Christianity's Critics: The Romans Meet Jesus by Robert Conner

Christianitys Critics:
The Romans Meet Jesus

Robert Conner
Roman authors such as Celsus, Porphyry, Julian, and Lucian of Samosata

argued that Christianity is a farce and a fraud. In fact, many of their insights
into the new cult, which anticipated the findings of 20th century religious
scholars by 18 centuries, are rather easily confirmed by the writings of the
earliest Christians themselves. This essay examines some of the charges made
by early Roman and Jewish critics and briefly interrogates documents from
Christianitys first centuries that confirm their allegations. Although apologists dismiss or at least attempt to minimize the force of the refutation of
Roman intellectuals, it bears mention that writers such as Celsus, who wrote
in the decade between 170180, read gospels significantly older than any
currently surviving copies1 and used real 2nd century Christians as sources,
i.e., Celsus did not make do with hypothetical gnostics based on extrapolations from a few surviving texts as a basis for reconstructing early Christian
beliefCelsus had access to the real thing.
Until the middle of the 2nd century Christianity barely registered on the social
consciousness of Roman intellectuals and even then they dismissed it as a
close-knit Judaistic sect, and an increasingly noxious one,2 at that. As counter-intuitive as it seems to us, living in a world in which some two billion
people claim to believe in one of the 40,000 or so permutations of Christianity, in the mid-1st century many converts to the cult of Jesus could barely distinguish themselves from Jews if, indeed, they even cared to make such a distinction. That Christianity might eventually emerge victorious from the welter of competing mystery cults, regional and national religions and various
Jewish sects may appear self-evident in retrospect, but in the 1st century it
probably appeared, even to the most ardent Christians, a most unlikely ascendency.3 The most plausible explanation for the triumph of Christianity,
it seems to me, was proposed by Walter Bauer: although the sum total of
consciously orthodox and anti-heretical Christians was numerically inferior
to that of the heterodox, by the early 4th century the Roman government
finally came to recognize that the Christianity ecclesiastically organized from

1
The oldest manuscripts of the New Testament that preserve any substantial
amount of text are tentatively dated from the late 2nd to early 3rd centuries. P52,
the famous Rylands fragment of John, which preserves a mere 114 letters on a
piece of papyrus the size of a credit card, has been optimistically dated to the early
2nd century based on its Hadrianic script, but it may come from the late 2nd century. The terminus post quem of Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the earliest
complete copy of the New Testament, is 325 C.E.
2
Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 163.
To date, no mention of Jesus of Nazareth has been located in a pagan source
written prior to the year 112 C.E...In the earliest years of the Christian movement, the Roman attitude toward followers of Jesus appears to have been marked
by casual indifference. (Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition,
24, 199).
3
Johnson, Among the Gentiles, 172.
Rome was flesh of its flesh, came to unite with it, and thereby actually enabled it to achieve ultimate victory over unbelievers and heretics.4
In any case, as Hoffman has so perfectly stated it, the Christian movement
was Romes Vietnam, a slow war of attrition which had been fought to stop a
multiform enemy.5 Although he certainly does not claim to explain anything
so complicated or grandiose as the eventual triumph of ancient Christianity,
Pierces observation regarding the inroads made by Christian fundamentalists
into the American body politic is worth quoting in this context: Very often,
it was the cranks who provided the conflict by which the consensus changed.
They did so by working diligently on the margins until, subtly, without most of
the country noticing, those margins moved (emphasis added)...[Americas]
indolent tolerance of them causes the classic American crank to drift easily
into the mainstream, whereupon the cranks lose all of their charm and the
country loses another piece of its mind.6 The surreptitious infiltration of
Christians into the margins of Roman society must have been something very
much like what Pierce describes. The Roman Celsus noted, [Christians]
convince only the foolish, dishonorable, and stupid, and only slaves, women,
and little children...whenever they see adolescent boys and a crowd of slaves
and a company of fools [the Christians] push themselves in and show off.7
Christians, their critics charged, targeted what we today call low information
voters, and, like the Campus Crusade for Christ, they proselytized among
the impressionable, those whose youth and lack of sophistication or education rendered them vulnerable to the blandishments of missionaries.
Historians have treated Christianity with extreme deference. A combination
of theological, cultural, and historical factors has conspired to create a protected enclave for this particular religion. As a consequence, methods and
techniques that are taken for granted in the treatment of other religions have
been ignored or discarded in dealing with this onethe further assumption
has been made, with however much sophistication, that certain events in
early Christianity are not only historically distinctive but in some sense religiously unique8 ...dogmatic images of normative Christian origins are not
only reinforced every Sunday during worship but are also subconsciously
lodged in the minds of scholars.9
McKechnie provides an easy example of a scholar so entranced: Jesus was
literate, and read Isaiah aloud in the synagogue (Luke 4:16-20). He, there
4
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 231-232.

Hoffmen, Porphyrys Against the Christians, 14.
6
Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, 31, 33.
7
Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 162 (III, 49-50).
8
Gager, Kingdom and Community, xi, 3.
9
Ldemann, Paul, 240.
5
fore, knew biblical Hebrew as well as Aramaic which was the spoken language
of Judea.10 While credulously accepting the testimony of Luke, who was no
historian, 11 McKechnie ignores the reported opinion of Jesus contemporaries: The Jews therefore marveled, saying, How knoweth this man letters,
having never learned?12 According to Luke,13 when Jesus was crucified the
sun was eclipsed (eklipontoj)an astronomical impossibility...since Passovers occur at full moon and solar eclipses occur only at new moon...By way
of defense [the apologist] Origen insisted that secret enemies of the church
had introduced the notion of an eclipse into the text to make it vulnerable to
a show of reason.14 As the historian Luke ably demonstrates, the incompetence of the authors of the gospels made secret enemies utterly superfluous.
At this point one might well ask (rhetorically, of course), as does Paula
Fredriksen, Why, then, in a field generally so cautious and self-consciously
critical, do New Testament scholars routinely confuse historical reality with
theological polemic, and in the name of pursuing the former reproduce the
latter?15
As will be pointed out in this essay, Jesus came from an insignificant village
and avoided urban areas. Although it is nearly impossible to know anything
certain about Jesus biography, a void that extends even to the dates of his
birth and death, it is well established that ancient literacy was tightly connected to city life and that in areas where agriculture predominated literacy rates
were very low.16 It is quite likely that Jesus himself was illiterate. Regarding
the quest for the historical Jesus Gager observed, On no other issue have
such prodigious efforts led to more inconclusive results.17 Those years of
aimless wandering in the scholarly wilderness is due almost entirely to theological commitment and a maidenly unwillingness to offend the gossamer
sensibilities of believers.
It has only recently been emphasized that magic, pagan, heresy, and
orthodoxy are examples of Christianity supplying the categories of analysis
so that the discussion of Greco-Roman religion and Christianity was left to

10
McKechnie, The First Christian Centuries, 27.

After a long discussion of Lukes infancy narrative, a respected classical historian
concludes, Lukes story is historically impossible and internally incoherent. It
clashes with his own date for the Annunciation (which he places under Herod) and
with Matthews long story of the Nativity which also presupposes Herod the Great
as king. It is, therefore, false. (Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 27-31).
12
John 7:15, ASV.
13
Luke 23:45.
14
Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition, 97.
15
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, 103.
16
Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, 35.
17
Gager, Kingdom and Community, 7.
11
passionate amateurs whose main interest was scoring points for their version
of authentic Christianitythe last 40 years have seen a dramatic displacement of Christian schools of theology by university departments of religious
studies as the center for serious conversation about religion.18 It is instructive
to reframe the history of early Christianity by looking at it through the lens
of its Roman critics who charged that both believers and the scriptures they
read and trusted lacked intellectual integrity...Constituting a third facet of
this literary barrage, followers of Jesus were ridiculed as ignorant, gullible
fools, and for mainly consisting of women and fanatics.19
This essay dispenses entirely with affable, theologically based assumptions
about Jesus and Christianity and utterly rejects the question begging and special pleading that infests much of the literature on early Christianity. To the
surprise of many readers and the dismay of others, it can be rather easily
demonstrated that the harshest denunciations of Jewish and Roman detractors aimed at Jesus and his followers can be verified from early Christian
writings and the actions of Christians themselves. However, apologetic
scholarship raised a serious barrier to understanding the founding documents of ChristianityThe rationalizing instinct not infrequently appears
in the service of faith with an apologetic function.20 Nor is this a new ploy.
Roman critics frequently charged Christians with practicing magic; Christian
apologists who attempted a rebuttal followed a well-worn path: Jewish authors from [the Second Temple] period take pains to distinguish extraordinary events taking place in their midst from magical practices, especially in
cases that require the employment of certain objects and rituals. The most
common strategy was to ascribe miracles to Gods power and magic to human agency.21
To regard the triumph of Christianity as merely the victory of one religion
over others is to completely miss the significance of the new intellectual regime that would dominate the western world for the next fifteen centuries.
Far more than a set of religious doctrines, Christianity became the framework
around which an enduring social order arose, a distorting prism through
which a culture perceived the natural world, and a totalitarian ethos that
sought out and destroyed all who challenged it. Christianity did much more
than bury the gods of the Greco-Roman world under the rubble of their vandalized templesits intensely anti-intellectual impulse smothered the voices
of generations of genius. As Murdock noted, [Constantine] let loose a philosophy that was to pervade every aspect of political, social, cultural, and, of

18
Johnson, Among the Gentiles, 14, 16.

20
Moberly, The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, 66.
21
Twelftree, The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, 5.
19
course, religious life right up to modern times.22 Given all that Christian
zealots erased, that we know anything at all about the amazing accomplishments of the world before Christianity is due in most cases to pure happenstance.
An obvious example is the recent rescue of the text of the Archimedes Codex, a
collection of works by the greatest known mathematical genius of the preChristian era. In this particular case, the original writing of Archimedes text
was scraped off the parchment on which it had been copied, the codex cut
into pieces, and the resulting pages used to create a prayer book. The first
piece of parchment in [the Christian scribes] new codex contained On Floating Bodies.23 He covered it with a blessing for loaves for Easter. Further into
the codex, he wrote over a different section with a prayer for repentance.24
The monk who repurposed the parchment of Archimedes text to make a
prayer book was either too ignorant to know he was destroying a foundational work on mathematics or knew and didnt care.
This essay focuses on two Roman writers in particular, Lucian of Samosata,
whose extensive works have survived remarkably intact despite his characterization of Jesus as that crucified sophist,25 and a little known philosopher
named Celsus, whose work comes down to us in the form of quotations in
the Christian apologist Origens magnum opus, Contra CelsumThat [Contra Celsum] still needed refutation seventy years after it was written is an indication of how seriously Christians took its arguments.26 We know about
these anti-Christian texts because they were quoted (selectively) and paraphrased (tendentiously) by Christian authors: Origen, Against Celsus (Contra
Celsum),27 Eusebius, Against Hierocles, and Cyril of Alexandria, Against Julian.28
The case of Flavius Claudius JulianusJulian the Apostatedeserves some
extended comment. Born into a Christian family, he converted to a theurgic
form of Neo-Platonism, a conversion probably hastened by the murder of his
father and eight of his relatives by his uncle, the Christian Constantius. The
savagery of what happened, in a Christian court, had a searing effect on the

22
Murdoch, The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate, 4.

The first known work on hydrostatics, or in laymans terms, what makes an iron
ship float and an iron bar sink.
24
Netz & Noel, The Archimedes Codex, 124-125.
25
Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus, 13.
26
Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2nd edition, xvi.
27
[Origens] Against Celsus was a sustained piece of theological writing even though
hardly relevant to Celsus charges made seventy years before. (Frend, The Rise of
Christianity, 373).
28
Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, 17.
23
six-year-old boy...Libanius marked the murders as the major event of Julians

infancy.29 While Julian was still in his teens, Constantius had the future emperors half-brother Gallus murdered as well.
As a child, Julian was thoroughly indoctrinated in the tenets of Christianity,
and although he came to loath the religion, he feigned belief until declared
Augustus, consensu militum, at Paris in 360. Shortly after, Julian openly embraced the ancient Roman religions. Julians criticismsto the extent they
have survivedare of particular interest therefore, coming as they do from
the pen of an intelligent, indeed bookish, insider who repaid his Christian
instructors with interest for the enforced studies of his boyhood.30 His most
direct attack on the Church, Against the Galileans, is, unfortunately, preserved only in fragments.
[Julians Against the Galileans] appears rather disjointed. What remains is
disappointing, and it is not just because only around a third has survived.
The passages we have are those garnered from an extensive refutation of the
work by Cyril of Alexandria in the early 440s. By definition it is the weakest
passages that have survived. Not only are the passages Cyril excerpted naturally enough the ones he disagreed with, but also they are the one he felt he
could refute.31 Julians sense of irony is revealed by his decision to call the
Christians Galileans, a choice that reflected the gospel saying, out of Galilee
ariseth no prophet.32 Nevertheless, Julians lifelong inclination toward mysticism, his ascetic personal habits, as well as his inflexibility may betray the
aftereffects of early Christian indoctrination on a susceptible mind.
Julians pushback against the Church also took the form of cleverly crafted
legal movessince the days of Constantine orthodoxy had been associated
with tax exemptions for clergy as well as access to wealth and patronage and
the high status enjoyed by the state church.33 Julian turned the tax code
against the Church in the same way the Church had used it against the heretics. He cancelled tax exemptions for the clergy: Julian proclaimed that no
one could henceforth claim exemption from service as a decurion (councillor)
on the grounds of being a Christian. Since only the clergy had been entitled
to seek this exemption, the measure was accordingly directed at them.34
With the withdrawal of their lucrative tax exemptions,35 Julian struck a deft
blow at the claim of Christian disdain for materialism. In addition, he passed

29
Bowersock, Julian the Apostate, 23.

Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, III, 315 (Loeb).
31
32
John 7:52 (KJV).
33
Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, 194.
34
Bowersock, Julian the Apostate, 73-74.
35
Freeman, 185.
30
a law that banned [Christians] from teaching the three pillars of Roman
education: grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy...In one fell swoop, Julian cut
Christians off from potential converts and from the classical tradition...Julian
had marginalized Christianity to the point where it could potentially have
vanished within a generation or two, and without the need for physical
coercion.36 Julians attack on the cult was that of an intelligent insider who
was literally well versed; it is little wonder that Christians reacted with glee to
his death in battle in June, 363.
Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234-c. 305 C.E.), a polymath and philosopher, wrote a
work titled Against the Christians, a great book of fifteen volumes, a scourge
of the Christians,37 so feared by the Church that in 448 Theodosius II ordered any copies still in existence burned. Not only were Porphyrys books
destroyed, but many of the works of Christian writers incorporating sections
of Porphyrys polemic were burned in order to eliminate what one critic, the
bishop Apollinarius, called the poison of his thought.38 In fact, it is no
longer certain which fragments attributed to Porphyry are genuine; for the
sake of simplicity, and because this is an essay, not a dissertation, I have elected to follow Hoffmans reconstruction. In any case, Porphyrys insights into
the new Jewish sect anticipated the conclusions of modern scholars: Centuries before the advent of modern biblical criticism, Porphyry already knew
that the book of Daniel was a Maccabean pseudepigraph,39 i.e., a faked prophecy. Porphyry contentiously reported that the oracle ascribed to Isaiah in
Mark 1:2 was in fact a conflation between Isaiah and Malachi (to be exact,
Mal 3:1 and Isa 40:3). Similarly, he flagged Matthew 13:35, which wrongly
assigns a passage from Psalm 78:2 to Isaiah...Porphyry in fact represented the
contradictions and errors in these revered writings as the natural product of
rustic and unsophisticated followers of Jesus...Attentive readers...noted within
the gospels glaring factual errors, Old Testament citations wrongly attributed, and inconsistencies in the details reported by the separate evangelical accounts.40 Later Christian scribes altered the text of Mark, which mistakenly
attributed a quote to Isaiah the prophet,41 to read in the prophets in a belated attempt to derail further criticism of the supposedly inerrant gospels
multiple inaccuracies.
At least a generation passed between the appearance of the first Roman critiques of Christianity and the Christian apologetic response. Christian orthodoxy produced no leaders of the intellectual range and status of its oppo
36
Murdoch, The Last Pagan, 138-139.

38
Hoffman, Porphyrys Against the Christians, 164-165.
39
Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 138.
40
Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition, 65, 68, 82.
41
Mark 1:2.
37
nents...Irenaeus possessed a robust common sense, a long memory, and flashes of theological insight, but between the memorable phrases his writing is
prolix and tedious, and his ideas inflexible. Like his colleagues, he was encumbered with a millenarian legacy...There could be no accommodation
with the thought of the Greco-Roman world so long as millenarianism prevailed.42
That any trace of these criticisms survivesand even then only in quotation
is evidence of the acute anxiety they caused the early Church. Celsus in
particular was a fearsome opponent: He was a man who relied not on rumors and hearsay evidence but on personal observation and careful study. Because he had read both the Old and New Testaments and was familiar with
Jewish and Christian literature, he knew the difference between Gnostic and
orthodox theologies, and his book is on the whole free of mistakes and misconceptions, excepting those that reflect the generally held superstitions of
the second century. It contains none of the popular pagan antagonism against
Christians and makes no unsubstantiated charges.43 Indeed, Celsus accuracy
is widely acknowledged: Celsus technical impartiality in the disputes he refers to is helpfulhe had no interest in making the Christians seem better or
more numerous than they were (exactly the reverse), so he has a good claim
to be believed.44 Origens refutation of the Celsus True Doctrine did not appear until some 70 years after its composition and even then Origen may
have deleted the most damaging parts.45
The Roman intelligentsia took an extremely dim view of Christianitythey
regarded it with the same mixture of disgust and incomprehension that Westerners reserve for Muslim suicide bombers. The three Roman historians
whose writings we have investigated were all contemporaries, and all reflected
the aristocratic, well-bred Romans judgment that Christianity was one of a
multitude of degraded foreign cultsatrocious and shameful things as
Tacitus put itthat infested Rome...Romans of higher social classes believed
that these oriental superstitions polluted Roman life and that they attacked
the very fiber of society like a debilitating disease...Some of the liturgical
practices of Christians, notably glossolalia, confessions of sins, prophecies,
sacraments, and the sexual aberrations of fringe groups, may have contributed
to a distorted picture of this oriental superstition.46 Julian saw Christianity
as a sickness infecting the Roman Empire.47

42

Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, 148.
44
45
Benko, 156.
46
Ibid, 21, 23.
47
43
Christian book burning began early,48 even before the composition of those
most Christian of books, the gospels. The burning of books was part of the
advent and imposition of Christianity.49 [Christianitys] more extreme proponents equated pre-Christian learning with paganismin finding a home in
a pagan building the books themselves became tarred with the brush of paganism. Knowledge has always been the enemy of extremism, and for the
most radical elements among Alexandrias Christians, the books in the Serapeum were a threat. So they simply destroyed them.50 The Council of Ephesus (431) decreed that Porphyrys books be burned, and the Christian emperor Justinian (529) likewise decreed that anti-Christian books were to be
consigned to the flames. As mentioned, Julians Against the Galileans survives
only in the form of partial quotations in a refutation written by Cyril of
Alexandria (429-441)51concerning the much longer original, [Cyril] says
that he omitted invectives against Christ and such matter as might contaminate the minds of Christians.52 Lucretius De Rerum Natura (On the Nature
of Things), a celebrated poem that advanced the dangerous ideas that the universe ran without the intervention of gods and that religion actually posed a
danger to human life, survived in a single copy discovered in 1417, forgotten
in the library of a German monastery.
What early critics had to say about the Christianity of their era has been of
interest primarily to historians, but I will argue first that their criticisms were
remarkably accurate, prescient in fact, and second that the first Romans to
investigate the new religion identified fundamental flaws that broadly characterize much of Christianity in its present form. Early Christian writers often provided unwitting support for Celsus appraisal of the fledgling faith and
the observations of Lucian. Celsus and others accurately anticipated many
modern scholarly insights into early Christianity as well as religious scandals
of our own day.
Relevant terms are sometimes cited in Greek for those interested in the exact
text of primary sources, but the essay has been written in a manner that hopefully makes it easily accessible to the interested layman. Unless otherwise
noted, the translations from Greek are my own. That said, lets turn to the
specific claims of ancient critics.

48
Acts 19:19.
Canfora, The Vanished Library, 192.
50 Pollard & Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, 282.
51
Cyril is infamous for his connection with the civic disturbances that led to the
murder and dismemberment of Hypatia, the Alexandrian mathematician and
astronomer, at the hands of a Christian mob as well as his support for violent
confrontations between Alexandrias Christians and Jews that eventually led to
the expulsion of the Jews.
52
Wright, Julian, III, 314.
49
10
Jesus and Paul were false prophets.

