Christ is Belial

R. Hakola, O. Lehtipuu, & N. Nikki (eds), Common Ground and Diversity in Early Christian Thought and Study: Essays in Memory of Heikki Räisänen (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament; Nro 495). Mohr Siebeck. , 2022

The article situates early Christian struggles between new interpretations and continuity in the larger ancient context, where various communities sought to preserve their cultural, social, and religious heritage while simultaneously introducing novel ways to express their distinctive social identities. It is argued that the tension between continuity and discontinuity, so aptly perceived by Heikki Räisänen in many of his publications, illustrates how various groups turn to the past to construct and maintain their social identities. The author applies the social identity approach to explain how the success of various cultural and social innovations depends on the ability of their architects to conceal that these reforms are a mixture of various past and contemporary stimuli and as such continually in the making.

Katell Berthelot (ed.), Reconsidering Roman power: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian perceptions and reactions, Collection de l'École française de Rome 564 (Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2020), , 2020

The beginning of Christianity is often associated with biblical protagonists (Jesus, Paul, the Apostles etc.) and often linked to historical events taking place around the mid-1st century. This article takes a different view, beginning with the assumption that what was later called Christianity; should not be anachronistically projected back onto the first century. Even though it built on gradual developments taking place over the course of 140 years, Christianity; was a novel concept, no older than the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE). As most of the early Christian; writings cannot be dated with certainty, we do not know whether Jews started calling themselves Christians; prior to this time. The first texts to report such self-descriptions are Marcion’s Antitheses from around the year 144 CE and Ignatius’ Letters (middle recension) which together, and supported by growing scholarship, I take to be from after the mid second century. Before this point, Christian; texts describe the word as a deprecating exonym (Acts 26:28 attributes use of the term to a cynical Agrippa; 1 Peter 4:16 associates Christian; with suffering and shame). In what follows I hope to show why and how Marcion created Christianity; as a label for a third way between Jerusalem and Rome, an innovation which proved successful and was quickly picked up by a number of apologists; in the late years of Hadrian and the early years of Antoninus Pius

Fourth-Century Christology in Context: A reconsideration, 2021

This is a response which will be printed at the end of a collected volume on fourth-century Christology. My task in this text was to sketch main challenges in the study of fourth-century Christology as well as some trends in current research as illustrated by the contributions to the volume.

Church History, 2007

The Bible and Critical Theory, 2008

Arnal challenges the recent accusations that the historical Jesuses of scholars like Mack, Crossan, Horsley, Vaage, and the Jesus Seminar are un-Jewish and, therefore, at least implicitly complicit with anti-Semitism. Arnal readily acknowledges the presence of anti-Semitism today (e.g., in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ) and in the past in New Testament scholarship (e.g., in the work of Walter Grundmann). Arnal also finds tendencies toward anti-Semitism in Christian anti-Judaism and in the apologetic scholarship that asserts Jesus' uniqueness and accordingly distinguishes him from his environment. Despite this 'bad karma,' however, he argues that scholarship has improved in the last thirty years, particularly by making Jesus' Jewishness central to historical reconstruction and by thereby normalizing Jesus as a part of his world, rather than distinguishing him from it. Today, the Jewish Jesus is simply no longer a matter of academic debate. Instead, the debate is now about what kind of Jew the historical Jesus was. In this context, the accusation that some scholars produce un-Jewish Jesuses is a 'straw man,' which dismisses the accused scholars' hypothesis without discussion. Moreover, the accusation ignores debates about the ethnic and religious character of the Galilee, the fluidity of ancient markers of Judaism (see Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion), and, in particular, the comparative nature of Mack's Cynic hypothesis. For Arnal, however, the real issue is not these historical debates, but a moral (or political) divide. Despite the accusations against them, scholars like Mack and Crossan are actually demonstrably opposed to anti-Semitism and their work deliberately strives to compensate for Christian anti-Judaism (see Mack's Myth of Innocence and Crossan's Who Killed Jesus?). By contrast, those who reject their work peremptorily are guilty of assuming that all kinds of ancient Judaism must be the same and of an anachronistically modern view of religion. This rhetoric BOOK REVIEWS

