Both in his Time Patrol series and in There Will Be Time, Poul Anderson sidesteps the question of the historical claims of Christianity. This evening, I ate with James Crossley who gave me a copy of his soon to be published book:
James Crossley & Robert J. Myles, Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict (Alresford, Hampshire, 2023)
I also hope to read a work by James' mentor:
Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching (London, 2010).
Maurice Casey believed that New Testament scholars need to know not only Greek but also Aramaic - to be able to construct possible originals of Gospel sayings. I now embark on some non-fiction reading but always remembering the Time Patrol.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
One historical novel which greatly impressed me as a boy was William Stearns Davis' THE BEAUTY OF THE PURPLE (1925), focusing on Leo III the Isaurian and how he defeated the Muslim siege of Constantinople in 717-18. Altho we don't see the Eastern Roman Empire at its height in Anderson's works, we see it when it was still powerful in THE LAST VIKING. And THERE WILL BE TIME gives us a grisly glimpse of the Sack of Constantinople by the Venetians and Fourth Crusaders.
I have some books touching on the issue of the "historical Jesus:" JESUS AND HIS TIMES, by Daniel-Rops, and the first three volumes of Fr. John Meir's A MARGINAL JEW series. And I recall how gently but scathingly critical the late Fr. Raymond Brown was of the methodology of the "Jesus Seminar" in AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
I believe, thanks to David L. Dungan's HISTORY OF THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM, that Matthew's Gospel was the oldest and first written of the four canonical gospels, probably around AD 50. And an early Church Father, Papias, wrote not long after AD 100 that Matthew was originally written in the "Hebrew" (i.e., Aramaic) language before being translated into Greek. I think any attempt at "reconstructing" the Aramaic texts of the words of Christ should start with Matthew and the Targums (ancient Aramaic translations of the NT).
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: The SYRIAC (closely related to Aramaic) translations of the NT were called the "Peshitta," not Targums. Attempted Aramaic "reconstructions" of the words of Christ should start with the Peshitta and the Greek text of Matthew.
Sean
In my experience, most historians mentally 'time travel' a fair bit.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That would be esp. true of historians whose sources happens to be scanty, ambiguous, doubtful!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: no, all of them. Wishing they could see what they study is very common.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, once I understood you more clearly.
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, fairly substantial chunks of the Koran originated in Aramaic versions of the Gospels that were circulating in the Middle East in that period. You can tell because Aramaic was very similar to, but not identical to, early classical Arabic and led to confused on-the-run translations and transpositions.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I basically agree. If I can go by Dawood's translation of the Koran, Mohammed's confused comments about the "gospel" came come from apocryphal, non-canonical sources.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Middle East was full of variations on the Gospels, and syncretistic cults. It was a long time before the canon of the bible 'settled down'.
As Poul put it, something over which scholars cracked their heads, and warriors cracked each other's heads.
Incidentally the same thing happened with Islam. Early Arabia was, to put it mildly, not a very literate society, and the Koran didn't actually assume a standardized form until the second or third Umayyad Caliph, and it was done in Damascus, not Mecca, and about a century after Mohammed's lifetime. Until then there were competing versions, many purely oral.
This accounts for a lot of the confusion about what the Muslims were and believed in the first few generations; they didn't agree on it themselves. The Byzantines were convinced for some time it was a Christian heresy, an offshoot of Monophysitism.
With considerable justification; it's about the same relationship as that between Christianity and Mormonism. Though Joseph Smith was a lot less sincere that Mohammed -- not that that makes much difference in the long run.
A lot of the outer fringe of the Islamic sphere got a stripped down version of "Din Allah", the "Religion of God", without theological nuance, for a long time.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, many of the debates within the early Catholic Church centered on which books belonged in the OT and NT canons. Some were unanimously accepted, others needed time and guidance from our Lord the Spirit before being rejected or accepted. The Muratorian Fragment, from about the mid second century AD, gives a listing of which books were accepted in Rome at that time. And it wasn't until the Council of Rome, under Pope Damasus (in about 381), that the full Catholic canon of the Bible was agreed on. A decision reaffirmed de fide by the Council of Trent in 1546.
I agree with what you said about how the actual textual history of the Koran is complex, and that there were and are textual variations. But those Muslims with whom I tried to discuss such things (e.g., the Yemeni Fragments) have almost always denied the Korah was ever anything but perfect and unchanged.
I don't think comparing Islam to the Monophysite heresy is quite correct. Too briefly, the Moophysites stressed the divinity of Christ to such an extent that His humanity was virtually extinguished. And Islam denies Christ's divinity. I favor Hilaire Belloc's view, Islam is a stripped down, Arianizing imitation of Christianity.