Radical apocalypticism was the foundation of the earliest form of Christianity. Jesus imagined the kingdom to be coming soonvery soonin the very
generation that heard his preaching.
The High Priest was standing in their midst and he asked Jesus,
Have you nothing to say in response? What are these men testifying
against you?
But he kept silent and made no reply.
Again the High Priest asked him, Are you the Christ, the son of
the Blessed One?
Jesus said to him, I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at
the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven!53
The High Priest himself will witness the coming of the Son of Man and Jesus
own generationTruly I tell you, by no means will this generation disappear
until all these things happen54this generation, will not pass away until
all these things happen. These two predictions of Jesus [Mark 9:1 and
13:28-31] are related in that they do not simply announce the somewhat
vague imminence of the kingdom of God, but they announce its arrival prior
to the end of the generation to whom Jesus was speaking...the community
which produced the Gospel of Mark [was] an apocalyptic millenarian community living in the imminent expectation of the end of the age.55
The disciples will not even complete their circuit of the towns of Palestine
before the coming of the Son of Man: But when they run you out of one
town, flee to another, for truly I tell you, by no means will you finish going
through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man arrives!56 The end is
fast approaching: Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will
by no means taste death until they see the kingdom of God already arrived in
power.57
If Jesus really believed that the religious and political order was soon to end,
we would expect to hear that belief reflected in his preaching and we do. The
disciples are not to imagine that Jesus has come to bring peacefamily mem
53
Mark 14:60-62.
Mark 13:30.
55
Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 172, 194.
56
Matthew 10:23.
57
Mark 9:1.
54
11
bers will turn on one another, becoming bitter enemies58 and those who expect to follow Jesus into the kingdom must not even stop to say farewell to
those left behind.59 A man must not linger to gather possessions, nor stop
even to pick up his cloak.60 The urgency of the situation abrogates even the
most basic filial responsibilities:
Another of his disciples said to him, Lord, first allow me to go and
bury my father. But Jesus said to him, Follow me and let the dead
bury their dead.61
For those hoping to inherit the kingdom the costs will be steep. The disciple
must hate his own father, mother, brothers and sisters, wife and children.62
Moreover, he must sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor.63 So
complete is the renunciation of the present age that those who can must become eunuchsthere are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for
the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.64
However, one set of familiar texts has repeatedly failed to draw the
detailed attention of the Jesus questers: the beatitudes for childless
and barren women (Lk 23:29; Gos[pel of] Thom[as] 79b) and the
warnings to pregnant women and mothers (Mk 13:17-19; Lk 23:28,
30-31)...when the beatitudes and woes to women are understood in
the context of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, they function together
as an injunction against procreation...[Jesus] message of renouncing
reproduction in light of imminent tribulation stands firmly in the tradition of an ancient prophetic predecessor (Jer. 16:1-9)...Jesus words
of renunciation are congruent with his negative response to an unnamed woman who blesses the womb that bore him and the breasts
that nursed him (Lk 11:27-28; Gos. Thom. 79a)...His retort, Blessed
rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! makes a good
deal of sense if, as we have seen, part of his message was to warn women against bearing children.65
Nothing must distract the disciple from the nearness of the End, neither selfregardunless you change and become like little children, you will never

58
Matthew 10:34-37; Luke 12:49-53.

Luke 9: 61-62.
60
Matthew 24:17-18.
61
Matthew 8: 21-22.
62
Luke 14:26.
63
Luke 18:22.
64
Matthew 19:12.
65
Pitre, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 81 (2001): 60, 78.
59
12
enter the kingdom of heaven66nor standing in the communityI swear

to you that the tax men and the whores are going ahead of you into the kingdom of God!67 As Fredriksen points out, anger becomes equivalent to murder68 in Jesus ethics, and lust to adultery,69 and notes that such intensification of ethical norms...is a phenomenon typical within communities committed to the belief that time is rapidly drawing to a close. Passivity in the face
of evil70 and a refusal to judge71 would simply lead to the exploitation of
those abiding by such rules by those who did not. This impracticality in turn
allows us to glimpse the intensity of expectation that motivated Jesus mission
and the community that formed around him: the Kingdom was at hand.72
Thus the complexities of moral judgments that typify a complex society are
resolved into a series of binary opposites: poor-rich, good-evil, pious-hypocrite, elect-damned. And a final reckoning is proclaimed for the near future.73 Aune remarks on the eschatological polarity of Jesus ethical teaching and concludes, The teachings of Jesus, therefore, show a strong tendency
to use eschatological expectation as the basis for a hortatory or parenetic purpose.74
Among the first generation expectations of Jesus quick return ran so high
that those with property sold off what they had and Jesus followers lived
communally.75 Writing to the newly converted, Paul advised slaves to remain
slaves and the virgins and unmarried to remain single. Married men were to
act as if they had no wife, for the time allotted has become short.76 It is
likely that contempt for Christianity among the common people arose in part
from believers divorcing their mates or denying them conjugal relations. The
asceticism provoked by the impending End resulted in a household of
brothers and sisters rather than husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.77
According to the historian Eusebius, Origen, the church father of the 2nd
century went so far as to castrate himself as a teenager, the action of an immature mind (frenoj...atelouj), yet praised as an act of faith and selfcontrol (pistewj...kai swfrosunhj). 78 Justin Martyr applauded a young

66
Matthew 18:3, NIV.

Matthew 21:31.
68
Matthew 5:22.
69
Matthew 5:28.
70
Matthew 5:38-48.
71
Matthew 7:1-2.
72
73
74
Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 166.
75
Acts 4:34-35.
76
1 Corinthians 7:21-31.
77
Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 108.
78
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VI, 8.
67
13
Alexandrian convert who petitioned the Roman governor to give a surgeon

permission to castrate him.79 Although permission was refused, Justins apologetic use and evident approval of the effort itself are striking.80
Like many apocalyptic movements since, early Christianity exemplified sexual psychopathology and extremism. Origen, who took Matthew 19:12
rather too seriously, urged fellow Christians in his Exhortation to Martyrdom,
Therefore, hate your souls because of eternal life,81 persuaded that the hatred
Jesus teaches is noble and useful.82 Little wonder that the Stoic Marcus Aurelius despised the Christians, calling their preaching the claims of the miracle-mongers and sorcerers (twn terateuomenwn kai gohtwn) about incantations
and casting out devils (daimonwn apopomphj), and characterized their fascination with martyrdom as originating not in personal acts of judgment but
from dissent unsupported by evidence (kata yilhn parataxin), 83 from
mere obstinacy based on irrational ideas.84 If Marcus despised the Christians, the Christians despised him right back; his magnificent bronze equestrian statue remained intact only because it was mistakenly believed to be of
Constantine.85
Of course Jesus did not return in the lifetime of the High Priest or in the lifetime of those of this generation. As believers began to die awaiting the
Coming of the Son of Man, anxiety reached a peak. Pauls letter to the house
church in Thessalonica, widely regarded as the oldest surviving Christian
document, likely written as early as 52 C.E., offered the following false assurance to the flock:
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall
asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will
bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to
the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are
left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who
have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven,
with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the
trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that,
we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be

79
Justin Martyr, Apology 29:1-2.

Caner, Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997), 396.
81
John 12:25.
82
Greer, Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, 3, 69.
83
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations I, 6; XI, 3.
84
85
80
14
with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these
words.86
Paul obviously believed that some would survive until the return of the
Lordwe who are still alive and are leftand that at least some of the
believers who read his letter would be physically, corporeally, alive when
Jesus returnedmay your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.87 ...the Second Coming of
Jesus will occur in the immediate future...the hope that the vast majority
of Christians would be living witnesses to Christs return from heaven
points to the likelihood of composition in the first decade of the Christian movement. 88 But Pauls ecstatic house churches contained the seeds
of their own destruction: Paul had opened a Pandoras box among the
Jews and God-fearers wherever he established Christian communities.
His first letter to the Corinthians indicates that the proclamation of freedom from the Law through the love of Christ and the approaching end
led to wild revivalist prophesyings in which men and women participated, to claims of possession of knowledge (that is, esoteric knowledge
of the beyond)...89 As time would tell, defeated expectations of the End,
as well as unrestrained individualism, would eventually be suppressed by
the rise of the Church and so began the ageless drama of The Church
versus the churches.
Aune notes the rapidly diminishing sense of immediacy in later writings:
...the Christians of the Macedonian community lived in the fervent expectation of Jesus return to save them and judge their enemies. In contrast, Luke-Acts does not convey the notion that early Christians lived in
imminent expectation of the end of the age. Lukes more relaxed attitude
toward the parousia of Jesus is due in part to the fact that he wrote his
two-volume treatise more than a generation after 1 Thessalonians. 90
Looking back from our vantage point we can identify several Jewish apocalyptic movements from the era, and, based on the testimony of writers
like Josephus and the Essene evidence, conclude that early converts did
not represent the established sectors of Jewish society; we are thus able
to locate [earliest Christianity] within the tradition of apocalyptic
Judaism, which in itself represents a paradigm case of great expectations
followed by repeated disappointments. 91 The figure of the prophet

86
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, NIV.

1 Thessalonians 5:23.
88
Ldemann, Paul, 14, 49.
89
90
Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 192.
91
Gager, Kingdom and Community, 26-27.
87
15
was the object of widespread eschatological fantasy in first-century Palestine. This nostalgic emphasis on prophets of the past was partially motivated by the desire to replace the dismal realities of the present with the
idealized glories of Israels past.92
Josephus, a near contemporary of Jesus, describes the destabilizing role
wonder-working apocalyptic prophets played in Roman-occupied Palestine. Among them were Theudas, who Josephus calls a gohj (gos), sorcerer or imposter, and a profhthj (prophts), prophet. At Theudas command the Jordan River was supposed to part so the rabble that followed
him could cross on dry land. 93 Notwithstanding Theudas sticky end,
Josephus also tells of those deceived by a certain man, a magician (tinoj
anqrwpou gohtoj), who proclaimed salvation and an end to their
troubles if they chose to follow him into the wilderness.94 Like Theudas, the Roman authorities promptly dispatched this man and his followers. Josephus also describes the Egyptian false prophet: A man appeared in the countryside, a magician, who established a reputation as a
prophet (anqrwpoj gohj kai profhtou pistin epiqeij)... 95 The Egyptian
prophet led 30,000 into the desert and attacked Jerusalem but was repulsed and escaped. According to Acts 21:38, Paul was once mistaken for
the Egyptian.
The apologist Origen acknowledged several prophetic figures Celsus
compared to Jesus: Theudas and a certain Judas of Galilee who the Romans executed, as well as Dositheus, a Samaritan, supposedly the one
prophesied by Moses (o profhteumenoj upo Mwusewj), and (naturally)
Simon the Samaritan magician (Simwn o Samareuj magoj). Celsus perceptively noted these and many other deceivers of Jesus type (opoioj hn o
Ihsouj)96it is clear that Celsus recognized Jesus as belonging to a familiar category: the apocalyptic prophet who established his bona fides by magical wonder working. Stanton notes that the most widely attested ancient
criticism of Jesus is that he was a magician and false prophet...accusations of magic and false prophecy are very closely related to one another.97
By the time Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, around 55-56 C.E.,
significant numbers of the first generation Christians had fallen asleep.

92
Aune, 154.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XX, 97.
Theudas fate is noted in Acts 5:36.
94
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XX, 188.
95
Josephus, Jewish War, II, 259.
96
Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 57; II, 8.
97
Stanton, Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ, 166-167.
93
16
Yet Pauls letter assures the survivors, Behold, I tell you a mystery. We
shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed during the last trumpet.98
Paul clearly seems to indicate that not all shall die though the majority
will. In 1 Corinthians, that is, survival represents the exception, whereas
in 1 Thessalonians it is the rule...the fate of members of the community
who have already died is becoming a divisive issue. The death of some
members of the community obviously led to hopelessness and mourning
in the communityprobably because the notion of the resurrection of
Christians was unknown in Thessalonica.99
But what exactly will happen on the Day of the Lord? And when
will it occur? Here Pauls teaching is uncharacteristically clear and
consistent throughout his letters. Believers whether living or dead
will receive a new, glorious body, like Christs at his resurrectionand this will happen very, very soon. Christs resurrection itself
proves the nearness of the End of all things: it is a sign, for Paul, that
the final days are not merely at hand, but have already arrived. It is
upon us, he informs his Corinthian community, that the end of the
ages has come...Paul expects to live to see the Last Days. He speaks of
his hope for the transformation of his present body before death (2
Cor 5:1-5)...So near is the End that both Paul and his communities
are troubled by the death of believers before Christs Second Coming:
they did not expect this and do not know what to make of it (1 Thes
4:13).100
For Mark, writing a generation after Paul, the destruction of the Temple in
70 C.E. was the latest sign of the times. When is the End? Soon, Mark argues; very, very soon. The Temples recent destruction clearly marks the
beginning of that period that will terminate with the Second Coming of the
Son of Man. In fact, the Lord has already shortened the days before the
consummation for the sake of his elect (13:14): the Parousia101 could occur at
any time, certainly within the lifetime of Marks community...By the time
Matthew and Luke write, the destruction of the Temple as well in the past,
and things had continued much as before. It could not, therefore, have been
the signal for the beginning of the End. But Mark, writing shortly after 70,
could not have known this and for him the destruction of the Temple announced the nearness of the Parousia...Christian tradition in various ways
continually adjusted itself to successthat is, to its own vigorous existence

98
1 Corinthians 15:51.
Ldemann, Paul, 51, 206.
100
101
The term parousia, parousia, means arrival or presence as at 1 Thessalonians 2:19
(NIV): For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the
presence (parousia) of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?
99
17
as its central prophecy failed.102 For early Christians, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 was a signWhen you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you
will know that its desolation has approached.103just as the founding of the
state of Israel in 1948 was a sign for present day Armageddonists. Unfortunately for the prophets, past and present, for something to count as a sign
of the End, the End has to actually occur at some point.
While the believers sat up nights waiting for Jesus return, their private banquets in Christian households, beyond the pale of synagogue surveillance,
centered on the belief that the Lord was soon coming to finish what the Roman legions had started...For the expectant community, their attention
riveted on the heavens for some sign of the reappearance of their savior, the
eucharist was the interim realization of his presence...As often as you eat the
bread and drink the cup, you are proclaiming the death of the Lord before he
comes (1 Cor. 11.26)...Later Christians seem to have advanced a variety of
inconsistent rationales for the delay...We must see all these rationales, strictly
speaking, as the defensive posture of a community challenged to provide
evidence of its beliefs.104 As Pauls words to the Corinthians imply, With
the collapse of the eschatological hope for the speedy return of Jesus the
spiritual and sacramental presence of Jesus was all that remained.105
By the time the pseudepigraphical letter attributed to Peter was composed in the early 2nd century, disbelief in the Second Coming had become open
and probably common, not surprising given Jesus repeated failure to appear
as foretold:
They will say, Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our
ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of
creation.106
The disillusioned (former?) Christians who posed the question, Where is
this Coming he promised? had arrived at an inescapable conclusion: both
the prophesy of Jesus and the assurances of Paul were belied by the passing of
time. Jesus and Paul had proven to be false prophets, and not just around the
edges. No sane person could take their words in context and honestly claim to believe them. That doubt about the Second Coming had become widespread is
evident from the letter of 1 Clement to Christians in Corinth, written in the
late 1st century, probably about the same time as Revelation: Those who are
uncertain are miserable, those who doubt in their soul, who say, We have

102
Fredricksen, 50-51, 135.

Luke 21:20.
104
Hoffman, Celsus On the True Doctrine, 9-11.
105
Hoffman, Porphyrys Against the Christians, 138.
106
2 Peter 3:4, NIV.
103
18
heard these things since our fathers time and look! We have grown old and
none of these things has happened! The writer of the letter insists, You
have peered into the scriptures, and assures his listeners, that nothing mistaken nor anything falsified has been written in them.107
Those who were disabused among the Christians were hardly the only ones
to notice the failure of Christian predictions. Porphyry declared, And there
is more to Pauls lying: He very clearly says, We who are alive.108 For it is
now three hundred years since he said this and nobodynot Paul and not
anyone elsehas been caught up in the air.109 Porphyry knewover sixteen
centuries agothat Jesus of Nazareth was no more than a thimbleful of dust
and his Kingdomwith its hundredfold houses and fields 110 an empty
sack. Indeed, Julian makes clear that Romans regarded Christianity as the
veneration of a corpse: those who follow after you abandoned the immortal
gods and changed over to the [worship of the] cadaver of the Jew (epi ton
Ioudaiwn metabhnai nekron).111
At the end of the 1st century at least some still clung for dear life to the illusion of the Parousia. The Didache (Teaching), a tract written around the end
of the century, cautioned its listeners, Dont let your lamps go out, nor your
loins be ungirded!...The Lord will come with all his saints. Then the world
will see the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven!112 The faithful waited,
loins girded and lamps ablaze, scanning the clouds in vain while the world
continued to turn.
More than any other scholar, Albert Schweitzer exposed this lie that is the
bedrock of primitive Christianitythe radical apocalyptic belief of Jesus of
Nazareth113and by so doing uncovered the scandal at the heart of apologetic scholarship. Commenting on the significance of Schweitzers landmark
study, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Kmmel notes,
Only when Schweitzer, at the end of an account of the Geschichte der
Leben-Jesu-Forchung [The Quest of the Historical Jesus], presented

107
1 Clement 23:3; 45:2-3.

109
110
Mark 10:30.
111
Julian, Against the Galileans, 194D.
112
Didache 16: 1, 7-8.
113
Schweitzer regarded Matt. 10:23 as an authentic apocalyptic prediction of Jesus,
who expected the present age to close and the future age to dawn before the mission of the Twelve was completed. According to Schweitzer, when this expectation
failed to materialize, Jesus experienced his first crisis, which led him to attempt to
force the coming of the kingdom by going to Jerusalem. (Aune, Prophecy in Early
Christianity, 183).
108
19
consistent eschatology as the right solution of the question concerning the historical Jesus did there emerge a really dangerous opponent
of the picture of Jesus that had hitherto been accepted...The proclamation of Jesus as wholly dominated by the expectation of the
imminent supernatural kingdom of God, Schweitzer had presented as
the answer to all debatable questions of previous life-of-Jesus research,
and had accordingly characterized as entirely demolished the liberal
picture of Jesus...First of all there is the question of the expectation of
the End in early Christian thought and its permanent significance.
Bultmann, Lohmeyer, and Dibelius had acknowledged without qualification the central importance of the expectation of the End for the
thought of Jesus and early Christianity, but in their effort to interpret
this early Christian faith for men of today they in various ways incurred the danger of imposing concepts taken from a modern philosophical system on the primitive Christian belief in the End...the
fundamental faith of early Christianity is to be found precisely in the
strictly temporal expectation of an imminent end of the world, a view
that obviously soon proved to be false and by so doing compelled the
early church to put something else in its place.114
In a recent survey of the New Testament evidence regarding the end-of-theworld beliefs of Jesus and the primitive church and the modern theological
response, Allison concluded, I myself do not know what to make of the eschatological Jesus. I am, for theological reasons, unedified by the thought
that, in a matter so seemingly crucial, a lie has been walking around for two
thousand years while the truth has only recently put on its shoes. But there it
is.115
Behold, I come quickly!116 was, is, and always will be a lielittle wonder
that for centuries in the orthodox churches the apocalypse has been an embarrassment and little preached. Any cult that survives the failure of its initial prophecy must necessarily modify or scrap its beliefs about the future...by
definition no millenarian cult can long survive in its original form...The one
undeniable fact is that the attention of the community, and thus of its
worship, was entirely on the imminent End. The time is near [Revelation
1:3] and Amen, come Lord Jesus [22:20] frame the [Revelation] as a whole
as much as they express the mood of its hearers.117

114
Kmmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, 238,
241, 283-284.
115
Allison, Journal of Biblical Literature 113 (1994): 668.
116
Revelation 22:12.
117
Gager, Kingdom and Community, 21, 56.
20
Fredriksens trenchant observation about the apocalyptic worldview is worth

quoting at some length:
Happy people do not write apocalypses. The apocalyptic description
of the joyful future that awaitsthat is in fact imminentis the
mirror image of the perception of present times, which are seen as
ultimately, indeed terminally, terrible...But apocalyptic symbolism provided more than just protective camouflage for potentially
dangerous political statements. It also enhanced the prestige and
mystique of these writings and gave them almost unlimited interpretive elasticity. The more obscure the symbolism, the more
privileged the reader who understood it and the more elevated the
revelation.118
It has been remarked that Jesus expected the coming of the Kingdom of God
but the Church arrived instead. Evangelical Christians, particularly Americans who ever alert to commercial possibilities, have dubbed the sky fantasy
described by Paul as the Rapturewe who are still alive and are left will
be caught up together with [the dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
airand have turned it into a highly successful business model, playing on
both the evangelical dissatisfaction with the liberalizing present and the selfaggrandizing figment that fundamentalists are vouchsafed unique insight into
world events through their parsing of biblical jabberwocky. Despite the fact
that each and every one of the hundreds of predictions of Judgment Day by
Armageddonists has proven false, non-prophet preachers continue to foretell
divine wrath on a nearly weekly basis with no apparent fear that their credulous followers will awaken to the obvious.
However, one of the signs of the End has been completely and indubitably
fulfilled: In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated
stories. 119 Or as the King James Version renders it, And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you (umaj emporeusontai). The verb in question means to make a profit from, or exploit for
gain. Christian false prophets were quick to monetize the hopes of the gullible; the Didache, composed in the late 1st century, warned early believers,
But if [a man claiming to be a prophet] has no trade, according to your
understanding, see to it that, as a Christian, he shall not live with you idle.
But if he wills not to do it, he is a Christ-monger (cristemporoj). Watch that
you keep away from such.120 The christemporos, or Christ-monger, was an
early forebear of modern-day salesmen of the apocalypse.

118
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, 82-83.

