quite well, even in dealing with others who claimed to follow Jesus. Around the turn of the third century, Tertullian wrote a five-volume work (Against Marcion) in which he put on trial, so to speak, the views and practices of Marcion, a follower of Jesus who had substantially different views from Tertullian’s. Tertullian opens this massive work with a somewhat extensive ethnographic description of the peoples of the Euxine Sea (Black Sea) and Pontus region — this is where Marcion came from. Here Tertullian characterizes these people as barbarians with extremely strange practices, including “deviant” sexual practices he dare not name (“If the wagon’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’”) and “savage” practices such as carving up their own fathers for a stew. These stereotypical accusations of barbarity are neither here nor there in terms of realities of life around the Black Sea or in terms of what Marcion was like, but it is interesting to see such name-calling techniques used in one Christian’s attack on another. Marcion, it turns out in Tertullian’s not so subtle characterizations of everyone from Pontus, is, no doubt, a savage, father-eating sexually-deviant barbarian. Don’t listen to Marcion’s form of Christianity is the message:

The sea called Euxine, or hospitable, is belied by its nature and put to ridicule by its name. Even its situation would prevent you from reckoning Pontus hospitable: as though ashamed of its own barbarism it has set itself at a distance from our more civilized waters. Strange tribes inhabit it—if indeed living in a wagon can be called inhabiting. These have no certain dwelling-place: their life is uncouth: their sexual activity is promiscuous, and for the most part unhidden even when they hide it: they advertise it by hanging a quiver on the yoke of the wagon, so that none may inadvertently break in [blogger's note: "If the wagon's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'"]. So little respect have they for their weapons of war. They carve up their fathers’ corpses along with mutton, to gulp down at banquets. If any die in a condition not good for eating, their death is a disgrace. Women also have lost the gentleness, along with the modesty, of their sex. They display their breasts, they do their house-work with battle-axes, they prefer fighting to matrimonial duty. There is sternness also in the climate—never broad daylight, the sun always niggardly, the only air they have is fog, the whole year is winter, every wind that blows is the north wind. Water becomes water only by heating: rivers are no rivers, only ice: mountains are piled high up with snow: all is torpid, everything stark. Savagery is there the only thing warm—such savagery as has provided the theatre with tales of Tauric sacrifices, Colchian love-affairs, and Caucasian crucifixions.

Even so, the most barbarous and melancholy thing about Pontus is that Marcion was born there, more uncouth than a Scythian, more unsettled than a Wagon-dweller, more uncivilized than a Massagete, with more effrontery than an Amazon, darker than fog, colder than winter, more brittle than ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than Caucasus. Evidently so, when by him the true Prometheus, God Almighty, is torn to bits with blasphemies. More ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver more self-castrating than this man who has abolished marriage? What Pontic mouse is more corrosive than the man who has gnawed away the Gospels? Truly the Euxine has given birth to a wild animal more acceptable to philosophers than to Christians (trans. by Ernest Evans, Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972], pp. 4-5).

Oh yes, Tertullian doesn’t like philosophers either.

Podcast 1.9: Paul and the situation at Rome

Phil Harland — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:57:58 +0000

This episode looks at the situation at Rome in the mid-first century that led Paul to write the letter to the Romans, now in the New Testament. I delve into the purposes in Paul writing and his focus on what he sees as ethnic divisions between Greeks and Judeans in the groups of Jesus-followers. This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.8: Paul and the situation at Rome (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.9TheSituationatRomeHarland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 1.8: Paul’s response to the Galatians

Phil Harland — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:33:28 +0000

This second episode on Paul’s letter to the Galatians looks at Paul’s response to the situation involving opponents that were advocating circumcision. I discuss a plausible apocalyptic rationale for Paul’s notion that circumcision was not an entrance requirement for Gentiles to belong to the Jesus groups. In the process, I also begin to deal with Paul’s complicated positions regarding the Torah (the law) and its relation to non-Judeans (approx. 35 minutes). This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.8: Paul’s response to the Galatians (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.8PaulandtheGalatianspart2Harland.mp3)
You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcast 1.7: Paul and the situation in Galatia

Phil Harland — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:24:01 +0000

This episode looks at the situation in Galatia that led Paul to write his letter in the mid-first century. Here I explore the rationale of Paul’s opponents who advocated circumcision among Gentiles (non-Judeans) as a symbol of belonging to God’s people and an entrance requirement into this Jewish movement that considered Jesus the Messiah (approx. 25 minutes). This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.7: Paul and the situation in Galatia (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.7PaulandtheGalatianspart1Harland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Podcasts will continue – breath not wasted

Phil Harland — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:41:15 +0000

Well, my uncertainty as to whether or not anyone would actually listen to my podcasts on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (mainly early Christianity) is dispelled. The number of subscribers to my bi-weekly podcast is now over 200 within just two months (mainly through iTunes). This crawls towards the number of subscribers to my blog itself (in the low 300s), which has been around for years. I can say that the podcasts will indeed continue. I’m glad my breath is not wasted.

You can subscribe to my podcast with a podcatcher (like iTunes).

Oh what fun it is to mark tests

Phil Harland — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:45:21 +0000

Question:

Identify and discuss the significance of the four “common denominators” (or central concerns) of second-temple Judaism.

(Answer should be things like: monotheism, temple, election / land, covenant / torah.)

Part of the answer on one test:

“Second temple Judeans also believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Interesting. I did not know that. (I like the use of “Judeans” there, though).

Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean: Jews, Christians and Others. Essays in Honour of Stephen G. Wilson

Phil Harland — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:57:36 +0000

A new book in honour of Stephen G. Wilson (perhaps best known for his Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 CE) was released at the Society of Biblical Literature this year in San Diego:

Zeba A. Crook and Philip A. Harland, eds., Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean: Jews, Christians and Others. Essays in Honour of Stephen G. Wilson. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007 (312 pp.).
ISBN-10: 1906055173; ISBN-13: 978-1906055172

I have gained permission from the publisher to reproduce my article here, partly as inspiration for you (or your institution’s library through your prodding) to purchase the book itself:

Philip A. Harland, “‘These people are . . . Men Eaters’: Banquets of the Anti-Associations and Perceptions of Minority Cultural Groups.”

Buy the book at Amazon.com or directly from Sheffield Phoenix.

The volume contains some intriguing articles by names you may recognize:

Zeba A. Crook , Introduction
Peter Richardson, Stephen G. Wilson 35 Years On
Kimberly B. Stratton, Curse Rhetoric and the Violence of Identity in Early Judaism and Christianity
Adele Reinhartz, Who Cares about Caiaphas?
Willi Braun, ‘Our Religion Compels Us to Make a Distinction’: Prolegomena on Meals and Social Formation
Philip A. Harland, ‘These people are . . . Men Eaters’: Banquets of the Anti-Associations and Perceptions of Minority Cultural Groups
Richard S. Ascough, ‘A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow’: Architectural and Epigraphic Evidence for Expansion in Greco-Roman Associations
John M.G. Barclay, Constructing Judean Identity after 70 CE: A Study of Josephus’ Against Apion
John S. Kloppenborg, Judaeans or Judaean Christians in James?
Laurence Broadhurst, ‘Where my interests and ignorance coincide’: Early Christian Music and other Musics
L. W. Hurtado , The ‘Meta-Data’ of Earliest Christian Manuscripts
Edith M. Humphrey, On Visions, Arguments, and Naming: The Rhetoric of Specificity and Mystery in the Apocalypse
Michele Murray, Christian Identity in the Apostolic Constitutions: Some Observations
Roger Beck, Identifying and Interacting with the ‘Others’: The Late Antique ‘Horoscope of Islam’
Alan F. Segal, The History Boy: The Importance of Perspective in the Study of Early Judaism and Christianity
Robert Morgan, S.G. Wilson On Religion and its Theological Despisers
William Arnal, A Parting of the Ways? Scholarly Identities and a Peculiar Species of Ancient Mediterranean Religion

Those present at the celebratory release had a great time and Steve was indeed surprised, as we had hoped. Many (including myself) reminisced about how Steve had welcomed them at Canadian and international conferences and had influenced their own careers or research.

