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Response to Gakusei Don
by Earl Doherty
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Preface
A contributor to the Internet Infidels Biblical
Criticism and History
forum who goes by the name of "GakuseiDon" recently posted a critique
of the "Jesus in the Christian
Apologists" chapter of my book, The Jesus Puzzle.
I am familiar with him only through the IIDB, and am unaware of any
other work by him; his critique does not seem to be part of a
larger web site. While it is of sufficient quality and substance to
merit a reply, I will style him an "apologist" (rather than a neutral
critical historian) for reasons which will become clear in this
response. The critique can be read at:
http://www.christianorigins.com/2ndcdon.html
In the discussion on the IIDB thread which followed
GDon's notification about his critique, a few points were raised which
I
would like to address as a prelude to examining the text of the
critique
itself. One is in regard to the silence in Paul and other early epistle
writers about historical details in the supposed recent life of Jesus.
This involves a misunderstanding of the situation which I have tried on
many occasions to correct, seemingly to no avail, and one wonders how
serious certain people can claim to be in addressing the substance of
the mythicist case before undertaking a
condemnation of it. When the "silence" in the epistles is referred to
by such critics,
it is always in terms of what Paul and the other early writers do not mention, rather than what they do. I have styled this difference
the negative vs. the positive silence. By focusing only on the former,
apologists think to be able to appeal to the limits (or outright
invalidity, as they like to put it) of the argument from silence. There
could always be some explanation,
they claim, for why Paul does not mention such-and-such, even if this
involves just about everything to do with an historical life, and even
in situations that would cry out for such mentions. Be that as it may,
what is conveniently ignored are the positive things that Paul states
about his faith, his object of worship, the beginnings of the movement,
and so on; some of his and others' statements clearly exclude the idea of an historical
founder while many others make it highly unlikely. These are clearly
laid out in my book and on this website, and have been raised in
internet
arguments over the years, but they have yet to be properly addressed.
(I'll
mention a
few shortly.) These "positive silences" are not so easy to ignore or
dismiss, even though
scholarship as a whole tends to do precisely that.
"Bede" on IIDB had this to say:
But is it [GD's case against my
Second Century
Apologists chapter]
fatal to Doherty's thesis? Probably not. The
dividing line
that he can always point to (assuming he does retreat from his second
century examples [which, of course, I
have no intention of doing])
is the Jewish revolt ending in 70AD. Aside from Paul,
getting back before that is always hard (although Hebrews is a big help
here), and the only way to kill mythicism is to prove that Paul knew of
a historical Jesus. Given almost all scholars (all until Carrier's so
far unexplained conversion) already think this is proven, the argument
is unlikely to develop.
What we need is someone very good at Greek (which means neither you,
me, Doherty or Carrier) to carefully analyse the relevant Pauline
passages with all the critical apparatus that is available. Then we
will see where we are. I suppose the advent of computerised texts does
make this much easier, though.
Well, many have tried to prove that Paul knew of an
historical Jesus, but this has so far been a failure except through
reading meanings into Paul that are not evidently there and by
ignoring the "positive" things I referred to. The fact that so many
scholars "already think this is proven" is a good measure of the
lack of seriousness and honesty they have brought to the question, and
how much of their stance is simply predetermined. While I won't get
overly offended by Bede's snide accusation about the quality of
my Greek, its lack of proficiency remains to be demonstrated—by "good"
scholars or otherwise. Simply assuming that one of those "good"
scholars could demonstrate it
(which is his implication) won't do. It's similar to the common claim
that a
"good" scholar or historian could shred the mythicist case if only they
would undertake to do so. This remains an assumption—and thus invalid as
an argument—until someone
actually does it and shows that it's
possible. However, I am offended
on Richard Carrier's behalf, whose proficiency in Greek is undoubtedly
superior to mine and does not merit such offhanded disparagement. And
since Carrier has in fact offered an explanation for his recent
conversion to the probability of the mythicist position, one can only
assume that Bede has been forced to ignore or dismiss this as well.
Let's also look at some remarks on IIDB by
GakuseiDon:
The problem
is that from what I see,
there is currently no case to
rebut. There are a series of statements from Doherty regarding the
writings of Christians in the first couple of centuries, but when you
try to pin down the case that he is actually arguing, things get
frustratingly vague. There is no cohesive case there. All that we are
left with are a number of curiosities - Paul's lack of references of
Jesus's ministry, for example - that tend to get argued separately.
That's one reason why I wanted to concentrate specifically on Doherty's
comments on second century writings. At least there were specific
claims that could be examined and possibly rebuted. I don't think there
is ANY way to rebut "Paul was a mythicist who presented a historicized
version to non-initiates" [if this is supposed
to be a shorthand reference to my position, it is erroneous], short of Paul saying, for
example, "Jesus
was REALLY born of a woman".
I can't speak to GDon's ability to
perceive cohesive cases, but there are many who see the case laid out
by The Jesus
Puzzle, and on the website, as comprehensive, coherent and
anything but fragmented. This would be a good time to briefly mention a
few examples of those "curiosities" regarding Paul and others. Again,
GDon styles it in terms of "a lack of references to Jesus' ministry,"
but
the situation is far more sweeping and positive than that. He and
others consistently ignore passages such as these:
Romans
16:25-26: "...the gospel about Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery kept in silence for long ages but now
revealed. and made known through prophetic writings at the command of
God..."
2 Corinthians
5:5: "God has shaped us for life immortal, and as a guarantee of this
he has sent the Spirit."
Titus 1:3:
"Yes, it is eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised long ages
ago, and now in his good time he has openly declared himself in the
proclamation which was entrusted to me by God our Savior."
1 Corinthians
12:28: "Within our community, God has appointed...apostles...prophets
and teachers."
1 Peter 1:7:
"...so that your faith may prove itself worthy when Jesus Christ is
revealed."
Romans 8:22:
"Up to now, the whole created universe groans in all its parts as if in
the pangs of childbirth...we wait for God to make us his sons and set
our whole body free."
I don't intend to reargue the details of the case here, but I
offer the above as examples of the sorts of statements that saturate
the epistles, giving us a comprehensive picture of a faith which began
with God's revelation of his Son through
scripture, one that is impelled by the Spirit rather than the memory of
a human Jesus, wherein the "gospel" being preached is that of "God" and
nothing is presented as having been instituted
by a recent human founder, where no historical Jesus is inserted
between God's promises and prophecies, and their fulfilment in the
missionary movement.
Jesus himself is a "secret/mystery" revealed by God to apostles like
Paul, after long ages of being unknown, an entity who will be coming to
earth only in the future. And so on. The case is not nearly so simple
as Paul failing to mention features of Jesus' earthly ministry. If the
Gospel preconceptions are set aside, we have no "curiosities" here.
Rather, we find in the epistles a consistent, sensible and clearly
stated picture of a faith movement like others of its day, one
that was an expression of contemporary religious and philosophical
trends, and one that did not involve a recent historical figure.
Without the Gospels and 19 centuries of church tradition created out of
them, nothing would seem out of place or lacking. There is nothing
"vague" or uncohesive about it.
I review this background not only because there are too many who still
turn a blind eye to it, but because with such a scenario in mind for
the beginnings of the movement—or part
of it—it
becomes much easier
to situate and evaluate elements such as the second century apologists
within the larger picture. I'll also add another misconception which
has skewed GDon's and others' criticisms. Historicists are still tied
to
the old paradigm of a Christianity which was, if not entirely unified,
essentially a singularity, linear in its development. One thing
supposedly grew into the next, and more or less in lockstep. They have
failed to appreciate the chaotic, fragmentary nature of the entire
movement, different streams from different places flowing at different
times into the ultimate Christian river.
The documentary evidence
ranges from the purely philosophical "only-begotten Son" and Logos of
Philo, to the scripture-revealed sacrificial Christ of Paul, to the
Revealer-Son of some of his rival apostles who regarded a crucified
Messiah as "folly," a Revealer found at the base of the Gospel of John
as well. Hebrews has an entirely unique take on a High Priestly Christ
whose sacrifice takes place in Heaven, based on the Temple cult.
Documents like The Odes of Solomon and the Shepherd of Hermas reveal
other sects' mystical beliefs in a heavenly Son who is a channel of
knowledge like Wisdom and non-sacrificial. The Gnostic Savior concept
can be regarded as part of a
separate stream (critical scholarship now largely considers gnosticism
as having had an independent genesis, though a certain amount of
merging with the Christian Jesus was to take place), as can the Logos
religion
of the major apologists. Out of left field came the wisdom and
apocalyptic preaching of a Kingdom of God movement which impelled the
addition of a Galilean ministry to create the Gospel Jesus, and so on.
Some of the objections of mythicism's detractors are best dealt with
when this picture of diversified origins is taken into account.
A Picture of the Second
Century
To some extent, GDon has misrepresented my position in this
chapter of my book. In "Jesus in the Christian
Apologists" (which, alone among the chapters of The Jesus Puzzle,
is a reproduction of the "Second Century Apologists" article on my
website, with only minor
changes), I define an "apologist" as one who is presenting a document
or documents that are defenses of the faith, and I make the claim that
a "majority" of those that are reasonably extant do not speak of an
historical Jesus. Thus an inclusion in his critique of figures like
Ignatius and Polycarp is not valid. Nor of Basilides and Heracleon who
are not
apologists. I also make it clear that my parameters in this study of
the second century do not extend beyond the year 180 or so. Clement of
Alexandria and Tertullian lie outside this group, falling into a later
time frame in which I pointed out that virtually all Christian writers
were now on board the train of belief in the historicity of the Gospel
Jesus. I realize that it may be valid to examine the content of those
later writers to help evaluate the 'silence' of the earlier ones, which
GDon tries to do, but only
if
that content is properly represented, which as I will demonstrate is
not the case here.