2 Peter 2:3, NIV.
120
Didache, 12:5.
119
21
Lucian describes the Christian career of the religious grifter Peregrinus:

It was then that he learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by
associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine...in a trice he
made them all look like children; for he was prophet, cult-leader,
head of a synagogue (xunagwgeuj), and everything, all by himself. He
interpreted and explained some of their books and even composed
many...Then at length Proteus was apprehended for this and thrown
into prison, which itself gave him no little reputation as an asset for
his future career and charlatanism and notoriety-seeking he was
enamored of...Indeed, people came even from the cities in Asia, sent
by the Christians at their common expense, to succor and defend and
encourage the hero...So if any charlatan and trickster, able to profit
by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth
by imposing on simple folk.121
Christians were an easy target for the racketeers of the Roman Empire.122
As they are for the hucksters of the modern eraLucians [Peregrinus] is a
shysterthe first example in literature of an anything-for-profit evangelist
who bilks his congregations.123 As Kannaday points out, it was not merely
the widows and orphans who were easy marks for shysters like Peregrinus.
Even those members of the cult who were viewed as persons of means are
portrayed [in The Passing of Peregrinus] as fools who will soon be parted from
their money. The bigwigs of the sect, as he calls them, come across as impulsive, even whimsical, as they bribe guards for the privilege of sleeping inside
the cell with Peregrinus. Lucians satire, therefore, leaves the impression that
Christians are not so much generous as they are gullible, and not so much
faithful as they are foolish.124
Hundreds of modern examples might be cited to support Lucians observation about Christian bred-in-the-bone credulityfrom faith healer Kenneth Copelands $20 million Cessna Citation bought with donor funds to
Joel Osteen, known for his cotton-candy, feel-good, self-help style of peaching, who moved his 40,000 member church to a Houston sports arena after

121
Harmon, Lucian, V, 13-15.

...there is significant evidence to suggest that we have here a fairly accurate picture of historical events. In particular the mention of widows visiting Peregrinus is
striking...The visibility of widows in the story of Peregrinus will come as no surprise to anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of the involvement of women in early Christianity. (MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, 74-75).
122
123
124
Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition, 144-145.
22
performing a $75 million renovation to the facility. As Posner noted, despite

revelations of their flamboyance, secrecy about money, and apocalyptic
world view...lavish spending, or bizarre policy prescriptions,125 not to mention continuous exposs of questionable finances, sexual scandal and outlandish pronouncements, the carny world of Christian Armageddonism continues
to be a billion dollar enterprise.
In 1970, The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold something on the order of
30 million copies, suggested that Armageddon would occur one generation
after the establishment of the nation of Israel. The Left Behind business,
which to date has spawned sixteen novels and several low-budget movies
as well as a graphic video game in which teenagers can blow away nonbelievers and the army of the Antichrist on the streets of New York126has
garnered an estimated 75 million customers for its books alone. The dispensationalist dreck dispensed by the evangelical Left Behind fantasies appropriately includes a Catholic cardinal among the Antichrists inner circle.127
The co-author of the Left Behind nonsense, Timothy LaHaye, is a Southern
Baptist preacher man, who before becoming the champion of Christian
America and the apocalypse...made his living as a fortune teller.128
Among Christians in the mainstream sects, the solution to the failure of Jesus prophesy has been to simply ignore it and all that it implies, essentially
the imposition of a species of institutional senile dementia that has, most
conveniently, erased the memory of Christian origins from millions of Christian minds. Among evangelicals the specter of a planetary holocaust, from
which they alone will be saved, is a source of selfish satisfactionto say nothing of the endless mercenary possibilities for the End Times business empire.
After the Eurcharist, the Parousia is Christianitys most lucrative product
being an illusion it costs nothing to manufacture and because it will never
arrive costs nothing to shipand its vast earning potential has been extended
indefinitely through the application of the economic theory called dispensationalism.
The creature of John Darby (d. 1882), who, like the apostle Paul, received
his revelation after falling off a horse, dispensationalism depends on an illiterate reading of scripture that encourages amateur Bible bricoleurs to select
suggestive bits of text and cobble them together into oracular utterances only
they can interpret. Darby, who believed the invention of the telegraph was a
sign of impending Armageddon, invented a prophecy-generating device that

125
Posner, Gods Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters,
21, 113, 172-173.
126
Hedges, American Fascists, 186.
127
Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, 70.
128
Hedges, American Fascists, 187-188.
23
any feeble-minded preacher with a grade school education could easily operate. Biblical literalists from Jehovahs Witnesses to Southern Baptists assiduously applied themselves to the task, cranking out an endless series of failed
predictions. The Jehovahs Witnesses, for example, foretold that Armageddon
would occur in 1975 and when 1975 came and went with nothing spectacular having happened membership in the cult dipped. Strangely, many
Witnesses, particularly those in responsible positions, seemed to suffer from
some sort of collective amnesia which caused them to act as though the year
1975 had never held any particular importance to them at all.129
It has been estimated that as many as 40 million people in the United States
alone subscribe to some version of dispensationalism. To its Roman critics,
who regarded Christianity as inherently irrational, an epidemic of religious
psychosis, a folie plusieurs, none of this would have come as any surprise:
One ought first to follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since
anyone who believes without first testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived
...Just as the charlatans of the cults take advantage of a simpletons lack of
education and lead him around by the nose, so too with the Christian teachers: they do not want to give or receive reasons for what they believe.130
Despite failures beyond counting of End Times predictions, there is little
hope that endless disconfirmation will stop the prophecy scam in modern
times any more than it did so in the first Christian centuries. Hoffman notes
that the Jewish apocalyptic tradition to which Jesus belonged had been mystically vague, studiously mysterious regarding the timing of apocalyptic
events, and concludes, Christianity did not so much invent its imprecision
as use it to advantage, having mimicked the style of its Jewish prototype...the
belief that unfulfilled prophecies had been misread prophecies, provided
some consolation to the beleaguered community.131
However, I suspect that the evangelical fascination with End Times whackadoodle springs from a darker needDarbys End Times head-trip was a
nihilistic vision expressive of the modern death wish. Christians imagined the
final extinction of modern society in obsessive detail, yearning morbidly toward it...Premillennialism was a fantasy of revenge: the elect imagined themselves gazing down upon the sufferings of those who had jeered at their beliefs, ignored, ridiculed, and marginalized their faith, and now, too late,
realized their error...the reality it purports to present is cruel, divisive, and
tragic.132 As one of the most effective modern critics of Christianity noted,
Religion looks forward to the destruction of the world. By this I do not

129
Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovahs Witnesses, 99-100.

Hoffman, Celsus on the True Doctrine, 54.
131
132
Armstrong, The Battle for God, 138-139.
130
24
mean looks forward in the purely eschatological sense of anticipating the

end. I mean, rather, that it openly or covertly wishes that end to occur.133
Like the Christians who gloated over the destruction of Jerusalem and interpreted it as retribution for the Jewish rejection of Jesus, evangelicals itch to
see the secular world that dismisses their literalist belief go down in a sea of
flame.
The fast approaching Kingdom turned out to be a mirage. As believers imagined themselves steadily approaching it, the Kingdom steadily receded, leaving them to die, one by one, generation after generation, forever. Events
proved Jesus to be a false prophet and Paul a peddler of delusionBehold, I
tell you a mystery!134 could be amended to Behold, I tell you a lie! Apocalypticism, the bedrock of Christianitys original theology, is a laughable
piece of Levantine folklore.
Christianity is a Jewish heresy.

The Jesus of primitive tradition cares not a whit for GentilesGo nowhere
among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go instead to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news: the
kingdom of heaven is almost here.135 Jesus traveled through the small, often
anonymous towns of Galilee, seemingly avoiding the major cities. Citizens of
Sepphoris, Tiberius, the coastal plain and the Decapolis heard none of his
sermons. When Jesus did enter the territory of cities in the Decapolis, he remained outside the walls (Mk 5:1; 7:31; 8:27).136 Jesus preaching reflects
the village137Jesus parables accordingly speak of sowers and fields,138 shepherds and flocks,139 and birds and flowers.140 Before his fateful trip to Jerusalem, it appears Jesus had little to do with any major city.
Jesus attitude reflected the history of the region, in particular the aftermath
of the Maccabean revolt (167-160 B.C.E.), the first religious war in the history of humankind from which the Jewish nation that emerged was self
133
Hitchens, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 56.

135
Matthew 10:5-7.
136
Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era, 67.
137
Ldemann, Heretics, 63.
138
Mark 4:3-8.
139
Mark 6:34.
140
Matthew 6:26-28.
134
25
conscious and intolerant towards all Gentiles whether friendly or unfriendly.141 Romans regarded the Jews as a people who were true only to each
other[they were] regarded as misanthropesby the vast majority of Romans, and they had a long history of conflict with the authorities in
Rome,142 a simmering animosity that exploded into a series of disastrous
wars in 66 C.E. Writing to Jewish believers in Rome, Paul said, The name
of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,143 possibly in
reference to such bias. The dogma of a chosen people, while at least implicit in most faiths, achieved a stridence in Judaism that was unknown in the
ancient world. Among cultures that worshipped a plurality of Gods, the later
monotheism of the Jews proved indigestible.144
Despite occasional encounters with Gentiles, Jesus attitude toward them
appears to have been openly antagonistic. Jesus refers to Gentiles as dogs
he tells the Canaanite woman whose daughter he eventually heals, It is not
right to take the childrens bread and throw it to the curs.145 Some commentators have interpreted Jesus use of kunarion (kunarion), the diminutive of
kuwn (kun), dog, as ironic or even affectionate,146 but as corrected by Grant,
the diminutive form rather expresses contempt and distaste.147 Jesus intended to draw the strongest possible distinction between the Jews, to whom
alone he has been sentI was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel 148 and the Gentile mongrelsDo not give what is holy to
dogs149 which he generally avoids.150 The Jesus movement...did not show
any inclination to reach out to Gentiles. The life of Jesus and the history of
the Jerusalem church illustrate this.151 It is quite clear from the hesitations
of the Apostles in the first chapters of Acts that there was a firm tradition that
Jesus had not ordered a mission to the Gentiles.152 Jews even regarded the
Samaritans, who claimed descent from the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and
Manasseh, as racially impure on the grounds that the Samaritans had intermarried with heathen peoples.153 Outside the archipelago of fundamentalist

141

Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, 16-19.
143
Romans 2:24.
144
Harris, The End of Faith, 93.
145
Mark 7:27.
146
Connolly, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, 158.
147
Grant, Jesus, 122.
148
Matthew 15:24.
Compare Matthew 23:37: Jerusalem, Jerusalemhow often I wanted to gather
your children together
149
Matthew 7:6.
150
Matthew 10:5.
151
Ldemann, Paul, 221.
152
Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 285.
153
142
26
Bible colleges this understanding of Jesus mission has now become common:
There is no evidence whatsoever, apart from the tendentious writings of the
later church, that Jesus ever conceived of himself as anything other than a Jew
among Jews, seeking the fulfillment of Judaismand, likely, the return of
Jewish sovereignty in a Roman world.154
Christian scholarship long ago parted company from the Jewish Jesus, establishing a self-conscious Christian tradition that deliberately distanced itself
from the historical Jewish context in which Jesus had lived and died...[Christians] had to explain to themselves, to potential converts, and, should they be
so challenged, to skeptical Jews, how it was that the Jewish understanding of
Jewish history and religion was false, and why those who had heard this
Christian revelation most directlyJesus Jewish audience in Palestine
should have so completely failed to receive it.155 Nevertheless, Christianity
could never have spread into the Greco-Roman world without the internationally distributed Jewish enclavesthe Dispersion communities were the
magnet which drew [Christian missionaries] beyond the boundaries of Palestine.156 As late as the end of the 1st century the Christian communities were
still conceived in terms of the Jewish DiasporaJames, a servant of God
and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion,
greeting.157
The theological divorce between Jews and Christians has translated into realworld horror on numerous occasions but never more so than in Germany in
the 1930s in the setting of die Endlsung der Judenfrage, the The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Gerhard Kittel, the editor of the Theologisches
Wrterbuch zum Neuen Testament, the German work translated into English
as the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, a work much admired by
many scholars,
...produced a body of work between 1933 and 1944 filled with hatred
and slander towards Jews and warmly supportive of National Socialist
anti-Jewish policies...Kittel admits he was a good Nazi. He had not
joined the Party under pressure or for pragmatic reasons; rather he
thought, as did countless people in Germany, that the Nazi phenomenon was a vlkisch renewal movement on a Christian, moral foundation...[Kittel] set German, Christian, social and vlkisch unity
against the Enlightenment, modern secularism and liberal democracy
...Some scholars, e.g., the liberal theologian, Adolf von Harnack, had
maintained that Christianity was totally unique from Judaism and


Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, vii, 211.
156
157
James 1:1.
154
155
27
that the Old Testament should be removed from the Bible...the conclusion he reached coincided with the antisemitic prejudice that Judaism was necessarily inferior and unworthy to be considered the source
of Christianity...The clinching assurance for [Emanuel] Hirsch in his
encouragement of a Volks church was his conviction that Hitler was a
heaven-sent Christian leader...[Kittel] created a theological foundation for Nazi oppression of Jews, yet he somehow was able to reconcile his work with his Christian and academic values...Kittel, Althaus
and Hirsch were not isolated or eccentric individuals...These three
theologians saw themselves and were seen by others as genuine Christians acting upon genuine Christian impulses.158
In his magisterial work on the Catholic origins of anti-Semitism, Carroll remarks on the depth of Christianitys antipathy: Without this strain in Europes past [the Crusades, the Inquisition...the intermingling of antimodernism and antisemitism] a fascist movement organized around Jew hatred,
would not have occurred...[Hitler] was a much a creature of the racist, secular, colonizing empire builder who preceded him on the world stage as he was
of the religion into which he was born, and which he parodied. But in truth,
the racist colonizers, before advancing behind the standards of nations and
companies, had marched behind the cross...However modern Nazism was, it
planted its roots in the soil of age-old Church attitudes and a nearly unbroken chain of Church-sponsored acts of Jew hatred. However pagan Nazism
was, it drew its sustenance from groundwater poisoned by the Churchs most
solemnly held ideologyits theology.159
Paul, heretic and founder of Christianity.

In Antioch Paul and Barnabas preached in the synagogue to Jews, descendants of Abrahams race, and God fearing proselytes to whom the word of
salvation had been sent. The next Sabbath they appeared again to address the
Jews and [God] fearing proselytes160 but met resistance that culminated in a
shocking announcement.
The coming Sabbath nearly the entire city assembled to hear the
word of the Lord, but when the Jews saw the crowds they were filled
with rivalry and they began to speak out against what Paul was saying, blaspheming.

158
Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel
Hirsch, 30, 31, 35, 50, 148, 198-199.
159
Carroll, Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews, 475-476.
160
[God] fearing proselytesebomenoj proshlutojis a fixed expression for Gentiles converted to Judaism.
28
Speaking freely, Paul and Barnabas said, It was compulsory that

the word of God be spoken first to you. Seeing that you have cast it
aside and do not judge yourselves worthy of everlasting life, listen!
We turn to the Gentiles! For the Lord has commanded us as follows:
I have placed you as a light to the Gentiles to spread salvation to the
ends of the earth.161
When the Gentiles heard this they began to celebrate and praise the
word of the Lord and as many as were destined for everlasting life believed. The word of the Lord spread throughout the region, but the
Jews incited the devout women of noble rank and the principle men
of the city and stirred up trouble for Paul and Barnabas and drove
them out of the [city] limits. So they shook the dust off their feet [as
a curse] against them and left for Iconium and the disciples were filled with joy and holy spirit.162
Lukethe true identity of the gospel writers was a matter of conjecture even
in the 2nd century, but following convention well call the author Luke
the only Gentile author among the gospel writers,163 composed Luke-Acts,
the first, and greatest, of Christian apologies to be addressed to highly placed
pagans,164 sometime after 80 C.E. Luke-Acts pretends that the mission to
the Gentiles resulted from a divine revelation. In the coastal town of Caesarea
lived a certain Cornelius, a centurion, a devout man who feared God. An
angel instructed Cornelius to summon Peter who by happy coincidence fell
into an ecstatic trance and saw a vision of unclean animals he was commanded to kill and eat. While still pondering the meaning of the vision, the
spirit told Peter that men were asking for him at the gate. Peter, invited to
the home of an unclean Gentile, concluded, In truth I am convinced that
God is not one who judges by appearances. With the conversion of Cornelius and his household, the faithful of the circumcision who accompanied
Peter were amazedthat the gift of the holy spirit had been poured out on
the Gentiles.165
One who judges by appearances more or less captures the sense of proswpolhmpthj (prospolmpts)one who receives [an impression] by the face
but the notion that the God of Israel didnt judge people by appearances
would have been news to Jesus who, in addition to being circumcised,166

161
Isaiah 49:6.
The context reveals that the restoration of Israel is being predicted (Isaiah 49:5-7).
162
Acts 13:26, 43, 44-52.
163
Pagels, The Origen of Satan, 89.
164
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 430.
165
Acts 10:1-6, 9-17, 34, 45.
166
Luke 2:21.
29
wore magical tassels that healed those who touched them, 167 tassels (tycyc,
tsitsith) that all pious Jews wore in obedience to the law of Moses.168 Longer
tassels were the mark of greater holiness.169 Strict observance of the Torah
also forbid the cutting of the forelocks or corners (twap peot), the hair
growing in front of the ears.170 Jews were obviously meant to be different in
appearance from Gentiles, sanctification by segregation.171
The questionable history of Acts aside, it is clear from the letters of Paul, the
missionary-in-chief to the Gentiles, that inclusion of non-Jews provoked a
strong reaction from the leadership in Jerusalem. (The letters of Paul, who
was executed in Rome around 64 C.E., predate the gospel accounts written
after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The gospels read the results of the war
back into the preaching of Jesus by having him predict the war as a judgment on the Jews.)172
Pauls push back is particularly notable in his letter to the Galatians, a circular letter to churches in Asia Minor. Paulan apostle neither from men
or by men, but from Jesus Christ and God the father173 confronts the
house churches that were breaking ranks and changing sides to a different
gospel and pronounces a curse on his competitorsagain I say, if someone
preaches a gospel to you different from what you received, a curse on him!174
The opposition to Paul comes not from pagan Romans, but from fellow Jews
as the context of the letter makes clear,175 false brothers,176 who have turned
against Paul due to the machinations of the so-called pillars (oi dokountej
stuloi)177 of the Jerusalem church, Peter, James and John. Paul reveals that
after a delegationcertain peoplecame from James, the brother of Jesus,178 in Jerusalem, Peter stopped eating with the Gentile Christians due to
fear of those of the circumcision and even Barnabas was led astray by their
hypocrisy.179

167
Mark 6:56; Matthew 9:20-21; Luke 8:44.

Numbers 15:37-41.
169
Matthew 23:5.
170
Leviticus 19:27.
171
Ldemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity, 65.
172
Luke 20:20-21, for example.
173
Galatians 1:1.
174
Galatians 1:6, 8, 9.
175
Galatians 4:10; 6:12.
176
Galatians 2:4.
177
Galatians 2:9.
The verb dokew (doke), to seem, carries strong implications of an appearance based on opinion, pretense, or conjecture.
178
Mark 6:3.
179
Galatians 2:9, 11-12.
168
30
Pauls rejection of the Jerusalem leadership was absolutewe at no time acceded to a subordinate position in order that the truth of the gospel might
always endure among you. From those so-called [pillars]whatever they
were means nothing to meGod does not judge by human appearances (proswpon o qeoj anqrwpou ou lambanei). The so-called [pillars] contributed nothing to me!180 Not only does Paul have no intention of knuckling under to
the notables from Jerusalem, he follows up with a scandalous claim:
Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you! Yet again I call every man who
submits to circumcision to witness that he is obliged to perform the
whole Law. You have been cut off from Christ! Whoever is justified
by law, you have fallen from grace!181
As other references from his letters make clear, Paul rejects circumcision as a
sign of election.182 His rejection of the rites and rituals of Judaism as a means
of salvation for Gentiles is absolute:
Watch out for the dogs (touj kunaj)! Watch out for the evil workmen!
Watch out for the mutilation (thn katatomhn)! For we are the circumcision (h peritomh), we who serve in the spirit of God and boast in
Christ Jesus and do not rely on the fleshalthough I also have reason
to rely on the flesh. If anyone else is confident in the flesh, I am
much more so: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel,
tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew [born] of Hebrews, a Pharisee in regards
to the Law, a zealous persecutor of the church, as for righteousness
according to the Law, blamelessI have lost everything and I regard
it as filth (hgoumai skubala)183 so I may gain Christ!184
In Pauls mind the reversal is completethe immediacy of prophetic charisma functions to neutralize traditional canons of authority. 185 Circumcision has become mutilationreal circumcision occurs through the spirits
effect on the heart.186 The dogs are no longer unclean Gentiles but the evil
workmen who insist on imposing Jewish ritual on Pauls Gentile house.187

180
Galatians 2:5-6.
Galatians 5:2-4.
182
Romans 3:30; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6.
183
The term skubalon (skubalon), means dung, manure, offal. It would barely be an
exaggeration to translate it as shit.
184
Philippians 3:2-9.
185
186
Romans 2:29.
187
181
31
This vision clearly contradicts the Jesus of the gospels: Anyone who breaks
one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same
will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and
teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.188
Indeed, Jesus tells a rich man he must keep the Law to gain eternal life189
If the same person approached Paul with the same question twenty years
later, what would he have said? Would he have told him to keep the Law?
His own writings give a clear answer: decidedly not (cf. Rom. 3:10; Gal.
2:15-16).190
Indeed, Pauls relationship to Jesus has provoked frequent comment. As
Frend notes, Paul made no recorded attempt to explain Jesus teaching, to
prove from his words and deeds that he was the Messiah...he made no reference to the virgin birth, the miracles, or any salient incident in Jesus ministry...The Lord Christ, the God-man to be known by faith, replaced the prophet from Nazareth experienced by the disciples. [Paul] was not the man to
feel compassion for crowds. In some ways, even his sense of the elite prepared
the way for a Gnostic system of salvation...Paul was a apocalypticist, believing
that the end was rapidly approaching. He imagined himself carrying the gospel as one of the messengers promised for the end times.191
Pauls inconsistency regarding the Mosaic law did not escape the notice of his
Roman detractorseven though he called circumcision mutilation,192 he
nevertheless circumcised a certain man named Timothy, as the Acts of the
Apostles193 instructs us...And as if to press the point and make it an offense
for anyone to heed the law he says, Those under the law are under a curse.
The same man who writes, The law is spiritual194 to the Romans, and The
law is holy and the commandment holy and just195 now puts a curse196 upon
those who obey what is holy!197 Celsus could argue that Christianity was
patently false because, contrary to its own claims, it had deserted Jewish ways.
Christians may have claimed to have the correct interpretation of the Jewish
Scriptures, but on those points which were clearly set forth in the Scriptures
such as circumcision and keeping of the Sabbath, the festivals, and the
food lawsChristians wantonly disregarded the meaning of the very books

188
Matthew 5:19, NIV.

Matthew 19:17.
190
Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 99.
191
Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 92-93, 97.
192
Galatians 5:12; Philippians 3:2.
193
Acts 16:3.
194
Romans 7:14.
195
Romans 7:12.
196
Galatians 3:10.
197
Hoffman, Porphyrys Against the Christians, 58, 62.
189
32
they claimed as their own...Christianitys claimed relation to Judaism was

perceived as one of its most vulnerable points.198 Julian certainly did not
miss pointing out that the Christians were double apostates: Why is it that
you do not abide even by the traditions of the Hebrews or accept the law
which God has given to them? Nay, you have forsaken their teachings even
more than ours, abandoning the religion of your forefathers and giving yourselves over to the predictions of the prophets.199
Oddly enough, Jesus had nothing incisive to say about the cutting issue of
circumcising of Gentiles: He never had to. His mission did not extend to
Gentiles.200
The whitewashing tendencies of Acts aside, it is apparent from Pauls letters
to his house churches that he did not go unchallenged by the Jerusalem dogs
who preached mutilation. Pauls followers are being seduced by another Jesusa different spirita different gospel preached by crackerjack apostles.201 Such men are false apostles, treacherous workers, disguised as apostles of Christ. In case there is the slightest doubt about just who these
minions of Satan are, Paul asks, Are they Hebrews? So am I! Are they Israelites? So am I! Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I! Are they ministers of
Christ? I speak like a man derangedI am even more so!202
For the Aramaic-speaking community which remained in Jerusalem, the
Torah was still valid. Anyone who was baptized in the name of Jesus
whether Jew or Gentilewas not free to dispense with the law.203 Theological merits aside, the circumstances of history were to seal the fate of the Jerusalem faction. Around the year 62 C.E. a mob inspired by the Jewish authorities murdered Jesus brother James. The Christian historian Eusebius, writing
many years after the fact, described James as having been entrusted with the
throne of the bishop (o thj episkophj qronoj) in Jerusalem204Eusebius history seeks to validate the hierarchical organization of a later age by superimposing it artificially on the early Jesus movement. Earliest Christianity consisted in a loosely associated collection of local assemblies that were each
sociologically marginal and powerless...leadership in the assembly is clearly
both local rather than general and intimately connected to the structure of
the household.205

198
Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 116-117.