Buy at Amazon

The anti-imperial Paul “coalition” — John Barclay’s response to N.T. Wright

Phil Harland — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:22:35 +0000

I was just listening to John Barclay’s excellent talk from this year’s SBL that has been posted (as an mp3) by Andy Rowell. Now I’m wishing I had been at the talk itself. Not without humour, Barclay discusses what he calls the anti-imperial Paul “coalition” (including N.T. Wright and Richard Horsley and his group). In recent years, it has become very popular within scholarship to approach Paul as clearly anti-imperial and to see this figure as having clear intentions (however hidden in code) of taking stabs at the emperors (whether as rulers or as gods) throughout his letters. It seems to me that Barclay has, in this talk, clearly pinpointed the major fault-lines in the coalition’s approach to Paul and the methodological problems in imagining we can decode some hidden code in Paul’s letters. So do listen to that talk!

I would like to clearly position myself in these “battles” within scholarship over Paul and politics. As for my views on this matter, which clearly intersect with Barclay’s, I will quote an earlier post of mine that I wrote following on the SBL in Vienna in the summer:

[Christopher D. Stanley’s helpful paper on past research into "Postcolonial Perspectives on Paul"] inspired me to ask him his opinion regarding the ways in which post-colonial theory has already heavily influenced studies by scholars such as Richard Horsley and some others involved in the Paul and Politics group of the SBL. In particular, I find that post-colonial theory has played a major role not in critical analysis but in pre-conceptions of what will be found in Paul’s letters. There is now a very common trend among those who study Paul and imperial issues to assume Paul’s anti-imperial stance rather than establishing it.

To generalize my take on it, there is an assumption (based on post-colonial or liberation theology ideas) that Paul MUST be anti-imperial. There is no need to establish whether he was. Instead, some scholars begin with this idea that he was anti-imperial and then focus on micro-details and terminology in Paul that CAN be interpreted as anti-imperial if one were to assume that he was. In this approach, there is no need to find explicit references to empire in order to assess Paul’s views. On the other hand, there are some interesting interpretive acrobatics with one of the very few explicit references to emperors and imperial matters, Romans 13 (with its seemingly positive statements on the relation between followers of Paul and the empire).

This method might be conducive to producing a good number more articles, books and dissertations on Paul’s supposed anti-imperialism (one needs more topics to study in such a well covered area as Pauline studies), but it is highly problematic in understanding the nuances of Paul’s “political” views, in my view. Stanley agreed with some aspects of my comments. He did agree that post-colonial analysis has indeed influenced the assumptions (rather than self-conscious method) of some scholarly work in this area and that there have been a number of problematic studies of anti-imperialism and Paul. We’ll have to wait for his forthcoming studies to see the details of Stanley’s findings.

As much as I agree with a modern perspective that would want Paul to be anti-imperial (I would characterize myself as anti-imperial now), I do see major problems in allowing our own modern political or theological views be the guiding principle in interpreting ancient documents, such as Paul’s letters. Enough on one of my pet peeves regarding modern scholarship on Paul and politics. (You can read more of my views and critique of such scholarship in my book, if you like.)

Much of my book on Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations was likewise focussed on deconstructing previous approaches to the study of imperial aspects of Greco-Roman society. In particular, I argued against the tendency to over-emphasize imperial cults and to interpret all of early Christianity through the lenses of the anti-imperial Apocalypse of John: “Although imperial cults [worship of the emperors] were among the issues facing Christians and diaspora Jews, these cults were not in and of themselves a key issue behind group-society tensions, nor a pivotal causal factor in the persecution of Christians” (p. 242). Quite often scholars project John the seer’s counter-imperialism onto other authors such as Paul, as though all early Christians agreed on such matters. Things were far more diverse, as I argued in that book.

The anti-imperial Paul coalition’s position on Paul is based, in part, on misinterpretations and misunderstandings of imperial cults. Here is an excerpt from my book on how imperial cults have been misused in scholarship on early Christianity (pp. 241-243), some of which clearly pertain to views espoused by Richard Horsley, N.T. Wright and others:

Scholars tend to overplay the significance of imperial cults–distinguished from religious life generally–in connection with diaspora Judaism and, even more so, early Christianity. . . . [There is a] common emphasis on the centrality of imperial cults per se for our understanding of Christian assemblies’ relations to society, particularly with regard to persecutions. Thus we find frequent references within scholarship to the antagonism or “clash” between the cult of Christ and the cult of Caesar, the latter being singled out from religious life generally (cf. Deissmann 1995 [1908]:338-78; Cuss 1974:35). Donald L. Jones (1980:1023), for instance, can begin his paper on Christianity and the imperial cult with the statement that: “From the perspective of early Christianity, the worst abuse in the Roman Empire was the imperial cult.” . . . An important basis of this view is the assumption that we can take the hostile viewpoints and futuristic scenarios of John’s Apocalypse as representative of the real situations and perspectives of most Christians, or even as a reliable commentary on the nature of imperial cults.

Along with such views comes a common, but highly questionable, depiction of imperial cults. One often reads of how emperor worship (particularly though not solely under emperors like Domitian) was “enforced” by Roman authorities or that there was considerable “pressure” or “demands” on Christians in their daily lives to conform to the obligational practices of imperial cults specifically (cf. Cuss 1974; Schüssler Fiorenza 1985:192-99; Hemer 1986:7-12; Winter 1994:124-43; Kraybill 1996; Slater 1998; Beale 1999:5-15, 712-14). Moreover, in this perspective, Rome took an active role in promoting such cults in the provinces and neglecting to participate could be taken as the equivalent of political disloyalty or treason, especially since imperial cults were merely political. Imperial cults stood out as a central factor leading to the persecution of Christians both by the inhabitants in the cities and by the imperial regime itself, especially in the time of Domitian when Christians were faced with death if they did not participate in such cults and acknowledge him as “lord and god.” . . .

This traditional view regarding the significance of imperial cults for Judaism and Christianity falters on several inter-related points concerning the actual character of these cults in Asia Minor. Although imperial cults were among the issues facing Christians and diaspora Jews, these cults were not in and of themselves a key issue behind group-society tensions, nor a pivotal causal factor in the persecution of Christians (cf. de Ste. Croix 1963:10; Millar 1973; Price 1984:15, 220-22). First of all, . . . cultic honors for the emperors were not an imposed feature of cultural life in Roman Asia. Rather, they were a natural outgrowth and spontaneous response on the part of civic communities and inhabitants in relation to imperial power. . . Most emperors and officials were not concerned whether the living emperor was worshiped so long as they were shown respect and honor (in whatever form) indicative of a situation in which order and peace could be maintained in the provinces. In fact, quite often these religious honors exceeded what the emperors themselves would expect or desire, at least in the case of emperors who wanted to keep in line with some Republican and Augustan traditions (cf. Suetonius, Divine Augustus 52).

Secondly, in contrast to a popular tradition within scholarship, . . . imperial cults in Roman Asia were not in fact solely political phenomena devoid of religious dimensions. If imperial cults were indeed merely political then we could understand the Christians’ non-participation as the equivalent of disloyalty or treason, in which case this would be a central cause of the persecution of Christians. However, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Fergus Millar, and others show the inadequacies of such political explanations of the persecutions, which had more to do with broader though interconnected religious and social issues. That is, persecution was often linked to the failure of Christians to fully participate in religious activities (especially sacrifice) in honor of the Greco-Roman gods generally.

Thirdly, far from being totally distinct phenomena in the eyes of most inhabitants in Asia, imperial cults were thoroughly integrated within religious life at various levels of civic and provincial society. . . [G]roups and communities reflecting various social strata integrated the emperors and imperial power within their cultural framework. The forms of honors or rituals addressed to “the revered gods” (emperors and imperial family) were not fundamentally different from those offered to traditional deities. This integration is a key to understanding the actual significance of the imperial cults for both Judaism and Christianity.