No one is denying that, surveying all of the second century writers
from
start to finish, a great many seem to have believed in some kind of
historical Jesus, although with some of them, particularly in the
gnostic category, it may be hard to tell just what was the nature
envisioned for such a figure. But my emphasis was on a certain group of
apologists from whom we have major and complete works which purport to
give a comprehensive presentation of the faith, chiefly for outsiders.
By examining that group, it was my intention not only to show how they
differed from the circles that produced and subscribed to the Gospel
story and character, but to cast light on the variety of expressions
within the Logos- and Christ-belief phenomenon. If there could be shown
to be a
broad segment of expression covering several major apologetic documents
over several decades, all ignoring or even denying by implication the
existence of an historical founder, it speaks to a "Christianity" which
encompassed a version of faith which did not include an historical
Jesus. It serves to undermine the validity of belief in those circles
which by that time did envision such a figure, since it would belie the
unity and singular origin of the movement as a whole.
It has long been
acknowledged by scholars of the second century apologists that they
show little if any connection to the type of cultic Christianity of the
first century as represented by Paul. They thus find themselves in the
position of having to explain this discontinuity. What happened to
divorce the second century stream represented by the apologists from
the first century Pauline antecedent? In that group, including Tatian,
Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix and (I maintain) in Justin's
earliest thinking,
there is not only no historical founder in view, there is no idea of
incarnation, there is no atonement doctrine and no Calvary,
there is no resurrection of a human or divine entity from the dead.
These are
major voids, quantum divergences from a presumed original faith
movement that are hardly explainable by the rather feeble
rationalizations provided by modern scholars. But they are
hamstrung by their own preconceptions. They are reading a certain set
of
documents and beliefs into everything else. The most plausible
explanation is that there was no discontinuity, no divorce or
divergence from Paul or some of the early Fathers of the Church.
Rather, these are the varied expressions of general trends
of belief found throughout the Empire, trends which were only gradually
coalescing and evolving into a commonality based on the ever
more appealing and powerful figure created by the Gospels.
Even in Paul's day, there were "apostles of the Christ" going about
preaching the message of "another Jesus" (based, like his own, on the
"spirit"—meaning revelation—and not historical tradition) which was
so at odds with his own he could call them agents of Satan (2
Corinthians 11). There is
thus nothing unusual at encountering a range of apologetic works
produced in the second century which could diverge so widely from each
other, some based on knowledge of the Gospel story with biographical
details of an historical founder, while others are devoid of such
things, presenting nothing so much as a Logos religion. (Many scholars
of the second century use this term to describe the apologists.) The
mistake is
to try to force them all into the same mold, all products of a unified
movement with a single origin. One of the other aspects of that group
of second century apologists which I failed to emphasize is their total
lack of a sense of history. They talk of their religion essentially as
a philosophy, not as an ongoing movement with a specific century of
development behind it, through a beginning in time, place and
circumstance, and a spread in similar specifics. It's not just Paul and
his type of faith they show no knowledge of.
This is not to say that
they were necessarily oblivious to other current expressions. Both
Tatian and Minucius Felix indicate that they were. But since these
elements were not part of their own faith, they could ignore them—or criticize them. Just
as we have a perplexing range of documents from the first century of
Christian faith which scholars have great difficulty in pulling
into line with orthodoxy and a single chain of development, we
encounter
the same variety and difficulty
in the second century, only with some recognizable signs of
gravitational
pull. But as long as scholars, whether of the first or second century,
refuse to countenance the conclusion which all this diversity points
to,
namely that what became Christianity did not go back to a single
founder or point of origin, we will continue to flounder in this sea of
uncertainty and debate.
But on to specifics.
Throwing
Light on the Apologists
Following on his Introduction and opening survey of the Christian
writers of the second century, GDon focuses in on the apologists
themselves. In his list, he
includes three whose works exist only in fragments, Quadratus of
Athens, Claudius Apollinaris, and Melito of Sardis. As I said earlier,
while it is clear that these writers did indeed refer to their belief
in an historical Jesus, it is difficult to evaluate their overall
attitudes toward the faith and the type of "defense" they offered in
the absence of complete works, and in the uncertainties attached to
what little has survived. In my book I briefly mentioned a similar
document that was discovered in its entirety in the late 1800s,
the little apology of Aristides. I pointed out that it was a work in
Syriac from the Levant area, based on a knowledge
of some Gospel or Gospel traditions. Since it has nothing to
say about the Logos or Greek philosophical concepts, it is clearly in a
different category from the major apologists. Its literary quality and
breadth of thought is very limited. As to the others, Quadratus
exists in only one brief fragment, which makes an allusion to the
healings of "the Savior" and how many who were so healed survived to
the writer's own time, a claim hardly less than outrageous. As it would
have been impossible for someone in the second quarter of the century
to reasonably make such a claim, the integrity of this lost work
is greatly devalued. Apollinaris
is equally obscure, with what little preserved scarcely telling us that
it comes from an apology. For Melito, the situation is chaotic in the
extreme. Remarks about him by later writers such as Eusebius are
unreliable, contradictory, and most likely second or third hand. Titles
of
works are uncertain or corrupted; inauthentic attributions abound.
Nor are the datings of these works and fragments all that secure. GDon
is
not the first to tout Aristides and Quadratus as "early" apologists,
but
the emperors to whom they are reputed to have addressed their works
have
been questioned. (See The Apology of
Aristides, p.10-17; I do not have at hand an
author's name for this book, though it was published early in the 20th
century. It argues for a dating of Aristides later than 140, and
Quadratus in the latter second century, rather than earlier.) Indeed,
all the traditional datings of the apologists, with the exception of
Justin and Tatian, are dependent on later assumptions about their
authors and who
they wrote to, and we are not unfamiliar with interpretations and
traditions coming from later Christian commentators which do not
stand up to critical scrutiny. Thus, GDon's arguments relating to
relative dating and which type of apologist are to be assigned to which
part of the second century are in some cases resting on shaky ground.
In any event, my lack of inclusion of such uncertain and fragmentary
works in a study of "the major apologists" is hardly surprising, and
GDon
tries to make too much of it. His own inclusion of these
obscurities I regard as an example of apologetic padding, designed to
enable him to say that of "the second century apologists writing to
pagans, we can see that 7 of 12 refer to a historical Jesus." And, as
I've pointed out above, that "7" includes the later Clement of
Alexandria and Tertullian, who belong as much to the third century as
to the second.
Here and later, GDon makes the claim that I regard the
Gospels as "probably already circulating among the pagans" shortly
after the year 150. I've never gone so far as to say they were
"circulating," though I acknowledge that certain interested and
knowledgeable pagan writers such as Celsus may well have read one or
more such documents, in whatever state they may have existed at that
time. My point, rather, was that some pagans, including among those
being addressed by the apologists, were undoubtedly familiar with Gospel traditions
about a human Jesus as the founder of the movement and certain
teachings and events associated with him. We should note that such
familiarity is only in evidence from the latter second century, and not
before—with the sole exception of the reference in
Tacitus, whose
authenticity remains under a cloud. (I happen not to commit myself to
inauthenticity, and can dismiss its 'witness' value on other grounds.)
Pliny's letter gives us no witness to a figure who was historical, nor
does
Suetonius, and no satirist before Lucian around 160 gives any attention
to the outlandish beliefs of the Christians regarding a crucified man
and his resurrection.
But by far GDon's most misguided appeal is to later writers who clearly
believe in an historical Jesus but in certain of their documents do not
mention historical details about him. GDon thinks to link this to
my statement
in regard to the earlier apologists, that
"this blatant suppression of Jesus, the misrepresentation of everything
from the name 'Christian' to the source of Christian ethics, amounts to
nothing less than a denial of
Christ." But there is a huge difference
between a writer who nowhere in his work betrays a knowledge of an
historical Jesus and those who do, but happen not to mention him in
specific places. Such
later authors as Clement and Tertullian do not deny the human Jesus in their
works as a whole, and to interpret a silence in one particular document
as such a thing borders on the dishonest; it is certainly a
misapplication of the concept. Nowhere does Clement or Tertullian say
something like, "I have gone into every aspect of our religion" while
failing to mention Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnation, the resurrection
and so on. Nowhere do they give us disparaging remarks about a
crucified man such as we find in Minucius
Felix, or an outright
ridicule of the concepts of gods being born or coming back from the
dead such as we find in more than one writer. Silence in a particular
spot
or document, when balanced by open presentation in others, is not
"concealment." It is unclear to me how GDon cannot recognize the
fallacy
of his comments in regard to Tertullian, when he acknowledges that
there
are indeed "vivid references" to Christ's incarnation, death and
resurrection in the Apology
but none, not even the names Jesus and
Christ, in the Ad Nationes
(both written in the same year, he notes), as though this somehow
provides a case against my stance on the earlier apologists. He might
as
well have declared that the absence of such things in one chapter of a
work in contrast to their mention in another chapter of the same work
is significant as well. The point is, we do not have additional
works from the earlier apologists verifying that they did indeed
believe in an historical Jesus, and this makes all the difference
in the world.
