Jesus: The Missing Years in the East

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So religion is based on practices which are based on beliefs.

"Religion"? No. Several religions do have theologies and orthodoxies rather than orthopraxies. Several are so-called "religions of the book" where sacred texts form an integral part of the belief system. However, for the most part religion in the ancient world was just culture. Judaism was an exception and as a result so was Christianity. For the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Babylonians, etc., there was no bible, no theology, no belief system; there were just the ways one honored/placated/manipulated the gods.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

'was made' is not being used in the sense of 'making' something, such as an artifact; it is used in the sense of 'made to be', or 'appear as'.

My god. The word isn't "made". The word in question means to exist, to be, to come to pass, to come to be (become). The word for "to appear" is dokein.

Nothing 'becomes' something else.

Yet in languages you don't read there was actually a word that was similar to the English "to be" only it meant "to become something else". To peoples from earliest antiquity to the modern day, lots of things become something else and in fact this is a driving principle. Just scan through Ovid's Metamorphoses or attend a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mass in which the bread and wine are believed to literally become the body and blood of Jesus.

Wood is wood and ash is ash. Wood does not become ash.

Sure it does. But this is irrelevant. We're not dealing with your belief system but with what the text says. It doesn't say "appear" and can't. It's the wrong word.

Here is the progression:

Here's a better translation:
"1a In the beginning there was the Word,
1b and the Word was very close to God,
1c and the Word too was God.
2a This Word was, in the beginning, with God;
3a Through it, all things came into being,
3b and without it, not one thing came into being.
3c-4a What has come into being† |in it was life,
4b and this life was the light of mankind,
5a and the light is shining in the darkness,
5b and the darkness has never become master of it.
[† 3c: or What came into being]"

from
McHugh, J. F. (2009). A critical and exegetical commentary on John 1-4 (International Critical Commentary). T&T Clark Int'l.

[The light is already present at this point]

There's no reason to necessarily read the text this way. However, as we could waste a long time on a pointless Christological discussion when the only reason I have disagreed with you on what "light" meant was because you sought to defend the notion that Jesus was a solar deity. He's not, and once again the light in John is metaphorical (as is the darkness). Cf. the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness described in the Qumran finds. Also:
In religious literature the use of the term ‘darkness’ is almost certain to be metaphorical. It refers not to the absence of physical light, but rather to that ‘encircling gloom’ of doubt or depression, of uncertainty or despair, where it would be a grace to see but one step ahead (cf. Ps 119.105). Similarly, LSJ records that in the Iliad, ὁ σκότος always refers to the darkness of death, mostly in the phrase τὸν δὲ σκότος ὄσσε κάλυψεν (Il. 4.461 etc.), but also in lines such as στυγερὸς δ᾽ ἄρα μιν σκότος εἷλε (Il. 5.47; 13.672). Again, the texts from Qumran about the struggle between the Prince of Light and the Angel of Darkness (1QS III 20-26), or between the children of light and the children of darkness (1QS I 9-10; II 16-17; III 24-25), serve to illustrate the currency of this metaphor in the religious literature of the age...This is the first mention of the contrast between light and darkness in the Fourth Gospel, and two statements are made. φαίνει: the close parallel in 1 Jn 2.8 (ἡ σκοτία παράγεται καὶ τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ἤδη φαίνε&#953 is there certainly intended to refer to the age in which the writer is living"
(ibid)
Now, if you wish to see the author as saying that the light was always there, a light for all humanity before there was any humanity or even creation for there to be a light for, fine. I'm not really concerned with such interpretations, just with the ones that are relevant and clearly wrong. Jesus wasn't a solar deity and the light here doesn't refer to the sun.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Word = Logos = Teaching = Light = Yeshu

You are confusing two things here:

1) Both 'light' and 'word' are metaphors used to describe the same person, Jesus [this we agree on, I think]

2) Both 'light' and 'word' are different metaphors [this is what you don't understand]. Forcing these two clearly different metaphors to say the same thing divorces both metaphors from their meanings, which are *obviously* distinct.

Remember, people can have ore than one characteristic, and Jesus had many qualities attributed to him by John.

 

[godnotgod]

"Religion"? No. Several religions do have theologies and orthodoxies rather than orthopraxies. Several are so-called "religions of the book" where sacred texts form an integral part of the belief system. However, for the most part religion in the ancient world was just culture. Judaism was an exception and as a result so was Christianity. For the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Babylonians, etc., there was no bible, no theology, no belief system; there were just the ways one honored/placated/manipulated the gods.