The imperial cults and the gods they honored were an issue for group-society relations only insofar as they were part and parcel of religious life in the cities. Failure to fully participate in appropriately honoring the gods (imperial deities included) in cultic contexts was one of the sources of negative attitudes towards both Jews and Christians among some civic inhabitants. Jewish and Christian “atheism” could then be perceived by some as lack of concern for others (“misanthropy”) and, potentially, as a cause of those natural disasters and other circumstances by which the gods punished individuals, groups, and communities that failed to give them their due (cf. Tertullian, Apology 40.1-5). This is why we find inhabitants of western Asia Minor, on one occasion, protesting that “if the Jews were to be their fellows, they should worship the Ionians’ gods” (Josephus, Antiquities 12.126; c. 16-13 BCE; cf. Against Apion 2.65-67; Apollonios Molon of Rhodes in Stern 1976:1.148-56). This issue which is broader than, though inclusive of, imperial cults is also a key to understanding sporadic outbreaks of persecution against Christians in Asia Minor.

It is time for scholars, particularly those of the “coalition”, to take more care in their study of Paul within the broader context of the Roman empire. It is time to stop reading into Paul (and other ancient authors) what we wish he had thought and said. Or, to quote Barclay’s appropriate critique of the “coalition”: “once you start looking for code in Paul, you can end up just about anywhere you want.” Paul said very little about imperial cults or the empire and its emperors, so let’s face that and move on to studying what he and other Greeks, Romans, Judeans, and others did say, think, or do.

Podcast 1.6: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 3

Phil Harland — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:33:46 +0000

This episode concludes the discussion of followers of Jesus at Corinth with a focus on Paul’s response to the situation (in 1 Corinthians). Here we see Paul’s education in Greco-Roman methods of rhetoric or argumentation. Paul’s arguments for unity and against divisions provide a clear example of deliberative rhetoric, comparable to political speeches by the likes of Dio Chrysostom. The use of the body metaphor in chapter 12 further confirms Paul’s employment of civic discourse (approx. 20 minutes). This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.6: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 3 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.6paulAndTheCorinthianspart3harland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Humorous Hannukah interlude

Phil Harland — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:49:06 +0000

Overheard between Phil (me) and Nathaniel (my five year old son) after watching an episode of Friends about Hannukah:

Nathaniel: “Can we celebrate Hannukah this year?”

Phil: “Sure!”

Nathaniel, after a pause: “Are we Jewish?”

Phil: “No.”

Nathaniel: “Oh, I don’t want to do it then.”

Phil (desperately): “Well, I can at least tell you about it, can’t I?”

April D. DeConick’s The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says

Phil Harland — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:11:26 +0000

The Gospel of Judas has been quite controversial, primarily in connection with the question of how Judas Iscariot is portrayed in the document. (Scholars did not see this as reflecting the actual historical Judas back in the first century, I should clarify, simply second or third century understandings of the figure). The original work of transcription and translation of this “gnostic” work by a National Geographic team resulted in an inverted picture of Judas. According to the translators and according to interpreters such as Bart Ehrman, Judas was the hero of this writing and was seen as the ultimate student of Christ in his role in having Jesus killed, thus freeing Christ’s spirit from the prison of Jesus’ body (see my earlier post on Judas Iscariot as the “good guy”?, now apparently very wrong on the overall portrait of Judas, which was based solely on my reading and trust in that translation, the only one available at that time).

Quite clearly, this picture of a heroic Judas was quite different from traditional understandings of Judas as betrayer doing the work of Satan. I had since expressed my doubts about the National Geographic picture and my own first post upon hearing about Louis Painchaud’s (a Nag Hammadi expert) major doubts. Painchaud saw major problems in the National Geographic transcription of the Coptic and in their translation: Judas Iscariot may be evil after all.

I just finished reading April DeConick’s new book on the Gospel of Judas which I picked up at the SBL meeting (you may also want to visit her Forbidden Gospels blog):

April D. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (London: Continuum, 2007). Buy at Amazon

The book’s main contribution is in pointing to the problems in the National Geographic (NG) work on the manuscript in terms of errors in transcription of the Coptic and errors in the translation by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst. She presents her own translation. Here DeConick is clear and convincing. She points to a number of major problems which change entirely interpretations of this document.

Some of the main, major changes that DeConick presents (pp. 45-61) are as follows:

The Coptic term daimon (borrowed from the Greek) should not be translated “spirit” as in NG but rather “demon”. Judas is called a “demon”.
The NG translation “For you (Jesus) have set me (Judas) apart for that generation (the generation that will see salvation)” should read quite the opposite: “you have separated me from that generation”. Judas is condemned by Jesus, not saved in this document.
Jesus does not, as in NG, say that others “will curse your (Judas) ascent to the holy [generation]“. Rather it says the opposite: “you will not ascend to the holy [generation]“.
Jesus does not simply say that Judas “will exceed” all of the other disciples, but rather that Judas “will do worse than all of them” (exceed them in doing evil).

These are major errors, indeed, on the part of the National Geographic Society’s work. DeConick’s careful presentation of how these errors were introduced and how the Coptic should actually be read are convincing.

April DeConick’s book then argues that the Gospel of Judas presents a demonic Judas, perhaps even harsher than portraits in the canonical gospels, who is seen as the ultimate, terrible representative of the disciples. For the author of the Gospel of Judas, the disciples, with Judas at their head, are the equivalent of the types of Christians that the “gnostic” author has most problems with and he even charges them with the equivalent of murdering children (see my post on The Gospel of Judas and ethnographic stereotypes: The priests “sacrifice their own children”). The overall effect, as DeConick argues, is that the Gospel of Judas is a parody aimed at critiquing what DeConick calls “apostolic Christianity” (the equivalent of what some others label “the proto-orthodox”).

DeConick’s introductory chapters and her chapters assessing the content of this gospel are well-written and useful as an introduction not only to the Gospel of Judas but also to “gnostic” thought and its place within a variety of forms of Christianity in the early centuries. So the book would serve well within a course on the variety of early Christianity.

However, there are two terminological choices that I find problematic, one minor but notable and the other quite significant. Since these chapters are clearly aimed at beginners and carefully presenting ideas in an non-anachronistic way on the whole, it is strange that DeConick speaks of “Lucifer” (e.g. pp. 31ff) when explaining notions of personified evil and “gnostic” notions of the world-creator as the evil one. The term “Lucifer” came to be applied to a fallen angel or to “Satan” only after the fifth century Latin translation of the passage in Isaiah 14:12 and after a conflation of this passage about a Babylonian king with developing notions of personified evil figures. The way that DeConick speaks of this seems as though she is unaware of this, though it is perhaps simply an anachronistic slip.

The second, more significant terminological problem is DeConick’s use of the phrase “apostolic Christians” throughout her book as a convenient catch-all category. Like the problems with Ehrman’s “proto-orthodox” category, such categories might serve to confuse rather than clarify the variegated nature of early Christianity when teaching students. There is some anachronistic thinking involved in the use of such categories. First we might (should) be telling students that orthodoxy and apostolic Christianity did not exist as some clearly defined monoliths in earliest Christianity, and that the formation of “orthodoxy” was a long and complicated process involving the exclusion of certain forms of Christianity (I think that both Ehrman and DeConick would agree with this). But then some scholars nonetheless continue to use terms that presume the future arrival of orthodoxy, as though it had precursors in a specific group that can be identified and that various Christians can be categorized together. Who is to decide which specific Christians are to be fit into either the category of “apostolic Christianity” or “proto-orthodoxy” and would such figures agree to being grouped together in this way?

These are some more general theoretical problems that I have with a work that is in other respects a fine new translation and a very useful introduction for students.

Podcast 1.5: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2

Phil Harland — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:37:33 +0000

This fifth episode continues discussion of the situation at Corinth as reflected in chapters 6-15 of 1 Corinthians, dealing with problems that arose due to the socially superior position of some Corinthian Christians and the spiritually superior claims of others. This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast. (approx. 32 minutes).