Wright, Against the Galileans, The Works of the Emperor Julian, III, 389.
200
201
202
2 Corinthians 11:13-14, 22-23.
203
Ldemann, Heretics, 40.
204
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II, 23.
205
Johnson, Among the Gentiles, 234-235.
199
33
A war added destruction and chaos to the loss of leadership in the mother
church when, in C.E. 67, Vespasian invaded Galilee in response to a Jewish
revolt. Roman troops entered Judea in 68 C.E. and sacked and burned Jerusalem two years later. While the Romans slaughtered, enslaved and scattered
Jews in Christianitys homeland, the new cult, profoundly changed in character, progressed apace among Gentiles. As a lasting result in this change in
fortunes the New Testament canon, formed in the 3rd and 4th centuries, overrepresented the importance of Paul among his 1st century rivalsbecause he
figures so prominently in the New Testament, Pauls significance in early
Christian history has tended to be grossly overrated.206
Significantly it was in Antioch following Pauls arrival that the disciples were
first called Christians 207 in short, a Jewish faction that followed Pauls
Christ just as some identified themselves by allegiance to particular preachers
as mentioned by Paul himself: What I mean is this: One of you says, I follow Paul; another, I follow Apollos; another, I follow Cephas; still another, I follow Christ.208 Antioch, a city infamous for its sense of humor,
did not mean Christian as a complimentit was the Antiochenes who dubbed the followers of Christ Christians or Christ-groupies.209
Seen from the standpoint of the founding family in Jerusalem, defeated as
much by demographics and the vicissitudes of history as by theology, Pauls
ethnophilic Christianity was the first of many heresies. Starting with Paul, the
trajectories of Judaism and Christianity radically diverged. Although [Christianity] has its roots in Judaism, those roots are both shallow and distributed
across a diverse and divided first-century Judaism that was itself deeply
marked by Greco-Roman culture.210 After C.E. 70 an invocation, the Birkat
ha-Minim (~ynymh tkrb), the Invocation Against the Heretics, was recited in
synagogues to distinguish Jews from Jewish Christians. This prayer seems to
be behind Justins assertions in the mid-second century that the Jews curse
Christ in the synagogues.211
By the end of the 1st century the Jesus faction that started as a Jewish splinter
group based in Jerusalem split into multiple quarreling factions, a process already evident during Pauls career. Within a few decades of Jesus death,
Christians were at war with one another and consistent with their apocalyptic
mindset, their internecine squabbles were portrayed in the truculent rhetoric

206

Acts 11:26.
208
1 Corinthians 1:12, NIV.
209
Murdock, The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate, 120.
210
211
207
34
of the final battle between Light and Darkness, God and Satan. in the last
times some will fall away from (aposthsontai) the faith, misled by deceptive
spirits and teachings of demonsfor some have already turned away to follow Satanhaving a sick craving for controversies and fights about words.212
The one who sins is from the Devil because the Devil has been sinning from
the beginning.213 Even as there were false prophets among the people, so
also there will be false teachers among you who will introduce destructive
heresies (aireseij).214 In the beginning the heresy wars were largely a matter
of Jews fighting with other Jews over how Jewish Christianity would be.
[The Christians] identified themselves with the ancient texts of Israel
The earliest Christian compositions can be regarded, in fact, as a
massive effort to reinterpret Torah in light of the distinctive Christian
experiences and convictions connected with Jesusthere is a great
distance between a tiny cult trying to find its way in the world in
competition with a more ancient and impressive rival, and an imperial church that had (and was willing to use) the power to extirpate
its ancient foeHowever important Jewish Christianity may have
been in earlier generations, it diminishes to the point of disappearance by the mid-second century.215
By the late 1st century the rift between Judaism and Christianity had widened
to a chasm. The text of the later gospels reflects the internecine struggle between Jesus earliest disciples based in Jerusalem and the victorious Pauline
ethnophiles. Anachronistically reading this conflict back into Jesus preaching, his disciples are warned, They will hand you over to Sanhedrins (sunedria) and they will scourge you in their synagogues (en taij sunagwgaij).216
According to Matthew (composed around 80-90 C.E.), the Son of Man,
now identified with the risen Jesus, will gather all the [Gentile] nations217
before his throne of judgment and in anticipation of this grand finale to
history the disciples are commanded to convert all the nations, baptizing
them most unjewishly in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit.218
According to Matthew, all the chief priests and Jewish elders took counsel
to plot some means of killing Jesus and having turned him over to Pilate for
execution, the mob threatens to riot if Jesus is released. After Pilate dramati
212
1 Timothy 4:1, 5:15, 6:4.

1 John 3:8.
214
2 Peter 2:1.
215
Johnson, Among the Gentiles, 1-2, 173.
216
Matthew 10:17.
217
Matthew 25:32.
218
Matthew 28:19.
213
35
cally washes his hands before the crowd, the whole people reply, His blood
on us and on our children!219
The two-volume apologetic we know as Luke-Acts addresses a theological
embarrassment and source of intense Christian anxiety: how did the Jewish
Messiah come to be roundly rejected by the Jewish people? The gospel of
Luke, written at least ten years after the fall of Jerusalem in C.E. 70, puts a
prophetic parable of condemnation into Jesus mouth as he enters the city: a
nobleman goes to a distant country to obtain kingly power, but on his return is rejected by the citizens who hate him, prompting his command,
Bring them here and slaughter them before me!220 In Lukes version of subsequent events, Peter, who died around C.E. 64, speaks to the men of Judea and all those who live in Jerusalem. In this retelling, written at least a
decade after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, Israelite men betrayed Jesus and you nailed him up by the hands of lawless men.221 The
wholesale destruction of the city and its people, which took place a generation after the generation that Jesus promised would witness the End, is reinterpreted as a sign of the ever impending but never arriving End.222
By the time the gospel of John was composed (after 90 C.E.) the break with
Judaism was complete: Abraham is our father is answered by You are from
your father the Devil and you are inclined to do your fathers desires.223
Those of the synagogue of Satan, who claim they themselves are Jews but
are liars, will be forced by Jesus to their knees before the feet of Christians in
order to know that I loved you.224 Christians have replaced the Jews as
Gods electthe Christians are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods own people.225 The Jews, on the other hand, have become the
symbol of everything evil; the gospel of John, seeking to ingratiate Christians
with Roman authority, suppresses all traces of Roman initiative in Jesus
execution.226 As Carroll points out, once the embattled Jewish sect morphed into the Gentile Church, the structure of the foundational story was set,
the ground of Christian memory, the longest lie.227
If you, being a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how then do you

219
Matthew 27: 1-2, 24-25.

Luke 19:11-12, 27.
221
Acts 2:14, 22-23.
222
Luke 21:20.
223
John 8:39, 44.
224
Revelation 3:9.
225
1 Peter 2:9.
226
Pagels, The Origin of Satan, 104-105, 106.
227
Carroll, Constantines Sword, 91.
220
36
demand the Gentiles live as Jews (Ioudaizein)?228 Based on this verse, subsequent generations of Christians characterized the advocates of Jewish practice
as Judaizersfrom Ioudaizein (Ioudaizein), to live according to Jewish customs. Christians who believed the destruction of Jerusalem was punishment
since [the Jews] killed the prophesied Christ229 clearly did not share Pauls
belief that all Israel will be saved.230
The internal scrimmage initiated by Paul, a Jew born of Jews, in the Jewish
splinter group that would become Christianity became the theological justification for two millennia of horror by setting a grim precedent, to confirm
for Christians their own identification with God and to demonize their opponentsfirst other Jews, then pagans, and later dissident Christians called
heretics.231 Well before the closure of the New Testament canon apostasy
(apostasia), 232 heresy (airesij) 233 and heretical (airetikoj) 234 entered the
Christian vocabulary, sealing the fate of countless future lives. As pointed out
by Brakke, heresy is an invention created through practices such as excommunication, ritualized condemnation, and silencing of texts235 to say nothing of being tried sub rosa, tortured with thumb screws, racked, water boarded or burned alive at the stake.
The triumph of Pauline Christianity marked a stunning reversal: the earliest
tradition among Jesus followers became Judaizing, and the most primitive
form of Christianity, its original form, became its first heresy. In his 20th century classic, Walter Bauer identified this reversal.
It could be said that the Jewish Christians in their opposition to Paul
introduced the notion of heresy into the Christian consciousness.
The arrow quickly flew back at the archer. Because of their inability
to relate to a development that took place on hellenized gentile soil,
the Judaists soon became a heresy, rejected with conviction by the
gentile Christians. Basically, they probably remained what they had
been in the time of James the JustThus the Judaists become an
instructive example of how even one who preserves the old position
can become a heretic if the development moves sufficiently far beyond him.236

228
Galatians 2:14.
Origen, Contra Celsum I, 47.
230
Romans 11:26.
231
Pagels, The Origin of Satan, xvi.
232
233
234
Titus 3:10.
235
Brakke, The Gnostics, 15.
236
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 236.
229
37
The importance of this point should not be overlooked. the priority of

orthodoxy and the subsequent nature of heresy is a lie, the invention of the
sect that finally emerged victorious. Following the analogy of the church historian Rousseau, Brakke likens the emergence of orthodox Christianity to a
horse race: In this model, we cannot really see the starting gate, but around
the year 100 CE, numerous independent Christian communities come into
view237 and it is only near the end of the 3rd century that the eventual winner
often called proto-orthodoxyis revealed.
Similarly, the churches of Marcion, the first Christian to attempt to define a
canon of Scripture, filled the whole world according to Tertullian; besides
Rome and Carthage, they are documented in various cities of Asia Minor and
in Syria, including Antioch, but in the end, Marcions church took permanent root only in parts of Syria and towards the Euphrates frontier.238
In 451 C.E. the church council at Chalcedon, now a prosperous suburb of
Istanbul, ruled against the Monophysitesfrom monoj (monos), single, and
fusij (phusis), natureChristians who believed that Jesus had a single divine
nature. After 451 the Christians of the west declared that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human, made known in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. With Chalcedon the Church took another long step away from the historical Jesus
Not only were Monophysites numerous and influential, but they dominated much of the Christian world and the Roman Empire long after Chalcedon...The heirs of the very oldest churches, the ones with the most direct
and authentic ties to the apostolic age, found their distinctive interpretation
of Christ ruled as heretical...Each side persecuted its rivals when it had the
opportunity to do so, and tens of thousandsat leastperished. Christs
nature was a cause for which people were prepared to kill and die, to persecute or to suffer martyrdom.239 A few Christian sects, notably the Copts and
the Syriac Orthodox Church, still retain the monophysite creed.
...beyond question, in some areas what was later called heresy preceded orthodoxy. This insight of Bauers proves itself in particular in

237
Brakke, The Gnostics, 6,7.

The reader interested in more detail is referred to Ehrmans Lost Christianities:
The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew, particularly pages 95134, 159-180.
238
Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 215, 217.
239
Jenkins, Jesus Wars, xi.
Mussolini even gave, as one of his justifications for the use of poison gas and
other gruesome measures in Abyssinia, the persistence of its inhabitants in the
heresy of Monophysitism... (Hitchens, god is not Great, 236).
38
connection with the earlier Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, the descendants of which were called heretics. But it may also
apply to other Christian groups[the] historical picture of orthodoxy always preceding heresy misled Christian theology for almost
two thousand years, deterring critical scholarship from reconstructing
Christian origins as they really were.240
We can identify a further cause of animosity between Christians and Jews:
under Julius Caesar the Jews were recognized as a religio licita, a policy continued under Augustus, Caligula, Nero and even Vespasian.241 Besides being
protected by imperial decree, Judaism was respected for its antiquitynothing was older or more venerable than Jewish cult, synagogues were wellknown buildings in many Roman cities and the upper-class Jewish priesthood had a strong history of support for Rome.242 The protections afforded
by official recognition of Judaism did not, however, extend to Christians who
the Romans (eventually) recognized as a Jewish heresy, a process hastened by
the new sects anti-Jewish polemic. ...new religions do not come into being
ex nihilo, but are in some sense always heretical or revitalization movements
...the new group draws a tight circle around itself and insists that it has
broken radically with the corruption of the previous order.243
Which leads us to another insight first advanced by pagan critics, namely
that
there was never a single Christianity.

Early Roman critics were well aware of the internecine skirmishing between
the Jewish majority and the Jewish followers of Christ and early Christian
documents reflect that fact. When the Jews accused Paul of fomenting a form
of worship against the law, the proconsul Gallio refused to involve himself
in the controversy, a dispute about semantics and names, and dismissed the
case with an abrupt, See to it yourselves.244 Gallio treated the problem as
an internal affair of the Jews (which it was then)...245

240
Ldemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Christianity, 11-12.

Berchman, Porphyry Against the Christians, 25.
242
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 428-429.
243
244
Acts 18:15.
245
241
39
In a stinging characterization, Celsus dismissed the quarrels between Christians and Jews as a proverbial fight about the shadow of an ass.246 Celsus
correctly noted that as Christians increased in number they are divided and
form factions (scizontai) and each wants his own sect and concluded, they
still have one thing in common, so to speak, if indeed they have that in
commonthe name [Christian].247 Celsus employs the verb scizw (schiz),
from whence our schism as in the Great Schism, the separation of Eastern and
Western orthodox churches in 1054 C.E. By the 4th century, Epiphanius, the
bishop of Salamis, was able to list no less than eighty heresies extending back
over history (he was assured his total was correct when he discovered exactly
the same number of concubines in the Song of Songs!), and Augustine in his
old age came up with eighty-three.248
The many-headed hydra of Gnosticism.

By the time Celsus wrote The True Doctrine (approximately 175 C.E.) Christianity still retained a fading Jewish contingent, the Ebionites, but the Jew
versus Gentile controversy had taken on a new and ominous twist. Some
Christian sects, broadly and problematically characterized 249 by recent
scholars as Gnostics, had utterly rejected Judaism and Jewish scripture. That
gnosticism was a grab bag of diversity, currently labeled hybriditymixing,
combining, and grafting of disparate cultural elements250 was recognized by
Hans Jonas over half a century ago: ...the salient feature [of Gnosticism]
seems to be the absence of a unifying character.251 The fundamental incoherence of the gnostic movement epitomized the interpretive chaos of primitive Christianity. Following the false lead of ancient Christian apologists,
historians of religion once considered Gnosticism as a heretical offshoot of
orthodoxy, but as Brakke points out in a recent work, Gnosticism as traditionally conceived, does not serve a useful purpose and does not accurately
identify an actual ancient religion...Gnosticism is an outstanding example of
a scholarly category that, thanks to the confusion about what it is supposed
to do, has lost its utility and must be either abandoned or reformed.252
Celsus, a remarkably well-informed opponent 253 of Christianity, learned
many details of the beliefs of various Christian factions: their members form
246
Origen, Contra Celsum III, 1, 4.

Ibid, III, 10, 12.
248
249
250
251
Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, xvi.
252
Brakke, The Gnostics, x, 19.
253
Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, ix.
247
40
ed secret companies with each other254 that violated legal norms, some sects
rejected the Jewish God and the Jewish scriptures,255 and offered widely differing interpretations of the gospelsOrigen conceded the existence of Marcion, Valentinus, Lucian, the Ophites, Cainites, Simonians, Marcellians,
Harpocratians, Sibyllists, Ebionites and Encratites 256 some even rejecting
the doctrine of the resurrection according to scripture (to peri anastasewj
kata taj grafaj dogma)257 and worshipping a god above heaven who transcends the heaven of the Jews, (ton uperouranion qeon uperanabainontaj tou
Ioudaiwn ouranon). 258 The god above heaven had magical significance;
Kotansky has published a spell that begins, I invoke you, the One above heaven... (ton epanw tou ouranou).259 The facts adduced by Celsus forced Origen
to admit that there are some among us who do not say that God is the same
as the God of the Jews.260 Celsus obviously knew Christianity at first hand,
and as a skilled polemicist his portrait of the Christian movement is detailed
and complete.261 Because in the eyes of pagans Christianity had become not
one thing but a many-headed monster with rival claims, Origen must constantly bear in mind that the heretics also have their interpretations of scripture...Origen needed to keep adjusting his position while standing on shifting
sands.262
Although some gnosticizing sects rejected the Hebrew bible, Pearson is almost certainly correct when he states, it becomes abundantly clear that the
essential building blocks of Gnostic mythology are reinterpretations of Jewish
scriptures, Jewish scriptural interpretation and Jewish traditions.263 Another
expert has suggested that [Gnosticism] begins roughly in a movement in the
fringes of Judaism mainly among a disenfranchised priestly component.264
During a period when Judeo-Christian sects were multiplying like rabbits, in
a rather bizarre twist some factions co-opted the quintessentially Jewish Jesus
who criticized the Pharisees for not observing the Mosaic Law closely enough265
while writing both the Jewish law and the Jewish God out of their version of
Christianity. However, as we have seen, these gnostic sects would not be the
last to try to isolate Jesus from his Jewish past, a project repeatedly carried to
extremes by various Christians and Christian groups.

254

Ibid, II, 3; IV, 2.
256
Ibid, II, 27; III, 10, 13; V, 61-62, 64-65; VI, 19.
257
Ibid V, 12.
258
Ibid VI, 19. (Compare VI, 61; VI, 21; VIII, 15).
259
Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets, I, 276, 280.
260
Origen, Contra Celsum V, 61.
261
262
263
Pearson, Voices of Gnosticism, 72.
264
Turner, Voices of Gnosticism, 90.
265
Matthew 5:20.
255
41
In point of fact, gnostic traits are already apparent in the New Testament
documents. The Marcionite movement, begun around C.E. 144, which prohibited sexual intercourse and marriage, doubtless took some comfort from
the words of Paul, Now to the unmarried and widows I say it is good for
them to stay unmarried, as I do.266 The rejection of the material world, in
embryo in the writings of Paulthe world is dead to me and I am dead to
the world267reaches its logical extreme in some gnostic sects as well as the
writings of Tertullian where marriage is disparaged as obscenity (spurcitiae).268 Whereas Paul discouraged marriage due to apocalyptic fervorThis
is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From
now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none269 the
gnostic movement sought to cease populating the world of the lesser god, the
Demiurge, due to an unequivocally negative evaluation of the visible world
together with its creator; it ranks as a kingdom of evil and darkness...The
world is the product of a divine tragedy...a baleful destiny in which man is
entangled and from which he must be set free.270 No doubt, however, Gentiles found attractive the considerable similarity of Pauls Christianity to the
pagan mystery religions...His system is a syncretism formed by fitting Jesus
(what little he knew of him) into the mystery-religion format. Same old story
with a new real, historical hero. It sold like hot cakes.271
We are again indebted to Bauer for the insight that heresy was the predominant form of Christianity during the first several centuries of its existence.
To Origen there also flocked countless heretics (EH 6.18.2)272 as
well as orthodox...Thus even into the third century, no separation between orthodoxy and heresy was accomplished in Egypt and the two
types of Christianity were not yet at all clearly differentiated from
each other...It is also highly significant that precisely [Ignatius]
gnostic contemporaries and countrymen can without hindrance call
themselves Christians, as Eusebius twice complains in utter disgust
...Polycarp fights against a docetic Gnosticism: Everyone who does
not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an antichrist...
and whoever perverts the words of the Lord...and says that there is
neither a resurrection nor a judgment, that man is the firstborn of Sa
266
1 Corinthians 7:8. (Compare 1 Thessalonians 4:4).

