A common argument for the truth of the Christian religion is that its origins were too improbable for it to be false. This argument has appeared in many forms over the years, but most of the usual ideas are combined into a single popular effort by James Holding.[1] The following article critiques that effort, by comparing Holding's arguments and claims there with the actual facts of ancient history, and identifying fallacies in his reasoning. Holding offers seventeen factors "where Christianity 'did the wrong thing' in order to be a successful religion" and concludes from this that "the only way Christianity" could "succeed" under those seventeen hostile conditions is "because it was a truly revealed faith," in particular "because it had the irrefutable witness of the resurrection." Besides those seventeen factors, Holding offers one additional critical assumption about "luck," making eighteen points altogether. Each of those points will be addressed in a separate chapter, in order, with his eighteenth underlying assumption counted last (even though he states it first), followed by an evolving chapter responding to critics of the present work. In addition, I have added some preliminary remarks about method below (after the table of contents).
One thing that is missing from Holding's paper is any sort of formal logical or statistical argument. Despite his rather hyperbolic language, even Holding must admit that the odds of Christianity becoming successful without being true could not be zero even on all of his own assumptions. Human behavior is not that predictable, nor are there any demonstrated historical "laws" that make any conclusion about historical cause-and-effect beyond all probability of error. Rather, Holding can only mean that the probability of Christianity becoming successful, on all of his own assumptions and premises, is so low that we have no rational ground to believe it did--except by some divine aid. In Holding's version of the argument, this fact can only become reasonably probable if we accept as true the premise that the "witness of the resurrection" was (and therefore is) "irrefutable."
I will not quibble about what exactly "irrefutable" means, since I will assume he means the "witness of the resurrection" was (and therefore is) as irrefutable as the historical fact that Christianity was successful. All observers agree with the latter statement, and that is certainly a sufficient standard to compel belief, which is Holding's aim. However, how improbable would the success of Christianity have to be, before we have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus to explain that success? Holding never says. Nor does he say how improbable Christianity's success really was. Yet without comparing those two estimates, it is not really possible to confirm the success of Holding's argument objectively. Many fantastically improbable things happen all the time, simply because so many things happen. For example, "that's about as likely as getting struck by lightning" is often used as a cliche of an event so improbable it never happens, yet over four hundred people are struck by lightning every year in the United States alone. Some people have been struck multiple times.[2] Hence our intuition often fails us when estimating the improbable.
Normally, this is not a barrier to historical inquiry, since we need only ascertain the most probable cause of an event, given all we know. And usually we can say that, given what we know, the most probable cause is the one that is most probably true, and therefore worthy of belief (though maybe only a tentative belief, depending on how much more probable it is than alternatives). However, in Holding's case this requires trying to sort out three crucial questions: (i) whether the "prior probability" of a miracle from God is greater than the prior probability of any alternative natural cause that is proposed to explain the same evidence (e.g. the prior probability of my being struck by lightning is a lot lower than my prior probability of catching a cold); (ii) the probability that a genuinely risen (and hence living) Christ would actually produce all the evidence we have (including a Church preaching immoral doctrines such as the subjugation of women and the persecution of doubters); and (iii) the probability that a qualified set of natural causes would still make Christianity as successful as it was.[3] We must also rule out the influence of a deceiving supernatural power, i.e. some force, such as Satan, who could bring about the same results through supernatural influence, as some Jews might allege for the success of Christianity.
Holding does not make any effort to answer these questions even vaguely. Thus, his conclusion can only be vaguely certain at best. We will nevertheless set this aside and assume Holding's argument succeeds unless we can show that some set of natural causes that we know for a fact happen more often than miracles do (i.e. natural causes that were not unusual or rare), were reasonably likely to have produced the same result (the actual success of the Christian Church). We will also assume for the sake of argument that all non-Christian supernatural causes that could logically be to blame are less probable than the most probable natural causes, whatever they may be. In other words, we will assume that if Jesus was not raised by God, then probably Christianity's success was due to natural causes, and not (for example) Satan.
[1] James Patrick Holding, "The Impossible Faith: Or, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion" (n.d.). This critique is based on how that article appeared in October of 2004 (which I have saved, for anyone who wants to see how it appeared then).
[2] See, for example: Robert Shmerling, "The Real Dangers Of Lightning" (Aetna InteliHealth.com, 2001). I have discussed these problems of relative probability before, in "Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds," which is Part 2 of Richard Carrier, "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004).