Podcast 1.5: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.5PaulandtheCorinthianspart2Harland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher. View credits for my introductory music remix.

Breaking news: Early Christians were impious atheists . . . (NT 3.2)

Phil Harland — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:17:53 +0000

in the eyes of some angry Greeks and Romans, that is.

Followers of Jesus, like others devoted to the God of the Judeans, were among the most odd inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean world when it comes to their attitudes towards the gods of others. Virtually everyone agreed that there were many gods, and that each home, association, city, ethnic group, or empire might have its own favourite deities without denying others. Few beyond those who honoured the Judean God were concerned with denying the legitimacy of other gods or with questioning other peoples’ practice of honouring their own gods, even if they looked down upon people from another ethnic group or place.

Monotheism was not the norm in antiquity. It was an anomaly. As a result, some Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, and others had difficulty making sense of the Judean focus on one god, which seemed to them the equivalent of denying the gods altogether, of “atheism”.

Despite other ways in which they made a home in the Greco-Roman world, this is where the early followers of Jesus were at odds with surrounding culture, and it could be a source of harassment, abuse or even violence. In times of trouble or catastrophe, fingers began to point at those who failed to honour the gods properly, at the “atheists”. The gods were punishing people through natural disasters, such as earthquakes and fires, because the gods were not being honoured fittingly and atheists like the followers of Jesus were being blamed.

This is why, in part, the emperor Nero could choose the Christians as a scapegoat for the fire that took place in Rome in 64 CE (see these sources and translations see Early Christians through Greco-Roman eyes). The Roman historian Tacitus (writing around 109 CE) relates how rumours were spreading that Nero had intentionally started a fire in an area of town where he had hoped to rebuild and renovate (Tacitus does not like Nero, by the way). To distract away from these rumours, which Tacitus implies were true, Nero was looking for someone to blame and he chose “a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace” (Tacitus, Annals, 15.44). Tacitus relates how these “superstitious” Christians were tortured and killed in a disturbing display, a display that was so over the top that it went well beyond any “hatred” that the populace had, or upper class disdain Tacitus had, for these little known worshippers of the Judean God and followers of an obscure criminal executed under Pontius Pilate (as Tacitus would put it).

A similar dynamic relating to the Christians’ failure to honour the gods seems to be at work behind the accusations brought before the governor Pliny the Younger in a northern province of Asia Minor (c. 110 CE). This Roman governor, like other authorities, knows very little, if anything at all, about this obscure group devoted to one “Christ”. This even though Pliny had spent previous decades in important imperial positions in Rome itself. What he does know from locals who brought charges against the accused is that followers of Christ will not honour other gods, including the emperor as a god:

Those who denied that they were or had been Christians and called upon the gods with the usual formula, reciting the words after me, and those who offered incense and wine before your [emperor Trajan's] image — which I had ordered to be brought forward for this purpose, along with the regular statues of the gods — all such I considered acquitted — especially as they cursed the name of Christ, which it is said bona fide Christians cannot be induced to do (Pliny, Epistle 10.96).

So the denial of other gods was perhaps the most important source of conflict and the strangest thing about devotees of the Judean God and of Christ. So far, I’ve not mentioned any cases where Christians are explicitly called what is implied in the cases discussed so far, namely “atheists”. Actual martyrdoms of Christians were not very common, but when anger towards Christians reached the point of violence and death, other Christians were careful to remember the deceased who were considered martyrs, “witnesses”.

One such remembrance in the form of a story related in a letter from one Christian group to others is the Martyrdom of Polycarp (written in the decades following Polycarp’s death in the 160s CE). It is here that we find the explicit charge of atheism. The angry crowds shout out “away with the atheists!” in reference to the Christians. And, when Polycarp is brought before the Roman governor (proconsul) of Asia for final trial, Polycarp turns the accusation on his accusers (something more than “I know you are but what am I” is going on):

“Therefore, when he was brought before him, the proconsul asked if he were Polycarp. And when he confessed that he was, the proconsul tried to persuade him to recant saying, ‘Have respect for your age,’ and other such thngs as they are accustomed to say: ‘Swear by the Genius [guardian spirit] of Caesar; repent, say, ‘Away with the atheists!’ So Polycarp solemnly looked at the whole crowd of lawless heathen who were in the stadium, motioned toward them with his hand, and then (groaning as he looked up to heaven) said, ‘Away with the atheists!’” (Mart. Poly. 9.2; trans. by J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer and revised by Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992]).

Similar charges of “atheism” and “impiety” were brought against Christians in Lyons in France in the 170s CE (see H. Musiurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], 64-65). The perception of early Christians as atheists was not uncommon.

Podcast 1.4: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 1

Phil Harland — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:32:01 +0000

This fourth episode begins to look at the followers of Jesus at Corinth through Paul’s letter known as 1 Corinthians in the New Testament. After discussing the city of Corinth, I go on to consider the history of Paul’s interactions with these Christians, which was characterized by rocky relations. Then we delve into the situation among the Corinthians that led Paul to write his letter, primarily the issue of social and spiritual divisions within the Jesus groups at Corinth (in 1 Corinthians, chapters 1-4). This is the first of three episodes on 1 Corinthians (approx. 25 minutes).

This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.4: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 1 (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.4PaulandtheCorinthianspart1Harland.mp3)

You may also subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Was there such a thing as ancient “Judaism”?: Steve Mason’s recent article on “Judeans” (Ioudaioi) in antiquity

Phil Harland — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:46:38 +0000

Steve Mason (a colleague of mine here at York U.) recently handed me an offprint of his new article that, in my mind, puts to rest a recent debate within scholarship regarding the appropriateness of using the term “Judaism” — as though it were an ancient, emic (insider) concept — to describe a whole system of practice and belief in the Greco-Roman world:

Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007) 457-512. (available online to subscribing institutions here).

Mason convincingly argues that Ioudaioi (traditionally translated “Jews”) and related terms should be understood in terms of ethnic groupings in antiquity. For the Hellenistic and Roman periods (at least until the third century CE) we should be speaking of “Judeans”, not “Jews”, and of “Judean customs” or practices, not “Judaism”. Mason is careful to point out that he is not arguing against the use of critically-employed, etic (outsider), scholarly categories in the interest of furthering scholarly knowledge (pp. 458-460). So while he is underlining the absence of the category “Judaism” as a system (i.e. the lack of an emic term such as this in ancient literature), on the one hand, he is also pointing to the ineffectiveness, scientifically, of the uncritical use of this specific modern scholarly (etic) category, “Judaism”, in connection with the ancient period.

Mason builds his argument in three stages. First (pp. 457-480), he deals with the relatively rare ancient terms ἰουδαίζω (verb) / Ἰουδαισμός (noun), which have often been erroneously translated as referring to “Judaism” as a system of belief and practice, rather than to the practice of adopting the ways of a particular ethnic group. Mason shows, that these “-ize” terms, like “barbarize”, “Spartanize”, “hellenize”, and “Romanize”, are used by the ancients to speak of those from one ethnic group going over to or adopting the practices of a people other than their own, adopting foreign ways. Christian uses of “Judaize”, as in Ignatius of Antioch, often occur in polemical materials pertaining precisely to this pull toward Judean ways among Greeks of western Asia Minor (“Gentiles”). Mason goes through the main cases of “Judaize”, including those in the Maccabean histories and in the inscription from Stobi, to show that there was no “static or systematic abstraction” known as “Judaism” in minds of those who used these Greek terms in antiquity.

Second (pp. 480-488), Mason goes on to show how some scholars continue to uncritically employ the concept of “religion” in studies of ancient Judean culture. In particular, theories by Shaye Cohen and others that propose a shift in the meaning of Ioudaioi from an originally ethnic-geographic category (i.e. “Judean”) to a religious category (“Jew”) are built on problematic notions regarding the category of “religion”. Mason emphasizes that what we as moderns think of as “religion” was, in fact, not known in antiquity and also intersects or envelopes at least six different categories that were familiar to the ancients (ethnos, cult, philosophy, familial rites of passage, associations, and astrology / magic).

