In this post, I will attempt to gather my thoughts (some of which I have already expressed in past posts) on Christianity as a hybrid religion. To anyone who has followed my posts, it should be clear that my views on Christianity are changing. Naturally, I am influenced by what I read. All of which contributes to my evolving understanding of Christianity.
THE WAY
Christianity began as a sect of Jewish followers of Jesus who identified themselves as "The Way." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his informative book on Jewish life, "A Letter in a Scroll," explained that the term, "the way," was an ancient Jewish term regarding the study of Torah as journey of faith throughout one's life. Rabbi Sack's definition of "the way" gives us some insight on how the earliest followers might have perceived Jesus' teachings. "The Way" originally could have meant for the earliest followers of Jesus, what Rabbi Sacks says it means for all Jews, the study of the Torah, albeit for Jesus' earliest followers, in the light of Jesus' teachings about the Torah.
As I have mentioned in other posts, Jesus' teaching were nothing new to his Jewish audience; in that, they are rooted in the Torah and the writings of the prophets. What was new was how Jesus taught and applied them through his sermons (his collected sayings) and his parables. According to the Gospels, his manner of teaching was, to some of the rabbinical scholars of Jesus' day, a new teaching, which Christians have misinterpreted as something entirely new, but as Rabbi Sacks suggests, a "new teaching" was a term of interest in that it introduced a new interpretation of scripture, which rabbinical scholars would have been interested in and would have debated - something which most Christians are not use to when it comes to their understanding how the scriptures should be treated.
According to the Acts of Apostles, the earliest followers of Jesus lived communally, giving up their personal property and wealth. This was likely based on Jesus' parables like the rich young man in which he was told to sell all of his property and give the proceeds to the poor and then to follow Jesus, when he asked how he may obtain everlasting life. Following such mandates from Jesus was seen as " the way." In was in this communal soup of Jesus' earliest followers, that those who personally knew Jesus, shared their stories and what those stories meant to them. It was in that community that Jesus was kept alive, was resurrected, if not in body then in spirit, as Paul described the resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians. Flavius Josephus, who knew of this community of Jesus' followers commented on how much they loved Jesus, which undergirds the notion that their love of Jesus did not permit him to die.
PAUL
The earliest followers of Jesus continued to worship in the Temple, which is largely ignored by Christian theologians. It begs the question, did they continue to offer sacrifices or did they merely go there to pray?
In his letter to the Romans Paul writes this,
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Romans 5: 8-11
A most telling event regarding whether Jesus' earliest followers continued to participate in offering sacrifices at the Temple is found in the Acts of the Apostles.
When Paul arrives in Jerusalem, he is brought before the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem and James the brother of Jesus. There he is questioned about converting gentiles without following the rite of circumcision (to become Jews in order to become Christians) for which Paul and those accompanying him are required to do a form of penance in form of following the Jewish rite of purification. In Act 21:26 it states, "Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them entered into the temple, to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them."
Obviously, the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem continued to worship and offer sacrifices in the Temple. Paul obviously felt compelled to acquiesce to the the church's leadership, which also raises a question as to whether these earliest followers of "The Way" thought that Jesus death on the cross was a sacrifice for the sins of the world, thus no longer seeing the need for further sacrifices which later Christians. Obviously the Jewish Church in Jerusalem continued to participate in the rites of Temple worship and maintained their adherence to the Torah, the law, which Paul from time to time repudiated through anxiety ridden, convoluted arguments that the law was fulfilled by Christ's atoning sacrifice and no longer requires strict adherence; that those who follow the law are condemned by it, and those who don't are not (or something to that effect.)
Paul of Tarsus was a controversial figure in the early church, which is clearly identified in Luke's Acts of the Apostles and in the epistles that Paul wrote. His an appointment as an apostle to the Jewish communities in Asia Minor and Greece was not without dissension on the part of leadership of the Church in Jerusalem. While he was sent to spread the Gospel of Jesus to the Jewish communities in the Greek-speaking world of the Roman Empire, it was the Greeks more than the Jews who became attracted to what he said. While early Christianity identified as a Jewish sect who followed Jesus' way of being Jewish, expansion of Christianity among the gentiles of Asia Minor and Greece saw Jesus as a liberator from imperial domination and civic duties, which were deemed pagan.
Since Paul was having better success in converting Greeks than Jews to Jesus' way, he considered circumcision to be an obstacle to conversion and he unilaterally decided it was unnecessary for male gentiles to become Jews before being baptized into the church. As noted above, this caused great concern amongst the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem. The foremost of whom was Jesus' disciple, Peter. (See Galatians 2 to read about Paul's view on circumcision.) While a controversial figure in the early church, Paul becomes a pivotal figure in Christianity becoming a religion in itself.