[3] This follows necessarily from Bayes
Theorem. See: Giulio Agostini, Bayesian
Reasoning in Data Analysis: A Critical Introduction (2003) and
Richard Swinburne, An Introduction to Confirmation Theory
(1973). It is not always the case that a hypothesis with a lower prior
probability (i.e. (i)) is less likely true than another, since a
sufficiently high probability for (ii) along with a sufficiently low
probability for (iii) can overcome any prior probability, no matter how
low with respect to that of any other hypothesis. In laymen's terms,
even though miracles must be extremely rare (since even at best we see
few of them, and have yet to establish even one with anywhere near the
same certainty as we have for countless other causes of even very
bizarre events in history), and therefore miracles must be extremely
improbable, it is still possible to have enough evidence to establish a
high value for (ii) and an extremely low value for (iii), enough to
make "miracle" the most probable explanation among all alternatives.
Nevertheless, this does require a substantial scale of evidence, a fact
that also follows necessarily from Bayes Theorem, which follows a
deductively valid argument.
| 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. |
Precedents and Distinctions How Converts Differed from Critics How Things Really Looked Many Converts Expected a Humiliated Savior Conclusion |
James Holding asks "Who on earth would believe a religion centered on a crucified man?" Well, the Sumerians perhaps. One of their top goddesses, Inanna (the Babylonian Ishtar, goddess of Love and "Queen of Heaven"), was stripped naked and crucified, yet rose again and, triumphant, condemned to hell her lover, the shepherd-god Dumuzi (the Babylonian Tammuz). This became the center of a major Sumerian sacred story, preserved in clay tablets dating over a thousand years before Christ.[1] The corresponding religion, which we now know included the worship of a crucified Inanna, is mentioned by Ezekiel as having achieved some popularity within Jerusalem itself by the 6th century B.C. The "women weeping for Tammuz" at the north gate of the Jewish Temple (Ezekiel 8:14) we now know were weeping because Inanna had condemned him to hell, after herself being crucified and resurrected. So the influence of this religious story and its potent, apparently compelling allure, upon pre-Christian Judaism is in evidence.[2] Even so, my point is not that the Christians got the idea of a crucified God from early Inanna cult. There may have been some direct or indirect influence we cannot trace. We can't rule that out--the idea of worshipping a crucified deity did predate Christianity and had entered Jewish society within Palestine. But we don't know any more than that.[3] Rather, my point is that we have here a clear example of many people worshipping a crucified god. Therefore, as a matter of principle--unless Holding wants to claim that Inanna really was resurrected--it appears that people would worship a false crucified god. Therefore, Holding cannot claim this is improbable.
In the case of Christianity, Holding is certainly correct that the point of crucifixion was extreme humiliation (as well as terror), and it was certainly a commonplace view held by the elite, especially the more snobbish, that to die in such a way was the ultimate disgrace and embarrassment. However, just because many people find some idea repugnant does not mean everyone does, nor does this mean it was regarded as repugnant by those who converted. Ancient literature (by far most of it written by the rich and well-connected) is full of disgust towards the humiliating professions of prostitute or slave, and yet there were still people willing to choose the life of a hooker or slave. There were even sacred prostitutes within some cults. Likewise, to be a gladiator was a shameful embarrassment among the rich, and yet gladiators could become famous and revered among the poor. And for a more direct parallel, consider the cult of Attis and Cybele: this was a popular religion, with priests and followers all over the Roman Empire, yet it centered on the worship of a eunuch (the castrated Attis), and priests as a result castrated themselves in honor of their god.[4] And this despite the fact that the emasculating act of castration was among the worst of embarrassing disgraces to the snobbish elite, just as crucifixion was.
This last point is demonstrated by a passage from Seneca, who (as a famous philosopher, rich land owner, and advisor to emperors) definitely represents someone deeply invested in the elite power structure. Seneca wrote of this practice of castration (and acts of mutilation promoted by other popular cults):
If anyone has leisure to view what they do and what they suffer, he will find practices so indecent for honorable men, so unworthy of free men, so unlike those of sane men, that if their number were fewer no one would have any doubt they were demented. As it is, the only support for a plea of sanity is found in the number of the mad throng.