Galatians 6:14.
268
Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 144-145.
269
1 Corinthians 7:29, ESV.
270
Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, 60, 66.
271
Ldemann, Paul, 230.
272
Eusebius Ecclesiastical History.
267
42
tan. Immediately after this [Polycarp] adds: Therefore let us abandon the foolishness of the great majority (mataiots tn polln) and the
false teachings...Each individual and each special group is fighting for
its Christ and against the Christ of the others, and is endeavoring to
enlist tradition and theological inference in his service...for a long
time after the close of the post-apostolic age the sum total of the
consciously orthodox and anti-heretical Christians was numerically
inferior to that of the heretics.273
Thanks to its esotericism and consequent lack of formal restraints, all
Gnosticism tended to be anarchically speculative; and Christian Gnosticism
was worst of all, a many-headed hydra, as the heresiologists put it, likely to
devour and regurgitate, often in virtually unrecognizable form, any idea that
came into view.274 The Christian factions generally considered gnostic had
an underlying structure of themes, but these were just a bedrock to build
cities of theosophical inquiry without much legalistic zoning.275 Consistent
with the rejection of the Old Testament by some gnosticizing groups, Celsus
noted, Christians say the Creator (dhmiougon, dmiourgon) is an accursed
god because he cursed the serpent (ofij, ophis) the revealed the knowledge
(gnwsij, gnsis) of good and evil.276 Gnostic sects that demoted Yahweh
the Demiurge (dhmiourgoj, dmiourgos), craftsman or creatorto the position
of a lesser god were called Ophites, snake worshippers, by early apologists.277
Celsus also knew of a Christian diagram illustrating ten heavens represented
as circles guarded by theriocephalic angels278 a form of the diagram still
existed in Origens day. Celsus compared the multiple squabbling JudeoChristian sects to a flight of bats or a swarm of ants.279 However, Celsus
comparison is hardly fair to ants and bats that, despite the appearance of confusion, know where theyre going and very rarely collide with each other.
Multiplying gospels.
[The heretics] adduce an untold multitude of apocryphal and spurious writings which they have composed to bewilder foolish menthe more modern
endeavor to excogitate something new every day and to produce something

273
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 59, 67, 72, 202, 231.
Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 113.
275
Conner, Voices of Gnosticism, 3.
276
Origen, Contra Celsum VI, 28.
277
Ibid, III, 13.
278
Ibid, VI, 21, 24-32.
279
Ibid, IV, 33.
274
43
no one has ever thought of280 By the end of the 2nd century Christianity
had acquired a permanent siege mentality. Assailed from without by a hostile
Greco-Roman society, threatened from within by a waning Jewish faction
and a burgeoning gnostic movement, the borders of Christian orthodoxy required constant surveillance, an incessant policing of difference. As the
emerging church struggled to gain control over its founding narrativeorthodoxy marching to an inevitable triumph over heresy281upholding this
story required the suppression of competing gospel stories and the crushing
of dissent.
Early Christian apologists and historians such as Irenaeus and Eusebius
concocted a falsified narrative, an apostolic fiction, in which Jesus transmits
a coherent, if secretive, body of teaching to his apostles who in turn transmit
the doctrines to a succession of bishopsin fact, it was not until 363 that
Athanasius declared the 27 books currently in the New Testament to be authoritative within his jurisdiction. By the 4th century the official invention of
a unified Church had been set firmly in place and generations of scholars
would repeat it in outline even as they questioned the veracity of its details.
That the Christians were cooking their books did not escape the notice of
their Roman critics: After this [Celsus] says that some believers, a though from
a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose themselves and alter the original text of the
gospel three or four or several times over, and they change its character to enable
them to deny difficulties in (sic) face of criticism. I do not know of people who
have altered the gospel apart from the Marcionites and Valentinians, and I
think also the followers of Lucan. As is his wont, Origen deftly ignores the
point of Celsus accusation: But this statement is not a criticism of Christianity, but only of those who have dared lightly to falsify the gospels.282
In point of fact, Julian opens Against the Galileans with some choice words
about the Christian gospel: the fabrication (h skeuwria) of the Galileans is a
forgery (plasma) of men constructed by fraud (upo kakourgiaj).283 It is worth
the effort to briefly unpack Julians terms: skeuwria (skeuria), fabrication,
carries the added connotation of plagiarism. Julian was well aware that the
Christians had ransacked the Jewish scriptures, cherry picking passages they

280
Irenaeus, Against the Heresies I, 20.1; 21.5.

During the series of violent clashes between Catholics and Calvinists or Huguenots (1562-1598), during which an estimated 4 million Europeans were murdered, Irenaeus remains were disinterred by the Calvinist faction and thrown
into the river Loire during an orgy of vandalism that included the destruction of
monasteries and manuscripts.
281
282
Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, 90-91 (II, 27).
283
Julian, Against the Galileans, 39A.
44
could misconstrue as applying to Jesus. The preaching of the Christians was

therefore a plasma (plasma), a fiction, a counterfeit, or forgery, a contrivance
fudged together from disparate elements upo kakourgiaj (hupo kakourgias), by
malice, in order to defraud. Julian promised a detailed examination of the
miracle mongering and fabrications of the gospels (thj twn euaggeliwn
teratourgiaj kai skeuwriaj), but it appears that Cyril excised that part of his
polemic. Neither the vast majority of Jews nor educated Romans had been
deceived by this imposture, but it would take religious scholars working within the Christian intellectual regime fifteen centuries to slowly work their way
back to where Julians criticism began.
The Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st century or early 2nd) illustrates the extremity
to which Christians would go in raiding the Jewish scriptures, which they read
in Greek, not Hebrew, for proof texts: For it says, From his household
Abraham circumcised eighteen men and three hundred (andraj dekaoktw kai
triakosiouj)284...The eighteen first, and pausing, he says three hundred. The
eighteen is I (ten) and H (eight)you have Jesus! (eceij Ihsoun). 285 The
Greeks used the letter iota (I) to stand for ten, the letter eta (H) stood for
eightthus iota plus eta, and voil, the first two letters of IHSOUS (Jesus)!
According to the author of Barnabas, the Hebrew prophets were Jesus disciples, and when Jesus finally came he raised them from the dead, likely an
claim derived from MatthewThe tombs were opened, and many bodies of
the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs
after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.286
The writer, basing his fatuous numerology on a Greek translation of a Hebrew
text, conveniently overlooked the fact that the Old Testament prophets had
not written in Greek. Little wonder Romans found Christian preachments so
simple to refute.
Textual criticism since 1881 has clearly shown that Christian scribes were not
merely passive (or even accurate) transmitters of textit has even been
shown that a copyist could presumably reproduce a text even when he could
not read or understand it. Sometimes, however, scribes took on the unsupervised role of creative consultant...the scribes pen was mightier than the
evangelists word ...an intentional variant, it may be argued, is no longer the
act of a scribe but an author.287 Given this reading of the abundant evidence
of textual manipulation, one could affirm that the New Testament had, in
fact, a multiplicity of authors, nearly all of them unacknowledged.288 In the

284
Genesis 17:23.
Barnabas 9:2, 8.
286
Matthew 27:52-53.
287
Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition, 9, 14.
288
The interested reader is referred to Ehrmans The Orthodox Corruption of Scrip285
45
majority of cases the copyists, as users of the text, had a vested interest in its
meaning: Their ability to write meant they could correct, clarify, buttress, or
interpret a text, and, in so doing, impose with enduring effect their own ideas
into their exemplars and, in turn, those controversies that sought out authority or information...Christian scribes engaged in the act of transmitting the
text of the New Testament occasionally changed their exemplar in order to
produce a text that resonated with the tuning fork of the copyists own ideology.289
Irenaeus also admitted that Christian factions were altering the gospel texts to
suit their theological ends: [Marcion] mutilated the Gospel according to
Luke, discarding all that is written about the birth of the LordThis fiction
[the Cainites] adduce, and call it the Gospel of Judas.290 As a matter of fact
the Pastoral Epistles may contain an allusion to Marcions revision of
Christian scripture: Timothy, guard what God has entrusted to you. Avoid
godless, foolish debates with those who oppose you with their falsely-called
knowledge (yeudonumou gnwsewj)291
It seems quite clear that by the end of the 1st century a bitter debate raged
over true and false gnosis and that gospels were being composed or revised
to provide ammunition for the opposing sides. The Christians of the first
centuries were not writing scripture as currently defined. Different writers
felt free to rearrange and alter the information they inheriteda simple comparison of the first three canonical gospels reveals thisbecause they did not
see themselves as writing scripture...The four gospels collectively stand as the
survivors of a process whose principles of selection had more to do with
competition between different Christian groups than with a disinterested
concern for history.292 It has been suggested that the earliest gospel, Mark,
is the synthesis of several stages of composition and written, plausibly, in
different locations. 293 In Alexandria the elite among the Christians may
have used a secret Gospel of their founder Mark.294
The first century was likely marked by a profusion of gospelsmany have

ture (1993, Oxford University Press) for a compelling discussion of the effects of
christological controversy on the text of the New Testament.
289
Ibid, 22-23.
290
Irenaeus, Against the Heresies I, 27.2; I, 31.1.
291
1 Timothy 6:20.
292
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, ix, 6.
293
Humphrey, From Q to Secret Mark, 25.
294
For a recent discussion of the Secret Gospel of Mark and the controversy attending it, see Conner, The Secret Gospel of Mark: Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and Four Decades of Academic Burlesque (2015, Mandrake of Oxford).
46
undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled

among us.295 In the course of time, the traditional material had not only
swollen greatly, but it provided quite diverse pictures. Alongside the synoptic
type of picture, there came John; alongside the canonical gospels were many
apocryphal gospels which were often pronouncedly heretical.296 Nearly every
Roman critic familiar with the gospels seems to have noted their inconsistencies and contradictions. Julian again: For Matthew and Luke are refuted by
the fact that they disagree concerning [Jesus] genealogy.297
In addition to the problem of forged apostolic letters and heretical gospels the
house churches swarmed with prophets who at any moment might blurt
out some extraordinary nonsense. The faithful are not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from uswhether by a prophecy or
by word of mouth or by letterasserting that the day of the Lord has already
come.298 Late in the 1st century the Christian message was still subject to the
whims of soothsayers who could claim divine inspiration: You tolerate that
woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my
servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols...
And I solemnly declare to everyone who hears the words of prophecy written
in this book: If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add
to that person the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words
away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any
share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this
scroll.299 Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name
perform many miracles?300 It takes no great imagination to picture a loosely
organized, ecstatic sect in which any attention seeker or any person who was
mentally unbalanced could claim a personal revelation, thus sowing chaos in
the ranks.
The documents of the New Testament attest to exactly such doctrinal bedlam: Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is
coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it
is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us...301 The
churches are beset by deceivers and antichrists,302 false prophets,303 who

295
Luke 1:1.
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 183.
297
298
2 Thessalonians 2:2, NIV.
299
Revelation 2:20; 22:18-19, NIV.
300
Matthew 7:22, NIV.
301
1 John 2:18-19.
302
2 John 1:7.
303
2 Peter 2:1-3; 1 John 4:1.
296
47
in the Last Times will spread the teachings of demons304 and empty deceit.305 Therefore not many Christians should become teachers since they
will be judged harshly.306 The early Christian practice of speaking by the
spirit307 authenticated private revelation and unleashed a firestorm within
the house churches, a firestorm that resulted in corruption of gospel texts and
the eventual elimination of those that conflicted with proto-orthodox teaching.
Eusebius provides an additional witness to the adjustments made to Christian
scripture as well as to the inadequacy of transmission:
For this reason [confidence in the techniques of unbelievers] they
fearlessly put their hands on the divine scriptures, purporting to have
corrected them and that I make no false allegation against them anyone who wishes can learn, for if any man so desire, collect the copies
to closely compare each with the other. He would find many discrepancies and variances between those of Asklepiades and Theodotus
and it is possible to acquire an abundance of them since their disciples have copied them diligently, set aright as they call it, but in
fact corrupted.
Again, the copies of Hermophilus do not agree with these, nor do
those of Apollonides even agree with one another, for the copies they
produced first can be compared to those which later on they even further corrupted and they will be discovered to differ greatly.308
Even as Christians were busy tweaking the text of the gospels, the theology of
their falsified biographies also changed. Exorcisms, which litter the text of
Mark, lose the more lurid details in Matthew and Luke and disappear entirely
from the gospel of John. As Fredriksen points out, such key synoptic terms
as righteousness, power, and good news all fail to appear in John; Kingdom (as
in Kingdom of God), used more than 120 times in the first three gospels, occurs in John twice (3:3, 5; cf. 18:36). Conversely, the synoptics use truth 10
times to Johns 46; world (kosmos) 13 times to 78; and Jews 16 times to
Johns 67.309
Today some 5000 manuscripts of the New Testament books, produced before the advent of the printing press, are known. To the extent they have
been compared one to another they are known to contain at least 300,000

304
1 Timothy 4:1-5.
Colossians 2:8.
306
James 3:1.
307
Matthew 10:20; 1 Corinthians 12:3.
308
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V, 28, 17-18.
309
305
48
variant readingsthere are 138,000 words, more or less, in the New Testament. As textual scholar Bart Ehrman notes, the earliest copyists appear to
have been untrained and relatively unsuited to the tasks [of producing accurate copies].310 Besides the problem posed by untrained copyists, the gospels
and occasional letters of Paul were being used in fierce doctrinal disputes,
referenced obliquely in the New Testament books themselves[Paul] writes
the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters
contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.311 Since we have no preserved text of any length of any New Testament
document before the early 3rd century, we can only guess how editing or
other forms of meddling may have changed them,312 but the words of textual
scholar Helmut Koester are certainly worth bearing in mind: Textual critics
of classical texts know that the first century of their transmission is the period
in which the most serious corruptions occur. Textual critics of the New
Testament have been surprisingly nave in this respect.313
One might expect that after several centuries of textual study of thousands of
manuscripts the authentic text of the New Testament would be established.
But in that case one would be gravely mistaken. Commenting on the critical
edition of the United Bible Societies, Lane Fox observed, Their committee
consider-ed that there were two thousand places [in 1966] where alternative
readings of any significance survived in good manuscripts...by 1975 their
Greek text had had to be revised twice because no revision has yet proved free
from error and improvement. The very aim, a standard version, is misleading
and un-realistic...There are scriptures but no exact scripture within the range
of our surviving knowledge...314
Developments, or rather the lack of them, also left a mark on the gospel texts:
...the failure of the End to precede the death of the beloved disciple caused a
further chapter to be added to his Gospel (John 21). Those who had predicted it in the plainest terms were wrong.315

310
Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 49.

2 Peter 3:16.
312
The interested reader is referred to Ehrmans The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture for an accessible, intelligent discussion.
313
Koester, Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, 19.
314
Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 156, 157.
315
Ibid, 346.
311
49
Christianity appeals to the ignorant and

foolish.
The ancient world was a world in submission, the masses to the ruling class,
youths to adults, women to men, soldiers to their commanders, slaves to their
masters, and households to the whims and caprice of the paterfamilias. Jesus
own preaching assumes as muchJesus often refers to the master of the
house, the oikodespothj (oikodespots)316 or house despot, a title redolent
with hegemonic assumptions about masculine identity.317 The lord and master of the house can do as he pleases with what belongs to him318 and the
rulers of the Gentiles lord it over their subjects and the great among them
exercise dominion. 319 We can scarcely imagine the festering resentment
among the immiserated Jewish peasantry in Roman occupied Palestine, a fury
so intense that it contributed to no less than three wars between the Jews and
Romans.320
Roman law and governance discouraged arrivistes who sought to advance to
positions of controlIt was out of the question for a poor man to serve. For
a start, he could not have afforded the entry fee.321 Rome was effectively a
slave society in which sons followed the trade of their fathers as in the case of
Jesus himself. The villagers of Nazareth ask, Isnt this the laborer, the son of
Mary (Ouc outoj estin o tektwn, o uioj thj Mariaj) and the brother of James
and Joses and Judas and Simon, and arent his sisters here among us?322
Matthew rephrases the question to avoid making Jesus out to be a mere
laborer: Isnt this the son of the laborer? (Ouc outoj estin o tou tektonoj
uioj).323 The gospel writers were clearly anxious to buff Jesus rsum.

316
The term occurs at Matthew 13:52; 20:1; 21:33; Mark 14:14; Luke 12:39;
13:25; 14:21; 22:11, for example.
317
Anderson, New Testament Masculinities, 79, 102.
318
Matthew 20:15.
319
Mark 10:42, Matthew 20:25.
320
The First Jewish War (66-73 C.E.) resulted in the destruction of the Second
Temple (70 C.E.) and ended with the siege of Masada. The Kitos War (Kitos
is a corruption of Quietus, the name of a Roman general) was a widespread ethnic
and religious conflict (115-117 C.E.), followed by the catastrophic Bar-Kokhba
revolt (132-135 C.E.) that resulted in the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem and
the founding of a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the site of the former Jewish city.
321
322
Mark 6:3.
323
Matthew 13:55.
50
That Jesus cast his teachingsthat so far as we know were strictly oral, never
writtenin the form of parables points to a lack of formal education: For
centuries, the Jews had no schools or higher education: significantly, proverbs
had flourished, the symptom of societies where limited education imposes the
traditional and conventional expression of opinion, wisdom and sentiment
...By most people the words of the holy law were still heard but not seen
...Among the rabbis, we find that parables tend to begin from a biblical text:
in the Gospels Jesus never begins a parable from quoted scripture.324
The Jewish religious leadership, headquartered in Jerusalem, represented the
outlook of the elite; Jesus teaching, however, like that of John [the Baptist],
was directed to the Palestinian countryside and his main support came from
the crowds, that is, unlettered country folk.325 Have any of the rulers or
the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the
lawthere is a curse on them.326
As Christianity progressed, Roman society regressed, becoming increasingly
calcified with the result that a mass of the permanently poor lived far below
the upper crust of the immensely rich. Though the ruling class dismissed the
new cult and its membership as yet another oriental import beneath contempt, the stratification of Roman society and the hopelessness that resulted
provided the perfect environment for Christianity to flourish and spread its
dominion. The poverty of the masses proved an environment in which religion generally flourishedas Marx said, Religious distress is at the same
time the expression of real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people...The demand to give up the illusions
about [the peoples] condition is the demand to give up a condition that
needs illusions.327
It has been estimated that about 90% of the population in the first century
was completely illiterate328 and the New Testament specifically states of Peter
and John that they were agrammatoj (agrammatos), without letters, 329
unable to read or writePeter even betrays himself to the Judean authorities
by his rustic Galilean accent.330 Since Jesus closest disciples were predominantly men who worked with their hands, an inability to read and write

324
Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 106, 119.

326
John 7:48, 49 (NIV).
327
Hitchens, god is not Great, 9. The quote comes from Marxs Contribution to the
Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right.
328
Harris, Ancient Literacy, 147-175.
329
Acts 4:13.
330
Matthew 27:73.
325
51
would have been completely in keeping with their circumstances, a point

conceded by the Christian apologist Origen who admitted, they had not
received even the rudiments of learning (mhde ta prwta grammata memaqhkotaj) even as the gospel records about them.331 Origen also reports Celsus
charge that Christians were known their utter lack of education (amaqestatouj) and abysmal ignorance (apaideutotatouj), and that they gained
converts by misdirection: they set traps for complete yokels (paleuomen de
touj agroikoterouj).332
Both Celsus and Galen observed that Christians relied on faith without
proof. This was indeed the case. The uneducated were attracted in great
numbers to the church, and they were assured that the foolishness of God is
wiser than men.333 It has been posited that there were as few as 420 literate
Christians at the beginning of the 2nd century, and as few as 42 fluent and
skilled literates in Christian communities empire-wide,334 which would go
some way toward explaining why Christian apologetic works appear so late. It
is also likely that the majority of Christians in the early church were illiterate
as evidenced by the custom of reading texts aloud.335 Even in cities, literacy
could not be assumed. It was possible to be a town councillor, a curialis, in a
major city and yet to be illiterate.336
Early Christian converts were mostly laborers, slaves and women, members of
groups with very low rates of literacy. Making a virtue of necessity, Paul
openly acknowledged that proclaiming Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews
and foolishness to Gentiles,337 opened Christians to charges that they were
dullards and dupes.
Consider your own calling, brothers, that not many are wise in accordance with the flesh, or many powerful, or many well-born, but
God chose the worlds fools to shame the wise, and God chose the
worlds weak to shame the strong, and God chose the worlds lowborn and contemptible, the nobodies (ta mh onta), so that he might
overthrow the somebodies (ta onta).338

331

Ibid, VI, 14.
333
334
335
Compare Revelation 1:3; Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27.
336
Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, 37.
337
1 Corinthians 1:23.
338
1 Corinthians 1:26-28. Ta mh onta, literally, the things that are not, versus ta
onta, literally, the things that are.
332
52
Not many in this case evidently meant precious few. Early Roman critics
such as Celsus clearly considered gullibility and ignorance to be notable
Christian attributes, to believe without reason.339 In his biography of the
religious huckster Peregrinus, the satirist Lucian described the Christians as
idiwtaij anqrwpoij (iditais anthrpois), ill-informed men,340 impressionable
rubes eager to believe and easily misledHe does not scrupleto call the
Christians iditai, a word which was then applied by the philosophers to
those whom they regarded as incapable of elevated thought. 341 Lucian
mocked the half-baked philosophers drawn from cobblers and carpenters
(autoscedioi filosofoi ek skutotomwn h tektonwn)342 possibly a gibe aimed at
Jesus himself. Gathered in private homes, often supported by women, wool
carders and cobblers and fullers (skutotomouj kai knafeij) and the most uneducated and biggest gaggle of yokels343 constituted the Christian mob. In
essence, Christianity redefined truth. Or in the words of Charles Pierce, discussing the fundamentalist fascination with creationism, Fact is merely what
enough people believe, and truth lies only in how fervently they believe it.344
The house churches established by Paul can be characterized as a spirit-possession cult. Paul establishes communities of those possessed by the spirit of
Jesus.345 The worshippers and the attending spirits form a double assembly
346 Paul, addressing the Corinthians, declares, because you are zealous devotees of spirits (umeij epei zhlwtai este pneumatwn). 347 Regarding Pauls
version of Christianity, Ldemann observed, Its orientation is supernatural;
it calls for unquestionable subjection to authority and surrender to divine
guidance; its ultimate appeal is not to the intellect, but to the emotions; and
its final goal is to be seized by the Spirit. For this reason, spiritual enthusiasts
(pneumatics) are elevated high above people of a more everyday mind (psychics), because to them alone is disclosed the vision of the mysterious truth
which can never be grasped by reasonreligious enthusiasm had taken precedence over reason.348
It should be pointed out that Ldemann is using enthusiasm in its technical sense, not merely as a synonym for eagerness. The Greek enqousiasmoj
(enthousiasmos) referred to possession by a god, particularly by Dionysos, and

339

Lucian, On the Death of Peregrinus, 13.
341
Edwards, Christians, Gnostics and Philosophers in Late Antiquity, 95.
342
Lucian, The Double Indictment, 6.
343
Origen, quoting Celsus, Contra Celsum III, 55.
344
Pierce, Idiot America, 49.
345
Mount, Journal of Biblical Literature 124 (2005), 316.
346
Thee, Julius Africanus and the Early Christian View of Magic, 382.
347
1 Corinthians 12:3.
348
Ldemann, Paul: The Founder of Christianity, 128, 130.
340
53
basically meant frenzy. The enqousiasthj (enthousiasts) was accordingly a

worshipper in the throes of religious possession. Christianity, especially
when under Pauline influence, was, after all, deeply anti-intellectual and
passionately concerned to establish the rights of irrationality in controllable
form.349 As Driver noted in his discussion of the role of ritual, Jesus said
that the wind (spirit) blows where it will.350 So also the spirits summoned by
shamanism arrive when, where, and how they will...In the New Testament,
especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is portrayed more like a shaman than a priest. Probably the earliest Christian rituals were of the shamanic
type, occasions invoked the spirit of the crucified Jesus and became ecstatically possessed by him.351
It is clear that the Pauline Christians conflated the spirit of God with the
spirit of the risen JesusPaul and his companions traveled throughout the
region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from
preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border
of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow
them to.352 and the author of 1 Peter even attributes the predictions of the
Old Testament prophets to the spirit of Christ in them.353 A pagan entering a house church would encounter a pandemonium of the spirit possessedif the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and strangers or unbelievers enter, will they not say you are possessed (mainesqe)?354
Pauls Gentile converts would have been quite familiar with mania (mania),
frenzy, as a religious phenomenonthat religious trances and ecstasy were
the manifestations of possession by a god was one of wide currency in Greek
and Eastern religions. 355 Then the frenzy arrives (hdh h mania apikneetai)...356 The early Christian cult of possession had many points in common with other ecstatic religions. Dionysus, the Son of Zeus, was born from
the mortal woman Semele as Jesus, Son of God, was born from the mortal
woman Mary. Dionysus is borne to Earth in a fiery bolt of lightening
(astraphforw puri)357 much as Mary conceives because, The Holy Spirit

349
Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, 50.