As I have pointed out in several other posts, the greatest historical event that impacted both Christianity and Judaism was the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. As Rabbi Sacks points out, the destruction of the Temple eliminated the Sadducees and destroyed the Church in Jerusalem. The result was that the Pharisees remained the primary Jewish group whose worship had been primarily centered on the synagogue. With the destruction of the Church in Jerusalem and its leadership, the only authoritative voice that guided the Christianity became the epistles attributed to Paul. In fact, the Synoptic Gospels were likely written after Paul's time and were greatly influenced by Paul's epistles. The only other theological work that greatly influenced Christian thought and theology at the start of the 2nd century C.E. was the Gospel of John in which Jesus is raised to being God incarnate through whom all things came into being. (John 1)
THE HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE
As a whole the canon of the Christian New Testament is overtly geared to an Hellenistic understanding. Thus we have the virgin birth story of Jesus, the institution of Holy Communion, and the physical resurrection of Jesus. Given these articles of Christian doctrine, one can trace which school of thought they proceeded from. The virgin birth story and physical resurrection of Jesus are theologically rooted in the Gospel of John, while Holy Communion and Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world is established in Paul's epistles.
Biblical scholars and theologians will be quick to point out that all of these doctrinal teachings are supported and rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament. If they are honest, however, they will have to admit that the virgin birth of Jesus and physical resurrection are read back into selected Old Testament scriptures as what those scriptures were foretelling, not necessarily what they mean to the Jews of Jesus day or for Jews today.
Jews would have been and are extremely skeptical about such a thing as God causing a virgin to become pregnant and thus permit God to become incarnate in a demi-god son, Jesus. In a like manner, Jews would find the notion of Jesus claiming to offer his flesh and blood in the rite of Holy Communion repulsive as the Gospel of John notes in chapter 6. There we are told a number of Jesus' disciples no longer followed him when he told them that unless thy eat his flesh and drink his blood they could not have eternal life. Interestingly, there is no Old Testament scripture that supports what John is saying. There is, however, a polytheistic connection to Holy Communion.
The Gospel of John, in many respects, presents Christianity as mystery religion in which one can enter into eternal communion (life) with God through participation in the mystical body of Jesus. There is an obvious connection with the mystery religions of Ancient Greece. Most notably what comes to mind is the Eleusinian mysteries which also deal with death and resurrection, in the story of Demeter and Persephone, who annually returns from underworld. Bread and a wine-based drink would be offered to a successful initiate that would ensure freedom from the fear of death and a beneficial afterlife.
It is interesting that the oldest mention of the rite of Holy Communion is recorded the 11th chapter of Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthian where Paul states, "I received from the Lord (Jesus) that on the night he was betrayed he took bread... ." It seems obvious that writers or later editors of the Synoptic Gospels borrowed and inserted what Paul received into their versions of the Gospel. The writer or writers of John does it one better, he or they created a Gospel that in essence is all about a journey from Holy Baptism into Holy communion with God through Jesus. Water, bread and wine play a significant role in this Gospel.
As one of several mystery religions in the Roman Empire, Christianity would have been appealing to a wider and more diverse audience. That Christians in Rome had to hide in the catacombs of Rome to escape notice from the Imperial police is, in part, probably true. It is more likely, however, that they met in catacombs as a sort of death and resurrection cult. It is known that Holy Communion was performed in the the catacombs with libations of bread and win poured into holes drilled into the coffins or sarcophagi of Christians who died. Such a hole is reported drilled into the tomb of St. Peter under the high altar of the basilica where he is buried for this very purpose for the purpose of such a libation, a noted in "The Immortality Key -The Secret History of a Religion with No Name" by Brian Muraresku).
Like many mystery religions of the past, the early Christian church utilized initiation rituals. Catechesis (instruction) and baptism, which remains in many mainline churches today, was required for full membership in the body of Christ. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Christianity at the time was that it was open for anyone to be initiated, slaves, women, nobles, and eventually Roman soldiers. Even in the time of Paul, it was noted that members of Caesar's household (most likely trusted imperial slaves or clientele of the imperial family) were baptized.
THE PAGAN CONTINUATION HYPOTHESIS
"The Immortality Key -The Secret History of a Religion with No Name" by Brian Muraresku, like Jonathan Sack's "A Letter in a Scroll" has led me to reconsider the origins of Christianity. I highly recommend to my readers that they read both Sacks' and Muraresku's books. What Brian Muraresku has led me to consider is that Christian theology regarding who Jesus and who God is may be more rooted in the stories and cults of Greek polytheism than in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the "Immortality Key," the archeologist Kaliiope Papangeli, who continues to work on the archeological site of the Eleusinian Mysteries is quoted, "Whatever they (Christians) cannot extinguish, they keep."