Thus, even something so foul and repugnant to an elite scholar like Seneca, nevertheless commanded a large following. There can be no ground for claiming Christianity was any different than the cult of Cybele and Attis in this regard. One man's disgrace was apparently another man's holy salvation. Contrary to Holding's assumption, the most repugnant beliefs could command large followings.[5]
Therefore, it does no good to present examples of people who find something repugnant or embarrassing--especially from the literate elite, since Christianity won very few of them over until it had positions of power and authority to offer them, within a wealth-generating Church hierarchy (by the mid-to-late 2nd century), amidst an otherwise collapsing social system (in the mid-3rd century), which we will discuss in Chapter 18. Rather, what we want to know is whether anyone would find a crucified god acceptable or even praiseworthy, and whether it was those very people who became Christians. That means we must study the attitudes of those who converted--not the attitudes of those who refused or attacked the religion. Obviously many people rejected Christianity because it was in many ways repugnant to them, and probably would have rejected it no matter what evidence confirmed its truth. That's why Christianity never won universal acceptance until it had the power to compel that acceptance under pain of death or loss of all property (by the end of the 4th century A.D.).[6]
When we engage this correct approach, however, we find there are two relevant facts that Holding omits from his consideration: First, the early Christians were in a significantly different social position than those who most looked down on the form of Christ's death, and they had known and credible reasons not to share the elite view when it came to Jesus; Second, among some Jews there was a certain expectation that the Messiah had to be humiliated, as a part of God's plan to secure his triumph, and therefore these Jews would not find a crucified messiah repugnant--to the contrary, it would be exactly what they were looking for.
The first point becomes clear when we read the early teachings in Paul and Acts, and compare them with the teachings of the Essene community at Qumran: like the Qumran community, the early Christians appear to have come from among a disgruntled poor and middle class, who had grown disgusted with the fundamental injustices in their society and government, especially social and economic inequities (as evidenced by the Christian desire, attested in Paul and Acts, to eliminate those very inequities within the Church itself, e.g. Gal. 3:28, Acts 4:32-35, etc.), but also the execution of righteous men. The fate of John the Baptist is a case in point: executed by the state, yet still held in high esteem by a great many Jews.[7] If John could be revered despite the embarrassment of execution, so could Jesus. This would have been no less likely had John been crucified--to the contrary, the outrage at this insult to his honor would be all the greater, and popular reverence for his unjust suffering all the greater for it. So long as someone believed Jesus had been a righteous man crucified unjustly (which converts always had to be persuaded of first), his crucifixion would have been no stumbling block at all. To the contrary, it would be testimony to his greatness. It would make him even more a hero than any other death could have.
This was especially true among Jews and their sympathizers, who already had a tradition of revering humiliated martyrs,[8] and among the poor, disillusioned, and disenfranchised, who expected good men to be humiliated and murdered by the corrupt elites they despised. Indeed, "standing up to the man," as modern slang would put it, was a surefire way to win reverence among these groups. Obviously "the man" did not feel that way--hence those who looked down on Christians for worshipping a crucified god were typically invested in the wealthy power structure, Jewish or Gentile. In contrast, we don't have on record anyone outside that structure scorning the idea.[9] And when we look at the early success of Christianity, in its first century it was nowhere so successful as among the poor, the disillusioned, the disenfranchised, and Jews and their sympathizers (like the faithful centurion of the Gospels, cf. Lk. 7:2-6). That Christianity won success principally among these groups is evident in Acts, where successes are achieved primarily within Jewish communities and synagogues, and elsewhere most often by recruiting slaves and women--rarely Roman citizens or anyone of wealth or power, who were not already Jews or sympathizers. In other words, Christianity was most successful among those very people who would have empathized most with the story of Jesus and could admire his unjust manner of death. And for at least a century it was not successful at all with those very kinds of people who did scorn his manner of death: wealthy, politically-connected scholars (i.e. the only sort of people whose writings we have scorning the manner of Christ's death).[10]
So it seems that Holding has no case here. Yes, someone who found the idea of revering a crucified man repugnant would need very powerful evidence to convert despite their revulsion--exactly as Holding argues. But there is no evidence any such person converted, at least for a hundred years after Christ's death, and after that all opportunity to inspect the evidence would be gone. So Holding's argument turns out to be irrelevant to the actual history of early Christianity. Instead, with a lone exception we shall examine in later chapters, all those who converted within that period--insofar as we can assign them to any social group at all--appear to have not belonged to any of the social groups who would routinely scorn the idea of revering a crucified man, but instead belonged to those groups who would be most ready to accept or even cherish the idea of a righteous man martyred for his principles. And for them a crucified hero would be even more a hero, precisely because crucifixion was intended by the despised elite to be the ultimate humiliation. To deify such a man could easily be sold as an attractive "f-you" to the corrupt powers of Judaea and Rome: for then the good man triumphs despite their greatest efforts to destroy him in the most degrading way possible. Indeed, these very efforts at degradation were exactly the kind of thing the disillusioned despised about those in power.