John 3:8.
The word pneuma (pneuma), wind or spirit, is a double entendre: to pneuma opou
qelei pnei could be understood to mean the wind blows where it wants or personified, mean, the Spirit blows where he wants...
351
Driver, Liberating Rites, 74.
352
Acts 16:6-7, NIV. Compare Romans 8:9.
353
1 Peter 1:11.
354
The verbal form of mania (mania), frenzy or possession.
355
Esler, The First Christians in Their Social Worlds, 46.
356
Lucian, De Dea Syria, 51.
357
Euripedes, Bacchae, 3.
350
54
will come upon you,358 and the power of the Most High will overshadow
you.359 Dionysus exchanged [his] divine form for a mortal one (morfhn d
ameiyaj ek qeou brothsian)360 just as Jesus, who existed in the form of God
(oj en morfh qeou uparcwn), assumed human likeness and was found in the
appearance of a man (en omoiwmati anqrwpwn genomenoj kai schmati
eureqeij wj anqrwpoj).361 Euripedes Dionysus assumes human form, a grim
predecessor of Christ.362 It is worth pointing out that the double nature of
Jesus celebrated in Philippians almost certainly derives verbatim from an early
Christian doxology, a hymn that, with little theological modification, could
have been addressed to Dionysus or any one of several other Greco-Roman
deities.
Paul clearly attempted to rein in the cacophony of the jabbering Christians
The one speaking in tongues speaks not to men, but to God. No one understands for he is speaking mysteries by the spiritif anyone speaks in a tongue, do so two at a time, or three at most, and in turns363 Ancient authors
noted the correlation between mindlessness and spirit possession:
Whenever [the light of the mind] dims, ecstasy and possession naturally assail us, divine seizure and madness (katokwch te kai mania).
For whenever the light of God shines upon us, human light is extinguished and when the divine sun sets, the human dawns and rises.
This is what is apt to happen to the guild of the prophets. At the arrival of the divine spirit, our mind is evicted. When the spirit departs,
the wandering mind returns home, for it is well established that that
which is subject to death may not share a home with that which is
deathless. Therefore the eclipse of the power of reason and the darkness that envelops it begets ecstasy and inspired madness (ekstasin kai
qeoforhton manian egennhse).364
Though generally beneath the notice of the Roman social lite, the three
Roman writers who mention Christianity at the beginning of the second century agree in calling the new movement a superstitioThe superstitious person engaged in religious practices that neither honored the gods nor bene
358
The holy spirit will come upon you (epeleusetai epi se). The verb epercomai,
(eperchomai) is used in the papyri for magical attacks: defend me from all
troubles coming upon me... (epercomenou mou), Papyri Graecae Magicae, XXXVI,
176, for example.
359
Luke 1:35, NIV.
360
Euripedes, Bacchae, 4.
361
Philippians 2:6-8.
362
Rutherford, Classical Literature: A Concise History, 61.
363
1 Corinthians 14:2, 27.
364
Philo, Quis rerum divinarum heres, Philo, IV (Loeb), 264-265.
55
fitted men and women.365 Christians, on the other hand, saw their revelation
in a different light: It was a commonplace of Christian polemic that the
church had brought to the Roman world a wisdom and a moral code that
had previously been the fragile acquisition of, at best, a few great minds. In
the words of Augustine, in his City of God, any old woman, as a baptized
Christian, now knew more about the true nature of the invisible world of angels and demons than did Porphyry, the most learned of near-contemporary
philosophers.366
Wherever available, the data from the New Testament tend to support the
assessments of Roman critics. For example, Peter stays at the home of Simon
the tanner in his house by the sea.367 The shore was a nearly inevitable location for Simons enterprise given the need for water and the stench that accompanied the processing of hides. The Christian fullers (knafeuj) ridiculed
by Celsus were typically slaves employed in fulleries (fullonicae) who rhythmically stomped woolen clothing as it soaked in tubs of human and animal
urine that bleached the cloth and removed soilbacterial action on the nitrates in urine produces ammonia. The reek of such ancient laundries obliged
that they be located outside upmarket residential areas; the disastrous health
effects on the workers can easily be imagined.
Paul worked as a tentmaker as did his companions Aquila and Priscilla.368 Reflecting on early Christianitys ethic of poverty, Gager remarks, early
believers came from disadvantaged groups andin return they were rewarded with the promise that poverty, not wealth, was the key to the kingdom
wealthis rejected as a measure of human worth.369 Paul attests to the
relative destitution of the Corinthian Christians, to their utter poverty (h
kata baqouj ptwceia autwn) 370 ptwcoj (ptchos) means beggar. Jewish
Christians who continued to observe the Mosaic law were known as Ebionites371 from the Hebrew ~ynyba (ebyonim), poor or destitute. Given their belief
that they were living at the end of history,372 the Christians of the mother
church in Jerusalem sold their belongings and lived communally373 a factor

365
Ibid, 50, 60.

Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, 73-74.
367
Acts 9:43; 10:6, 32.
368
Acts 9:43. Compare 1 Corinthians 4:12: we work hard with our own hands.
369
Gager, Kingdom and Community, 24, 34.
A number of ethical maxims justifying poverty, possibly interpolated ex post
facto and attributed to Jesus (Gager, 9) can be cited: Mark 10:25, Matthew 5:3
(Blessed are you poor), James 5:1-3, etc.
370
2 Corinthians 8:2.
371
Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Christ are called Ebionites. Origen,
Contra Celsum II, 1.
372
Acts 1:6, 2:17-21.
373
Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-34.
366
56
that likely contributed to their destitution. During the career of Paul, the
Gentile house churches were collecting money for the poor among the holy
ones in Jerusalem.374 Paul implies that the pillars of the Jerusalem church
required only that we [Gentiles] remember the poor.375 Remembering the
poor meant that Paul spent as much of his time between 52-57 C.E. collecting funds from his churches in Asia for the saints back in the Jerusalem
mother church as he did preaching. 376 Indeed, he shamelessly used the
generosity of some to spur others to make ever-larger contributions.377
The low social status of the early Christians reflected a bitter reality of the ancient world. The social pyramid tapered much more steeply than we might
now imagine when first surveying the monuments and extent of the major
surviving cities. As pointed out by Lane Fox, specialized ability in a craft
was not a source of upward mobility since craftsmen were either slaves or
free men in competition with slave labor.378 Given the plight of the lower
class and of women whose ranks were thinned by exposure of female infants
and by death in childbirth, the empowerment promised by Christian preaching must have been intoxicating. Christian converts are Gods beloved,379
Gods children, 380 beloved children, 381 Gods chosen, 382 a chosen
race.383
There can be little doubt that elevation from societys dregs to Gods elect
encouraged a certain religious megalomania among believers, an attitude the
Roman authorities interpreted as obstinacy. Celsus ridiculed the Christians
egocentrism: God shows and proclaims everything to us beforehand, and He
has even deserted the whole world and the motion of the heavens, and
disregarded the vast earth to give attention to us alone; and He sends messengers to us alone and never stops sending them and seeking that we may be
with Him forever.384 Plotinus remarked on the conceit of Christians: A
common man (idiwthj anhr), if he hears, You are a child of God (Su ei qeou
paij) but the others you once admired are not [his] children, nor are the
objects of their veneration according to the tradition of their fathers; you are
even better than heaven despite having done nothing...385 Or as a much later

374
Romans 15:26.
Galatians 2:10.
376
377
2 Corinthians 8-9.
378
379
Romans 1:7, Jude 1:3.
380
Ephesians 1:5, Philippians 2:14-15, 1 John 3:2.
381
Ephesians 5:1.
382
Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 3:12.
383
1 Peter 2:9.
384
Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 199.
385
Plotinus, Against the Gnostics, Ennead II, 9.55.
375
57
critic phrased it, Life itself is a poor thing: an interval in which to prepare
for the hereafter or the comingor second comingof the Messiah. On the
other hand, as if by compensation, religion teaches people to be extremely
self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in
mind.386
Women featured prominently in the Gentile churches established by Paul,
although probably much less so in the Jerusalem church. Our sister Phoebe
is described as being a minister of the church (ousan diakonon thj ekklhsiaj)
in Cenchreae,387the participial construction should probably be taken to
mean serving [continuously] as a minister. The term diakonoj (diakonos),
from whence the English deacon, means servant or minister, a term Paul uses
to describe himself.388 Phoebe is also called a prostatij (prostatis),389 the feminine form of prostathj (prostats), a leader, presiding officer or guardian, patron. Her recognition by Paul almost certainly indicates that she served in
some official capacity.
Paul also mentions Andronicus and Junia, notable among the apostles
(epishmoi en toij apostoloij). It is not entirely clear in what sense Junia, a
woman, was notable or prominent among the apostlesthe precise connotation of epishmoj (epismos) is disputed and the term apostoloj (apostolos),
messenger or emissary, could be applied to people not numbered among the
traditional twelve apostles. Apollos was considered an apostle390 and Paul
refers to Epaphroditus specifically as as your apostle and minister (umwn de
apostolon kai leitourgon) to my needs.391 In any case, Epp (among others)
makes a strongly argued case that Junia was, in fact, considered an apostle by
the early church and that her status was subsequently suppressed.392
One of the first non-Christian mentions of Christianity, the letter of Pliny
the Younger,393 the governor of Pontus (111-113 C.E.), to the emperor Trajan, describes two female slaves (ancilla) as deacons or ministers (ministra). Commenting on how these deacons came to attention of the Roman
authorities, MacDonald notes, The fact that these women had a prominent
ministerial role in the Christian communitya ministry apparently not
hampered by their status as slaveswas in all likelihood a significant factor in

386
Hitchens, god is not Great, 74.

Romans 16:1.
388
1 Corinthians 3:5, 2 Corinthians 3:6, 6:4, 11:23.
389
Romans 16:2.
390
1 Corinthians 4:6, 9.
391
Philippians 2:25.
392
Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle.
393
Pliny, Letters, 10.96-97.
387
58
their visibility and subsequent arrest.394 Christianity, like the cult of Dionysus, proved attractive to sequestered women, but female participation in
both raised the suspicions of Roman authorities. Julian identified a second
role of women in the early Church in Antioch: every one of you allows his
wife to carry everything out of the house to the Galilaeans, and when your
wives feed the poor at your expense they inspire a great admiration godlessness in those who are in need.395 The women dispensed charity, bribing the
needy into accepting the Christian faith.
Jesus radical apocalypticism reversed social boundariesthe tax collectors
and whores would enter the kingdom ahead of the conventionally religious.396 However, the initial egalitarianism was contingent on the imminence
of the End, and when the Final Judgment failed to materialize, the Christians
quickly reverted to the Greco-Roman status quo. By the end of the 1st century the new libertywhere the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,397
and Christ has set us free,398has been replaced by the traditional stricturesI do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a
man399 and the women must keep silent in the churches.400 Jane Schaberg,
a feminist New Testament scholar, has suggested that men in the early
church were discomfited by women in authority, particularly if that authority
had been passed down from woman to woman.401
The suppression of female participation likely served an apologetic purpose as
well. Female believers were expressly targeted as unreliable witnesses, possessed, fanatical, sexual libertines, domineering of or rebellious toward their
husbands, and, in the familiar rhetoric of Celsus, hysterical.402 Evidence
from the extra-canonical gospels suggests that there were some Christians
who were following the [Gospel of Mary] and took their apostolic authority
from MaryMary is portrayed in many of these newly discovered texts as an
important disciple of Jesus, and even as an apostle403

394
MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, 52.

These references hardly exhaust the evidence for the prominence of women in the
early churches. See, for example, Acts 16:1, 12-15, 40; 17:4, 12; 18:2-3; 24:24;
25:13; 26:30; Philippians 4:2-3; Colossians 4:15; 1 Corinthians 1:11; 16:19; 2
John.
395
Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, II, 491 (Misopogon, 363, A).
396
Matthew 21:31.
397
2 Corinthians 3:17, Romans 8:1-4, John 8:36.
398
Galatians 5:1.
399
1 Timothy 2:12.
400
401
Schaberg, Voices of Gnosticism, 170.
402
403
King, Voices of Gnosticism, 157.
59
Classical scholar Catherine Kroeger addresses the issue from the vantage
point of the socio-religious world of [Greco-Roman] women.404 It is particularly relevant to note that Pauls congregations in Asia Minor, particularly
in Antioch, lay in the very heart of Anatolia, where religious expression
particularly that of womentook on an extremely noisy, wild and orgiastic
aspectAncient women, as disadvantaged, neglected and repressed members
of society, often turned to religion as a release and escape. In it they vented
violent emotions that were not able to be expressed through any other
channelNeither is it surprising that women who lacked any sort of formal
education flocked to cults that were despised by the intellectuals.405 In Greek
sacrificial rites animals were killed to the piercing cry of female spectators.406
It is almost treacherous that when in 1 Corinthians Paul repeats the
baptismal tradition of Gal. 3:28 he omits the pair male-female.
Now it simply runs: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one
bodyJews or Greeks, slaves or freeand all were made to drink of
the same Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13).407
The prominence of women in the ecstatic cult of Dionysus is well known,
but the similarities between spirit possession during Bacchic and Christian
ritual are worth pointing outthose similarities extended beyond the mere
mechanics of ecstatic ritual to the theology of both religions. Euripedes
Bacchae is our earliest substantial witness408 to the mania that accompanied
Dionysian ritual; 1 Corinthians is the earliest witness to Christian spirit possession. Just as Christians gathered for worship in an ekklhsia, (ekklsia),
assembly or congregation, worshippers of Bacchus gathered in a qiasoj, (thiasos), a guild or company.
As previously mentioned, it was said of Dionysus, I have exchanged my divine form (morfhn...ek qeou) for a mortal oneand changed my appearance to
that of a man (eij androj fusin).409 Of Jesus it was said, Who existing in the
form of God (en morfh qeou)emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
born in the likeness of men (en omoiwmati anqrwpwn).410 As noted by Julian,
the healing god Asclepius also appeared in the form of a man (en anqrwpou
morfh). 411 Dionysus is the son of god (paidaqeou). 412 Jesus is the son of

404
Kroeger, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 30/1, 25.

Ibid, 26, 28.
406
407
Ldeman, Paul, 146.
408
Kovacs, Euripides, 2.
409
Bacchae, 4, 54.
410
Philippians 2:6-7.
411
Julian, Against the Galileans, 200A.
405
60
God.413 The maenads of Dionysus take up snakes.414 Early Christians were

promised they would pick up serpents without harm.415 Bacchus causes the
ground to run with wine (rei d oinw).416 Jesus turns water into wine as the
first of his miracles. 417 Dionysus enemies berate him, claiming, some
stranger has come in, a sorcerer, a spell caster (tij eiselhluqe xenoj, gohj
epwdoj). 418 Jesus opponents accused him of black magic, an accusation
which stands as one of the most firmly established facts of the Gospel Tradition.419 Dionysus opponents consider him a new divinity.420 Jesus introduces a new teaching, with authority.421 Of Dionysus it is said, The god is
a prophet (mantij d o daimwn)he makes those possessed foretell the future.422 Jesus is also a god423 as well as a prophet.424 Phillip the evangelist had
no less than four virgin daughters who prophesied.425 Without endlessly prolonging this list of comparisons, it might fairly be asked why women with
little education, once enslaved to those who by nature are not gods,426
women who regarded an altered state of consciousness as a gift from Dionysos,427 would not naturally bring their understanding of religious ecstasy
to their new faith, particularly given the similarities between Christ and Bacchus.
After noting the likelihood that woman were a clear majority in the churches of the third century, Lane Fox goes on to observe, It was a well-established theme in [the writings of pagan moralists] that strange teachings appealed
to leisured women who had just enough culture to admire it and not enough

412
Bacchae, 84.
John 3:16.
414
Bacchae, 103-104.
415
Mark 16:18.
416
Bacchae, 142.
Compare the fountains of milk and wine that were supposedly produced
during bacchic rites. (Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius VI, 11).
417
John 2:9-11.
418
Bacchae, 233-234.
419
Plumer, Biblica 78 (1997), 357.
Compare Mark 3:22, for example.
420
Bacchae, 273.
421
Mark 1:27.
422
Bacchae, 300-301.
423
John 1:1, 20:28.
424
Matthew 21:11.
425
Acts 21:9.
426
Galatians 4:8.
427
Kroeger, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 33.
413
61
education to exclude it.428 Ardent credulity was presented as a weakness

characteristic of the [female] sex, pagan or Christian.429
Pauls encounter with debaters in Athens430 didnt go well. His interlocutors
dismissed him as a spermologoj (spermologos),431 a intellectual bricoleur who
gathers up scraps of information, like a bird randomly gathering seeds, and
fudges the results together without much regard for coherence. In Pauls letters we are reading an author who is capable of alluding at second hand to
themes of the pagan schools but who remains essentially an outsider with no
grasp of their literary style or contenthe has no great acquaintance with
literary style, and when he tries to give a speech to a trained pagan orator, he
falls away into clumsiness after a few good phrases.432 Aware of the shallowness of Christian erudition, Julian shot back, If the reading of your own
scriptures is sufficient for you, why do you nibble at the learning of the Hellenes?433
Christianity reflected a crucial difference between Greco-Roman and Jewish
religion:
Among the Jews, in the century or so before Jesus, [enthusiasts and
keen believers] played havoc with authors meanings. They took
their texts word by word and read them for the oddest senses; they
over-interpreted the words, ignored their context and general gist
...Nobody put critical, historical questions to the texts which they had
inherited, and, as a result, they raped them...They also avoided the
fundamental question: how much, if anything, was true?...Even the
most religious types of [Greek] philosophy raised basic questions...As
a result, in the first century BC in Athens and Rome, thinking about
religion usually made people less religious; among Jews, however,
the more you thought about religion, the more religious you became. The major reason for this difference was the Jews possession
of scripture. They set the agenda for thought, absorbed it and were
never questioned critically...The people who have been described as
obsessed with history had not a single historian among them with a
critical idea of evidence.434

428

MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (AD 100-400), 39.
430
Acts 17:16-34.
431
Acts 17:18.
432
433
434
Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 107-108, 116.
429
62
Christianitys lowly origins, lack of successful engagement with the learned

culture of its day, and its appeal to emotion and blind faithI do not know
in what rank to place [a Christian believer] who has need of arguments written in books435set Christianity on an anti-intellectual trajectory. The absurdity of Christian beliefs became an object of derision to their Roman critics. Porphyry ridiculed the teaching of the resurrection of the body:
Or let us take an example to test this little doctrine [the resurrection
of the dead], so innocently put forward [by the Christians]: A certain man was shipwrecked. The hungry fish had his body for a feast.
But the fish were caught and cooked and eaten by some fishermen,
who had the misfortune to run afoul of some ravenous dogs, who
killed and ate them. When the dogs died, the vultures came and
made a feast of them. How will the body of the shipwrecked man be
reassembled, considering it has been absorbed by other bodies of various kinds?436
Regarding the connection between 18th century revivalist jabberwocky and
disdain for education, Hofstadter remarked of backcountry American Protestantism:
it became more primitive, more emotional, more given to ecstatic manifestations. The preachers were less educated, less inclined
to restrain physical responses to an instrument of conversion; and the
groveling, jerkings, howlings, and barkings increasedOf the revivalist or New Light faction among the Baptists [Woodmason] reported a
few years later that they were altogether opposed to authority and,
having made successful assaults upon the established church, were
trying to destroy the state.437
Modern fundamentalist Christianity continues the ancient legacy of hostility
to intellectual culture and personal freedom, a blind obedience to a male
hierarchy that often claims to speak for God, intolerance toward nonbelievers, and a disdain for rational, intellectual inquiry.438
Celsus too zeroed in on the irrational, emotionally driven nature of Christian
belief:
While [Jesus] was alive he did not help himself, but after death he
rose again and showed the marks of his punishment and how his

435

437
Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 74-75.
438
Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, 13.
436
63
hands had been pierced. But who saw this? A hysterical female (gunh
paroistroj), as you say, and perhaps some other one of those who
were deluded by the same sorcery (thj authj gohteiaj), who either
dreamt in a certain state of mind and through wishful thinking had a
hallucination (fantasiwqeij) due to some mistaken notion (an experience which has happened to thousands), or, which is more likely,
wanted to impress the others by telling this fantastic tale, and so by
this cock-and-bull story to provide a chance for other beggars.439
Celsus raises several points that deserve some comment. By describing the
woman who was the primary witnesses of Jesus resurrection as hysterical (paroistroj, paroistros), Celsus at least implies a sexual component to her attraction. A related verb, oistraw (oistra), is used by Lucian to describe a man
turned to a donkey by magic as acting, like a man mad with lust (oistroumenoj) for women and boys.440 The hysterical female, Mary Magdalene, fits
the image of the woman susceptible to bizarre religious impulses that emerges
from ancient literature. Yet, she is by no means a silent victim of Jesus magic. Although she is deluded by sorcery, Mary Magdalene also becomes one
of the main perpetrators. She is an active witness, a creator of the Christian
belief in the resurrection.441
The susceptibility of women to transports of religious delusion would be
familiar to any educated person of the eraI have seen the wild bacchant
women, who ran from this city in madness (oistroisi)...442 It may be that
Celsus said more about Mary Magdalene and women followers of Jesus than
Origen discloses. For example, one wonders if Celsus had discussed Mary as
on from whom seven demons had gone out (Luke 8.2)...It is easy to imagine
that such possessed women became obvious targets for Celsus criticism, and
that he portrayed them as willing compatriots for a sorcerer who cast out
demons by the prince of demons.443
It may be pointed out, with no small degree of amusement, that Celsus
charges that women were congenitally prone to foolishness simply repeated
the churchs own estimation of its female membership: For among them are
those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with

439
Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, 109 (II, 55).