Third (pp. 489-512), Mason argues that the Ioudaioi / Iudaei “of Graeco-Roman antiquity understood themselves, and were understood by outsiders, as an ἔθνος, a people comparable to and contrastable with other ἔθνη” (p. 489). Ancient authors including Strabo, Posidonius, Tacitus, Philo, and Josephus consistently speak of Ioudaioi in terms of them being an ethnos, a people or ethnic group. Here Mason also deals with common objections to the use of “Judeans” to translate Ioudaioi, most notably the objection raised by Cohen and others that “conversion” to Judean ways by non-Judean peoples in the Hasmonean period signals the shift to a “religious” understanding of the label Ioudaios. Mason effectively argues that we have no evidence from ancient authors that this proposed shift took place and that it is also problematic in regard to the notions of “religion” that lie behind it.

This article, in my mind, has put this question to rest. It is time to speak of “Judeans”, “Judean practices”, and “Judean culture” in the same way that we would speak of the identity and practices of the many other ethnic groups or peoples that existed in antiquity. The Judeans of antiquity are not a special case.

Among other things, my own recent research into immigrant groups of various kinds, including Judeans in the Greco-Roman cities, led me to speak of Judeans and Judean culture, Syrians and Syrian culture. Even in lectures I now speak of Paul, Philo, Josephus, and others primarily as “Judeans” and of the practices and beliefs they express as variations on Judean culture. At the moment and probably in the long-run, these are the most appropriate categories to work with.

Podcast 1.3: Paul’s response to followers of Jesus at Thessalonica

Phil Harland — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:25:46 +0000

This third episode looks at Paul’s response to followers of Jesus at Thessalonica, including his attempt to comfort these socially dislocated Christians, his use of familial language to build up their identity, and his use of praising (demonstrative) rhetoric. It also begins to consider Paul as an apocalyptic Judean (approx. 32 minutes). This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.3: Paul’s response to Jesus-followers at Thessalonica (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.3PaulsresponsetotheThessaloniansHarland_vbr.mp3)

You may subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Review of new book on religious themes in U2′s Achtung Baby

Phil Harland — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:47:55 +0000

Over on my music blog, I have just today posted a review of Stephen Catanzarite’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall (33 1/3; New York: Continuum, 2007).

Podcast 1.2: The Situation at Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians)

Phil Harland — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:09:44 +0000

This second episode looks at the situation among followers of Jesus at Thessalonica in Macedonia in the mid-first century. Considering the ethnic and social makeup of the earliest Christians, this episode also discusses two main problems faced by these followers of Jesus: “afflictions” and the death of fellow-followers of Jesus. This prepares the way for episode three, which will look at how Paul responds to this situation in his letter, known as 1 Thessalonians in the New Testament (approx. 36 minutes). This episode is part of series one (“Paul and his Communities”) of the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast.

Podcast 1.2: The Situation at Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians) (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (Podcast1.2PaulandtheThessaloniansTheSituationHarland_vbr.mp3)

You may subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

Podcast 1.1: Paul in his own words

Phil Harland — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:56:38 +0000

This inaugural episode in series 1 (Paul and his communities) uses incidental autobiographical references in Paul’s letters as an avenue into the study of Paul, his letters, and early Christian groups (approx. 27 minutes).

Podcast 1.1: Paul in his own words (mp3; archive.org page with various downloading options here).
Download audio file (podcast1Paulinhisownwords.mp3)

You may subscribe to this and subsequent episodes through iTunes or another podcatcher.

An early Christian schism over how to view Jesus’ flesh: Opponents of John the elder (Diversity 1.2)

Phil Harland — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:37:41 +0000

Although philosophical debates about the nature of Jesus Christ in terms of his humanity and / or divinity were clearly a hallmark of the fourth century (as evidenced in the church councils and creeds), it is true that how one viewed Jesus’ fleshliness was a divisive factor among some followers of Jesus in the late first century and into the second. In fact, one of the earliest cases of schism within a specific community of Jesus-followers seems to relate to this factor.

The author of the tractate and epistles associated with John the elder (1-3 John) provides us with evidence of this earliest of schisms (probably in the late first century). More specifically, this elder attests to the fact that a group of people had left what was previously a relatively united community of followers, likely somewhere in western Asia Minor (usually labeled the “Johannine community” by scholars due to the community’s shared traditions associated with the Gospel of John).

The divide that had since developed between John the elder and his supporters, on the one hand, and those that had left, on the other, was considerable, with very little sign of reconciliation. So much so that the elder associates them with “the world” in a strongly negative sense and he does not hesitate to label them “deceivers” and “antichrists” — strong language indeed. The central factor in the disagreement relates to what the elder considers a failure to acknowledge Jesus’ coming in the flesh:

“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 John 7-8 [RSV]).

“For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already” (1 John 4:1-3).

(For a discussion of the rhetorical use of “Satan”, “antichrist” and related labels, see my other post here.)

Elsewhere, the elder also claims that this had some implications regarding ethics or behaviour, regarding how these opponents were viewing “sin”, namely that “we have no sin” (1 John 1:5-10). It is hard to evaluate the truth in this accusation of false claims, if there is any, since the elder claims that he and his camp, in opposition to the “children of the devil”, know that “no one who abides in [Jesus] sins” (1 John 3:6). Both sides are claiming sinless status though disagreeing on the other’s precise understanding of that and of whether or not the other is “abiding” in Jesus.

Apparently the “flesh” factor also underlies the elder’s other accusations that the opponents supposedly deny “the Father and the Son” or deny that “Jesus is the Christ” (1 John 2:22). We need to take these generalizations with a grain of salt and interpret them in light of the “flesh” factor, since it is hard to imagine that these other followers of Jesus were indeed denying that Jesus was the Messiah or that Jesus was sent by the Father. Instead, the elder seems to equate any downplaying of Jesus’ humanity as the equivalent of denying Jesus, the Son, and the Father altogether.

As scholars such as Raymond Brown point out, it seems that the elder and his opponents, who had belonged to the same community and had the same favourite writings, were both interpreting the gospel of John’s rather high Christology (Jesus as the preexisting “Word” or Utterance of the Father) in two very different ways. Both might agree that Jesus was preexistent and that Jesus was made flesh in some manner, but each interpreted such things differently and put more emphasis on one factor (divine preexistence) than another (flesh).

It is difficult to know precisely how these opponents relate to the opponents attacked by Ignatius of Antioch just about a decade later, also in Asia Minor. These opponents are accused of saying that Jesus “suffered in appearance only” (Letter to the Trallians 10). The downplaying of Jesus’ fleshliness is once again a factor here in what scholars often label “docetism” (from the Greek word dokein = to seem or appear to be). We’ll come back to docetism and Ignatius in a later post.

For more on the opponents in 1-3 John, see Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 93-144.

Contexts of early Christianity (NT 3.1)

Phil Harland — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:49:44 +0000

One of the things that needs to be emphasized when approaching the study of early Christianity is the fact that the early Christians, and the writings they produced, were part of a real world (for my course outline and discussion notes for Christian origins go here). Writings such as those found in the New Testament were not floating up in heaven somewhere. Instead, they were written by real people in real places. As a result, they both reflected and were products of broader social and cultural contexts, both Greco-Roman (or Hellenistic) and Judean.

On the one hand, it is important to consider the complicated conglomeration of things we scholars simplify with labels such as “Hellenistic (Greek) world” or “Greco-Roman world”. There is far too much to cover under such terms, but among the issues are the ways in which Hellenistic (Greek) culture came to prominent position in the ancient Mediterranean, something that I have discussed in a post on Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE) and Christian origins (NT 1.2). You might also get a taste, but only a mere taste, of how complicated this world was by reading some of the posts in my category Greco-Roman Religions and Culture.