GDon lays particular emphasis on the Ad
Nationes of Tertullian (written c.217) and accuses me of being
"clearly unaware"
of the work. I am sorry to disappoint him. In no small fashion does he
misrepresent the content and significance of certain passages of this
document. He refers to Tertullian's remarks in Chapter 3 about the
meaning of the term 'Christian':
"The name Christian, however,
so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing." And he
thinks to make a comparison with Theophilus' similar remarks in To Autolycus [I, 12]: in response
to some disparagement by Autolycus (not quoted), Theophilus says,
"Wherefore we are called Christians on this account, because we are
anointed with the oil of God." Here Theophilus is defining the meaning of the term,
and it does not include any reference to "Christ"; nor is there
anywhere else in this writer a counter-balancing reference to such a
figure or to an alternate or additional meaning for the name. The
situation in Tertullian could not be in greater contrast. First of all,
his reference to the 'anointing' sense of Christian is in the context of a
lament that the pagans are persecuting believers on the basis of their
name, not their alleged activities, and he wishes to point out the good
qualities inherent in the name itself. To that end he talks of it
"bear[ing] the sense of anointing." He is not defining it here, and he goes on to
add to that positive image by pointing out that when the pagans
mispronounce the name "Chrestians" they are creating their own
"sense
of pleasantness and goodness." There is no question of
misrepresentation or concealment here as there would have to be in
Theophilus, who presents a definition of the name "Christian" solely
in terms of anointing.
But that's not the end of it. Surely GDon himself read further, into
Chapter 4, which opens: "But the sect, you say, is punished in the
name of its founder." Not only is this an admission that the term
Christian is based on the founder figure, it tells us that the
pagans so regarded it as well. Tertullian goes on:
"Now
in the first place it is, no doubt a fair and usual custom that a sect
should be marked out by the name of its founder, since philosophers are
called Pythagoreans and Platonists after their masters; in the same way
physicians are called after Erasistratus, and grammarians after
Aristarchus. If, therefore, a sect has a bad character because its
founder was bad, it is punished as the traditional bearer of a bad
name. But this would be indulging in a rash assumption. The first step
was to find out what the founder was, that his sect might be
understood,
instead of hindering inquiry into the founder's character from the
sect. But in your case, by being necessarily ignorant of the sect,
through your ignorance of its founder, or else by not taking a fair
survey of the founder, because you make no inquiry into his sect, you
fasten merely on the name, just as if you vilified in it both sect and
founder, whom you know nothing of whatever." [Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 3,
p.111-112]
It is a mystery how GDon can hold up a document containing a passage
like
this as casting any light on apologists like Theophilus. It matters
little if the name of this founder is not actually stated (something
which GDon makes a big issue of), or if no details of his earthly
career
are mentioned in a treatise which is wholly devoted to countering the
calumnies levelled by the pagan against the Christian, and (in Book II)
to a critical condemnation of the pagan gods. Ad Nationes is in no way a defense
of the Christian faith, unlike the Apology
which is; the latter
contains no shortage of reference to Christ as a human man in history.
GDon is appealing to a technicality, building a mountain out of a
molehill. (While admitting that Ad
Nationes does indeed relate 'Christian' to "the name of the
founder," he adds, "all the while refusing to give the name of the
founder." This is a blatant apologetic twist, forcing some significance
on the
absence of the name which is hardly justified by the text
itself.) Given the narrow nature of the Ad Nationes subject matter, there
is nothing particularly unusual, significant, or "weird" (as one
reviewer on Amazon put it) about the lack of mention of Jesus' name or
historical activities.
GDon misrepresents the case by reducing it to the simplistic
claim that I regard the absence of the terms "Jesus" and "Christ" as
the criterion for distinguishing an "MJer" (Mythical Jesus) from an
"HJer" (Historical Jesus). It is not
simply the presence or absence of a term, but the picture created
by the writings of a given author as a whole and their commonality of
content with other similar writers around the same time. If I did not
include Tertullian in my examination of the second century scene, it is
because he fell later than my parameters (both the Apology and the Ad Nationes post-date, at the
earliest, the year 198), and because I never considered anyone would
have the temerity to hold up the situation in that apologist's work as
some kind of argument against my reading of documents several decades
earlier. Again, it amounts to padding on GDon's part, and misleading
padding at that.
Tertullian does something in the above quoted passage that none of
those earlier apologists do, which makes it even more disingenuous for
GDon to lump them all together. Tertullian goes so far as to demand
that the pagan
"find out what the founder was, that his sect might be understood." He
criticizes the pagan for being ignorant of the founder, not "taking a
fair survey of him." GDon can hardly impute to Tertullian a conscious
concealment of Jesus in Ad Nationes
(he is doing so if he insists on creating a parallel between Tertullian
and the earlier apologists whom he claims are doing just that), since
this would contravene Tertullian's insistence that the pagan should
familiarize himself with the founder, the better to understand and
evaluate the sect. Making such an appeal is the direct opposite of what
GDon and
others suggest is the tacit strategy of most of the earlier apologists,
who are alleged to have set about to deliberately hide the founder from the pagan—a true "conspiracy of silence."
Explaining the
Silence
At this point, GDon goes on to offer reasons for the apologists'
silence on the
historical Jesus and the details of his life. Again, he misrepresents
my position. He
quotes me (accurately) as saying that "nowhere in the literature of the
time is there support for the standard scholarly rationalization about
the apologists' silence on the figure of Jesus...nowhere is it even
intimated that these writers have deliberately left out essential
elements of Christian faith, for reasons of political correctness or
anything else." But in claiming that in fact such things are to be found in the texts, he
distorts the meaning of my statement.
That is, he fails to make an
important distinction. The reasons he offers for the apologists'
silence are conclusions that
are drawn by
modern scholars, based on factors they have identified in the second
century. But
these are not reasons
which
are intimated by the apologists themselves. In other words, no one
says or even implies, "I am being silent on the historical
Jesus, I am deliberately downplaying or obscuring his role, even to the
point of seeming to mislead the reader, because of such-and-such a
factor in the present day." That implication is being
read into the situation by modern scholars, and it is a judgment which
ought to be overridden by other considerations which I point
out, considerations which should make the carrying out
of such deliberate
silence, even in the face of those alleged factors, highly
questionable.
Let's look at GDon's enumeration of them.
1. "The apologists were more concerned with
stopping the persecutions against the Christians of the day than
converting their audience: ... In Doherty's opinion they should
have tried to rehabilitate the figure of Christ, even the HJ writers
appeared more concerned with addressing the injustices against the
Christians of the day than discussing historical details of Christ (for
example Tertullian's 'Ad Nationes')."
Regardless of whether this was the case, it should not have
precluded the apologists from presenting essential elements of the
faith picture, especially when they are purporting to do that very
thing. If, as GDon himself would assume, the pagans were already
familiar
with basic Jesus and Gospel traditions, what is to be gained for the
supposed purpose of the apology by being silent on them? In fact, would
it not be counter-productive in the eyes of the pagans to appear to be
concealing, denying and misleading the reader? When a defendant
conceals information about his activities in regard to the
circumstances surrounding a crime, this creates suspicion, not
mollification. The proper course would certainly have been to attempt
to
rehabilitate Jesus if he was a real elephant in the room. And GDon himself is being
counter-productive in appealing once again to Ad Nationes, for Tertullian does
precisely the opposite: he does not
remain silent on the historical Jesus. In fact, he urges his readers to
learn about him. If he felt it was OK not to
hide all mention of the founder in a closet, why did the earlier
apologists not feel
the same way?
2. "The names 'Christian' and 'Christ' were
hated: Tacitus...refers to Christianity as 'a pernicious
superstition', charged with the hatred of all mankind'..."
Indeed they were, but it was hardly on account of the figure of Jesus
or his reputed teachings, or even for claims that he had been
resurrected from the dead. Such things had sufficient commonality with
the cultic beliefs of pagans themselves (as Celsus admits and attests)
that they would hardly have provoked the reaction witnessed to by the
apologists. Rather it was the calumnies of alleged pernicious
activities on the part of Christians, together with their denial of the
traditional gods and refusal to engage in state religious
observances, that led to denigration and charges of hatred. We can
hardly imagine that the teachings of Christ (or most of them) as laid
out in the Gospels
would have been regarded by pagans as abominable, or that his reputed
miracles—especially the healings—would not have placed him in a popular
vein that included their own healer god Aesclepius. Thus
there would have been every reason for apologists to accentuate these
things, not
bury them, as promising avenues to convincing the pagan that
Christianity was founded on commendable and attractive elements.
3. Christianity was viewed as a barbarous new
religion: ... New sects were regarded suspiciously by the
Romans, and nearly all the apologists stressed Christianity's
'antiquity' via its Jewish roots, over its more recent origin....As
Karen Armstrong points out in her book The History of God, the Roman
ethos was strictly conservative, and Christians were regarded with
contempt as a sect of fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of
breaking with the parent faith. The apologists often referred to the
ancient Hebrew prophets to try to show a continuation from ancient
times."