Ultimately, for a crucified man to be victorious stands as a testimony to the impotence of the corrupt leaders, and that was the very thing the oppressed wanted most to believe: that there is a greater power the wicked elite cannot defeat no matter how hard they try. Obviously a supernaturally victorious conqueror was what people wanted more. But there was never any such person. So for the Jews and their sympathizers and other social underdogs, the only heroes left were martyrs--for the only way left to claim that the corrupt power structure was really powerless was to point to someone who triumphed despite their every efforts to degrade him (see Chapter 8), and lacking any real such hero, only someone whose triumph was invisible to all but the eye of faith could win anything like wide support. That is exactly what the early Christians were striving for. That was the "market niche" they most ably exploited. And in that context, the Christ story was sure to be a hit.
This is confirmed by the fact that the Gospel did not really preach a God crucified. No one converted thinking they were worshipping a defeated, disgraced god. To the contrary, from the very beginning the Gospel preached a God crucified and raised to glory. Many a potential convert could find that attractive. Christ was a victorious god receiving the ultimate honor, not a god defeated in humiliation. His crucifixion was only a temporary defeat. The god actually being worshipped, therefore, was not defeated at all--he lived, and sat on the ultimate heavenly throne, his power attested on earth in the charisma, conviction, and "miracles" that belief in him inspired (more on that point in Chapter 13). Not everyone bought it, of course. But many would have. And many did. The crucified Christ was the ultimate hero, who soon would save us all from the awful, corrupt world we despise and can no longer control, while raining down punishment on the wicked elite who seem to us so untouchable. That this hero had to die at the hands of elite conspirators in order to gain this ultimate power was not unusual--many a god required just such a path, from the Sumerian Inanna, to the Egyptian Osiris, to the Roman Romulus.[11]
And this idea of a suffering, executed god would resonate especially with those Jews and their sympathizers who expected a humiliated messiah. Jewish scripture declared that "The Redeemer of Israel" or "The Holy One of God" shall be "despised" by men, and nations will be "disgusted" with him, yet he shall triumph;[12] the people will "bury him with the wicked" even though he was innocent, and he shall be "numbered with the transgressors" just as the Gospel of Mark says.[13] The idea that a Chosen One of God must suffer total humiliation and execution at the hands of the wicked is a major theme in Isaiah.[14] Even David, a common prototype of the Messiah, sings in Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" for "I am a worm" and "a reproach to men, despised by the people" and "all that see me laugh and scorn," a song that set up a Jewish model for a crucified Davidic savior.[15]
The pre-Christian text of the Wisdom of Solomon also declares that the wicked will "condemn to a shameful death" the holiest man of god, because they are "blinded by their wickedness" and "do not know the secret purposes of God" and it is said this righteous man, "a son of god," who is given a shameful execution will be raised and exalted by god to avenge his own death.[16] This was a lesson that would automatically apply to the messiah, who would by definition be a blameless and righteous man, and we have evidence that it probably was understood by some in just this way, for the preeminent prophecy of the coming Messiah declares this very fate:
The anointed one shall be utterly destroyed yet there is no judgment upon him, then the city and the sanctuary will be torn down by the ruler who shall come. They will be knocked down in a cataclysm, until the end, when after war wreaks havoc there will be a systematic extermination. (Daniel 9:26)
This Jewish prophecy was widely known in the Jewish and Roman world, and interpreted in many different ways--by the Romans, as presaging the crowning of Vespasian as Emperor, and by the Jews, as presaging a military victory over Rome, even though the prophecy plainly says their anticipated messiah will be killed (despite his innocence), and that the Jews will be defeated (though later vindicated in the Apocalypse).[17] So we have the lesson of the Wisdom of Solomon, combined with Isaiah 52-53 (which explicitly describes a humiliated servant of God who is subsequently exalted) and the way David could be imagined to speak of himself (e.g. humiliated and killed in Psalm 22, then sojourning in the land of the dead in Psalm 23, then exalted to glory in Psalm 24). But most of all, we have Daniel 9, which outright says the messiah will be unjustly killed--while Isaiah and the Wisdom of Solomon confirm that he will then (as for any righteous man) rise again in divine triumph.