There is a sense in which dividing the Judean world from the Hellenistic world is itself a problem, since the two cultures were in interaction for more than three centuries before the emergence of the Jesus movement in Judea. A similar thing could be said of interaction with Roman (better: Greco-Roman) culture once the Romans were in charge of things (beginning in the second century BCE but climaxing with the imperial period, beginning about 31 BCE). The so-called Maccabean revolt of the 170s BCE, which I discuss in ‘Tis the season . . . : Jewish and Roman holidays, involved a sustained war arising from conflicts with certain actions by Hellenistic rulers and those Judeans who adopted certain aspects of Hellenistic culture. However, the relation between Judaism and Hellenism was by no means entirely hostile, and there were varying reactions by Judean individuals and groups to particular facets of Greek culture both within Israel and in the dispersion (cities across the Mediterranean). The fact that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (a translation known as the Septuagint = LXX) beginning in the third century BCE is indicative of the less antagonistic interactions that were going on in various places.

This discussion of varying Judean responses to Hellenistic culture segues well into the second main cultural sphere: Judean culture. To understand a movement that began within Judaism, such as the Jesus movement, one needs to consider Judean culture in its many forms in the first and following centuries. This is a tall order, since Judaism itself was marked by a variety which I have discussed in posts including Let’s talk about sects: Diversity in Second-Temple Judaism (NT 2.3). The Jesus movement was just one among many groups within second temple Judaism and it is important to consider how to plot out these followers of Jesus in relation to others. As we shall soon see in the case of Paul and the situation at Galatia, even early followers of Jesus could have different answers regarding the relation between the Jesus movement and certain aspects of Judean culture (circumcision among them).

There is a sense in which a course on the New Testament or early Christian literature is, through and through, a study of these two worlds and the interplay between them. So we will continue to struggle with these issues for a while.

Viewing the diversity of early Christianity through opponents (Diversity 1.1)

Phil Harland — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:44:58 +0000

The variety of early Christian groups and related questions regarding “orthodoxy” and “heresy” are the focus of a course I am offering this year (course outline here). The traditional view of “orthodoxy-first-and-heretical-deviations-later” which I’ve discussed in connection with Eusebius rests, in part, on lack of attention to followers of Jesus who were opposed by certain authors in the earliest period. Opponents in Paul’s letters (our earliest evidence starting about 50 CE) and other subsequent early Christian writings can provide an important window into opinions and practices that existed among Jesus followers from the beginning. I’ve chosen literature pertaining to the region of Asia Minor as a geographical focus for our attempt to plot out these opinions and practices, to map out the forms of Christianity in one area.

Yet there are serious (methodological) difficulties in getting back to the views and activities of such opponents. For one, the sources we have about them are quite hostile towards the worldviews and practices of such opponents, and ancient authors did not hesitate to engage in exaggeration, labeling, and name-calling. They expressed their opinions in a rhetorically-charged way, and it is likely that, if we had writings from the opponents, they may well have done the same. For an example of such counter-attacks, see my Peter vs. Simon Magus (alias Paul) in the Pseudo-Clementines (NT Apocrypha 17).

The modern historian must remain above this, so to speak, and avoid uncritically taking the position of the ancient author who condemns some other individual or group. Instead, we want to do the best we can to sift rhetorically-charged material for particularly significant items. We want to evaluate what levels of probability there are that a given practice or view goes back to the opponents in question, placing such things within broader cultural contexts. While the ancient author was interested in dispelling the opponents’ position, we want to recover it, despite the difficulties involved in doing this.

Added to this are the dangers of “mirror-reading” by which I and other scholars mean the process of mentally holding up a mirror to the literature. Here one must be careful not to assume that every point rhetorically attacked by an author necessarily has a basis in the reality of some group’s activities. There is not always a direct correspondence between one author’s proscription (condemnation) of certain behaviours and views and the actual situation at a particular locale, and we should not assume that everything condemned was actually done. Jerry Sumney has spent a good degree of his time researching precisely the difficulties in evaluating opponents in literature. See his brief summary available online: “Who are those ‘Servants of Satan’“.

Soon we’ll be starting out with one of the most difficult letters of Paul, Galatians, in asking what forms of Christianity are reflected in the opponents Paul attacks. So a couple of earlier posts that I have done on Galatians may be of help and, thanks to the wonders of the blogging universe, I have included links in these posts to Mark Goodacre’s (Duke U.) excellent discussions of similar issues:

What crime did Ignatius of Antioch commit and who laid the charges?

Phil Harland — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:45:47 +0000

Ignatius of Antioch was a controversial leader of the church in Antioch (around 100 CE) who ended up in handcuffs on his way to Rome for trial (his letters are available here). There is some mystery surrounding why he was arrested and who brought charges against him, however. He never tells us, but there are hints in his own letters to churches in Asia Minor that some of Ignatius’s problems stemmed from tensions not with outsiders but with fellow followers of Jesus at Antioch in Syria.

In his letter to the Christians at Philadelphia, for instance, he refers to reports of peace finally coming to the church at Antioch, thereby alluding to the conflict or schism that had been going on previously (Phld 10.2). This situation of conflict at Antioch has led some scholars (including myself) to suggest the possibility that it was fellow-Christians on the other side of the conflict who brought charges against Ignatius, resulting in his arrest (though they may not have intended his execution). Or, although less likely, it may be that turmoil within the Christian community led to intervention by local authorities and the arrest of Ignatius as one among the “trouble-causers”.

The reason I bring this up now is that, for other purposes (regarding Eusebius’ view of the unity of the earliest church against heresy), we were reading through a passage in Eusebius’ Church History (written in the 300′s CE). There I noticed an incident that provides an analogy for this possible explanation of Ignatius’ arrest: namely, that it was other Christians that took actions which resulted in the arrest of the leader with whom they disagreed. Eusebius cites Hegesippus regarding the reason for the arrest and martyrdom of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem in the early second century: “Certain of these heretics brought accusation against Symeon, the son of Clopas, on the ground that he was a descendant of David and a Christian; and thus he suffered martyrdom, at the age of one hundred and twenty years, while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor” (Eccl. Hist. 3.32.3; surrounding passage here).

Remembering that “heretics” is a label for fellow Christians with whom another Christian has a disagreement, this incident may not be unlike what happened at Syria when Ignatius was arrested, despite his role as a leader (sole bishop, in his view) of the assembly of Jesus-followers there. It may be that other Christians who disagreed with his monarchical method of leadership were involved in some way.

Immigrants adrift in the Greco-Roman world?

Phil Harland — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:30:12 +0000

What was it like to be an immigrant in the Greco-Roman world? Well, the answer given by many scholars of the past has been that it was not very good at all for immigrants. Without necessarily actually looking at any archeological or inscriptional evidence, some scholars tend to assume that foreigners were faced with significant hardships and feelings of rootlessness. Robert Turcan is somewhat representative of common views when he speaks of a “troubled and drifting world” in which “uprooted people”, particularly immigrants, lived “on the fringes of a disintegrating world” in both the Hellenistic and Roman eras (Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire [A. Nevill trans.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1996], 16-17).

Often this view of immigrant hardship is coupled with overstated notions regarding the decline of the ancient city in the Hellenistic and following eras, which resulted in general feelings of detachment and a lack of social connection. I have dealt with such problematic theories of decline in a full article elsewhere (The Declining Polis? Religious Rivalries in Ancient Civic Context).

It is true that immigrants, foreigners or minorities could, at times, be faced with negative attitudes or treatment associated with xenophobia (fear of foreigners), so there were certainly negative sides to immigrant experience (see ‘Come! Plunge the knife into the baby’: Tertullian’s not-so-subtle retort). Nonetheless the all-encompassing scholarly picture of immigrants adrift in a disintegrating society does not fit with the actual evidence we have available, at least in the case of Syrian or Phoenician expatriots in the Hellenistic and Roman eras.