This claimed Roman attitude is clearly an exaggeration. The Greeks and
Romans alike regularly embraced new cults, new saviors, coming from
more outlandish reaches than Palestine and the Jews. I can't verify his
reading of Karen Armstrong, as he must have a different edition of her
book than my own, but I'm very dubious about the Romans regarding the
Christians with contempt for breaking away from Judaism, a faith they
hardly held in high esteem themselves; or for simply doing
such a thing in principle. In any case, concealing Jesus
would hardly improve the matter. In fact, GDon's
observations about referring to Christianity's 'antiquity' and
continuation from the Hebrew prophets ought to have led the apologists
to present Jesus as the fulfilment of
Jewish and prophetic expectations (even if the Jews themselves refused
to see it that way). If the pagans already knew about Jesus anyway, why
pass up the opportunity to put a better spin on him as a link to
ancient precedents, as the culmination of Judaism? As I said by way of
introduction, the drawbacks to silence make less sense than the alleged
reasons put forward by apologists for that silence.
4. "The writer adopted
different approaches to
different audiences."
What writers? Almost all the ones we are examining, Theophilus,
Athenagoras,
Minucius Felix, Tatian and the author of Diognetus do not show
different approaches to different audiences. We only have examples of
one approach. GDon is simply appealing here to Tertullian, the
invalidity
of which I have addressed above, and to this he adds the scarcely
relevant
observation that Justin discusses the Logos "much less so" in Trypho than he does in his Apology. Also, GDon cannot leave
the
subject without appealing to that much-used fallacy of implying that
there may have been lost documents by those one-trick apologists
which could have adopted a
different approach on other occasions and mentioned an historical
Jesus. This kind of argumentation is utterly without merit, as I have
often complained, and is a mark of desperation. We cannot make
judgments based on things we don't have and know nothing about.
GDon wraps up this section by reiterating his lack of distinction I
mentioned above. I do not "ignore" his alleged reasons for the silence
found in the apologists' writings because they are not there. The
writers themselves do not intimate them (let alone state them) as
motivations for or factors in their silence. While these factors
were indeed present in the situation of the time, it
is simply modern apologists' own reasoning that they were the cause impelling the
writers to silence. My point is
that there
is no indication from the writers themselves that they were, and that
other factors such as I have discussed would have
proven much stronger in impelling them to bring Jesus into the light
rather than keeping him in a darkness which would have been ineffective
anyway.
I would thus regard this aspect of GDon's critique as entirely
ineffectual. And my observations should cast a different
light on his summary declaration at the end of this section:
A thorough review of
the relevant literature is an important part in developing any thesis.
It is clear that Doherty hasn't examined all the literature of the
period. It is also clear that Doherty hasn't analyzed his MJ writers
for points of similarities to the HJ writers of the day (more examples
given below). It cannot be overstated enough that these are serious
flaws in his approach to the evidence being presented in this section
of
his book. I suggest that it amounts to a virtual one-sided presentation
of the evidence.
I'm
afraid I do regard this
as an overstatement, simply because GDon has brought
in
writers who are not directly
relevant to the chapter he is addressing, and presents
them in a manner which is misleading when comparing them to the body of
apologists I deal with. As for his
alleged "points of similarity" with acknowledged "HJ writers of the
day," these will be further dealt with when he brings such writers
forward for examination.
Plumbing the Hebrew
Scriptures
GDon addresses the copious appeal to scripture
by early Christian writers, especially of the Gospels, in their
presentation of a 'biographical'
picture of Jesus. While admitting that doubt is cast on the
historical accuracy
of accounts that are seemingly constructed entirely out of scripture,
he maintains that "this alone shouldn't be used to
suppose that the authors didn't regard Jesus as an historical
personage." I've never claimed that it should, although it's a strong
part of a collective argument. It is hard to understand why scripture
would be the sole source in the presentation of a 'biography' given the
reasonable assumption that oral traditions about Jesus' life should
have been plentiful, and there should have been no reason to ignore
them. Nor should there have been the limitless leeway many subsequent
evangelists allowed themselves in reworking virtually
everything in the supposedly historically-based accounts created by
their predecessors. GDon's appeal to G. A. Wells' remarks also doesn't
work.
Wells said that even though the source of statements like 'descended
from
David' is scripture, not historical tradition,
"...this
does not mean, as Doherty supposes, that the life and the death were
not believed to have occurred on earth. The evangelists inferred much
of what they took for Jesus' life-history from scripture, but
nevertheless set this life in a quite specific historical situation."
Here Wells (and by extension, GDon) is simply begging the question.
Whether the life and the death were believed to have occurred on earth
is precisely the point under debate. While we cannot necessarily
conclude from the usage of scripture that they were not, it needs to be demonstrated
that
they were, and this is
extremely difficult to do when it is realized that all the
biographical details are indeed supplied from scripture, and are the
product of a huge midrashic exercise by the evangelists in virtually
all its details. Nor is setting such an exercise in a specific
historical situation any indication of belief in basic historicity, as
all historical novelists do this. Wells is actually contradicting his
own position, because he regards the Pauline Jesus as someone Paul
envisioned as having lived in an obscure distant past, not in the time
of
Pilate, so in that view the evangelists would necessarily have been
entirely
fabricating such a 'history'.
GDon makes the legitimate point that "to prove that the
Gospel message was valid, and that Jesus was the expected Messiah, the
early Christian writers had no choice but to draw upon the Hebrew Bible
and 'find Christ' in there." But he is thereby getting himself into
trouble. If scripture is where Christ is 'found' in the sense of being
prophesied (which is what he must mean), an essential element of
that exercise would be to demonstrate how such prophetic passages were
fulfilled in the actual earthly life of Jesus. It would make no sense
to draw on those biographical 'prefigurations' without adding the other
half of the presumed equation in actual history. But this is precisely
what a whole range of early writers fails to do; and my group of second
century apologists fails to engage in the exercise at all. GDon
compounds his own fallacy by pointing to Ignatius (whom he erroneously
calls an apologist) and Justin Martyr as practitioners of this
exercise, but Justin is precisely the apologist whom I identify as the
one who has adopted the Gospels as historical, giving him two sides to
the equation. Theophilus, Felix, Athenagoras, Tatian do not, and I have
focused on this startling contrast. Even Ignatius, whom I have pointed
out is the earliest non-Gospel writer to give Gospel-like biographical
features to his Christ, fails to directly link such features to
specific scriptural passages. His appeal to scripture, as indicated in
the quote GDon provides, is more or less 'in spirit' (as well as in the
spirit of mythicism), and his biography of Jesus is so threadbare he
can scarcely be said to be familiar with any written Gospel, let alone
that he had one open before him on his desk. GDon also appeals to the
epistle of Barnabas, which stands
on
the cusp of the equation of scripture with presumed historicity, but
even here, there is a perplexing lack of appeal to specific Gospel
elements; the few that are claimed to be so are either so general as to
be 'historicizing' products of scriptural expectation, or are
given
interpretations which are at odds with the Gospels as we have them.
(See my Supplementary Article No. 12.)
In fact, what GDon has done is selectively appeal to the example of
certain writers that are acknowledged to be believers in some form of
historical Jesus, and then say by implication: "See, this is what they
are all doing!" Well, they
are not all doing it. A vast
number of the writers of the first and second centuries do nothing of
the sort. And the void in them is deafening. By pointing to the writers
who do engage in such
comparisons, or by appealing to select apologists who do present an historical Jesus in
their pictures of the faith, GDon only serves to highlight the bizarre
nature of those who don't. His strategy of taking one strain of writers
who are by definition "HJers" and claiming that this somehow
demonstrates that all writers must be the same, is typical of the sort
of reasoning traditionally engaged in by New Testament scholarship as a
whole. It's like pulling a few apples out of a barrel of fruit,
pointing to their characteristics and concluding that the rest of the
batch all look and taste the same when an actual sampling of the others
tells our senses otherwise. Christianity in its first two centuries was
one great barrel of mixed fruit, and only in the third and fourth
centuries
did it get mashed into one giant purée by the stamping of "orthodox" feet.
Like his "reasons" for the maintaining of silence on the historical
Jesus, his
"reasons" for the apologists stressing Christianity's roots in the
Hebrew Bible are simply beside the point. Even if such factors were in
play, they would not have precluded adding an historical Jesus
to the mix, and in fact producing him would have been a more natural
and advantageous addition to those roots in the Hebrew Bible than
keeping silent on him. If emperors are presumed to have been
favorably impressed by figures like Moses and the prophets, why not by
a
figure like Jesus, especially given the intellectual and literary
qualities of writers like Athenagoras who could have offered those
comparisons and presented him in
the best possible light?
Begging the Logos
GDon asks, "Was there a
'Logos'
based Christianity separate from a historical stream?" He claims there
is no evidence for it; rather,
"the concept [of the Logos]
was adopted by
orthodox Christianity." But this is putting the cart before the horse
in the face of all contrary evidence. If "orthodoxy" must be defined as
including belief in an historical Jesus and the events of the Gospels,
the vast majority of documents from the first century and many from the
second show no such sign of such things; they are only to be found
there by reading such associations into them. While epistles like the
Pauline corpus and Hebrews do not use the term "logos" itself, their
philosophy of the Christ and Son is virtually identical to the Greek
Logos and to the Wisdom-as-Logos concept of Judaism. That group of
apologists I focus on (except for Felix) have the Logos, in concept and
word, as central
to their religious faith, and only Justin makes a link of such an
entity with an historical Jesus. (Tatian does not, contrary to what
GDon
claims.) Ignatius does, but again, here GDon is appealing to the same
two
writers who are "HJ authors"
and demanding that we infer the same is the case with all the rest, who
pointedly do not make such a link.