Thus, there is a flaw in Holding's reasoning. Yes, a man who "out of the blue" was crucified and then declared God would not win many supporters. But this did not come out of the blue. Rather, a large number of people had been prepared by the Jewish scriptures to expect that someone would suffer a most humiliating execution at the hands of the wicked elite, despite his complete innocence, and that this person would be the Chosen One of God, a Son of God, who would receive the ultimate elevation in heavenly honor, soon to return and impose his revenge on the wicked and bring salvation to the faithful. The soil was prepared for exactly what the Christians came to preach--in fact, this preparation no doubt contributed significantly to why the first Christians came to believe this amazing claim about Jesus in the first place. The scriptures predicted that precisely around their very time an innocent man would be humiliated with execution and scorn and this man, scripture plainly said, would be the Messiah. Jesus was an innocent man humiliated with execution and scorn. That made him a good candidate. Holding's argument requires that the evidence must be overwhelming, but in fact by being crucified Jesus already fit the bill--so it would not take much to convince his followers that he was more than merely a candidate for the title of Christ.
This is confirmed by the fact that scriptural demonstrations were one of the main modes of successful argument employed by the Christians (as we shall demonstrate in Chapter 13). Even to the extent that the Christians developed novel interpretations, the fact that they found such meaning in these revered oracles could and often did carry tremendous weight. The relevant point here is that prophetic preparation for a crucified messiah made sure that preaching a crucified messiah would not be a black mark, but a useful tactic, even a feather in Christianity's cap, among many Jews, certainly, but also some Jewish sympathizers who were already acquainted with their scriptures and impressed by them,[18] and even some unprepared Gentiles. Throughout the ancient world a great many people were awed by oracles of the gods and sought prophecy at innumerable places around the Empire. They were also well-acquainted with the idea of finding predictions of current events in "sacred scriptures." The Roman state consulted the Sibylline Books, for example.[19] Thus, to convert an unprepared Gentile merely required introducing him to the relevant texts and explaining how the story of Jesus confirms them. The fact that a humiliated, crucified man becoming a God (as all Heavenly Kings and Sons of God were) was predicted by ancient sacred texts would be a powerful argument in favor of belief. It is no accident that the Christians relied on that very argument.
In conclusion, Holding's point here only works to explain why certain groups and individuals rejected Christianity. It does nothing to argue against conversions from among those groups who actually did accept Christianity. For those groups included many people who would not have found anything challenging in worshipping a crucified martyr like Jesus, and some would even have found this particularly attractive, fitting both pagan and Jewish precedents, and conforming to their needs and desires within a corrupt world beyond their control.
[1] Samuel Noah Kramer, "The First Tale of Resurrection," History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History, 3rd ed. (1981): pp. 154-67. For more on Inanna, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis: G. Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis (1997); Diane Wolkstein, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (1983); Eugene Lane, Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M. J. Vermaseren (1996) and M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult (1977); Betty De Shong Meador, Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna (2001).
[2] Some Christians knew of the cult, too. The Apostolic Constitutions (c. 250 A.D.) mentions the cult of Tammuz and Astarte (a common transliteration of Ishtar, i.e. Inanna) as among the heresies of the early Jews (5.12). Origen and Hippolytus give important testimonies around the same time (c. 225 A.D.). Origen discusses Tammuz (whom he associates with Adonis) in his "Comments on Ezekiel" (Selecta in Ezechielem), noting that "they say that for a long time certain rites of initiation are conducted: first, that they weep for him, since he has died; second, that they rejoice for him because he has risen from the dead (apo nekrôn anastanti)" (cf. J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca 13:800). Although the Sumerian records are incomplete, and thus do not preserve an account of the resurrection of Tammuz, we do know his death followed the resurrection of Inanna.