My recent research into inscriptions that involve Syrians who settled elsewhere and formed themselves into associations points rather to the ways in which such “foreigners” maintained connections with the cultural traditions of their homeland while also finding a home for themselves in the society of settlement. Syrian immigrants acculturated, to various degrees, to local customs while also sustaining a sense of distinctiveness. In particular, there is a consistency in Syrians’ attention to the “gods of the homeland”. I am developing these ideas further for a forthcoming publication, but you can also see an inscription or two in an earlier post: For the gods of the homeland: Immigrants from Beirut on a Greek island.

In this respect, there are significant commonalities between Syrians and Judeans (Jews) or Israelites (Samaritans) in the ways that they found a place for themselves in cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. See, for example my post ‘Tis the season . . . : Jewish and Roman holidays and my article Acculturation and Identity in the Diaspora: A Jewish Family and ‘Pagan’ Guilds at Hierapolis.

“Diversity in Early Christianity” and “Founders of Christianity” course outlines now up

Phil Harland — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:40:01 +0000

As September quickly approaches, I have now prepared and uploaded two course outlines for this year. One course is my second year introduction to early Christian literature, Founders of Christianity. The other is a fourth year seminar on Diversity in Early Christianity (I-II CE). In both cases, I am trying to integrate the internet more fully into the course (in the form of readings, previous blog posts, and other such things). Let me know what you think by posting a comment.

In the seminar, the first term focuses on mapping out the range of Christian groups in Asia Minor in the first century or so. The second term focuses on groups of the second century as reflected in the Apocrypha and gnostic literature, including Ebionites, Marcionites, and the various groups often called “gnostic”. Some of my blog postings this year will therefore hearken back to my earlier series on Christian Apocrypha and “gnosticism”. This Fall, my colleague Tony C-B here at York U. is teaching a specialized one-term course on the New Testament Apocrypha which approaches things in a more genre focused way.

Bible Geocoding — Google Earth meets Bible

Phil Harland — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:10:45 +0000

Perhaps this is old news to some, but I was pleasantly surprized by a site that Daniel Bernard (from good ol’ Concordia U.) pointed out to me: Bible Geocoding: The location of every identifiable place mentioned in the Bible. As the name suggests, this site provides a look at virtually every biblical site mentioned in the Bible via Google Earth. You can browse the geographical landscape of the lands by biblical book as well. When I click on Revelation, here is what I get. Why not zoom in and see what “Jezebel” is doing in Thyatira. There are also great views of well-excavated sites such as Pergamum and Ephesus.

Visiting Ephesus . . . in Vienna, part 2: Some gods

Phil Harland — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:40:59 +0000

Walking through an ancient city such as Ephesus, one would encounter a plethora of monuments, inscriptions and statues on a scale not familiar to a modern person who is used to sky-scrapers and plain old pavement. Among these were dedications to Roman imperial authorities, such as an emperor or a governor, and monuments erected by or for local notables in the city, such as the monument for C. Vibius Salutaris which you see to your left. There were also many buildings and monuments relating to the gods at Ephesus, some of which I have discussed before.

There are numerous artefacts pertaining to gods and goddesses in the “Ephesus Museum” at Vienna. One might encounter a god like Hermes at various points in one’s travel through the city. Thus, for instance, archeologists have recovered a now headless statue of Hermes (above). But they have also found a bodiless head of Hermes (left). This messenger god Hermes also appears more than once at Ephesus in his other, less humanoid form as protector of those that travel (right).

Central to honouring any deity in the ancient Mediterranean was sacrifice. And so one would find altars on which to make offerings to certain deities, especially animal sacrifices, in the many temples and shrines in Ephesus. One of the altars that is now at Vienna possesses an interesting relief that depicts the goddess Nike (“Victory”) proceeding forward with an animal for sacrifice. Quite often Greeks (and Romans) would depict their gods engaged in the very activities that devotees engaged in. Thus deities are often pictured holding a libation bowl in their statues. Libation bowls were used by worshippers to honour a god or goddess with a drink offering.

Although not from Ephesus specifically, the museum at Vienna also happens to have a statue of a native Anatolian goddess (with many local “incarnations”), the Great Mother or Cybele as she was called by Greeks and Romans. Cybele was, in many cases, a goddess associated with the wild and with mountains in particular. Quite often she is pictured seated on a throne or standing with lions on either side as in this statue. Cybele was also known for her secretive “mysteries“.

Visiting Ephesus . . . in Vienna, part 1

Phil Harland — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:05:41 +0000

One of the more interesting parts of my recent visit to Austria for the SBL was visiting Ephesus. . . that’s right. The Austrian Archaeological Institute (Österreichische Archäologische Institut), whose website is here, has been active in excavations of this site in Turkey solidly since the 1950s (and Austrian work there goes back even further to the 1890s as you can read on that website). They have created the “Ephesos Museum” to display some of the finds that were brought back to Austria from Turkey.

As you may know, you can already read about Ephesus and view photos from the actual site on my own website here. I have also created a virtual tour of the “Selçuk (Ephesus) Archeological Museum” in Turkey, along with other museums, on my Archeological Museums webpage. Right now I thought I’d give you a few glimpses into the Ephesian materials that are kept in Vienna, in the Hapsburg palaces, no less. (No assassinations took place while I was there, as far as I know).

The Ephesos Museum has an interesting model in wood which provides a good overview of the site. Pictured here is the view from the south east showing the upper portion of the city with its temple for Domitian and Kuretes Street leading down towards the Celsus library, the theatre and the main marketplace (to the left of the theatre). Further in the distance (to the right of the theatre) are the two main gymnasia or athletic complexes.

This is an opportune time to mention some athletic related pieces in the museum.

First of all, there is a very well presented bronze statue of an athlete from Ephesus (reconstructed). This is a Roman copy of a Greek original (ca. 320 BCE) and is often categorized along with other statues that depict an athlete scraping off sweat and dirt after a competition (hence they are sometimes called “the scraper”, apoxyomenos — wiki article here). Here the athlete can be seen reaching down to scrape his thighs, holding his hands in a way that shows that the statue originally included a scraping instrument in his hands.

Similar statues have been found, such as the recent find (of 1996) in Croatia, on which see the online discussion of the Croatian Apoxyomenos. Another in the Vatican Museum (Pio Clementino inv. 1185), which is likely a copy of an original by the famous sculptor Lysippus, has been the subject of sketches that are available on the Perseus website here and here. An excellent photo of the upper portion of the Vatican statue is here.

Pliny the Elder also relates a story regarding a statue of this type by Lysippus. The story goes that this statue, which was dedicated by Marcus Agrippa in front of his baths was so admired by the emperor Tiberius that he had it moved into his own bedroom. There was such an uproar due to the popularity of the statue that Tiberius was compelled to put the statue back in its public setting for all to see (Pliny, Natural history 34.62).

For another bronze athlete, this one found in the Aegean sea off the coast of Cyme in Turkey (now in the Izmir / Smyrna museum), see my photo here.

Another intriguing bronze piece at the Ephesos Museum is a lamp. I’m not sure whether you’d want this as a reading lamp for your living room, though. It depicts Herakles (Hercules), patron deity of athletes, engaged in a struggle with a mythical centaur (half man, half horse). Looking at the piece you get the feeling that Herakles has the upper-hand and that the centaur doesn’t have much time left–he’s going down. In previous posts, I have discussed mythology associated with the centaurs at some length (with photos from the British Museum): Bandits and their wild banquets: Lapiths and Centaurs.

I’ll have more from the museum at Vienna soon. Oooh, the suspense.

International SBL in Vienna, part 2 — also Paul and anti-imperialism

Phil Harland — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:34:34 +0000

Well, I’m back from Vienna now and adjusting to real life (real life isn’t too bad either). There were a couple of other papers I thought I’d mention here as a follow through to my other post on the SBL conference. (I’ll soon have other posts on the Ephesos museum at Vienna).