He also gets another horse
and cart in the wrong order in saying that, "the gnostics had created
their own
ideas of how the Logos related to a historical Jesus." The Nag Hammadi
library, as interpreted by today's scholarship, shows that the Logos
idea existed
in gnosticism before an historical Jesus was added to it.
Several gnostic systems describing the emanations within the Pleroma
(the Godhead in heaven)
involved purely spiritual, logos-type entities (one of which was
labeled "Christ"); such systems did not always include a
descending savior figure, but even when it did (as in the case of
Derdekeas and the Third Illuminator), it cannot be seen as
an outgrowth from an historical Jesus. When the Gospel figure intruded
upon gnostic thought he could not be integrated in human form, so he
retained many mythical elements and was usually rendered docetic. GDon
speaks of the "controversy" over "whether the Word had become
corruptible flesh," but such a controversy is nowhere in evidence
during the first century, and I have pointed out that
the whole docetic issue is simply a product of the time when an
historical human Jesus was introduced and became a problem for the
hitherto heavenly Christ who had suffered only in a spiritual form and
dimension. Because certain people like Ignatius had no problem in
making such a transition, even when surrounded by those who did,
Christianity was able to take the momentous step of creating an
historical founder who was incarnated in flesh.
GDon's claim that "it isn't coincidence that the Logos became a
popular theme to be used in apologies to the Emperor and pagans in the
second half of the second century" is again misconstruing the
situation. Such a statement would have to imply that styling Jesus as
the Logos became advantageous and was
introduced at such a time. That would only work if we found
all apologists, or at least a majority of them, conforming to such a
development. It would only work if Jesus was mentioned. But most of
them don't do this. They don't try to make a
human founder figure more fashionable or palatable to the pagan by
interpreting him in such a manner. They don't
point to Jesus as the embodiment of the Logos. They simply have a Logos as the pivot of their
faith, which is why we can style them as part of a 'Logos
religion.' GDon's claim is simply another statement of the traditional
rationalization that in speaking of their heavenly Son (as in
Colossians 1:15-20 or Hebrews 1:1-3) early Christian writers are
offering an interpretation of
Jesus of
Nazareth, which is simply reading something into things that is never
even hinted at. In fact, such an "interpretation" on the part of
Tatian,
Theophilus,
and Athenagoras could not possibly have remained tacit, for why
would any pagan be expected to accept without qualm such an
identification of their
traditional abstract Logos with a human man, especially one who had
been a crucified criminal? The idea would strike the pagan as
ludicrous. It would
require the most
vigorous explanation and justification, which no apologist could
possibly neglect to supply.
It would also only work if the historical Jesus presentation of the
faith preceded the Logos presentation, but this is, of course, far from
the
case. The entire body of Christian documentation outside the Gospels
during the first century has nothing to say about an historical Jesus,
but preaches a Logos-style spiritual Son and cultic Redeemer. So we
should reasonably conclude that the historical Jesus was added to the
Logos—he was a subsequent interpretation
of the Logos if you
like—rather than the other way around. Where the
Gospels are
concerned, the Logos ("Word") does come at a later stage, but this is
an evolution within the Gospel stream itself which had a largely
independent origin. In the Gospel of John, it came about through an
attempt within the
Johannine community to merge their own savior concept with the Synoptic
story line.
GDon claims that pagans by the 160s were becoming familiar with the
idea
of Christian origins (meaning the Gospel story and character) and were
rejecting it "as superstition." And so the apologists turned to the
Logos as "a useful concept to Christians trying to re-image
Christianity as a philosophical school." This, too, flounders on closer
examination. Such a "re-imaging" would have to involve Jesus himself,
since he was an integral part of the picture: indeed, we have to think
that it was precisely
his career as Messiah and his reputed resurrection that would have been
the object of the accusation of "superstition."
Pagans would hardly have regarded belief
in a divine offspring (their own religions were full of them), or even
the Jewish God, as a superstition, worthy of ridicule. Thus there would
be no point in excising Jesus from the picture since he would have been
the essential element that had to be dealt with, especially since it
could be regarded as deception to simply substitute a 'philosophical'
entity, any incarnation ignored, for the traditional human founder
pagans
were presumably familiar with.
Athenagoras does indeed start his apology with a salutation to the
Emperors and to "philosophers." Since he makes a presentation of his
faith entirely in terms of a philosophical entity familiar to pagan
tradition, the first conclusion should be that this is its sum total,
rather than imposing on him the thought of other writers who had gone
in different directions from different sources, and accusing him of
suppressing it.
Slandering the
Christians
GDon spends much space in this article on examining the pagan
accusations
against Christians during the second century. Yes, much of the concern
of the apologists is in countering such accusations, most of them
certainly ridiculous or unjustified, but I find this line of argument
irrelevant. Again, this should not of itself have required or prompted
the apologists to suppress mention of an historical Jesus. Indeed,
quite the opposite. Since most of these calumnies related to 'moral'
issues, such as incest or libertine behavior, the worship of their
priests' genitals, and even cannibalism, and since the apologists are
ever at pains to convince their readers that Christians are good and
ethical citizens, the most natural way to demonstrate this would have
been to appeal to the estimable teachings of their founder, his own
exemplary lifestyle, his urgings to an honorable life. While there may
be less appealing pronouncements alongside these in Jesus' catalogue,
nothing would prevent the apologists from highlighting only the
commendable and supportive parts of their traditions about him
(something modern preachers do all the time).
One of the commoner pagan fantasies about Christians was their
participation in orgiastic "love feasts." Such slanders could have been
countered by an account of the Last Supper as Jesus had instituted it.
A major commentator on Minucius Felix,
H. J. Baylis, wonders why Octavius would not have introduced this 'pure
and sacramental' event into his response to his opponent's accusations.
A Missing Heresy?
At the core of GDon's rebuttal is an argument which others have
seized on as compelling, imagining it to be a virtual refutation of the
whole Jesus myth
case. Briefly stated, it claims that among all the heresies addressed
and condemned in the literature of the second century, there is no
mention of a heresy involving a denial of the human Jesus. No sect
or branch of Christian faith is accused of not believing in the
historical figure of the Gospels, in some form or other. If the
mythicist picture were correct,
they
say, we would expect to find some traces of groups who had not
yet evolved to the historicist viewpoint, and these would be roundly
condemned by at least some apologists.
On closer
examination, this argument
can be seen to be porous. First of all, there are
indications in epistles around the turn of the second century that
there were indeed circles of the faith which denied the fact that Jesus
had been on earth. Ignatius, in his insistence that Jesus had truly
been born of Mary, baptized by John and crucified by Pilate, condemns
those who do not preach such a Christ. Nor is this directed against
simple docetism. (I have argued this in an Appendix of The Jesus Puzzle.)
The first two epistles of
John speak of those who do not acknowledge Jesus as having come in the
flesh, an argument made by an appeal to the proper "spirit," meaning
revelation, not historical tradition; the author refers to such circles
of belief as "Antichrist." (See my Supplementary Article No. 2.)
So right at the beginning of the second
century we do encounter the existence of such a 'heresy.' As the
century progressed, more Christian circles were joining the historical
Jesus bandwagon, and full-blown gnosticism reared its head. By the time
the apologists turned their attention to attacking the latter, an
undertaking that does not begin until after the year 150, many
have fallen under the Gospel spell. Early traditions have been
reinterpreted. No one who knew of or attached any importance to Paul
doubted he was speaking about an historical Jesus; they simply read the
Gospels into the epistles, as Christians continue to do. Gnostics like
Marcion toward the middle of the century were also assuming that some
kind of historical figure lay behind the Gospels, and they were
concerned with appropriating him for themselves as a teacher of the
true High God behind the Demiurge of the Hebrew Bible. They would have
had little motive to deny the existence of an historical figure, even
though an earlier writing like the Valentinian Gospel of Truth (it
probably predates 140) shows no presence of a human Jesus, despite the
best efforts of scholars like Jacqueline Williams to find allusions to
earlier New Testament documents, including the Gospels. By the time we
get to Irenaeus and Tertullian, the entire reading of early Christian
tradition and writing had been irreparably skewed. Not even Celsus
could cut through the tangle and see the Gospel Jesus for what he was,
a fictional creation.
For centuries we were dependent on writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian
for our picture of the gnostic heresies. Today we can see that so much
of what they presented about the beliefs they castigated were distorted
by misconception and prejudice. Certainly the presence of savior
figures as something that had no connection to Jesus of
Nazareth in the developmental stages of those sects was lost to them.
And what of the reaction of heresiologists to apologists like
Theophilus and Athenagoras and the circles of 'heretical mythicism'
they
seem to represent? I am aware of no reference at all to any of them by
writers in their immediate wake, favorable or unfavorable, so it is
quite possible people like Tertullian and Irenaeus had simply not
encountered them. GDon claims that such apologists were well received
by subsequent orthodox writers, but the latter were notably later; he
mentions
Eusebius who who can hardly be relied upon for a dependable reading of
what Athenagoras had really been about, a century and a half earlier.
