Cutting off the Roots
I've been doing some thinking about early Christianity, having recently faced a good deal of criticism from the camp that tries to pass Christianity off as a religion that stole a bunch of ideas from earlier pagan religions and placed them on Jesus of Nazareth. Having run into people who are convinced that The Da Vinci Code is finally telling us the real story, I wanted to spend some time reviewing and learning more about first century Christianity. I am by no means an expert, but I think there is an interesting problem with the foundation of this whole concept of Jesus becoming a pagan dying and rising Godman.
That problem is this: The founders of Christianity were not primarily Greeks; they were Jews. More than that, they were Jews who saw in Jesus of Nazareth the fulfillment of God's plan in the world through Israel. Jesus became the fulfillment of God's covenant promises to Israel.
This means that the first century theology of Jesus is rooted in Old Testament Messianic expectation, not Greek mystery religion. Jesus isn't Savior of the World to early Christians because Mythra was also "savior of the world," and that seemed like a good idea to apply to Jesus, but because YHWH had declared that He was Israel's "only Savior."
This, of course, is why early Christians concluded that Jesus had to be God. If only God could save, and Jesus was Savior, Jesus was God. But Jesus was also clearly a man, so much so that John put forth belief in Jesus' incarnation as a test of true Christian doctrine (1 John 4:1). While the exact words "fully God and fully man" were not used until a later council, the concept is manifestly present in early Christian literature, and it is rooted not in the idea of some god coming down, getting a woman pregnant, and birthing a "godman," but in the theology and Messianic expectation of God's covenant promises to Israel.
If you cut off the roots of Christianity (i.e., God's covenant promises to Israel in the Old Testament), then you can have all sorts of fun recasting Christianity as another pagan religion, borrowing all its ideas from Mythraism and other such belief systems. But this is to miss the point entirely, and it's irresponsible historical work.
That problem is this: The founders of Christianity were not primarily Greeks; they were Jews. More than that, they were Jews who saw in Jesus of Nazareth the fulfillment of God's plan in the world through Israel. Jesus became the fulfillment of God's covenant promises to Israel.
This means that the first century theology of Jesus is rooted in Old Testament Messianic expectation, not Greek mystery religion. Jesus isn't Savior of the World to early Christians because Mythra was also "savior of the world," and that seemed like a good idea to apply to Jesus, but because YHWH had declared that He was Israel's "only Savior."
This, of course, is why early Christians concluded that Jesus had to be God. If only God could save, and Jesus was Savior, Jesus was God. But Jesus was also clearly a man, so much so that John put forth belief in Jesus' incarnation as a test of true Christian doctrine (1 John 4:1). While the exact words "fully God and fully man" were not used until a later council, the concept is manifestly present in early Christian literature, and it is rooted not in the idea of some god coming down, getting a woman pregnant, and birthing a "godman," but in the theology and Messianic expectation of God's covenant promises to Israel.
If you cut off the roots of Christianity (i.e., God's covenant promises to Israel in the Old Testament), then you can have all sorts of fun recasting Christianity as another pagan religion, borrowing all its ideas from Mythraism and other such belief systems. But this is to miss the point entirely, and it's irresponsible historical work.
posted by Travis Prinzi @ 7:31 AM
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