Recently came across, again, the link to an interview which I gave a few years ago on Meister Eckhart and the Lord's Prayer (in German) for an Austrian broadcaster. Simply follow the link.
Saturday 24 January 2015
Sunday 11 January 2015
‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ in the eyes of others
In two recent articles, A. Baumgarten, ‘The Rule of the Martian in the Ancient
Diaspora’, and J. Barclay,
‘“Jews” and “Christians” in the Eyes of Roman Authors c. 100 CE’, both part of P.J.
Tomson and J. Schwartz (eds), Jews and
Christians in the First and Second Centuries: How to Write their Histories
(Leiden, 2013), 313-26 and 398-430, respectively the question of ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’
in the eyes of others, predominantly Greco-Roman, non-Christian authors, have
been ventured.
As Baumgarten
rightly quotes, Lucian of Samosata in his famous Peregrinus depicts Jews and Christians as 'a cluster of bats coming
out of a nest, or frogs holding council round a marsh, or worms assembling in
some filthy corner' which he interprets in the light of Jonathan Z. Smith (‘What
a difference a difference makes’, 47) as an expression of '... even identity'
and calls the debate between Jews and Christians a 'Jewish discussions'. Hence,
according to Lucian, Christians are seen as part of Judaism, not separated
from Judaism (403), although Baumgarten shares the views of those Jews who
see in these Christians anything, but Jews. That is the reason why he
underlines against the apologetic trend of modern scholarship the difference
between Christians and Jews, despite what he quoted from Lucian, relying
on the Jew from Celsus. However, what this Jew complaints about, that
Christianity was 'another name and another life' to which some Jews have
'deserted' is not very different from how Paul would have regarded those Jews
whom he persecuted with all his powers. And even the 'mother-daughter' image of
this Jew is not different from what we read in Tacitus (dismissed by Barclay,
see below). It is obvious (and I don't know many amongst those criticized representatives
of 'modern scholarship' that would deny that Celsus' Jew, like the persecuting
Paul before him, held such views) that from a Jewish perspective, critical of
the 'Christian' interpretation, 'Christians' were seen as deviators, perhaps
even apostates of Judaism - which does not say much about how 'Christians'
would have regarded themselves (as one can see, again with Paul who despite
having joined the persecuted communities did not regard himself or his new
brethren as apostates from Judaism). Baumgarten, then, supports his Jewish
argument by pagan writers who, according to him, share this view that
'Christians' were no longer Jews (410), with reference to Barclay. He then
takes on Lucian's P. again and mentions the 'new cult' and martyrdom (note this
terminology reminds of Marcion's catchword 'new' and the fact that the Marcionites
were known for having produced most martyrs in the second century) and mentions
that for Lucian Christians are something else than Jews (no surprise from
somebody who writes contemporary to Justin/Irenaeus and reports about somebody
around the year 144 - note, it is the year in which Marcion went public with
his New Testament). Galen, all agree, still sees Jews and Christians as 'one
school' which is now one of two lawgivers (Moses and Christ; see also the notes
of Celsus on the 'contradictory laws' CC 7.18; 'Moses or Jesus', 'opposite
purpose' which supports the case I have made in my Marcion and the Synoptic Gospels [Leuven, 2014], that the Jewish
source of Celsus was aquainted with and critical of Marcion’s Antitheses). When Baumgarten draws the
conclusion, based on his retake of Lucian (no longer mentioning what he quoted
from him earlier - the cluster of bats coming out 'from a nest', not nests), and
against Galen (but supported by what he found by Barclay, see below), he comes
to the conclusion: ‘The nearly unanimous evidence of the “pagan” authors, taken
together with the explicit remarks of Celsus’ Jew, make it hard to argue that, “Most,
if not all of the Christians of the first, second, and perhaps even the third
centuries considered themselves and were
considered by others as Jews” or that the elites on what would become the two sides (to whom Celsus’ Jew would have
belonged) were so concerned with distinguishing between Jews from Christians because
so many other people of Antiquity did not see the difference between Jews and
Christians, that is, because the ways had not yet really parted’ (412-3). As
Baumgarten himself italizes the passage in Boyarin’s quote (Daniel Boyarin, ‘Semantic
Differences’, in Adam H.
Becker, Annette Yoshiko Reed (eds), The Ways that Never Parted [Tübingen,
2003], 65-86, 69), his
concern has not been about how Christians saw themselves, but how they were
seen by others.
As he has based the
core of his argument on Barclay’s article, we also need to review the latter.
Here my observations:
In his contribution on ‘“Jews” and “Christians” in the Eyes of
Roman Authors c.100 CE’, John M.G. Barclay suggests that ‘as far as Romans were
concerned, the association between “Christians” and “Jews” was not an early,
but a late phenomenon; two groups once clearly differentiated could now be
closely associated, but only when a good deal was discovered about “Christian”
beliefs and the “Christian” self-image. It was only late, and then only
patchily (and in elite circles) that Romans began to identify “Christians” with
“Jews”, an association certainly not made by 100CE’ (326).