[3] I caution strongly against overzealous
attempts to link Christianity with prior religions--see my critical
comment on "Kersey
Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" (2003); and for a
good comparative study: Hans-Josef Klauck, The
Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman
Religions (2000). But I can't deny there are some intriguing
parallels, including between this story of Inanna and the story of the
Incarnation of the Lord told in the Ascension
of Isaiah. There are many important differences, but it is
curious that in the Sumerian story Inanna descends through the seven
gates of hell, with a different encounter at each stage, and her
humiliation and crucifixion at the bottom, while in the Jewish story
the Savior (Jesus) descends through the seven heavens, with a different
encounter at each stage, and his humiliation and crucifixion at the
bottom. Jesus also supposedly said he would be "three days and three
nights" in the grave (Mt. 12:40), while Inanna herself was dead for
three days and three nights. Of course, we are told Jesus was not
actually dead for three nights, only at most two, but it is still
curious why there would be a tradition of his saying otherwise, a
tradition matching that of Inanna.
I admit these parallels are
worth noting, but they are too little to make much of. For instance,
Jonah 1:17 also shares the three-days-and-nights motif (and Matthew
12:40 explicitly draws from it), which I explain elsewhere probably
derived from a common ancient concept of death: Richard Carrier "Jewish Law, the
Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day" (2002). On the Jonah parallel
specifically (as a motif for death and resurrection), see Evan Fales,
"Taming the Tehom," in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty
Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (2005). So what is notable is not the
suggestion that the Christians "got the idea" of a third-day motif from
Inanna cult (directly or through transmission to later religions), but
that they perhaps "got the idea" from the same cultural concepts
governing the construction of the Inanna myth.
[4] On the Attis cult, see Note 1 and: "The Great Mother and Her Eunuchs," Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., 1992; tr. Antonia Nevill, 1996): pp. 28-74; Mary Beard, et al., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, A History (1998): pp. 164-66. On prostitutes, see discussions in: Catharine Edwards, "Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome," in Roman Sexualities, ed. J. Hallett and M. Skinner (1997) and Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1995). On slavery: Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (1981) and Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (1987). On gladiators: Thomas Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (1995) and Michael Grant, Gladiators (1967).
[5] This quote comes from Seneca's lost work On Superstition, written before 65 A.D., but quoted by Augustine in City of God 6.10. Augustine makes implausible excuses for the fact that Seneca, though he attacks every conceivable cult in this work, including Judaism, never mentions Christianity (6.11). More likely, Seneca did not mention it because he had never heard of it--meaning the book had to have been written before the persecution of 64 A.D., and may well have been written as early as the year 40 (the beginning of Seneca's known literary career).
[6] "We decree that no one shall have the
right to approach any shrine or temple whatsoever, or to perform
abominable sacrifices in any place or time whatsoever. All persons,
therefore, who try to deviate from the dogma of the Catholic Church
shall hurry to observe [it]" Theodosian Code 16.10.13, A.D. 395
(consolidating and reinforcing laws he had already been passing since
391). The penalties ranged from death to the confiscation of land and
property. On the government's Christianization of the Empire, see: Bill
Leadbetter, "From Constantine to Theodosius (and Beyond)," The
Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp.
258-92 (Theodosius: 285-87).
As a consequence of this
edict, open persecution of pagans began in earnest. Some fled, some
converted, and others adapted their paganism to be less offensive to
their Christian opponents. But some communities, such as Alexandria,
had so large a pagan community as to thwart the exercise of imperial
power there. This was a state of defiance that led inevitably to riots
and violence (including the burning of one of the two great Libraries
there, and the hideous flaying of the Platonist teacher Hypatia).
Nevertheless, the philosophical schools in Athens (which attempted to
find ways to make paganism palatable to the Christian authorities)
remained alive until they were forced to close by Emperor Justinian in
A.D. 529--by which point the Western Roman Empire had long since
collapsed, and the Eastern Empire had its own endless troubles. After
that there was every incentive to simply join the crowd and become a
Christian, and urban paganism completely vanished by the 8th century.
Throughout this sad tale, it
was always possible to defy the imperial edicts, as long as no one
noticed, or couldn't do anything about it. Ultimately, paganism
survived mainly in rural communities (the pagi, hence pagani,
"pagans"), which were often beyond the reach of the over-extended
government. See: Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity
& Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (1997) and
David Frankfurter, Religion
in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (1998); as well as
(for political and administrative context): Averil Cameron, The
Later Roman Empire: AD 284-430 (1993); and A. H. M. Jones, The
Later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative
Survey, 2 vols. (1964).
