In Robert Heinlein's Future History, even before the interstellar stage, the contradiction between technological progress and social regression generated the First Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder, and his theocracy. In Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, not part of the Future History but sharing the same race of Martians, a prophet called Foster founded the Church of the New Revelation.
On the interstellar scale, we have Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's Dune and Jaan in Poul Anderson's Technic History and here there is a link back to Heinlein. In the Future History, the Angels of the Lord used television to fake the Miracle of the Incarnation, the annual return of the First Prophet to Earth. In the Technic History, Aycharaych uses mental technology to fake the personality of Caruith, the supposed Ancient who possesses Jaan.
Beware of technology in the hands of manipulators of religion.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
At first I was puzzled, because the Terran Empire practiced religious toleration, so I didn't understand where those "contradictions" came from. But mentioning Jaan, the Cosmenosist prophet manipulated by Aycharaych in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN clarified matters.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I too am getting a bit puzzled here. Even without overt religious persecution, a populace can resent foreign rule and taxation and their general aspiration for a better life can take a religious form, the conviction that the Messiah will come, will overthrow the oppressors and will appoint the formerly oppressed to rule and judge everyone else under him. Christianity began as that but, when the political liberation failed to materialize, it became instead a universal message of individual salvation.
Paul.
When I was being brought up, it was a truism that the Jews had expected a military Messiah but Jesus was a "Suffering Servant" Messiah. However, the first Christians were Jews, including Jesus himself, condemning "tax-collectors and sinners," i.e., agents of exploitation and those who lived in luxury by exploiting the precarious peasantry. The message from the millenarians including Jesus to the rich was "Join our movement and support our itinerant population by giving them all your wealth or hang onto your wealth now in which case you will soon be dispossessed and relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy when the Messiah arrives."
Kaor, Paul!
Again, I have to disagree, because what you said is simply not the case. Our Lord disappointed many would be followers by refusing to be a merely political Messiah. We see Him saying or doing things like stating His kingdom was not of this world, telling people to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, irritating both the Pharisees and Sadducees, or making a point of being kind to tax collectors (even summoning one of them, Matthew, to be an apostle), etc.
Christianity makes no sense unless its supernatural claims are taken seriously, which is what Anderson did in "A Chapter of Revelation." So I disbelieve arguments claiming Christianity is merely a this worldly, man made thing.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Kingdom not of this world" is later, in the 4th Gospel.
I think belief in the Resurrection can be accounted for without a literal Resurrection.
Paul.
Of course the pre-Christian Jewish millenarians recruited some tax-collectors. The message to then was "Convert now or suffer soon!" Gentiles were not included in salvation. Other nations would be ruled by the Twelve from Jerusalem.
to them
The repeated Jewish rebellions against Rome were attempts to replicate the successful (and religiously inspired) revolt of Judah the Maccabee against the Selucid Greek dynasty.
They continued long after others in the area, I think, precisely because the Jews were monotheists and thought their God (very much a Jewish God) was all-powerful.
Only after the disaster of Bar Kochba's revolt in the 130's CE did the rabbinical version of Judaism become dominant and preach political quietism. Not that they -liked- Rome, but they accepted that for reasons known only to God, God wan't going to overthrow the Empire.
This in turn was the product of repeated demonstrations that Rome had the power and the wiil to exterminate all rebels... and all their civilians too.
There were groups that rebelled and groups that preached, "We are not strong enough to rebel successfully but just repent and wait because God is about to intervene and overthrow the Romans for us." The proto-Christians, including the individual who was later deified, were in the second category.
Kaor, Paul!
Again, I disagree. Christ, being God as well as man, had more important things to do than being a merely political Messiah. The IDEA that His kingdom was not of this world can be found in other, older parts of the NT, not just in John's gospel. E.g., Matthew 16.21-23 says: "From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and Scribes and chief priests, and be put to death, and on the third day rise again. And Peter taking him aside, began to chide him, saying, "Far be it from thee, O Lord; this will never happen to thee." He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, satan, thou art a scandal to me; for thou dost mind the things of God, but those of man."
IOW, even the apostles had great difficulty letting go of hopes and dreams of a political Messiah! So I disagree with your second category as well. To say nothing, of course, of how
Christ said He would have to die and literally rise from the dead.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Matthew 16: 21-23 reads back later beliefs about the resurrection into a dialogue between Jesus and Peter. And it does not contradict the original belief which was that a sacrificial death would initiate the kingdom on Earth there and then. Last words attributed to Jesus indicate that he died realizing that this approach had failed. It sounds as if he had expected an angelic intervention during the crucifixion.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Incorrect, because the RESURRECTION contradicts this. You still persist in refusing, at the very least, to accept that the first Christians believed SUPERNATURAL events like the Resurrection happened.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There is a total misunderstanding here. I have not denied that the first Christians believed that a supernatural Resurrection had occurred. Obviously they believed that. They said it and wrote it. I, along with many others, offer naturalistic and psychological explanations of why such a belief could have come about. No wonder we can't communicate if, underlying the disagreements, there is an until now unstated complete misunderstanding of what I have been saying.
When you write: "Christ, being God as well as man...," you simply assume the truth of the very belief that is in question. When addressing someone who does not share the belief, you have to do a lot more than that. Otherwise, we cannot communicate.
Paul.
Sean,
Let me present an absurd comparison. Suppose I maintain that Winston Churchill died early in life and was replaced by an imposter who fooled everyone till his death and burial. You ask me to substantiate that. I continue to speak as if the imposture was an established fact. I say thinks like: "And when the imposter reached the age of 60..." You would indeed become frustrated at our miscommunication.
Paul.
things
The evolution of both Judaism and Christianity in the Roman centuries is an example of evolution in action, very closely paralleling biological evolution. Unusually so, in fact.
Both became politically quietist, because variants that tried to rebel against Rome ended up dead or leading a short miserable life in a silver mine in Spain.
Hence there was 'selective pressure' towards otherworldliness and focus on the afterlife.
This applies to the religious trajectories of religion in general in Roman times.
Up until about Marcus Aurelius' time, the end of the second century, the 'established' religions of the Roman elite retained a strong ability to secure the allegiance of their followers and to spread by incorporating new groups and beliefs and deities.
These were 'public' religions in many (but not all; see 'lares and pentates') of their aspects, closely identified with the civic elite and with the State, and with the 'mos maiorum' the ancestral traditions.
The 3rd century, and particularly the 'time of troubles' after the death of Septimus Severus, changed this radically.
There was a period of three generations when nearly everything went wrong on both the macro and micro scales -- endless civil wars, secessions (the "Gallic Empire" for instance) economic collapse(*), repeated massive plague epidemics, barbarian invasions... at one point sea-borne Gothic pirates from what's now Ukraine were raiding as far as Sicily... and endemic crippling disorder. Basically the bottom fell out of the world.
This caused cultural/psychological shock on a huge scale too, discrediting the established cults and opening the door for others such as Mithraism and Christianity.
(*) the established and surprisingly sophisticated Roman banking system just vanished in this period, for example -- things regressed to a much more primitive level, accompanied by stratospheric inflation. That's just one aspect.
Consider the following propositions:
(i) We cannot understand Christianity unless we recognize that it is based on belief in a supernatural Resurrection.
(ii) We cannot understand Christianity unless we recognize that it is based on a supernatural Resurrection.
To slip from (i) to (ii) during a discussion is to generate endless confusion.
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