You mean no formal belief system.

There were beliefs.

There were gods.

There was practice.

Therefore there was religion, though embedded into the culture as it was.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You mean no formal belief system.

I don't mean that exactly, as "formal" has particular connotations I wouldn't use here, but it's close enough. My point was that your description of religion doesn't describe religion but more those religious practices that don't have many (perhaps most) of the elements generally associated with religion. For a couple centuries now, people have been trying to turn religions into collections of beliefs (myths) such that we have countless mythology collections to misrepresent just about every major culture we know of. The Greeks and the Romans are the worst here, because we've been re-writing their religious systems in our own image the longest. Buy a mythology collection and you will ensure that you get a fundamentally skewed and inaccurate view of that cultures beliefs. We went looking through written source to create something like a bible (a collection of beliefs) for cultures that were fundamentally about practice.

 

[godnotgod]

You are confusing two things here:

1) Both 'light' and 'word' are metaphors used to describe the same person, Jesus [this we agree on, I think]

2) Both 'light' and 'word' are different metaphors [this is what you don't understand]. Forcing these two clearly different metaphors to say the same thing divorces both metaphors from their meanings, which are *obviously* distinct.

Remember, people can have ore than one characteristic, and Jesus had many qualities attributed to him by John.

Do you agree that the Word is the Logos?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Do you agree that the Word is the Logos?

"The Word" in Greek is ho logos. "Word" is simply a translation of logos.

 

[godnotgod]

My god. The word isn't "made". The word in question means to exist, to be, to come to pass, to come to be (become). The word for "to appear" is dokein.


Yet in languages you don't read there was actually a word that was similar to the English "to be" only it meant "to become something else". To peoples from earliest antiquity to the modern day, lots of things become something else and in fact this is a driving principle. Just scan through Ovid's Metamorphoses or attend a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mass in which the bread and wine are believed to literally become the body and blood of Jesus.

However, in Christianity, there is always the notion of God and of Jesus existing simultaneously. If, as John 1 says, the Word literally 'became' flesh, the Word would cease being the Word, or spirit. One might argue that things can become other things, but in the spiritual world, God cannot become something other than what It already is, God not being a finite, changeable 'thing'. God is the Changeless, the Absolute, the Ultimate Reality. Since God is already Everything, and there is no 'other' to compare to God, God can only appear to become something other than what It is. That is manifestation, not becoming, regardless of what the Greek word translates to, or what the ancients believed. But where the divine nature is concerned, Christians DID believe that God remained God while dwelling in the flesh, as the idea of Jesus having a dual nature demonstrates, though this is still a dualistic notion which conceptually discriminates between the 'material' world (flesh) and the spiritual world (God), when, in reality, there is no such distinction.

The rope does not 'become' the snake. There is, in reality, no such snake. There is, and always was, only the rope.

 

[godnotgod]

"The Word" in Greek is ho logos. "Word" is simply a translation of logos.

OK.. So the Word and the Logos are one and the same.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

However, in Christianity, there is always the notion of God and of Jesus existing simultaneously.

That's a common interpretation, yes.

If, as John 1 says, the Word literally 'became' flesh, the Word would cease being the Word, or spirit.

1) Word doesn't mean spirit
2) Yes. That's the point. The pre-existent form changed.

One might argue that things can become other things, but in the spiritual world, God cannot become something other than what It already is, God not being a finite, changeable 'thing'.

Once again, I'm really not so interested in arguing Christologies and theologies here. For one thing, it's sort of pointless as I don't believe them, and for another it's always highly interpretive. What's not is whether Jesus was a solar deity, which was the original impetus for this diversion onto John's prologue. If you wish to see the light and word as equivalent, fine. I don't think that's what the authors of John intended, as to me they are quite clearly separate metaphors (though with respect to the same individual), but I'm not concerned enough with the issue to devote the time it takes to argue it. I like to stick with things that are much more demonstrably true than spiritual interpretations, and as we can ground the development of Christianity and the cult of Mithras in history, comparisons are easier to ground in fact (just like whether a text was originally written in Greek, or what a line in the text actually means as it relates to what the words can or can't mean, or even what evidence there is for Jesus ever going to the east and what, in his day, he could even have learned if he had).

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Do you agree that the Word is the Logos?