The more I learned about Mohammed and Jos. Smith, I came to think less and less favorably of them! (Snorts!!!)
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Mohammed was probably a nutter who heard voices in his head.
An intelligent and charismatic nutter, though.
Smith was a con-man who liked pretty women and power and dressing up in fancy uniforms.
Through a combination of native ability and being in exactly the right place at the right time, he hit an unexpected vein of success and got captured by the role he made up, ending with a martyr's death.
He probably didn't believe that would happen right up to the last moment.
A rogue, but an intelligent and charismatic rogue, like L. Ron Hubbard.
By then, apart from Smith, the Mormon church was run by true believers, which is a testimony to the human ability to believe -anything- if it caters to their psychological needs.
(Magic spectacles, golden tablets conveniently reclaimed by angels, lost tribes of Israel, etc.)
It was people like Smith that Voltaire had in mind when he said: "When the first rogue met the first dupe, priestcraft was born."
As an atheist, my take on the origins of religion isn't as cynical as Voltaire's: I postulate a bigger role for mentally disturbed people who hear voices in their heads.
That doesn't mean they're -stupid-, just disturbed. Like Joan of Arc.
And both the more skilled conmen and the brilliant nutters are often very, very convincing.
Absolute belief is; so is a really good imitation of it.
The biggest difference between now and premodern times is that belief in the supernatural was much more nearly universal then -- it was the basic explanation for life, the universe and everything, with only some aspects of Hellenistic philosophy as a countercurrent.
And there was no non-supernatural explanation for the voices-in-the-head thing; even those who (effectively) thought people like that were nutters thought of madness in terms of possession by spirits and so forth.
Those who hated Joan of Arc didn't deny she was communing with spirits; they just said they were -bad- spirits.
Sean: Belloc was more technically accurate, but the Byzantines had less information. And Monophysitism was the most familiar heresy coming from that area.
Also, of course, if you go far enough in one direction, you meet yourself coming the other way.
The Monophysites essentially denied that there was a -distinction- between the Persons of the Trinity -- which, in a backhanded sort of way, Islam does too. They both emphasize transcendence over imminence.
Islam has a certain... ah, backwoods simplicity that Monophysitism shares.
Whereas Catholicism and Orthodoxy are much more subtle.
In many ways Protestantism was a 'simplifying' movement, not only in terms of ritual but theologically, and hence less coherent and less resistant to counterargument (in the long term) than the Catholic or Orthodox traditions.
Which is why, btw, I usually have Catholicism doing better than, say, Methodists in post-apocalyptic settings.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks for these fascinating comments, which I read more than once.
Hmmm, I never thought of Mohammed being a "nutter." I thought of him as a con man and false prophet who, because of the power vacuum at that time in the Mid East, lucked out. The long war between the Eastern Romans and the Sassanid Persians had so exhausted both powers that neither could squash Mohammed before the "Prophet" had conquered Arabia.
Also, I have wondered what might have happened if Jos. Smith had set himself up as a prophet a century earlier? The theocratic system he set up reminds me of Islam's ideal: merging of state and mosque under the rule of a caliph. What if Smith had lived earlier and in 1740 led his misguided followers out of the hostile 13 Colonies across the Mississippi River? I can see the Mormons founding a theocratic kingdom somewhere west of the Big Muddy. An expanding US might have been confronted by a powerful rival!
Smith could not do that in the 1840's because the US was too strong and would not tolerate the Mormons setting up an independent state. The Mormons had to resign themselves to being a minority within the US.
Interesting, if you go far enough down the Monophysite road you can end being a de facto Arian! That said, I have nothing but respect for the Christians of Egypt, both Monophysites and Chalcedonians (Catholic and Orthodox). Their enduring faith in Christ, during many periods of persecution and oppression by the Muslims inspires admiration.
As a Catholic I do believe the supernatural is real and that God or His saints sometimes appears to certain persons. So I don't believe St.Joan of Arc was a nutter. I have a very interesting book about her, JOAN OF ARC: BY HERSELF AND HER WITNESSES, written by Regine Pernoud. Based on contemporary sources, esp. the transcript of her trial.
What interested me is why God intervened in the 100 Years War between England and France, during the latter's hour of despair after Agincourt? Daniel-Rops suggested in his history of the Church God did not want both England and France to be ruled by a king like Henry VIII, a ruler who would drag both nations into schism and heresy. Damage control, IOW!
One of the problems with Protestant "simplifying" is that so much is cut out, rejected, denied, etc., that many Protestants don't know how to respond intelligently and reasonably to attacks and challenges. While many Catholic writers can rebut such challenges.
Ad astra! Sean
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