Gerd Theissen’s paper on “The Historical Jesus and the Continuum between Judaism and Christianity” was quite interesting, even though the paper reflected (and did not necessarily defend) particular assumptions regarding what we can know about Jesus through the sources. Theissen argued for a somewhat high degree of continuity between Jesus and subsequent Christianity (including Paul). He did so by focussing on three main points:

1) Theissen pointed to evidence which he interpreted as Jesus’ universalizing tendencies, Jesus’ tendencies to include non-Judeans. These “liberal” (as Theissen calls them) ideas of Jesus are reflected in Jesus’ eschatological views (e.g. Mt 8:11-12), according to Theissen. In other words, Jesus opted for the inclusion, rather than annihilation, of the nations / gentiles (those from East and West, in Theissen’s interpretation) option within Judaism of the time. This reflects continuity with those Jews who likewise imagined the end-time inclusion of the Gentiles, as well as some continuity with Paul’s subsequent focus on including gentiles in God’s end-time community, according to Theissen.

2) Theissen then went on to outline the “radical” (rather than “liberal”) side of Jesus in terms of Jesus’ radicalized Jewish monotheism and restoration eschatology. Here there was an emphasis on Jesus in the context of millenarian movements in the first century. Theissen also proposed that Jesus focussed on love of neighbour and on humility, which radicalized ethics.

3) The combination of universalism and radicalism, which each had precedents in Judaism, were characteristic of the subsequent Jesus movements, in Theissen’s view. Here he brought in ideas from cognitive theory regarding intuitive and counter-intuitives to attempt an explanation of why Christianity was “successful” (here my memory fails me on the details).

This was my first time hearing Theissen speak, and so I enjoyed it despite my disagreements with this or that point and doubts about Theissen’s overall configuration of the materials.

I also managed to see Christopher D. Stanley’s helpful paper on past research into “Postcolonial Perspectives on Paul”. Stanley provided a very clear outline of what has been done (including work on Paul and “hybridity”) and where he plans to head with his own research into analyzing Paul’s letters in terms of post-colonial theory.

Stanley’s talk inspired me to ask him his opinion regarding the ways in which post-colonial theory has already heavily influenced studies by scholars such as Richard Horsley and some others involved in the Paul and Politics group of the SBL. In particular, I find that post-colonial theory has played a major role not in critical analysis but in pre-conceptions of what will be found in Paul’s letters. There is now a very common trend among those who study Paul and imperial issues to assume Paul’s anti-imperial stance rather than establishing it.

To generalize my take on it, there is an assumption (based on post-colonial or liberation theology ideas) that Paul MUST be anti-imperial. There is no need to establish whether he was. Instead, some scholars begin with this idea that he was anti-imperial and then focus on micro-details and terminology in Paul that CAN be interpreted as anti-imperial if one were to assume that he was. In this approach, there is no need to find explicit references to empire in order to assess Paul’s views. On the other hand, there are some interesting interpretive acrobatics with one of the very few explicit references to emperors and imperial matters, Romans 13 (with its seemingly positive statements on the relation between followers of Paul and the empire).

This method might be conducive to producing a good number more articles, books and dissertations on Paul’s supposed anti-imperialism (one needs more topics to study in such a well covered area as Pauline studies), but it is highly problematic in understanding the nuances of Paul’s “political” views, in my view. Stanley agreed with some aspects of my comments. He did agree that post-colonial analysis has indeed influenced the assumptions (rather than self-conscious method) of some scholarly work in this area and that there have been a number of problematic studies of anti-imperialism and Paul. We’ll have to wait for his forthcoming studies to see the details of Stanley’s findings.

As much as I agree with a modern perspective that would want Paul to be anti-imperial (I would characterize myself as anti-imperial now), I do see major problems in allowing our own modern political or theological views be the guiding principle in interpreting ancient documents, such as Paul’s letters. Enough on one of my pet peeves regarding modern scholarship on Paul and politics. (You can read more of my views and critique of such scholarship in my book, if you like.)

International SBL in Vienna, part 1

Phil Harland — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:50:16 +0000

I’m lucky enough to be at the International meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature here in Vienna, Austria this year. Besides the great Austrian beer, the ornate buildings, and the Ephesos museum (about which I’ll talk later), some of the papers have also been interesting (a few happen to be Canadian), which I’ll briefly mention here.

On Monday we saw Kim Stratton’s (Carleton University, Ottawa) paper on the depiction of Satan in modern film (a topic I have often touched on here: see Satan –but not literally). Kim showed the varying depictions of Satan from more abstract and relatively harmless Mephistos to extremely powerful Satans like the one in End of Days, where Satan seems to be stronger than God in destroying a church, for instance. She suggested that European films tend towards the more abstract depictions and that US films tend toward a more conservative, real, and dangerous Satan. She also discussed the androgynous and anti-Jewish depiction of Satan in Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.

On Tuesday, Ellen Aitken (McGill U.) presented an interesting piece: “In the Mouth of a Hero: Eating Practices and Ritual Utterance in Hero Cults of the Roman Period”. Ellen suggested that the evidence for story-telling in connection with heros in the context of meal practices, namely remembering and relating the achievements of the hero, may provide an analogy for understanding remembrances of Jesus in the context of early Christian meals. She used Philostratus’ Heroikos as her main source for the case study, and it seems she plans to continue this approach in a broader project.

Right now I’ve got to run off to Gerd Theissen’s paper on “Continuity and Discontinuity between Judaism and Early Christianity and the Historical Jesus.” Later.

Post-apocalyptic films: From Escape from New York to Twelve Monkeys and beyond

Phil Harland — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:33:04 +0000

As I have mentioned in connection with the likes of Nosferatu (1922), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Dr. Strangelove (1964), elements of apocalypticism (often, though not always, without an explicit role for “God”) are widespread within modern popular culture in the West (see the other posts in my Religion and Popular Culture category). In some cases, a filmmaker’s focus is on elaborating one specific apocalyptic idea, such as the Antichrist, whose story is told in a new way in films like the Omen series. In other cases, there is a convergence of a number of apocalyptic ideas and assumptions. Numerous films have been created with a focus on the apocalypse as the end or potential end of all human civilization, including Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998), which both viewed meteorites (rather than the previously “popular” nuclear bomb) as the final destructive weapon. A subgenre within these is the post-apocalyptic film.

Post-apocalyptic films are set after the end, or near-end. The apocalypse–the final intervention of some destructive power–has already taken place, and we, as viewers, witness the survivors in a horrible wasteland. Escape from New York (1981) is a good example. Twelve Monkeys is another.

The premise of the plot of Twelve Monkeys (1995) is an apocalyptic viral attack which wipes out the majority of humanity. Bruce Willis’s character, a convict, exists in the post-apocalyptic world (in 2035), where the precious (or not-so-precious) few survivors (1%) live a surreal existence underground. Oddball scientists are hard at work in this underworld seeking to reverse the apocalyptic clock. So Bruce Willis’s character, among others, is chosen to go back in time to find a way to stop the viral attack that decimated the population. The scientists have (mistaken) hints that a group known as the Army of Twelve Monkeys (which is led by Brad Pitt’s character) caused the massive slaughter. After showing up in several other time periods, Bruce Willis’s character finally arrives in the right time (1997) and place. But we the viewers, along with Willis and others, learn too late that it was not the Army of Twelve Monkeys but a disturbed red-headed man that released the virus and needed to be stopped. Perhaps the next time back crisis could be averted.

There is an online, academic article that deals with Twelve Monkeys alongside Waterworld: Conrad Ostwalt, “Visions of the End. Secular Apocalypse in Recent Hollywood Film,” Journal of Religion and Film 2 (1998).

What better time is there to post this than after watching Live Free or Die Hard (2007), in which Bruce Willis averts an attempt to bring on the apocalypse (“fire sale”: “everything must go”), at least in United States of America (which is the world from the perspective of this and other Hollywood films).

Apocalyptic literature on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha blog (End 1.11)

Phil Harland — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:27:00 +0000

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha course blog has now been going for a while and includes a number of entries on apocalyptic literature:

Apocalypse of Abraham: Online Translations of the Apocalypse of Abraham, Apocalypse of Abraham Abstract, Summary of The Apocalypse of Abraham Seminar

Apocalypse of Elijah: Elijah Materials Online, Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah Abstract, Summary of Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah Seminar