BMCR

Princeton University. The collection of articles presented here will be of interest as much to students of Greco-Roman antiquity as to those of the Near-Eastern world. It offers leading scholars' insights into the fascinating question of the ways in which collective memory is retrieved, exploited, and transformed by Greeks, Jews, and Christians from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. In this framework, construction of continuity or discontinuity played a crucial role in building communal identities, legitimizing religious constructs, and enhancing social status. In their introduction, the editors stress the particular approach to their past as a specific object of inquiry which marks the ancients of the Greco-Roman world: they often view their own tradition as the continuation of an earlier glorious age and thus as a lens through which to define themselves. The editors also single out the approaches used in the volume, i.e. the process of communal identity construction, the nature of collective memory as inscribed in literature and material remains, as well as their reinterpretation by members of the group and their rival elite groups. The elite group at work in this brilliant volume provides interdisciplinary approaches to the subject, offering insights from the Classics, Judaic Studies, Early Christian Studies, Syriac Studies, Archaeology, and History. In the course of this review, I will delve into detail in only some of the papers, merely summarizing others, as the length of the volume makes it difficult to review it integrally in depth.

In this collection scholars of biblical texts and rabbinics engage the work of Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Schwartz provides an introductory essay on the study of collective memory. Articles that follow integrate his work into the study of early Jewish and Christian texts. The volume concludes with a response from Schwartz that continues this warm and fruitful dialogue between fields.

2024

This illustrated general reference book, written for both Jews and Christians, explores three lesser-known but pivotal subjects: • The uniqueness of the biblical message becomes self-evident when viewed in the light of fourteen major world ideologies. • An overview of the convoluted history of the Church enables us to come to terms with our Western cultural heritage. • Like a magnificent tapestry, the Hebrew tradition delights the senses, feeds the soul, and shines with a compelling ancient beauty. This book provides numerous rejuvenating insights into the New Testament’s inherent Jewishness, and its seventy-five original line drawings, charts, and maps illuminate striking correlations between New Testament writings and the history, worship, customs, calendar, and language of the Jews. “One of the most comprehensive works on Jewish Roots is titled Return to the Fountainhead of the Faith, by Shelley Wood Gauld. Her book is very readable and a treasure chest filled with practical knowledge and insight. This book is not dry academicism. It is a work of art that touches head and heart.” Dr Frank Lenihan: Regional Director of Bridges for Peace, Montana, USA.

This article presents four main arguments supporting in a novel way the old view of a Jesus involved in anti-Roman resistance. Firstly, the presence of a consistent pattern of evidence in the New Testament, that enjoys the highest probability of historicity. Secondly, the great explanatory power of the hypothesis constructed in the light of the pattern. Thirdly, the lack of a convincing unifying alternative, and the far-fetched character of the atomizing approaches proposed. Fourthly, the fact that every objection leveled against the hypothesis can be convincingly countered. These arguments, as a whole, are the four pillars of a solid scholarly building. In this light, the widespread claim that the hypothesis of a seditious Jesus has been dealt a fatal blow is not only wholly gratuitous, but demonstrably false.

It is commonly held that Christianity arose during the reign of Tiberius, around the year 30 CE. This paper proposes that the religion emerged some forty years later, initiated by a rumor that the Messiah had appeared in Judea about the time the Temple in Jerusalem was razed by the Romans. Arguments from analogy as well as theology are presented to show that this is the most likely explanation for the origins of the cult given our understanding of how religions arise and the historical records available to us. In order to shed some light on this question, modern examples of significant rumors and cults are examined. The ancient historians Tacitus and Josephus are discussed in detail to show why they either substituted another narrative or omitted any reference to this phenomenon altogether. Finally other instances of similar phenomena arising in a Jewish context are examined, showing that given the appropriate conditions what has happened before can happen again.

Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, 2014

hristianity was born in an argument over how to understand Jewish texts. While the biblical traditions referred to by Jesus of Nazareth would most likely have been in Hebrew or Aramaic, the texts and the arguments that shaped Christianity's future were in Greek. Greek did more than make the new movement available to a wider world, both Jewish and pagan. It also made those Hellenistic Jewish texts that most mattered to the movement-the Septuagint (LXX), Paul's letters, various early gospels-interpretively compatible with three important traditions from pagan high culture: ethnographical stereotyping, forensic rhetoric, and philosophical paideia. From these four elements, Christian traditions contra Iudaeos took shape. In the following essay, I propose to trace the growth and effects of Christian rhetoric contra Iudaeos in three related but distinct historical moments: in Roman imperial culture pre-Constantine; in Roman Christian culture post-Constantine; and in the Christian culture of post-Roman, post-Arian Spain (589-711 ce). My goal is, first, to understand how this discourse functioned * This essay was originally published in Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire: The

A question important to Christology today is one that, potentially, could spell the end of Christianity as we know it. Did the historical Jesus exist? Was there a man called Jesus who lived in 1st century Palestine, preached a unique message of compassion and love, gathered a following of faithful disciples, was arrested and then later crucified by Roman authorities. Is this so called Jesus of history genuine and easily supported by historical evidence? The purpose of this study is to look at the available evidence, both biblical and non-biblical, presenting original manuscripts, commentary and current scholarship. What does come through strongly is the inability to make a water tight case for the existence of an historical Jesus. Furthermore, the possibility that the Jesus story may be a reworking of ancient pagan mythologies is particularly challenging.

This essay is based on two groundbreaking books, which are, in my opinion, bold attempts of their respective authors to clear ‘the mist of time’ we find in the Old and New Testaments. One is Sigmund Feud’s Mosses and Monotheism, from 1939, which is known more to the various theologian critics and the apologetics entrenched in the Old and New Testaments, then general public. Even, such great author as Erich Fromm criticized Freud book as his the weakest work. Freud was totally unmoved and gave his historical view of the major Jewish prophet Moses as the Egyptian. One can only imagine shock-waves the book sent to the Bible aficionados in the Jewish and the Christian camps on the eve of The Second World War. Freud’s profound knowledge of the history and the character traits gave Moses in his book distinctive human characteristics, not only a ‘shine face’ covered with a cloth after collecting the Commandments. Freud was at the same time one of the few who was capable to give us insight into inferno opened by the German racists’ in1933. The second book is Robert Eisenman’s James, The Brother of Jesus. Eisenman gives a real background of the person we learn to call Jesus comparing him with his brother James the Just, the true leader of the Jerusalem early Church, after the death of his more famous brother. James has been systematically and deliberately downplayed or written out of tradition. Once the New Testament reached its final form, the process of James’ marginalization became more unconscious and inadvertent but, in all events, it was one of the most successful rewrite – or overwrite – enterprises ever accomplished.

Sui Generis Publications, 2021

After the 2nd World War, the Jewish people became the target of Evangelical Christian missionaries. Many of the Jewish people who have been successfully converted had left orthodox Judaism years, if not generations, previously. Most of those Christian converts explain that they saw Judaism as being the repetition of empty ritual in the worship of a God to whom they could not connect. They almost unanimously say that they joined Christianity to have a direct connection to the divine. This paper had two objectives: To discover if the textual and historical evidence supported a homogeneous, original and continuous form of orthodox Judaism. To confirm or deny the validity of the idea that the Jesus of History created a form of proto-Christianity or if he was a part of the continuum of Hebrew spirituality and history. We examined textual, archaeological and historical evidence using philosophical coherence as a logical datum. The results showed that the Jesus of History was part of a philosophical, spiritual and religious continuum that stretched back to the birth of Israel. That Hebrew teaching was, and is, the antithesis of Christian dogma. © 2021 M. A. Sebastian. All rights reserved.