Lucian, The Ass, 33.
441
MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, 124.
442
Euripides, The Bacchae, 665.
443
MacDonald, 109.
The reference is to Matthew 12:24 (NIV): But when the Pharisees heard this,
they said, It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives
out demons.
440
64
sins and led astray by various passions...444 No widow may be put on the
list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is
well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints, helping those in trouble and devoting
herself to all kinds of good deeds. As for younger widows, do not put them
on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to
Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of
being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.
So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their
homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact
already turned away to follow Satan.445 ...pagan opinion concerning the vulnerability of women to conversion to Christianity is reworked within a
church context into the vulnerability of women to allegedly heretical teaching.446
In addition to its appeal to the credulous, other elements of Christian preaching struck its critics as counterintuitive, in particular the claim to be a universal, catholic, religion, a claim that provoked this pungent rebuttal:
But that from the beginning God cared only for the Jews and that he
chose them out as his portion has been clearly asserted not only by
Moses and Jesus but by Paul as well...Therefore it is fair to ask of Paul
why God, if he was not the God of the Jews only but also of the
Gentiles, sent the blessed gift of prophecy to the Jews in abundance
and gave them Moses and the oil of anointing, and the prophets and
the law...and finally God sent unto them Jesus also, but unto us no
prophet, no oil of anointing, no teacher, no herald to announce his
love for man which should one day, though late, reach even unto us
also. Nay he even looked on for myriads, or if you prefer, for thousands of years, while men in extreme ignorance served idols, as you
call them...save only that little tribe which less than two thousand
years before had settled in one part of Palestine. For if he is the God
of all of us alike, and the creator of all, why did he neglect us?447
A further difficulty is the apparent tendency of the Almighty to reveal himself only to unlettered and quasi-historical individuals, in regions of Middle

444
2 Timothy 3:6, ESV.

1 Timothy 5:9-15, NIV.
446
MacDonald, 63.
447
Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, III, 343-345 (Against the Galileans,
106C-D).
445
65
Eastern wasteland that were long the home of idol worship and superstition,
and in many instances already littered with existing prophecies.448
Porphyry, ever alert to the incongruous and the bizarre in Christian preaching, asked why Jesus had not appeared post mortem to Pilate, to Herod, or to
the Jewish authorities who condemned him, given that he had promised the
High Priest that he would see the Son of Man coming with glory.449 Instead
he appeared to Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who came from some horrible
little village and has been possessed by seven demons, and another Mary,
equally unknown, probably a peasant woman, and others who were of no account...Had he shown himself to people who could be believed, then others
would have believed through them...450
God, who according to the Christians loved the world so much he gave up
his only Son,451 was obviously content to let humanity fester for untold millennia in religious error, to live without hope452 in spiritual darkness, reserving his boundless love for a tiny portion of humanity, revealing his divine will
selectively to the inhabitants of a provincial boondocks. But now, once for
all time, [Jesus] has appeared at the end of the age to remove sin by his own
death as a sacrifice.453 Christianitys claim of universality was, by any rational
reckoning, simply absurd.
The new spiritual regime and its revelation of transcendent morality did not
do much to address evil in practice either. The emerging Church commanded believers, Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and
with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.454 That slaves might
very well be prostituted or even murdered by their masters appears to have
been of little concern and it would seem, based on the clear teaching of the
New Testament, that the American South prior to the Civil War represented
a culture completely in step with the values of the early church. That is, at
least, what the Southern slaveholders vigorously argued

448

Mark 14:62; Matthew 26:64.
450
451
John 3:16.
452
453
Hebrews 9:26.
454
Ephesians 6:5. Compare Colossians 3:22, 1 Peter 2:18.
449
66
Pick up your cot and walkChristianity

is basically magic.
The gospel of Mark, widely regarded as the earliest of the gospels, records this
remarkable account of a miraculous healing:
And when he came back to Capernaum after some days, it was
reported, Hes at home, and so many gathered that it was no longer
possible to get to the door and he spoke the word to them. And four
men come to him bearing a paralytic, but unable to approach him
because of the crowd, they made a hole in the roof where he was and
after digging through [the roof], they lower the cot where the paralytic lay. And Jesus, seeing their faith, says to the paralytic, Child,
your sins are forgiven.
But there were some of the scribes sitting there and they are questioning in their hearts, Why is this man speaking this way? Hes
blaspheming! Who is able to forgive sins except God alone? And at
once perceiving in his spirit that they are reasoning this way in themselves, Jesus says to them, What things are you pondering in your
hearts? What is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven,
or to say, Stand, pick up your cot and walk? But in order that you
may know that the son of man455 has the authority to forgive sins on
the earth, he says to the paralytic, I tell you, Stand, take your cot
(aron ton krabatton) and go home. And he stood up and immediately (euquj) took his cot and walked out in front of everyone so that
they are all astonished and praising God saying, We never saw
anything like this!456
The story is repeated by Matthew,457 who characteristically omits the more
dramatic details such as breaking a hole in the roof, and by Luke.458 John

455
Assuming Marks original source was Aramaic, the expression son of man bar
enosh (vna rb) in Mark 2:10 possibly functioned as no more than a common
circumlocution meaning, I have the power to forgive sins. Son of man (o uioj
tou anqrwpou) became an apocalyptic christological title due to the Christian
interprettation of the Greek version of Daniel 7:13-14. It is debatable whether
Jesus would have understood son of man as anything more than a simple reference to an individual.
456
Mark 2:1-12.
To the extent possible my translation preserves the tenses and phrasing of the
original Greek.
457
Matthew 9:2-7.
458
Luke 5:17-26.
67
recounts a similar Stand up, take your cot and walk healing at the pool of
Bethzatha.459
Pick up your cot and walkfollowed by immediate complianceappears
to have become a trademark of Christian miracle. Peter commands Aeneas, a
paralytic who has lain for eight years on a cot (epi krabattou), Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you! Arise and make your bed! and immediately he stood
up (euqewj anesth).460 Other, very similar, accounts are found: a man, lame
from birth, who must be carried to the gate of the Temple, is healed by
Peters command to stand up and walk.461 A similar miracle performed by
Paul is also reported.462 It is unlikely that any Roman conversant with the
Christian movement could remain unaware of such popular stories.
Lucian soon turned the trope to comic effect in his story of the snake blaster
in The Lover of Lies. A certain unlucky Midas, a vinedresser, is bitten by a
viper and carried in extremis from the field on a stretcher (epi skimpodoj).
At the suggestion of a bystander, a Babyloniana widely used synonym for
magicianis hastily summoned and he raised (anesthse) Midas with some
spell (epwdh tini)Midas himself, picking up the stretcher (aramenoj ton
skimpodoa) on which he had been carried, immediately heads back to work
on the farm for of such power was the spell (h epwdh).463 In a thorough analysis of Lucians Lover of Lies, Ogden proposed, that Lucian may be consciously playing with Christian imagerywhich graphically expresses the
speed and completeness of the recovery and noted that no pre-Christian examples of the [pick-up-your-cot-and-walk] motif are known.464 In his attempted rebuttal of Celsus, Origen said of Christian doctrines, they are just
like spells (wsperei epwdaj) that have been filled with power (dunamewj peplhrwmenouj).465 We will get to the significance of the word dunamij (dunamis),
power, in a bit. Lucian appears to have been quite familiar with Christian
preaching and may have read at least one of the gospels. It is easy to suppose
that he would find the pick up your cot and walk tales an irresistible target
for parody.

459
John 5:2-11.
Acts 9:32-34.
The similarities in vocabulary might suggest to a skeptic that the account is the reworking of the familiar gospel story.
461
Acts 3:2,6.
462
Acts 14:8-10.
463
Lucian, The Lover of Lies, 11.
464
Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerers Apprentice, 67.
465
Origen, Contra Celsum III, 68.
460
68
That Lucian used Christian miracle stories as fodder for satire is further suggested by his references to walking on water and raising rotting corpses.466
However, Lucian likely had Jesus specifically in mind when he composed his
story of the Syrian.
Everyone knows of the Syrian from Palestine, the master of his art,
and how he receives many struck down by the moon (katapiptontaj
proj thn selhnhn), 467 frothing at the mouth (afrou pimplamenouj to
stoma)468 and eyes rolling, and he sets them aright and sends them
away sound of mindstanding beside them as they lie there, he asks
from whence [the demons] have come into the body. The madman
himself is silent, but the demon answers in Greek or a barbarian [tongue]469 from whence and how he entered the man. By adjuring, or if
the spirit does not obey, threatening,470 he drives the demon out.471
The Syrian from Palestine is clearly a Jewish exorcist472 and given the several close parallels in vocabulary and imagery between Lucians story and the
stories in the gospels, it is no great leap of the imagination to suppose Lucian
had Jesus specifically in mind, a possibility conceded by Morton Smith: It is
possible that this parody was inspired by some gospel story like Mk 5.1-19
473 Jesus had such fame as an exorcist that other exorcists used his name
both during his lifetime474 and after his death.475 Gager comments on the appearance of Jesus, who was known independently in Jewish tradition as a
sorcerer, that is, as one who exercised power over spirits,476 in ancient spells.
Christians of Origens era bragged about the power (dunamij, dunamis) of Jesus name: Of course the name of Jesus is of such great power (dunatai)
against the demons that sometimes even unworthy men accomplish [exorcisms] by pronouncing his name just as Jesus taught when he said, Many will

466

Compare Matthew 14:22-23, John 11:39.
467
Compare Matthew 4:24: possessed by demons and moonstruck (daimonizomenouj
kai selnhiazomenouj) and Matthew 17:15: have mercy on my son because
hes moonstruck (selhniazetai) and suffers terribly, for he often falls into the fire
(piptei eij to pur) and often into the water
468
Compare Mark 9:18: the spiritthrows him down and he foams (afrizei) [at
the mouth] and grinds his teeth
469
Compare Mark 5:9: Our name is Legion
470
Compare Mark 5:7: I beg you, do not torture me
471
472
Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerers Apprentice, 133.
473
Smith, Jesus the Magician, 57.
474
Mark 9:38-40.
475
Acts 9:13.
476
Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, 230.
69
say to me in that day, we cast out demons in your name and performed works
of power (dunameij epoihsamen)477 Chadwick noted that narratives from
the gospels are found used as spells in the magical papyri.478
Celsus clearly regarded Jesus as a magician: After being brought up in obscurity he hired himself out in Egypt and having become proficient in certain magical arts (dunamewn tinwn), he made his way back and on account of
those powers proclaimed himself a god.479 Celsus concluded that Jesus was
merely some worthless sorcerer, hated by God (qeomisouj hn tinoj kai mocqhrou gohtoj), and claimed that he has seen among certain [Christian] elders
who were of our opinion books containing barbarous names of demons (biblia
barbara daimonwn) and magical formulas (terateiaj).480 Those who accused Jesus of being a magician (they were not few among the pagans) argued
that he, after all, had spent part of his youth in the homeland of magic, after
the escape from Palestine...481
Celsus is the first critic to call Jesus a magician and charge the Christians
with practicing magic. It may be that this view was already adumbrated in
Suetonius, who spoke of Christianity as a new and criminal (maleficus)
superstition. The term maleficus can mean magical, and used as a noun it
designated a magician. If so, Suetonius foreshadows what later became a
common charge.482 Flint notes magic was linked with mystery and secrecy
...and secrecy with almost certain treason. Magic, accordingly, came increasingly to be represented by the word maleficum.483 The Theodosian Code, a
compilation of laws published in 439, declared all forms of divination illegal.
Morton Smith on magic in the New Testament: Unfortunately for wouldbe apologists, not only the minor traits of the Gospel stories, but also the essential content of most of them come from the world of magic. Smith then
lists the parallels between the stories of the gospels and the spells of ancient
magical texts: (1) the power to make anyone he wanted follow him, (2-3)
exorcism, including exorcism at a distance, remote control of spirits, and
the power to order them about, (4) miraculous cures, (5) stilling storms, (6)
raising the dead, (7) giving his disciples power over demons, (8) miraculous

477

Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, 10 (footnote 1).
479
Origen, Contra Celsum I, 38; VI, 40.
Chadwicks translation, which I have followed with minor revisions, is probably
correct to render terateiaj as magical formulas. The word group basically refers to prodigies of nature, and could be read as simply, fairy tales.
480
Ibid, I, 71.
481
Graf, Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, 94-95.
482
483
Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, 17.
478
70
provision of food, (9) walking on water, (10) miraculous escapes (his body
could not be seized), (11) making himself invisible, (12) possession of the
keys of the kingdom, (13) foreknowledge, including foreknowledge of his
own fate...of the disasters coming on cities, (14) knowledge of others
thoughts, (15) metamorphosis, (16) revealing supernatural beings to his disciples, (17) prescribing reforms of temple practices, (18) introducing a new
rite, (19) claiming to be united with his disciples, so that he is in them and
they in him, (20) claiming to be a god or son of a god, and then concludes,
This list by no means exhausts the material. There are many other traits in
the Gospels picture of Jesusparticularly, but by no means exclusively, in
the Johannine picturewhich are common in magical material...the stories
of the Gospels are mostly stories about things a magician would do. They are
not mostly stories about things the Messiah would do. (Who ever heard of
the Messiahs being an exorcistlet alone being eaten?) 484 On the other
hand, the healing god Asclepius, like Jesus, cures blindness, dumbness, paralysis, lameness...[but] we rarely hear of him casting out devils, since for the
most part these did not trouble the classical imagination.485
The findings of many other modern scholars486 support Celsus claim: the
powers and authority Jesus claimed derived not from the main bodies of
power of his timethe Temple, the priesthood, even the Torah and its
studybut from the charismatic fringe. Leaders who emerged from this
fringe claimed authority through direct contact with supernatural powers
rather than through exalted birth or knowledge of scriptures.487 The spread
of Christianity came to depend largely on widely disseminated reports of
miracles that were performed either by Jesus himself or in Jesus name.488
The title magician is not used here [of Jesus] as a pejorative word but describes one who can make divine power present directly through personal
miracle rather than indirectly through communal ritual...if, in the end, the title
magician offends, simply substitute thaumaturge, miracle worker, charisma
484
Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, 224-227.

For the sake of space and simplicity I have omitted the scores of parallels Smith
produces in his text.
485
Garland, The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, 81.
486
Such as Hull, Hellenistic Magic and the Synoptic Tradition (1974), Smith, Jesus the
Magician (1978), Arnold, Ephesians: Power and Magic (1989), Klauck, Magic and
Paganism in Early Christianity (1996), Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (2001), Strelan, Strange Acts: Studies in the Cultural
World of the Acts of the Apostles (2004), Aune, Apocalypticism, Prophecy, and Magic
in Early Christianity (2006), Thomas, Magical Motifs in the Book of Revelation
(2010), Conner, Magic in the New Testament (2010), Jacobus, et al., Studies on
Magic and Divination in the Biblical World (2013), Conner, Magic in Christianity (2014), to name but a few of the book length works.
487
Ilan, The Beginnings of Christianity, 172.
488
Garland, The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, 89.
71
tic, holy one, or whatever pleases, but know that we speak of exactly the same
activity in any case...489
One of the greatest figures of antiquity, a man of incalculable influence on the thought and history of the western world, himself claimed to be possessed by, and identified with, the spirit of an executed
criminal, and to do whatever he did by the power of this indwelling
spirit. By its power he could even hand over his opponents to Satan.
This man and his claims are known from his own correspondence
he is Saint Paul, who asserted, I live no longer I, but Christ lives in
me (Gal. 2.20) and I dare speak of nothing save those things which
Christ has done through me, by word and deed, by the power of signs
and miracles, by the power of (his) spirit, to make the gentiles obedient (Rom. 15.19). He wrote the Corinthians about a member of
their church that, Being absent in body, but present in spirit, I have
already judged (the offender)...uniting you and my spirit with the
power of our Lord Jesus, to give this fellow over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh (1 Cor. 5.3ff).490
Irenaeus and other early writers accused their Christian opponents of magical
practice: The mystic priests of [the Simonians] live licentious lives and practice magic, each one in whatever way he can. They make use of exorcisms
and incantations, love potions too and philters, and the so-called familiars
and dream-senders. They diligently practice whatever other magic arts there
may be[the Carpocratians], too, practice magic and make use of incantations, philtres, spells, familiars, dream-senders, and the rest of the evil magic.491 In a discussion that documents the similarities between Christian rite
and magical practice, Benko concluded, that too often Christian authors
talked like magicians; they boasted of their ability to summon powers from
another world...After the patristic period we find the church increasingly absorbed and sanctified pagan magical practices; the veneration of relics and the
use of incense, charms, and bells were integrated into the life of the
church.492
Perhaps no single text better captures the fuzzy boundary between Christian
sacrament and magic than Ignatius well-known reference to the bread of the
Eucharist as the medicine (farmakon) of immortality, the antidote (antidotoj)
that [we] not die, but live forever in Jesus Christ.493 The term farmakon
(pharmakon) is a loaded word; it could mean either remedy or poison, but re
489
Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 138.

Smith, Jesus the Magician, 35.
491
Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, I, 23.4; I, 25.3.
492
Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, 131-132.
493
Ignatius, Ephesians 20.
490
72
tained a strong connotation of malevolent sorcery; the related term farmakeuj (pharmakeus) means poisoner or sorcerer, and farmakeia (pharmakeia),
the obvious source of our word pharmacy, refers to the compounding of potions, including abortifacients, and the casting of spells. The magical papyri
include a spell that begins, I am Thoth, the Discoverer and Patron of spells
and writing (farmakwn kai grammatwn).494
The writings of Romans contained lurid stories of witcheswitchcraft gone
horribly wrong is the subject of the Metamorphosis, our only complete novel
from the eraand Lucans Erictho is possibly the greatest figure of horror in
all of ancient literature. Erictho frequents battlegrounds and scenes of execution, grubbing for body parts to use in malicious magic, she mangled bodies
as they hung, scraped clean the crosses...she has stolen the iron [nails] driven
into hands...and from a dying boy cuts off a lock of hair.495 In The Lover of
Lies, Lucian refers to the magical powers crucifixion nails possessed: the
Arab gave me the ring made of iron from crosses and taught me the spell of
many names (thn epwdhn edidaxen thn poluwnumon).496 It is noteworthy that
magicians used the name of Jesus to conjure with both before497 and after his
death.498
How then were Romans to construe Christians nighttime celebration of the
Eucharist when they ate the flesh and drank the blood of Jesus? That the
Church had come identify Jesus as (a) God is clear. The gospel of John499
uses qeoj (theos), god, of the pre-incarnation Christ and Titus, likely written
in the early 2nd century, speaks of the glory of our great God and Savior (tou
megalou qeou kai swthroj), Jesus Christ.500
Ignatius, who died in the early 2nd century, clearly considered Jesus to have
been God physically, although his metaphysics is murkyThere is one physician, fleshly and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten, God in man (en anqrwpw qeoj)...[son] of Mary and [son] of God.501 For Ignatius, Jesus divinity was corporealFor our God (qeoj hmwn), Jesus Christ, conceived by Mary
...502and Christians are revitalized by the blood of God (en aimati qeou).503

494
Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die Griechischen Zauberpapyri, I, 190 (V,

249).
495
Lucan, Bellum Civile VI, 544, 546, 563.
Lucans poem is based on the battle of Pharsalus between Julius Caesar and
Pompey in 48 B.C.E.
496
497
Mark 9:38.
498
Acts 19:13-14.
499
John 1:1.
500
Titus 2:13.
501
Ignatius, Ephesians 7:2.
502
73
Besides asserting that God had blood, Ignatius believed that Jesus also truly
raised himself (kai alhqwj anesthsen eauton)504 from the dead. True Christians therefore confessed, that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior (thn eucaristian sarka einai tou swthroj hmwn) Jesus Christ 505 such language
offered Roman critics an easy charge: Christians confessed to eating the flesh
and drinking the blood of a crucified man who they imagined was God.
Christiansjust as if you were nailed to the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ,506were admonished to keep one Eucharist, one flesh of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and one cup with respect to the unity with his blood, one altar
...507 Were it not for magical thinking it would be difficult to make sense of
the representations which people ascribe to their participation even in the
rituals of doctrinarian modes of religion such as, for example, the Eucharist
of the Roman Catholic mass or the Lords Supper as celebrated in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Denmark.508
Small wonder that they were accused of cannibalism,509 a charge that highlighted the perception of Christians as intensely antisocial. McGown, in an
extensive discussion, concludes that while the correspondence of eucharistic
imagery with flesh and blood cannot be ruled out as a factor in the accusation [of cannibalism], it is difficult to demonstrate, but concedes that despite the secondary importance of the flesh and blood symbolism, the ritual
practice of early Christians may indeed have been of primary importance in
fitting them for the allegations.510 In any case, it is clear that the hoi polloi
considered both the cross and Eucharist magical; the Host was buried with
the dead, taken as a test of innocence or guilt, and used as an amulet or
protective talisman.511
Christianitys emphasis on death soon turned into something akin to necrophilia; the Christian cult of saints rapidly came to involve the digging up,
the moving, the dismembermentquite apart from much avid touching and
kissingof the bones of the dead...[Lucilla] had owned the bone of a martyr,
and had been in the habit of kissing it before she took the Eucharist.512 The
earliest record of Christians raiding the sites of executions to collect relics
comes from the Martyrdom of Polycarp (mid-2nd century): So [after his body

503
504
Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 2:1.