The question this poses is how much of the polytheism of Greece has made it into Christianity? I personally have come suspect that the "mythic" beliefs and rites of the ancient Greeks have had a greater impact on the teaching about Jesus found in the Gospels than the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament. As mentioned above, the birth of Jesus, his being declared the "Only Begotten Son of God," the Last Supper, the meaning of his crucifixion, and his resurrection and here I would add the doctrine of the Trinity are rooted in polytheism rather than Hebrew Scripture.
Gods like Zeus having trysts with women they desired often led to demi-god offspring like Hercules and Achilles. The god, Bacchus, was believed to have been born from the thigh of Zeus. Jesus, in the Gospel of John 1:18 was born or originated from the "lap" or bosom of God. Most modern translations gloss the original meaning of the ancient Greek text. The cult of Bacchus or Dionysus places the birthplace of Dionysus in Nysa a city that was part of the ten cities know as the Decapolis in the New Testament. Nysa is approximately 30 miles from Jesus' childhood home of Nazareth.
As mentioned earlier, rite of Holy Communion which Paul claimed occurred at the Last Supper where Jesus offers bread and wine to be or symbolized his body and blood has no corollary in the Old Testament or Jewish thought. While Christianity has cast this event as being associated with the Jewish Passover and thus remake of the spreading of a lambs blood on the lintels of the Israelites homes in Egypt. The Passover and Holy Communion do not correlate beyond theological speculation.
Resurrections occur in many polytheistic religions at the time Jesus. The mythic story of Prometheus comes to mind when it comes to the crucifixion. Prometheusis literally nailed to the side of a mountain for saving humankind by giving us fire. In fact, in some myths Prometheus is actually credited with creating humans from the dirt of the earth, something the Olympian God found rather disgusting. In giving us fire and the knowledge to use it result in Promethus being eternally sacrificed for his sin by daily having his liver eaten by an eagle.
Persephone comes to mind with regard to the resurrection, that one confined in the realm of the dead is allowed back into the land of the living. Again, her story is entwined with that of her mother, Demeter who pleads with Zeus to have her released from Hades once a year. One cannot help but see in Demeter the template for Mary the mother of Jesus. Of course, there are other polytheistic stories that correlate the stories about Jesus found in the canonical Gospels.
The doctrine of the Trinity, although derived from constant references to God as Father, as Holy Spirit, and Jesus as the Son of God. The idea of three persons or personification in and of one God is more polytheistic than monotheistic. I am skeptical that Jesus of Nazareth, a devote Jew, would have entertained, much less, approved of such an understanding. Jesus might have thought himself in terms of being a messiah, although there is considerable evidence in the Synoptic Gospels that he rejected that notion. That Jesus thought he was God was never expressed in the Synoptic Gospels. That doctrine is clearly an afterthought and supported by the theological Gospel of John. As I have suggested in other posts, the idea that Jesus being the only begotten Son of God was intended to be a poke in the Imperial eye of the Emperor being the Divine Son of God.
With regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, the polytheists of the Roman Empire would not have found it scandalous at all. In fact the Triune God, Jesus as a demi-god, and the concept of saints being intercessors would not have required much of an intellectual leap as it would be for Jews. Once Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire and 381 CE, the empire felt secure enough to rid itself of the divine blessings of its ancient gods and goddess and replace them with one religion that had one God in three persons, a new order of priesthood ,and new hierarchal system in which the emperor as the "Pontiff Maximus" became the vicar of Christ which, in essence, made him more divine than any of the past emperors and more godlike than any of the old gods of the Empire.
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas gives further evidence that the canonical Gospels are heavily influenced by the polytheism of the Mediterranean. The Gospel of Thomas contain only the saying of Jesus. There is no birth story, no death story, no resurrection story. Miracles are not mentioned, only his teachings. Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas may, in fact, be one of the earliest Gospels as it shares the same source of the Synoptic Gospels. In my opinion, that it didn't make it into the canon of the New Testament is simply due to its being void of any mythic qualities that would have appealed to the those living in the first four centuries of the Roman Empire. In some sense it was probably perceived as being too Jewish to be Roman.
Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, is said to have established Christianity in India around 52 CE We don't know much about the earliest followers of Jesus other than what can be gathered by legend, which tells that Thomas converted a royal household. Around 600 C.E. Indian Christianity followed the Syriac Rite and were considered Nestorian.
The point that I feel is relevant to this discussion is that the Gospel of Thomas, being void of all references to Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection, is probably the most unedited Gospel in existence. It may have originated in India, but it found its way back to Egypt were it was found among the Nag Hammadi scrolls in 1945. Even the early Gospel of Mark, which does not include the birth of Jesus was subject to editorialization; such as, its inclusion of Paul's concept of Holy Communion and later additions regarding the resurrection of Jesus at the end of the Gospel.
With that said, it is time to restore the Gospel of Thomas to a place of prominence in any Christian discussion.
WHAT NEXT?
In my next post, I will explore what all of this means to Christianity today.
How does Christianity deal with such information?
Does it ignore it? Does it embrace it?
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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