Another example paralleling
(and preceding) the events in Alexandria is the fate of the pagan
stronghold of Gaza, detailed in Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry,
Bishop of Gaza. See: Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing
the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) (1984): pp. 86-89; Robert
Grant, Early Christianity and Society: Seven Studies (1977):
pp. 9-11. Gaza was mostly pagan in 390 A.D., with only 280 Christians
out of some 10,000 inhabitants. When miracles performed by a new bishop
sent to "correct" the city only won over another 163 converts, the rest
of the city is converted by horrifying displays of force and cruelty.
[7] As reported by Josephus (AJ 18.116-19); also attested in Mk. 11:29-32; and by the apparent fact that many Jews expected God might raise John the Baptist from the dead before the general resurrection of Israel (Mt. 14:1-2; Mk. 6:12-16, 8:27-28; Lk. 9:18-19).
[8] For example, see 1 and 2 Maccabees (and also Daniel 11:33-35 & 12:3). Disgust at the murder of righteous men by those in power is certainly a complaint voiced by early Christians, quoting the rebuke of Elijah: e.g. Lk. 11:47, Acts 7:52; 1 Thess. 2:15, Rom. 11:3, drawing on 1 Ki. 19:10. See Alan Segal's discussion of the social context of early Jewish martyrology in his Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (2004): pp. 285-321. For more on the socio-cultural causes of this reverence for martyrs, see Chapter 8.
[9] Though many may well have--just as jail time today can be a badge of honor or disgrace among the lower classes, depending on the circumstances. Hence those of any class who were unconvinced that Jesus was righteous could certainly mock the manner of his end. Holding offers one piece of evidence here, although it is rather late and ambiguous: the famous Palatine Graffito of c. 200 A.D. (see Rodney Decker, "The Alexamenos Graffito," n. d., though he makes several errors, which are corrected in the sources cited below). Most probably this was written by a member of the middle-class (free or slave), though we don't know exactly why, or what he meant by it (or whether the author was mocking or merely depicting the crucifixion), and Holding can't claim to know this author wasn't well-invested in the elite power structure by being dependent upon it and supporting it (after all, the location--inside the Imperial Palace--suggests otherwise). See Mary Beard, et al., Religions of Rome: Volume 2, A Sourcebook (1998): § 2.10b, pp. 57-58; and E. Dinkler, Signum Crucis (1967).
[10] The fact that the early Christian movement began among those outside the elite social structure, and only later worked its way up the social ladder in later centuries, is the consensus view among qualified experts, and is almost too obvious to need proving. It is even explicitly admitted by Paul in 1 Cor. 1:26. However, I will discuss the evidence for this in Chapter 18. But for now, the case is adequately presented in David Horrell, "Early Jewish Christianity" and Thomas Finn, "Mission and Expansion," both in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 136-67 & 295-315. Relevant to the present chapter's argument, the highest ranking of known converts in the first hundred years of Christianity are the centurion Cornelius and the proconsul Sergius. But Cornelius was already a devout Jewish sympathizer (Acts 10:1-2, 10:22; on Jewish sympathizers in general, see Margaret Williams, "VII.2. Pagans Sympathetic to Judaism" and "VII.3. Pagan Converts to Judaism," The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans: A Diasporan Sourcebook, 1998: pp. 163-79), and the centurionate was a distinctly middle-class occupation, which contained its own daunting galaxy of social ranks, wherein disillusionment with the system (especially for a religious minority) would not be unusual. And though Sergius is a unique case in terms of social status, it is likely he was also a Jewish sympathizer, given his close association with the Jewish sorcerer Elymas bar Jesus and the fact that Luke calls him "a discerning man" who wanted to hear the "Word of God" (Acts 13:6-12). Moreover, Sergius was certainly not an "elite scholar"--for surely if that were so, he would have left writings to posterity, which Christians would have eagerly preserved.
[11] Inanna was discussed above. For Osiris,
see: Richard Carrier, "Osiris
and Pagan Resurrection Myths: Assessing the Till-McFall Exchange"
(2002), as well as John Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His
Cult, 2nd ed. (1980) and Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride
(1970). Osiris was murdered, dismembered, buried, then ascended to
heaven to become "the Supreme Father of the Gods" (Plutarch, On
Isis and Osiris 12.355d-19.358e, c. 75 A.D.; Apuleius, Metamorphoses
11.27-30, c. 130 A.D.; Seneca, On Superstition, via Augustine, City
of God 6.10, cf. Note 5).