506
507
Ignatius, Philadelphians 4:1.
508
Petersen, Studies on Magic and Divination in the Biblical World, 198.
509
Origen, Contra Celsum VI, 27.
510
McGowan, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2/3 (1994), 422, 438.
511
Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, 178, 214, 283, 285.
512
Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 4, 34.
505
74
had been burned] we collected his bones, more valuable than the most precious stones, more excellent than gold, and put them aside for ourselves in a
suitable place.513 The collection of relics from the ashes Polycarp mirrors a
similar salvage operation directed toward the remains of Peregrinus whose
disciples hurried to see the actual spot and lay hold of some remains [left] by
the fire (ti leiyanon katalambanein tou pupoj).514 The only other figures in
the ancient world known to have collected body parts are necromancers and
witches.
Julian alluded to the practice of building churches over the tombs of the martyrs: pulling down the temples, they rebuilt tombs (mnhmata) [on sites] old
and new.515 Aggrieved worshippers of the traditional gods sometimes gave tit
for tat, retaliating in kind against Christian vandalism of sacred sitesDid
those citizens of Emesa long for Christ who set fire to the tombs (toij tafoij)
of the Galilaeans?516 the people of Emesa burned the churches and converted the only one they spared into a temple of Dionysus. Eunapius echoed
Julians complaint: [Antoninus] had foretold to all that the temples would
become tombs (ta iera tafouj genhsesqai).517 Regarding the despoliation of
the Great Church in Alexandria, a former temple, Haas remarks, The
memory of the [Great Churchs] former status as one of the citys preeminent
pagan sanctuaries was fresh in the minds of Alexandrian pagans, and it
evidently rankled to see this sacred precinct employed in the worship of a
condemned Galilean criminal. It was a natural target of their indignation.518
Julian obviously regarded the churches as nothing more than charnel houses
polluted by the remains of martyrs. The full weight of [Julians] religious abhorrence comes to bear on the relation between the living and the corpses of
the dead.519 To that ancient corpse [of Jesus] you bring in addition the
dead newly sacrificed. Who would not be disgusted? You have filled the
whole world with graves and tombs and yet nowhere is it found [written]
that you must loiter among the tombs and pay them respects.520 After citing
Jesus words to the PhariseesYou are like whitewashed tombs which on
the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and
all uncleanness,521 Julian, who knew his scriptures, made the connection
between graves and sorcery: Why do you frequent the tombs? Do you want

513
Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers, II, (The Martyrdom of Polycarp, XVIII, 2).

Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus, 39.
515
Julian, Orations, VII, 229C.
516
Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, II, 475 (Misopogon, 357C).
517
Wright, Lives of the Philosophers, 425.
518
Haas, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 32/3 (1991), 286.
519
Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 7.
520
Julian, Against the Galileans, 335B-335C.
521
Matthew 23:27, NASB.
514
75
to hear the reason? It is not I, but the prophet Isaiah who says, They sleep
among the tombs and in caves [to receive] oracles in dreams (koimwntai di
enupnia).522 You see then how ancient among the Jews was this work of magical art (thj magganeiaj), to sleep among tombs for the sake of dream visions
...[the apostles] performed their magical arts more skillfully than you and
publicly displayed (apodeixai dhmosia)...these disgusting works of magic (thj
magganeiaj tauthj)...You, though, practice what God from the very beginning abhorred...523 Julians allusion to the apostles as powerful magicians
whose arts were publicly displayed (apodeixai dhmosia) is nearly a quotation
of the boastful claim of Paul: My message and my preaching were not with
wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration (en apodeixei) of the
Spirits power.524
Julian also reports that in his day the tombs of Peter and Paul were worshipped525 and commented on the violent reaction of the faithful of Antioch to
his removal of the leftovers of the dead 526 Babylas, an eminent Antiochene martyr527 buried at Apollos oracle in Daphnean act that polluted
the site and caused the priests to abandon itat the order of Julians Christian brother, Gallus. Even the throne of Peter is built on a graveyard: The
Basilica of St. Peter was built to venerate the tomb of Peter; the original purpose of the building therefore was to commemorate a grave. Originally Vatican hill was a necropolis, and, although much of the necropolis was demolished when Constantine built his basilica there, a city of the dead remains
beneath the current structure of St. Peters.528 An important temple to Cybele, known to the Romans as Magna Mater or Great Mother, which stood
on the Palatine Hill also was knocked down to make way for Saint Peters
Cathedral which now stands on the temples site.529 Cybele, whose priests,
the galli, were self-castrated mendicants, was supplanted by Jesus, whose
priests were celibate mendicants. One could arguebased on Jesus observation that some made eunuchs of themselves (oitinej eunoucisan eautouj) for the
kingdom of heaven530 that the gelded priests of Cybele had been far better
Christians than the Christians. Think of them what one will, the devotion of
the Great Mothers priests was hardly in question: At once taking up [the

522
In reference to incubation, the practice of sleeping in temples to receive dreams

from the gods. The text of Isaiah clearly refers to this practice: Who sit among
graves and spend the night in secret places... (Isaiah 65:4, NASB).
523
Julian, Against the Galileans, 339E-343C.
524
1 Corinthians 2:4, NIV.
525
Ibid, 327B.
526
Julian, Misopogon, 361C.
527
Bowersock, Julian the Apostate, 99.
528
Seely, Studia Antiqua 4/1 (2005): 69-70.
529
530
Matthew 19:12.
76
sword], he cuts himself (tamnei ewuton) and runs through the city, bearing in
his hand what he has cut away (cersi ferei ta etamen).531
Eunapius likewise complained about the Christian violation of boundaries:
[The Christians] also settled these monks in Canobus, chaining humanity to the service of worthless slaves instead of the real gods. They
gathered up the bones and skulls of those apprehended for numerous
crimes, men the courts had condemned, and proclaimed them to be
gods, wallowed around their tombs, and declared that being defiled
by graves made them stronger. The dead were called martyrs, and
some kind of ministers, and ambassadors of the gods, these degraded slaves, eaten alive by whips, their ghosts carrying the wounds
of torture.532
The later Christian collection of the remains of martyrs bodies was suspiciously like magicians collection of the remains of bodies of executed criminals
(the martyrs were legally criminals) whose spirits they wished to control. We
have many ancient stories of thefts of dead bodies for magical purposes; the
practice was evidently common and may explain the disappearance of Jesus
body and the empty tomb. Be that as it may, the Christians frequent gathering around tombs and in catacombs must have seemed to most pagans an
indication of necromancy.533
Christianity is antisocial and totalitarian.

Christianity makes a clear claim to absolute truth: Jesus answered, "I am the
way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me.534 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.535 The reaction of
their contemporaries to this claim, to the extent they bothered to react to it at
all, has been summarized by Wilken: non-Christians see the Christian community as a tiny, peculiar, antisocial, irreligious sect, drawing its adherents
from the lower strata of society...religious fanatics, self-righteous outsiders,

531
Lucian, De Dea Syria, 52.

Wright, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, 473 (Loeb).
533
Smith, Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, II, 211.
534
John 14:6, NIV.
535
Acts 4:12, NIV.
532
77
arrogant innovators, who thought only their beliefs were true.536 Christians
insisted on historical particularity; they pressed the unreasonable claim that
the divine had manifested itself uniquely through a specific person at a specific moment, and that not so long ago...It was intellectually embarrassing; it
was at once parochial and presumptuous; it was irreducibly odd.537 Harris
voices what must have been a very Roman conclusion:
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is
no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common
we call them religious; otherwise they are likely to be called mad,
psychotic, or delusional...clearly there is sanity in numbers.538
Christians were constantly amazed to find themselves cast as enemies of the
Roman order, but in retrospect we must admit that it was the Romans who
had the more realistic insight...To Roman eyes, the obstinate and incomprehensible intolerance of Christians made them appear not only foolish but
treasonable.539 Every convert to this novel superstition added to a growing
number of persons intolerant of the beliefs of the majority and of those unwilling to adhere to the traditions that helped make the [Roman] empire
great and insure its ongoing stability.540 The insular nature of Christianity
put it on a collision course with Roman societys mos maiorum, the social
mores than included traditional piety and respect for ancestral customs and
family forebears, epitomized by the February festival of Parentaliato
undermine the authority of masters over slaves, and paterfamilias over his
household was about the most subversive attack that could be made on
established society.541
The nescience of Paul set the new standard for Christian thinking: For the
wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.542 The new Christian order,
contemptuous of the empirical evidence that threatened its claims, inaugurated an era of sanctified ignorance. The Athenian philosopher Proclus made
the last recorded astronomical observation in the ancient Greek world in
A.D. 475. It was not until the sixteenth century that Copernicusinspired
by the surviving works of Ptolemy but aware that they would make more
sense, and in fact would be simpler, if the sun was placed at the center of the
universeset in hand the renewal of the scientific tradition.543

536
Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, xix, 63.

538
539
Gager, Kingdom and Community, 27-28, 124.
540
541
542
1 Corinthians 3:19.
543
Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, xix.
537
78
In defense of its own indefensible claims, Christianity made a basic mistake:

Theism pushes the quest for intelligibility outside the world. If God exists,
he is not part of the natural order but a free agent not governed by natural
laws.544 While this criticism captures the limits of transcendent Christian
theism, it does not apply to ancient forms of panentheist or pandeistic philosophies such as Pythagoreanism, or immanentist theologies that conceive of
the natural world as intrinsically both divine as well as conscious.
The Christian version of theism nearly erased centuries of inquiry that preceded it. Greek philosophers, not Christian theologians, set themselves the
task of observing and understanding the natural world and had made significant progress: Aristarchus, who grasped that the sun was much larger than
the earth, was the first to envisage a heliocentric solar system and Eratosthenes, the first geographer, became the first man to measure the circumference of the earth.545 Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of Earth to
within 1.6% of its true value without leaving Egypt, calculated the tilt of
Earths axis, and developed an algorithm, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, to determine prime numbers two centuries before the birth of Jesus.
Where myth had shown that human action was bound up with the essential
meaning of life, the new science had suddenly pushed men and women into a
marginal position in the cosmos. They were no longer the center of things,
but cast adrift on an undistinguished planet in a universe that no longer
revolved around their needs.546
Greek anatomists in Alexandria made great strides in correlating form and
function: Herophilus first described the linked functions of the brain, spinal
cord, and nervous system, rightly relocating the center of thought from the
heart to the brain...he established the heart as not the center of feeling but the
center of the circulatory system, thereby anticipating William Harveys discovery of the circulation of the blood by nineteen hundred years.547 A humanist who may have extended these Greek discoveries, the Spanish physician Michael Servetus, was slowly burned alive at the stake in 1553 at the
behest of John Calvin, a Christian famous for his discovery of predestination
and infant baptismServetus had the misfortune to question the doctrine of
the trinity as well as the theological justification for dunking babies. In a
treatise, Christianismi Restitutio, Servetus revealed the function of the pulmonary circulation, the first European to do so. Except for three survivors, all
other copies of Christianismi Restitutio are presumed destroyed, including the

544
Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 26.

Pollard & Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, xvii.
546
Armstrong, The Battle for God, 68.
547
Ibid, 68.
545
79
copy that burned along with its author, chained to his leg.548 Jesus followers
had obviously settled for a literal reading of his wordsIf you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such
branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.549
Certainly no one would claim that the Greco-Roman world before Christianity was an intellectual paradise or that the Roman Empire, bent on conquest
and consumed with defending its acquired territories, was much interested in
what we would call pure science. Nevertheless, the rise of Christianity did,
in fact, coincide with the end of a world, a loss hinted at by discoveries such
as the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient analog computer ably described by
Jo Marchant:
Its hard to overestimate the uniqueness of the find. Before the Antikythera mechanism, not one single gearwheel had ever been found
from antiquity, nor indeed any example of an accurate pointer or
scale. Apart from the Antikythera mechanism, they still havent...
Whoever turned the handle on the side of its wooden case became
master of the cosmos, winding forwards or backwards to see everything about the sky at any chosen moment. Pointers on the front
showed the changing positions of the Sun, Moon and planets in the
zodiac, the date, as well as the phases of the Moon, while spiral dials
on the back showed the month and year according to a combined
lunar-solar calendar, and the timing of eclipses. Inscribed text around
the front dial revealed which star constellations rising and setting at
each moment, while the writing on the back gave details of the characteristics and location of the predicted eclipses.550
By the 4th century, Christians had predictably turned on each other. Christian controversies mobilized individual congregations of believers within each
city, provoking, on occasions, major riots, and frequent processions and
counterprocessions. All over the empire, Christian factionalism led to a perceptible increase in the climate of violence...Ammianus Marcellinus understandably concluded that Christian groups behaved to each other like wild
beasts.551
Within Alexandria particularly as well as the rest of Egypt, Christian monks
functioned as religious death squads. Referencing Libanius description of the
destruction of shrines, Frankfurter notes, By the end of the fourth century

548
For the story of Servetus, his murder, and his book, see Out of the Flames by
Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone.
549
John 15:6, NIV.
550
Marchant, Decoding the Heavens, 40, 260.
551
Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, 90.
80
such militant destruction of native shrines and images had become epidemic
around the Mediterranean world. By the middle of the fifth century monastic
leaders like Shenoute, Makarios of Thw, and Moses of Abydos were gaining
a modest fame for burning temples, killing priests, and invading homes to
destroy private shrines. And indeed, the impetus for such havoc came not
from Roman edicts against paganism but from the whims and machinations
of bishops...And thus we find in the fourth and later centuries that monks,
the soldiers assisting them on scaffolds, and the bishops in charge paid particular attention to the faces of gods in their endeavors to neutralize temples.
Indeed, if one visits Egyptian temples today one finds scarcely a divinity that
has not been meticulously hacked at...Christian leaders were evidently highly
skilled at such negative dramaturgy. And immediately behind them stood not
random passersby but Christian confraternities devoted to the leaders
authority and primed to respond to his charismatic displays, who would
gather, serve, chant, and riot by avocation. Whether in Alexandria or Panopolis, popular iconoclasm meant joining a pre-set mob...A gang of monks
could raze a local temple and its village, and assassinate the inhabitants as
well...552
Julian adroitly exploited the mutual hatred of the Christian sects:
And in order to give more effect to his intentions, he ordered the
priests of the different Christian sects, with the adherents of each sect,
to be admitted into the palace, and in a constitutional spirit expressed
his wish that their dissensions being appeased, each without any hindrance might fearlessly follow the religion he preferred.
He did this the more resolutely because, as long license increased
their dissensions, he thought he should never have to fear the unanimity of the common people, having found by experience that no
wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to
one another.553
William Tyndale, strangled and burned at the stake in 1536 for translating
the scriptures into English, could have attested to the truth of that observation, as could the last man to be hanged in England, in 1697, for denying the
Trinityin liberal Switzerland the last anti-trinitarian was strung up as late
as 1782. The Spanish Inquisition did not cease its persecution of heretics
until 1834 (the last auto-da-f took place in Mexico in 1850), about the time
Charles Darwin set sail on the Beagle and Michael Faraday discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism.554 It was only in 1992 that the
Catholic Church belatedly concluded that Galileo had been wrongly con
552
Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 278, 280, 282-283.

Ammianus, Roman History, V, 3,4.
554
Harris, The End of Faith, 85-86.
553
81
victed. In 1633 the astronomer, old and ailing, had been forced to kneel before the inquisitors and recant his theory that the Earth revolves around the
Sun in order to avoid being burned alive and spent the last eight years of his
life under house arrest.
Christianity is parasitic.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is
nothing new under the sun. 555 Our Roman critics would certainly have
agreed with that world-weary assessment, particularly when it came to Christianity. Apocalypticism had been done before, and with greater panache, by
the author of the book of Daniel; Christian apocalyptic was a pale derivative.
Although the Christians boasted of their moral revelations, Celsus observed,
They have also a precept to this effectthat you must not resist a man who
insults you. Even, he says, if someone strikes you on one cheek, yet you
should offer the other one as well. This too is old stuff, and was better said
before them. But they expressed it in more vulgar terms. For Plato makes Socrates speak the following conversation in the Crito: Then we ought never to
do wrong. No, indeed. Not even ought we repay when wronged ourselves,
as most people think, since we ought not do wrong under any circumstances.
It appears not.556
Julian identified the dependency of Christian counter-polemic on GrecoRoman rhetoric and philosophy: In the words of the proverb, we are stricken with our arrows. For from our own writings [the Christians] take the weapons wherewith they engage in the war against us.557 Julian also noted that
Christianity brought nothing of substance into the world, neither original
philosophical insight nor any scientific discovery:
But has God granted to you to originate any science or any philosophical study? Why, what is it? For the theory of the heavenly bodies
was perfected among the Hellenes, after the first observations had
been made among the barbarians in Babylon. And the study of geometry took its rise in the measurement of the land of Egypt, and from
this grew to its present importance. Arithmetic began with the Phoenician merchants, and among the Hellenes in the course of time ac
555
Ecclesiastes 1:9.
Chadwick, Contra Celsum 443 (VII, 58).
557
Wright, The Works of the Emperor Julian, III, 299.
556
82
quired the aspect of a regular science. These three the Hellenes combined with music into one science, for they connected astronomy
with geometry and adapted arithmetic to both, and perceived the
principle of harmony in it. Hence they laid down the rules for their
music.558
Concerning the library in Alexandria, Greenblatt notes, Euclid developed
his geometry in Alexandria; Archimedes discovered pi and laid the foundation for calculus; Eratosthenes posited that the earth was round and calculated its circumference to within 1 percent; Galen revolutionized medicine.
Alexandrian astronomers postulated a heliocentric universe; geometers deduced that the length of a year was 365 days and proposed adding a leap
day every fourth year; geographers speculated that it would be possible to
reach India by sailing west from Spain; engineers developed hydraulics and
pneumatics; anatomists first understood clearly that the brain and the nervous system were a unit; studied the heart and the digestive system, and conducted experiments in nutrition. The level of achievement was staggering.559
Following the imposition of Christianity, any similar achievement was held
in abeyance for well over a millennium.
Given its lack of originality, Christianity first pilfered from the Jewish scriptures for proof texts that established its messianic claims. Next it rummaged
through Greco-Roman philosophical schools in order to concoct its own bastardized metaphysics, but given its disdain for empiricism, made no advances
in science or mathematics. Current Christian fundamentalism fares no better;
Mooney describes the appropriation of scientific trappings and the masking
of outwardly religious forms of argumentation by advocates of creation science:
Even as they thumped their Bibles and denounced evolution, early
American creationists sometimes made scientific arguments as well.
Scopes trial advocate William Jennings Bryan even joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924. But not
until the 1960s and 1970s did creationists consciously style themselves as practitioners of creation science, purging their writings and
arguments of scriptural references and consciously recruiting Ph.D.s
who were also fundamentalist Christians to their side. Not content
with merely denying science, they increasingly began to mimic and
abuse it.560

558
Julian, Against the Galileans 178A-178B (translation of W.C. Wright, Julian III,
369.)
559
Greenblatt, The Swerve, 87.
560
Mooney, The Republican War on Science, 37.
83
Creationism removes the follower from the rational, reality-based world.

Signs, miracles, and wonders occur not only in the daily life of Christians,
but also in history, science, medicine and logic...This insistence on the primacy of personal opinion regardless of facts destabilizes and destroys the primacy of all fact.561 Charles Pierce comically describes his visit to the 50,000
square foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, where stood another, smaller dinosaur. Which was wearing a saddle. It was an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently this was a dinosaur that performed in
dressage competition and stake races.562
Not only did Christianity bring nothing new to the world, it actively destroyed many of the intellectual advances made before its advent and lost
others through neglect and incomprehension. The imposition of Christian
theocracy resulted in nothing less than the extinction of serious mathematiccal and scientific thinking in Europe for a thousand years.563 Commenting
on the very similar situation current in the regressive backwaters of Islam, the
late Christopher Hitchens remarked, Faith-based fanatics could not design
anything as useful or beautiful as a skyscraper or a passenger aircraft. But,
continuing their long history of plagiarism, they could borrow and steal these
things and use them as a negation.564
In short, the claims of Christianitys Roman critics would appear to be valid:
the new sect advanced due to superstition and credulity, ignorance and illiteracy, it plagiarized crudely from Judaism, the mystery religions, magic and,
finally, from Greek philosophy. The Christian claim to universality was, prima facie, absurd, its prophecies manifestly false, its texts riddled with inconsistency and error. As Christianity insinuated itself into Roman politics, its
doctrinal controversies further fragmented an empire already in danger of
falling to pieces and it proved, in that sense at least, seditious. Had the Romans of the first century foreseen the conditions of the fourth, there is no
doubt they would have smothered Christianity in its cradle.

561
Heges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, 117-118.
Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, 2.
563
564
562
84
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Christianitys Critics:

The Romans Meet Jesus

Roman authors such as Celsus, Porphyry, Julian, and Lucian of Samosata

Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 231-232.

McKechnie, The First Christian Centuries, 27.

Johnson, Among the Gentiles, 14, 16.

Murdoch, The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate, 4.

six-year-old boy...Libanius marked the murders as the major event of Julians

Bowersock, Julian the Apostate, 23.

Murdoch, The Last Pagan, 138-139.

Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 231.

Jesus and Paul were false prophets.

Matthew 10:34-37; Luke 12:49-53.

enter the kingdom of heaven66nor standing in the communityI swear

Matthew 18:3, NIV.

Alexandrian convert who petitioned the Roman governor to give a surgeon

Justin Martyr, Apology 29:1-2.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, NIV.

Fredricksen, 50-51, 135.

1 Clement 23:3; 45:2-3.

Fredriksens trenchant observation about the apocalyptic worldview is worth

Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, 82-83.

Lucian describes the Christian career of the religious grifter Peregrinus:

Harmon, Lucian, V, 13-15.

performing a $75 million renovation to the facility. As Posner noted, despite

Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovahs Witnesses, 99-100.

mean looks forward in the purely eschatological sense of anticipating the

Christianity is a Jewish heresy.

Hitchens, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 56.

Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 17.

Harris, The End of Faith, 94.

Paul, heretic and founder of Christianity.

Speaking freely, Paul and Barnabas said, It was compulsory that

Mark 6:56; Matthew 9:20-21; Luke 8:44.

Matthew 5:19, NIV.

they claimed as their own...Christianitys claimed relation to Judaism was

Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 116-117.

Gager, Kingdom and Community, 4.

1 Timothy 4:1, 5:15, 6:4.

Matthew 27: 1-2, 24-25.

The importance of this point should not be overlooked. the priority of

Brakke, The Gnostics, 6,7.

there was never a single Christianity.

Ldemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Christianity, 11-12.

The many-headed hydra of Gnosticism.

Origen, Contra Celsum III, 1, 4.

Origen, Contra Celsum I, 1.

1 Corinthians 7:8. (Compare 1 Thessalonians 4:4).

Irenaeus, Against the Heresies I, 20.1; 21.5.

could misconstrue as applying to Jesus. The preaching of the Christians was

undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled

Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 49.

Christianity appeals to the ignorant and

Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, 106, 119.

would have been completely in keeping with their circumstances, a point

Origen, Contra Celsum I, 62.

Origen, Contra Celsum I, 9.

basically meant frenzy. The enqousiasthj (enthousiasts) was accordingly a

Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, 50.

Ibid, 50, 60.

Hitchens, god is not Great, 74.

MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, 52.

Kroeger, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 30/1, 25.

God.413 The maenads of Dionysus take up snakes.414 Early Christians were

Christianity's Critics: The Romans Meet Jesus by Robert Conner

Christianity's Critics: The Romans Meet Jesus by Robert Conner