This hypothesis is based on the assessment of a relatively
coherent picture that Barclay sees being painted by Roman authors of the first
and early second century who write about ‘Jews’ (Valerius Maximus, Apion of
Alexandria, Seneca, Petronius, Pliny the Elder, Quintilian, Martial and Juvenal),
about ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ (Suetonius and Tacitus), a picture that he
contrasts with the profile of ‘Christians’ given by those authors who talked
about ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’, and those who talked about ‘Christians’ alone
(Pliny the Younger, Trajan) or on ‘Galileans’ (Epictetus).
While ‘Jews’ are seen as a superstitious gens, ‘Christians’ are regarded as criminals, two ‘different’
categories, therefore, as Barclay suggests who never before Celsus have been
connected.
In order to maintain this neatly differentiated picture, he
needs to exclude the Claudian edict (taken as an individual rebel ‘not a
representative of a group’ [317], although according to the edict the Emperor
‘expellat Iudaeos’. Would an Emperor issue an edict, if the rebellious Chrestos
were only a single phenomenon with the Jewish synagogue without impact on a
group? That the Emperor expells ‘Jews’ contradicts Barclay’s reading – the
Emperor does not exclude and expell an individual rebel, but ‘Jews’, amongst
them the famous Aquila).
The second witness which Barclay needs to exclude (317) to
make his case is Tacitus’ lost work, the Historiae,
where Tacitus reports about Titus who wanted to destroy
completely
the religion of the Jews and the Christiani: For although these religions
are conflicting, they nevertheless developed from the same origins. The Christiani
arose from the Jews: With the root removed, the branch is easily killed.[1]
Only recently E. Laupot (not mentioned by Barclay) has made a
good case that the text is genuinely by Tacitus.[2]
The quote is, indeed, of interest as it gives, if not the opinion of Titus, at
least that of Tacitus that for him, Jews and Christians still belonged to one
religion, while at the same time he can also speak of them as two religions
with a clear indication that the Christians derive from the Jews and can be
seen like branch and root.
The third evidence that Barclay dismisses is Epictetus. When
Epictetus talks about a Jew who ‘has been baptised and has made his choice’ and
‘is in reality a Jew’, Barclay takes this as evidence for proselyte baptism
which, according to Barclay, ‘has nothing to do with Christian practice’ (319).
Yet, for a long time, the terminology of ‘baptism’ has made scholars think that
there was a potential connection to Christians (see, for example, James D.G.
Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem
(Cambridge, 2009), 55-6 (not mentioned by Barclay).
In addition, one does not only need to look at the positive
evidence, but also at the negative one. If the two groups were as
differentiated and distinct from early on, as Barclay claims, one needs to
explain why, for example, Josephus who talks about the different groups of
Judaism and also mentions key figures like James, Jesus’ brother, never speaks
of ‘Christians’. Likewise, James D.G. Dunn is more precise when he states that
‘there are no references to Christians or Christianity in non-Christian
Greco-Roman sources prior to the second century’ (54), but that all we have are
second century authors writing about first century events. This reduces the
basis for the claim that from early on, we have a differentiation between
Judaism and Christianity which only towards the later second century were
brought together by authors.
A more systematic problem is given by the fact that Barclay
states that ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ are incomparable labels, belonging to a
‘different category’, yet – in his contrasting of two groups, ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ he starts
blurring the difference between a label (which can be distinct, as they are in
the case of 'Jews' and 'Christians') and 'groups'. If the labels
refer to distinct categories ('Jews' a gens, 'Christians' criminals), a
comparison of 'Jews' with 'Christians' is like that of apples with pears, hence,
such comparison will not give us an insight into how people were related to
each other (let alone in their own minds), but will give us labels under which
people have been categorised from different perspectives. Instead, if one
followed Barclay's logic, one would need to say that if 'Jews' and
'Christians' are incomparable, Jews could easily also be seen as criminals
(Christians) (without the need of people by making such strictures to refer to
these people being Jews), as well as Christians could be seen as belonging to
the gens of Jews (without in thise case people being in need in accusing them
of being ‘Christians’ or criminals, as being a Jew was far from being a
criminal). If 'Christians' as a label is equated with being a 'criminal' - and
this is how I see it too, this label explains why the title ‘Christians’ has
not become a self-reference for a long time and that writings like 2Peter and
Acts still know of it as a shame name, and that even Justin has difficulties to
give it a positive rendering. If this is so, how can such a shame name which
has no reference to a gens give us any indication about the relation between
'Christians' and 'Jews' in the first half of the second, let alone about the
first century?
[1] Tac., in: Sulp. Sev.: ‘Plenius Iudaeorum et Christianorum religio
tolleretur: quippe has religiones, licet contrarias sibi, isdem tamen ab
auctoribus profectas; Christianos ex Iudaeis extitisse: radice sublata stirpem
facile perituram’.
[2]
E. Laupot, ‘Tacitus' Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement
of the Christiani and the Nazoreans’, VigChr 54 (2000), 233-47.
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