Yes, the "word" is logos in Greek. It's not "light."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

"Religion"? No. Several religions do have theologies and orthodoxies rather than orthopraxies. Several are so-called "religions of the book" where sacred texts form an integral part of the belief system. However, for the most part religion in the ancient world was just culture. Judaism was an exception and as a result so was Christianity. For the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Babylonians, etc., there was no bible, no theology, no belief system; there were just the ways one honored/placated/manipulated the gods.

Yet all of these cultures produced theological writings, i.e., reflections on God / the gods, and the rest of cosmology. I think it's more accurate to say that there was no theology that defined religion.

Of course, not hardly anyone read and/or believed these theologies, and people today are much the same. Everyone ignores good theology, and just practices the religions.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yet all of these cultures produced theological writings, i.e., reflections on God / the gods, and the rest of cosmology.

Not really. That is, theology is a discipline, not just writing about the gods. In antiquity, such writings did exist but were philosophical and fell under philosophy. That was a major reason for Christianity's success and one reason for later changes to it and paganism. Later neoplatonism, the attempt at reinvigorating paganism by the emperor Julian, the appearance of savior deities like Mithras or sacrificial gods like Attis began largely if not entirely as a reaction against a Christian religion which possessed a "unified" belief system (in that it wasn't mainly a series of practices but a system of beliefs, not in that there was only one form) and scriptures. In fact, Christianity was in may ways a religious expression of Greek philosophy on top of the scriptural structure of Judaism. This is an oversimplification, but it highlights a central difference between the expression of Christian religious thought and the wider religious beliefs and practices of that time (and most times). Religion, for most of time and in most cultures was something one did. There wasn't a word for it (and for those, like Herodotus, who sought to describe the "religion" of other peoples, it was a matter of what deities they worshipped and how) because there really wasn't anything to differentiate it from culture. It was part of the judicial system. Part of the legal system. Part of the political system. Part of one's family. To be an atheist described what one didn't do, not what one didn't believe.

Everyone ignores good theology, and just practices the religions.

True, alas, to an unfortunate extent. But practicing religions today generally (at least in the West and many other places) means affirming creeds, subscribing to a theology even if one doesn't know what that is, accepting a doctrine as expressed in e.g., scripture if not also in an official creed (as there is for Eastern Orthodox and the RCC), etc. Most importantly, perhaps, we call these religions names like "Reform Judaism", "Presbytarian", even "Wicca" and the names describe not only the deities worshipped but the natures of these deities. Nobody in antiquity was a Mithraist in the way that someone can be an Anglican. One worshipped some set of gods according to local customs and perhaps some larger, more global customs too. That was religion: how one honored, manipulated, placated, and appeased the gods. The concept of "religion" really is fundamentally different from the way most religions are and were, and many of those that were traditionally this type have (especially through Western contact and modernization) adopted a more and more theological and/or scripturally-based approach.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Not really. That is, theology is a discipline, not just writing about the gods. In antiquity, such writings did exist but were philosophical and fell under philosophy. That was a major reason for Christianity's success and one reason for later changes to it and paganism.

But Christianity is not just writing about God, either, it has a powerful political message. That is, if we're talking about Scripture. I'm not sure if Christianity ever really lost its political nature, either in the East or the West.

I mean, we start with Jesus making statements about how to deal with Roman occupation (paying taxes, submitting to soldiers, telling soldiers not to complain), the teachings concerning the Messiah and the kingdom of God, and the teachings concerning the end of the world.

I agree that there's a difference, but the whole idea of the kingdom of God cannot be interpreted as anything other than political in nature, even if it's a metaphor. Christianity developed a message of resistance and affirmation of the existing social structures at the same time. My opinion is influenced by modern methods (since the 1960s) - but there's a whole neighborhood of cottage industries of scholarship in this stuff.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think I understand what you're actually saying, in light of some pretty basic elements of Christian Scripture / theology.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But Christianity is not just writing about God, either

Quite true. Nor was it completely unique at the time, as one of the most unique features was that it was a religion of scripture, and this it borrowed from Judaism. It was, however, an "-ism". Religions in general aren't. It made a huge difference to cultures when atheism became a matter of disbelief, rather than simply not to worship the gods. Christianity, like Judaism, Islam, and other similar religions was and is about both belief and practice, just as all religions are. The difference is how thoroughly defined a religion is by belief vs. by practice. There are people who call themselves Christian who don't go to church. In the standard model of religions, this is utterly nonsensical. To be religious meant to do something not believe something. As godsgod points out, the reason to do something is belief, but the kind of belief that motivated (and to a lesser extent motivates) most religious practice throughout time is quite different than that which motivates what is generally associated with the concept of religion. It was a belief in the necessity of practice, not a belief which required some practice.