However, there is an aspect to GDon's
argument which has been completely overlooked. I will leave the reader
hanging, and revisit the question in my Conclusion, in response to his
summary comments on it.
Finally, I will throw out the suggestion
that the
traditional and even modern scholarly datings for some of these
apologists, along with their ascriptions as to addressee, may not be
accurate. The debate over Minucius
Felix, for example, has been going on
for at least a hundred years, with datings covering almost a century of
variance. (I
regard the arguments for its primacy over Tertullian's Apology and its dating to the
neighborhood of 155 as the more compelling.) Scholarly debate over what
emperor a given writing was addressed to, even in the presence of one
being stated in the text, is not unknown. We know from experience that
authorship and provenance of earlier documents by later Christian
commentators can be notoriously unreliable and downright fanciful, such
things often being added by later editors. Thus our relatively late
dating of Theophilus and Athenagoras has to be taken with caution. It
may well be that by the time Irenaeus and Tertullian were mounting
their high horses in defence of the heresies that beset them all
around, circles who still believed in the non-existence of an
historical Jesus had virtually died out.
GDon notes that
"one of Doherty's MJ writers" (which
he
has earlier identified as Theophilus) wrote an anti-heresy work against
Marcion, now lost. Given the general unreliability of such
traditions—this one comes from Eusebius, who declared
that a lot of
things were known to him, including a letter from Jesus himself to King
Abgar of Edessa, which Eusebius quoted from his own copy!—it is
risky to formulate any arguments based on unconfirmed attributions of
non-extant works. And I was wryly amused at GDon's appeal to
Tertullian's
inspiration from Minucius Felix
for his Apology as an
indicator of how highly regarded this allegedly MJ writer was. Of
course, this necessitates an admission that Felix was actually the earlier
work.
The Catalogue of
Apologists
In "Section 2" of his critique, GDon goes on to individual examinations
of
the several major apologists I deal with. I will be doing some
paraphrasing here, as he sometimes provides lengthy passages from my
book which I will not reproduce in full. (On the site, the
corresponding article is "The
Second Century Apologists".)
1. Justin Martyr
GDon finds it "curious" and "incredible" that I would take one section
of Justin's Dialogue with the Jew
Trypho and draw a meaning from its silence on Jesus of Nazareth
when the rest of the work is full of references to such a figure.
(This, of course, is exactly what he does in regard to two works by
Tertullian, as I've noted above.) However, in this case, I maintain it
is justified. In the opening chapters of Trypho, Justin is recounting his
conversion, an episode that happened in the past. The account (even if
it is only allegorical—some have suggested that the old man he meets by the
sea is a metaphor for the Logos itself) reflects his thinking at that
earlier time, and while one can't deny that it may be curious that
Justin would not have recast that thinking in light of his later
views, it is fortunate for us that he did not. The greater curiosity,
in fact, is that two such contrasting sections within the same work do
exist. Why, indeed, does Justin not present his conversion experience,
and
the ideas that contributed to it, in terms that include an historical
Jesus? Any of the reasons GDon suggests, such as Justin's purpose being
concerned with philosophical arguments, should apply to the work as a
whole. If he could include Jesus within that purpose in the bulk of the
document, why not to his account of his conversion experience? If he
felt no qualms anywhere else, why would they be operating here? The
only explanation which makes sense to me is that Justin, for whatever
reason, consciously or not, has preserved the actual state of affairs
at the time of his conversion and has not contaminated it with later
developments in his thinking through encountering the Gospels. One
cannot 'prove' that this is what happened, but
the possibility is not "incredible," especially in view of the
comparable evidence we find in other apologists who are entirely silent
on an historical Jesus. Justin came out of the same school of
philosophical thought as the others; only he went on to embrace the
Gospel Jesus where they did not. (Tatian was apparently to do so, but
only after
writing his own apology.)
Let me go into more detail about this conversion account than I did in
the book. In Chapter 7 of Trypho,
the old man is speaking
about "teachers" of the philosophy of body and soul they have been
discussing. Justin has asked if it is best to employ one, seeing that
so many pagan philosophers have, in the old man's view, been deficient
in their insights. The old man points to the Hebrew prophets "who spoke
by the Divine Spirit" and foretold events that are now happening.
"They [meaning the prophets] were entitled
to credit on account of the miracles which they performed, since they
both glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all things, and
proclaimed His Son, the Christ [sent] by Him; which, indeed, the false
prophets, who are filled with the lying unclean spirit, neither have
done nor do, but venture to work certain wonderful deeds for the
purpose of astonishing men, and glorify the spirits and demons of
error. But pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be
opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by
all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted
wisdom." [Ante-Nicene Fathers,
vol. 1, p.198]
This is the translation from which GDon quotes the part involving the
first reference to the Christ. When he goes on to claim that "Justin
makes clear in the text that the
ancient prophets proclaimed a HJ," he seems to be basing this in
part on the implications of the "sent" word. But this is the product of
the translator; it is not in the Greek text. The Greek reads: "(they
glorified the Father) kai ton par'
autou Xriston huion autou katēngellon". While it is difficult to
translate this phrase literally, there is no word for "sent"; this is
an implication supplied by the translator (which is why it was placed
in square brackets). The idea expressed is simply "proclaimed the
Christ from him (par' autou),
his Son." The "from him" is by no means a clear or strong reference to
"sending" the Son to earth in incarnated form, as GDon would like it to
be. In
fact, in the spirit of a Logos religion, it seems to be a reference to
the 'emanation' aspect of the Christ and Son. When Justin goes on (at
the end of the above quote) to speak of this Christ as imparting
wisdom, this is not a necessary reference to a teaching Christ on
earth; it is simply the common thought in virtually all expressions of
Logos philosophy, that the Logos/Christ is the channel—a spiritual one— through
which God makes knowledge of
himself known and acts upon the world. He does this through his
emanations, and the fundamental aspect of Logos religion is that it
"proclaims" the existence of such an emanation. This is the "Son,"
through whose revelatory activity salvation comes. When Justin a few
sentences
later [8.2] refers to "the words of the Savior," this is "tōn tou sōtēros logōn" which is a
common way of expressing the 'teaching' that comes from scripture,
regarded as the voice and channel of the Son. We find such ideas, for
example, in 1
Clement and the epistle to the Hebrews and alluded to in The Odes of
Solomon.
But here is the point I am leading up to. If, as GDon claims,
Justin and the old man are speaking of an historical Christ on earth,
why is a specific reference to this divine "teacher" notably missing in
their discussion of teachers? Justin has asked about the necessity and
value of teachers of philosophy, about who should be consulted to
provide insight into the great questions they are addressing. What is
the old man's answer? He points to the Hebrew prophets. "These alone both saw and announced the
truth to men" [my emphasis]. Where is the earthly Jesus in this
category? How could the old man,
or Justin, have left him out?
He even (see the above quote) disparages the miracle-working of "false
prophets" who seek to astonish men, something very reminiscent of Minucius Felix's oblivious
derogation of supposed features associated with Jesus.
GDon appeals to the opening lines of Chapter 8: "When he had spoken
these and many other things, which there is no time for mention at
present..." Could not Christ's earthly mission, he asks, be the "many
other things" referred to? Well, usually one mentions the most
important factors and relegates the minor ones to non-specific tags
like this. Somehow, I find it difficult to see all reference to
Christ's earthly career as minor and unimportant. In any case, we don't
know. And it's yet another appeal to the possible existence of things
we don't actually have, but which would bolster one's case if we did
have
them.
That same opening section of Chapter 8 also contains indicators that
Justin at this time had no particular conception of an historical
Jesus. I mention these in my book, but one merits a fuller quote:
"But
straightaway a flame was kindled in my soul; and a love of the
prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me."
It seems odd that Justin would not speak of feeling a love for Christ
himself. Odd, unless this is because he had as yet no sense of Christ
as a distinct, let alone human, entity, an historical man capable of
being "loved" as one would love the prophets—no more than Philo would say that he
"loved" the Logos with the same emotion and admiration he felt toward
Moses. Philo regarded the Logos as an abstraction, and while Justin's
and the other apologists' type of Logos may have evolved somewhat
beyond this, Justin in his conversion account, and the others in their
entire works, express no emotion toward the Christ; he is
simply a philosophically envisioned aspect of God. (By contrast, the
composer of the Odes of Solomon expresses much love for the Son and
Word; this is an earlier and probably independent expression of the
faith, a set of devotional hymns, not an apology, which nevertheless
presents no human or sacrificial Son, nor uses the name "Jesus." Its
venue is thought to be the region of Edessa in northern Syria.)
GDon also makes reference to a "later" statement by Justin, that "Of
these and such like words written by the prophets...some have reference
to the first advent of Christ..." But this statement comes in Chapter
14, much later than the conversion account. To try to have it
cast light on the darkness in the earlier chapter is a stretch,
especially since there is no connection implied. The remark is merely
part of the post-Gospel phase of Justin's thinking, the setting in
which his dialogue with Trypho takes place, when he had reinterpreted
everything in his Logos religion in terms of Jesus of Nazareth.
Thus, I once again have to disagree with GDon's summary assessment that
my conclusion "that Justin converted first to a philosophical
Christianity devoid of a historical Jesus" is "nonsensical" and
something which "defies logic." I will also take exception to his claim
that I have "badly misread" the well-known statement by Trypho at the
end of Chapter 8:
"But
Christ—if
He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and
does not even know Himself, and has not power until Elias come to
anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a
groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are
inconsiderately perishing."
It is true that within the context
of the scenario Justin is presenting, Trypho would have to mean
that the "invention of a Christ" refers to the making of a Christ out
of the historical Jesus, who is a figure Justin believes in and is the
pivot of his discussion with Trypho—outside the conversion account. (GDon
mentions the supportive "Note on Trypho" by Peter Kirby, who discusses
the meaning of the passage in these terms, within the scenario
presented by the text.) But we must look beyond the text and take into
account that this dialogue, together with the figure of Trypho, is a
construction of Justin. The fact that he would make his character put
things this way, with this meaning, does not guarantee that this is
what the real
Jewish world was saying. The very fact that he has included it in his
dialogue indicates that it must reflect something which was being said
against the Christians. But the very
vagueness of the passage, the fact that clear reference to an
historical Jesus is lacking, may well indicate that the accusation was
more in keeping with my suggestion, that the invention of "a Christ for
yourselves" was out of whole cloth. Justin, in transferring this into
his dialogue, has given it an historical Jesus context.
There is virtually nothing in the above quoted
passage which, taken out of the scenario of the Dialogue, would require
us to accept GDon's (or Kirby's) contention as to its meaning. Trypho
is stating what would certainly be the Jewish requirements for
identifying anyone as the Messiah; at the present time no one knows, so
the Jews would claim, whether the Messiah has yet come into the world.
The Jews could well declare that, because such requirements have not
been met in anyone, the Christians (of the sort Justin represents) have
invented their own false Messiah, in their declaration of him in the
form of a recent human man. Again, this does not mean that they were
referring to this
man as historical. In fact, the "invented a Christ for yourselves"
conveys
the opposite.
The only element of Trypho's statement which might disturb such an
interpretation is the phrase, "having accepted a groundless report,"
since this could refer to traditions, or assumed common knowledge,
about the historical man in question. But it could equally refer to the
Gospels or other written or oral reports which were not regarded as authentic, and thus
the passage, if it reflects fairly accurately the things being said in
the world at large, could as easily indicate that there were common opinions being voiced
against the Christians that they had simply invented their Christ,
lock, stock and humanity. Thus it is not entirely a "misreading," let
alone a bad one. However, there is simply no way of resolving the
question. To that extent, I overstated the idea that
the passage supports the
existence of a non-historical Christ.
2. Tatian
GDon is not the only one who appeals to the fact that Tatian was, by
tradition, Justin's "pupil." They all use it to draw the conclusion
that Tatian must therefore have followed Justin in all things and
adopted all of his views. But our meager knowledge of their
relationship does not justify such a conclusion. We only have the
tradition voiced by Irenaeus and Tertullian that Tatian was a
disciple/hearer of Justin. We have no record of the course of Tatian's
tutorship, when exactly it began or finished, how intense it may have
been, what degree of influence Justin had on him compared to other
inputs, and so on. All we have is a single writing by Tatian, and in it
he is silent on Justin as his teacher. In fact, he makes mention of
Justin exactly twice (which hardly justifies GDon's claim that it is
"several times"). The first, in Chapter 18, states that "the most
admirable Justin has rightly denounced (the demons) as robbers." (This
the ANF translator claims in a footnote is "the language of an
affectionate pupil," which is simply wishful thinking and an
application of tradition, as there is no necessary association of thaumasiōtatos with a
teacher-pupil relationship.) The second is even less significant, a
remark in Chapter 19 about a certain official who "endeavored to
inflict on Justin, and indeed on me, the punishment of death." These
are pretty slim pickings. Tatian speaks of his conversion through
reading the Jewish scriptures, but nowhere does he suggest that Justin
had anything to do with it, or with teaching him what he believes. The
fact that Tatian went on later to compose the Diatessaron, a harmony of the four
Gospels which is not extant, says nothing about his earlier state of
mind, or whether this 'conversion' to the Gospels was due to the
delayed influence of Justin.
What we are left with is a comparison of Tatian's thought, as expressed
in his Address to the Greeks,
with the writings of Justin. GDon claims that "not unexpectedly, Tatian
uses the same concepts as his teacher, Justin." While there are
certainly similarities of expression in the examples from the
two writers, one cannot say that Tatian derived them directly from
Justin; Logos philosophy permeated the era, and could well have been
the source of both men's ideas. Even if Tatian wrote about the
Logos due to his exposure to Justin, this creates no necessary link
between them in any other area. GDon admits that "it is possible that
Tatian adopted Justin's terminology and still rejected Justin's view of
a historical Jesus," but he adds: "there is no evidence that this
occurred" (which I assume refers only to the latter phrase). Surely
this has things backwards. Evidence is required that Tatian adopted Justin's view of an
historical Jesus, and this is in fact precisely what is missing, since
Tatian has nothing to say about such a figure, and puts forward in his
Address to the Greeks none of
the views of Justin regarding the human Jesus. And
if we were to search for
"evidence" that Tatian rejected Justin's view, what form would it take?
It's not likely we would get a statement from him to that effect.
Surely such evidence would take the form of precisely what we find in
the Address: the deliberate
failure to include any of the direct
identification of Jesus with the Logos, any appeal to the events of
Jesus' ministry, to the Gospels themselves to illustrate aspects of his
life and nature—in
short, all the things which Justin openly and enthusiastically includes
in his own picture of the Logos-Christ.
In regard to both writers' passages on the resurrection, I made the
point that Tatian does not appeal to Jesus' resurrection as support for
his contention that resurrection of dead bodies is possible (Chapter
6). GDon presented a passage from Justin (First Apology, Chapter 19) showing
that in similar circumstances Justin also does not appeal to Jesus'
resurrection. To some extent, the comparison is valid, though Justin is
focusing on his readers' experiences, which include the fact that they
"have never seen a dead man rise again." It would do little good to
appeal to Jesus' resurrection, since this is something they
would never have seen either. But contrast this with the extant
fragments from Justin's lost work On
the Resurrection (which GDon doesn't mention). Here the
circumstances are also similar.
"They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection
of the flesh" [Chapter 2]. After a number of philosophical arguments,
Justin goes where Tatian and the other apologists never tread:
"And
what is most forcible of all, He raised the dead. Why? Was it not to
show what the resurrection should be?... Why did He rise in the flesh
in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the flesh?...
And when he had thus shown them [the apostles] that there is truly a
resurrection of the flesh...he was taken up into heaven while they
beheld, as He was in the flesh. If therefore, after all that has been
said, any one demand demonstration of the resurrection..." [9]
This appeal to Jesus' own resurrection is something we do not get from
Tatian, or from Theophilus (not even in response to Autolycus' demand,
"Show me even one who has been raised from the dead!"), or from
Athenagoras, who wrote a 25-chapter treatise on the resurrection of the
dead.
What follows from GDon is somewhat
confused. He quotes me: "In Tatian's Apology we find a few allusions to
Gospel sayings, but no specific reference to written Gospels and no
attribution of such things to Jesus." He wonders what significance I
draw from this, in view of the fact that I elsewhere admit that Tatian
does make reference to "something like the Gospels." The "significance"
here is that Tatian does not appeal to
them in making any of his arguments, does not attribute to Jesus the
teachings he alludes to, which is something we need to keep in mind
when looking at that reference. GDon then notes that
Justin also doesn't specifically name any Gospels, referring to them as
"memoirs of the apostles." But this is
the 'naming' of them. He doesn't know any other names, certainly not
the names of reputed authors which only appear later in Irenaeus.
(Papias' reputed references to Matthew and Mark are not to any
narrative Gospels.) The
fact that I acknowledge Justin as being familiar with one or more
Gospels
is not a contradiction. The glaring contradiction is
that Justin regularly appeals to these "memoirs," regularly points to
Jesus' teachings as his product, to the events of Jesus' life, which is
something that the other apologists we are examining fail to
do.
On the key question of what Tatian is referring to in chapter 21 of his
apology, there seems to be more confusion. GDon quotes me as allowing
that Tatian's statement "Compare your own stories with our narratives"
is a probable reference to Christian Gospels, then he goes on to argue
as though I don't make such
an admission. The primary question is not
what is Tatian referring to by "our narratives." We both agree, it's
some form of Gospel. Rather, the question is, does Tatian regard these
as on the same level as the Greek myths? I maintain that the text
indicates he does, GDon maintains otherwise. I prefer the translation
of Molly Whittaker [Tatian,
1982], less flowery and more direct than the Victorian ANF:
"We
are not fools, men of Greece, nor are we talking nonsense when we
declare that God has been born in the form of man. You who abuse us
should compare your own stories with our narratives... So take a look
at your own records and accept us merely on the grounds that we too
tell stories. We are not foolish, but you talk nonsense [kai hēmeis men ouk aphrainomen, phlēnapha
de ta humetera]...."
The statements prior to the last sentence would certainly convey the
idea that Tatian is making a general equation of the Greek stories with
the Christian narratives. Accept us because we too tell stories.
Despite GDon's denial, my statement is accurate that neither here nor
anywhere else does Tatian rush to point out that the Christian stories
are "factually true." This is a devastating silence. I have also said
that he doesn't rush to declare them "superior" to those of the Greeks.