I agree that there's a difference, but the whole idea of the kingdom of God cannot be interpreted as anything other than political in nature, even if it's a metaphor.

I don't think Jesus meant it to be anything other than political. I think that Paul and later Christians made it largely apolitical by making the kingdom something that was far more spiritual and final.

Christianity developed a message of resistance and affirmation of the existing social structures at the same time.

And, when it became dominant, it became a part of culture in a way that brought it closer to more typical religious practice. But it was always identifiable as religion and as separate from culture. The word "Christianity" is from the 2nd century and "Christian" is from (as you know) Acts. By Nero's time these Christians were considered by the Romans something distinct from both Jews and everything else. When Christianity became dominant, including during the so-called dark ages and into the later middle ages, the peasant class still kept this separation of culture and religion going to such an extent that it was responsible for numerous uprisings, pogroms, movements, and an ongoing millenarianism that was what the coming of the god's kingdom quickly came to be.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think I understand what you're actually saying, in light of some pretty basic elements of Christian Scripture / theology.

It wasn't something I learned from studying Christianity. I was raised Catholic and continued to study Christianity when I stopped believing. It was something I came to realize after studying culture itself and realizing how thoroughly we've graphed modern (Christianized) Western concepts onto other cultures.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

The difference is how thoroughly defined a religion is by belief vs. by practice.

Yes, that's the key I think.

I teach Christianity as a pagan religion. I think that it's important for our thinking to immerse our perspective in the reality that Christianity didn't just spring out of Jesus's thigh, fully developed and unique. It might be a unique blending of other ideas, but Christianity was birthed in the sea of ideas that reach back in its atomic structure to Abraham and Pythagoras. And it was sustained by its contemporary incarnations of Greek philosophy.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I teach Christianity as a pagan religion.

As I said, I think of it as a religious expression of pagan philosophy imposed on a structure of Judaic scriptures. So I think of it perhaps not as a pagan religion per se but as religious paganism, perhaps? Certainly very much immersed in pagan ideas.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

As I said, I think of it as a religious expression of pagan philosophy imposed on a structure of Judaic scriptures. So I think of it perhaps not as a pagan religion per se but as religious paganism, perhaps? Certainly very much immersed in pagan ideas.

I think we're splitting hairs there. I teach it as a pagan religion as a hyperbole to get students out of the perspective that Christianity is one thing and all the other religions were something else. I'm teaching conservative Christians half the time, and this shocks them out of their thinking that Christianity is special simply because they believe it. So it might not be precisely correct, but its a far better starting point than where the were.

You're approaching this like my professors did when I was in undergrad - I'm reaching pretty deep here. Your separation between philosophy and theology, compartmentalizing them in distinct disciplines, the -isms- I actually had exams on that stuff undergrad religion classes. That was about ten years ago, so I know you're coming from a certain - good - perspective.

I took a minor in modern philosophy - specifically Nietzsche and Gadamer in my PhD program. I wrote my dissertation on Greek/Roman philosophy and early Christianity, but I didn't need to deal with the philosophy of religion // or philosophy of the history of religion. So I love - love - love philosophy (especially ancient) and early Christianity.

I don't really do theology, and that might affect my opinions. I see this ancient world as the flow of thought - I try to detect strands of thinking and trace their roots. I try to shed modern classifications like 'is this a philosophy or religion' and try to study the strands on their own terms.

I think we're agreeing on the significant points, and interpreting all the funny stuff in between from our perspectives.

That is to say, I know that traditionally, conventionally, scholars have classified religion, philosophy, and theology exactly as you have. And I'm thinking of all the theology/cosmology in Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and then Seneca and on -- I had thought that the philosophers were theologians. They didn't just think about the gods, it was an important aspect of their thinking. And, I'll point out, that it's a matter of historical accidence that their writings are preserved -- we know that the philosophers thought about the gods, but we also know - by common sense - that there were many other people who thought about the gods as well.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think we're splitting hairs there.

That was supposed to be my point. I largely agree with you and the differences that might exist don't really amount to much as far as I can see.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

That was supposed to be my point. I largely agree with you and the differences that might exist don't really amount to much as far as I can see.

Ah, I missed the point then. :face palm:

Not the first time, won't be the last.

I really appreciate your perspective - and even more than that - your patience with our little friend.