GDon thinks to read the last sentence above as doing just that. I see
it as not much more than a schoolyard taunt. "You call us foolish? You are the foolish ones!" If
Tatian were really concerned with pointing out the superiority of the
Christian fables to the Greek ones, or their actual historicity, I
think he was capable of doing it in a more sophisticated fashion—and more obviously.
He goes into some detail in itemizing the
legends of the Greeks, which he accuses of being ridiculous if taken
seriously, and he asks how they can mock those of the Christians. This
may be the most telling remark of all, for how, on the question of
whether legends are to be taken seriously or simply as 'stories,' can
Tatian not address the question of how the Gospel accounts are to be
taken? And do it by more than just "We are not foolish"? It is
probably true that Tatian thinks the Greek legends have the greater
degree of
foolishness, but he has hardly advanced any perceivable case for
regarding the Gospel tales as being in a different category—which would
certainly be his opinion and his impulse to do if he were a believer in
the historicity of Jesus and the reality of the account of his life.
This is typical apologetic argumentation. Ignore the glaring
discrepancies, in this case the complete lack of any mention or appeal
to the Gospels or the figure of Jesus as support for Tatian's case
throughout his work, and focus on some minor and at best ambiguous
detail that can be twisted into supporting the apologist's stance. (The
same, as we shall see, is done for Minucius
Felix.) Peeling a flake of skin off the elephant's hide does not
remove it from the room.
Finally, GDon appeals to Tertullian in the same misleading way he did
earlier. From Chapter 21 of Tertullian's Apology,
he quotes:
"Receive
meanwhile this fable [this ray of God
born of a virgin, grown to manhood, etc.], if you choose to call
it so—it
is like some of your own—while we go on to show you Christ's claims are
proved..."
GDon has seized on Tertullian's remark that the Christian "fable" (and
he is calling it that because his readers do so) is like
those of the Greeks; he claims that this is the same as what Tatian has
done, ignoring the fact that Tertullian goes on to do
what Tatian does not. He appeals in great detail in that chapter to
elements of the Gospel story, in ways which leave no doubt that he
regards them as worthy, factual and superior to the Greek myths. He
says he will go on to prove the validity of those beliefs about Christ.
The beam is overlooked while the splinter is removed. GDon's comparison
is invalid because the more important considerations are not paralleled between the two
apologists. Tatian's lack of what Tertullian includes is precisely what
sets them apart.
3. Theophilus
As GDon progresses from one apologist to the next, he repeats many of
the same arguments. Rather than this creating
a cumulative strengthening effect, the weaknesses in such arguments
only
become the more obvious. The misleading appeal to Tertullian's Ad Nationes I have dealt with earlier.
There is more dubious reasoning when GDon claims that, even though
Theophilus presents ethical teachings from "the gospels" as the
inspired word of God (meaning the evangelists have them through
inspiration), even though such teachings are said to be of the gospels
and not of Jesus, pagans would know they were from Jesus because, like
Celsus, they were familiar with such teachings in the Gospels.
Theophilus' readers would know what he was talking about (nudge, nudge,
wink, wink). This plainly creates a contradiction. On the one
hand, Theophilus, along with
his companion apologists, were supposedly deliberately silent on the
historical
Jesus because the subject was anathema to the pagans, but on the
other
hand, they knew that pagans were familiar with Jesus already and would
simply interpret what they wrote in terms of him. Apparently this is
some
form of ancient Da Vinci Code.
GDon
goes on to make this outrageous statement: "I suggest that the primary
question isn't 'why doesn't Theophilus refer directly to Christ,' but
'what do we understand from what he is saying'?" His
position seems to be that it is no longer incumbent on modern scholars
to offer
an explanation for the silence; rather it becomes a case of what can we
read into the words in keeping with our own assumptions. This, of
course, is the methodology of traditional New Testament scholarship in
regard to all the documents, not just the second century apologists.
On the thorny question of why (quoting me) "Theophilus has not a thing
to say about this Word's incarnation into flesh, or any deed performed
by him on earth," the strategy all along regarding such silences is to
force the desired meaning onto whatever passages one can, no matter how
obscure the possibility or how strained the process. GDon suggests
that Theophilus does claim
that the Logos acted on earth and points to
Chapter 22:
"The
Word, then, being God, and being naturally produced from God, whenever
the Father of the universe wills, He sends Him to any place; and He,
coming, is both heard and seen, being sent by Him, and is found in a
place."
This obscurely worded verse is elucidated by what leads up to it.
Theophilus
is explaining that, while God Himself cannot contain himself in a
specific
'place' (which is why philosophers felt he needed an aspect of
himself, namely the Logos, to do so and communicate with the world),
the Word could so contain
itself. An example of this was the Word's visitation to Eden to
converse with Adam; the voice Adam heard was that of the Word, God's
Son. But Theophilus is hardly saying that this visitation to Eden was
an incarnation; it was simply the voice of a spiritual entity who could
"contain himself" in Eden. GDon has no justification for regarding the
above quote, which concludes this whole passage, as anything but a
statement of the same thing. The spiritual Son and Word is "sent"
whenever and wherever God needs him, in a spiritual form to communicate
with human beings. (The New Testament epistles are full of this kind
of language.) GDon could not be more misguided than to
claim that, "It certainly appears to be an indication of the Word being
physically active on earth,
and...is almost certainly an expression of the incarnation." It appears
to be nothing of the sort.
Not only has GDon simply forced the meaning he wants on a passage that
will not bear it, he ignores other aspects of it. Following on the
verse saying that the Word is God's Son, Theophilus remarks:
"Not
as
the poets and writers of myths talk of the sons of gods begotten from
intercourse [the translator adds: with
women], but as truth expounds, the Word, that always exists, residing
within the heart of God."
Here is a perfect example of the the type of
'denial' of an historical Jesus that can be seen within so much of what
the apologists write. How can Theophilus state that this Word and Son
is not to be thought of in
the manner of gods that are born on earth, when in fact this was
precisely the case with the historical Jesus? How can he go on to
define the 'Word/Son' entirely in terms of Logos philosophy, as though
the whole incarnational aspect of the Word simply doesn't exist for
him? Elsewhere in his work, Theophilus ridicules the pagan for
believing that his gods Heracles and Aesclepius were raised from the
dead [1.13]; he tells Autolycus that the Christian doctrine is not
recent, that it is "not modern or fabulous but ancient and true"
[3.26]; another good example of the outright exclusion of an historical Jesus is
this astounding statement [2.33]: "And therefore it is proved that all
others have been in error; and that we Christians alone have possessed
the truth, inasmuch as we are taught by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in
the holy prophets and foretold all things."
Theophilus' attitude toward the "gospels" is certainly curious. He
treats them as inspired documents, not historical records and never
mentions their central character. I suggested that his one reference to
an evangelist, "John" [2.22], may be a marginal gloss, since he gives
no other authorial name and elsewhere always treats such sources
collectively. GDon claims that "a reference to a named Gospel of John
would appear to be conclusive evidence establishing Theophilus as an
orthodox Christian," but this is ignoring a great deal of contrary
evidence, including the fact that in a following chapter [2.27]
Theophilus declares that "everyone who keeps God's law and commandments
can be saved, and, obtaining the resurrection, can inherit
incorruption." This is salvation by knowledge of God and his laws,
which is a hallmark of
the Logos religion. The 'orthodox' Atonement doctrine is completely
missing here. Theophilus can hardly be aware of, or subscribe
to, Jesus' declaration in the Gospel of John that "I am the
Resurrection and the
Life"—meaning that he himself is the only avenue to salvation.
Again, these are the sorts of things
throughout the apologists that GDon and others simply ride roughshod
over.
Finally, GDon claims that, since Theophilus is reported to have written
a work against the heresy of Marcion, he finds it improbable that he
could have composed such a thing without betraying his lack of belief
in an historical Jesus. And where does that report come from? Eusebius,
a century and half later. I've already commented on the reliability of
traditions proceeding from later Christian times, and from Eusebius in
particular. In any case, we can only judge the content of a work by
having access to it, and there are no extant fragments.
4. Athenagoras
Athenagoras, too, is full of those exclusionary silences. In Chapter 10
of his A Plea for the Christians,
he gives the emperor a detailed picture of the Son and Logos, one of
the finest we have in all of ancient literature, as though in
answer to a question: "if you inquire what is meant by the Son." There
is no mention of an incarnated Jesus, and Athenagoras wraps up his
description with "If I go minutely into the particulars of our
doctrine, let it not surprise you." If I had been the emperor, I would
have had the apologist hauled before me and executed for telling me
such a bare-faced lie. He has also lied to me in Chapter 11:
"For
presenting the opinions themselves to which we adhere, as being not
human, but uttered and taught by God... What, then, are those teachings
in which we are brought up? 'I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless
them that curse you; pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be
the sons of your Father who is in heaven, who causes His sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust'."
GDon is not the only one to claim that this shows Athenagoras'
knowledge of Matthew, but there is no guarantee of this. Athenagoras
never refers to a 'gospel' in the sense of a written source, and in
Chapter 32, he says: "For the Logos again says to us..." and he goes on
to present some unknown dictum about the evils of kissing. This is in
line with the language of the quote above, that these teachings are
from a divine source, God himself through the channel of the Word,
which is said to be a "not human" source. While they may be
circulating in a
documentary collection (possibly with no attribution), Athenagoras
seems not to hold the opinion that they are the product of an
historical teacher and founder of the faith. He qui |