Like the Inanna myth, the
Osiris myth also contained curious yet inconclusive parallels with the
Christ story. Although it is otherwise a very different tale, there are
still a few similarities that might be too unusual to be coincidental:
both were "sealed" in their tomb or casket (Plutarch, ibid. 13.356b-d,
called a "burial" at 42.368a; Mt. 27:66); both were killed by
seventy-two conspirators (Plutarch, ibid.; the Sanhedrin who condemned
Christ consisted of seventy-one men--per Mishnah Law, Sanhedrin
1.5 & 1.6--and Judas makes seventy-two); both rose on the third day
after their death (Plutarch, ibid. & 39.366e-f); and both
resurrections took place during a full moon (Plutarch, ibid. 42.367e-f;
Passover always occurs during a full moon).
Another God who submitted to
being murdered in order to triumph was the well-revered Roman national
deity Romulus, whose death and resurrection was celebrated in annual
public ceremonies in Rome since before Christian times (Plutarch, Romulus
27-28 & the pre-Christian author Livy, From the Founding of the
City 1.16.2-7, written c. 15 B.C.; cf. also Cicero, Laws
1.3, Republic 2.10, c. 40 B.C.; Ovid, Fasti 2.491-512,
c. 10 A.D.; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities
2.63.3, c. 10 B.C.; Tertullian, Apology 21, c. 200 A.D.).
Though again a very different story, the Romulan tale shared with
Christ's at least the following elements: both were incarnated gods
(Romulus descended from heaven to become human and die); both became
incarnate in order to establish a kingdom on earth (for Romulus, the
Roman Empire; for Christ, the Kingdom of God, i.e. the Church); there
was a supernatural darkness at both their deaths (Mk. 15:33, etc.);
both were killed by a conspiracy of the ruling powers (Christ, by the
Jewish and Roman authorities; Romulus, by the first Roman senate); both
corpses vanished when sought for (i.e. Christ's tomb is found empty--no
one sees him rise); both appear after their resurrection to a close
follower on an important road (Proculus on the road to Alba Longa;
Cleopas on the road to Emmaus--both roads 14 miles long, the one
leading to Rome, the other from Jerusalem); both
connected their resurrections with moral teachings (Romulus instructs
Proculus to tell the Romans they will achieve a great empire if they
are virtuous); both "appeared" around the break of dawn; both ascended
to heaven (e.g. Lk. 24:50-55, Acts 1:9-11); both were hailed "God, Son
of God, King, and Father"; and in the public Roman ceremony, the names
were recited in public of those who fled in fear when the body of
Romulus vanished, just as we "know" the names of those who fled in fear
when the body of Jesus vanished (Mk. 16:8), and in both cases the story
went that these people kept their silence for a long time and only
later proclaimed Romulus a risen god (just as the women "told no
one" and the Christians waited fifty days before proclaiming their
"discovery" to the public: Acts 1:3, 2:1-11).
Both Osiris and Romulus were
dismembered (as was Orpheus, according to Apollodorus, Library
1.3.2; and as was Bacchus, before his own resurrection and ascension to
heaven, according to Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin and Trypho
the Jew 69-70). Though Jesus is not dismembered, his clothes were
(e.g. Mk. 15:24), and clothing was a common metaphor for the body in
Jewish thought (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:49-54, 2 Cor. 5:2-4; Origen, Contra
Celsum 7.32; Gospel of Phillip 57(23); Ascension of Isaiah
9.9-18; cf. Dale Martin, The
Corinthian Body (1995): p. 109). But this is a far more
tentative parallel than the others mentioned above.
[12] Isaiah 49:7; that this was a messianic prophecy is clear from the context (Is. 49:1-13). See, also, Psalms 89:38-45 (which is specifically about "the Christ" being shamed and maltreated).
[13] Isaiah 53:9 (which also says the messiah will be "with a rich man in his death," a plausible basis for having a rich man bury him in Mark's narrative) and 53:12, Mark 15:28.
[14] Isaiah 50:4-9, 52:7-53:12. Thus, N. T. Wright's claim that "Messiahship in Judaism, such as it was, never envisaged someone...suffering the fate he suffered" is demonstrably false--insofar as Isaiah 52-53 and Daniel 9 both clearly envision such a fate, and the other evidence clearly allows it.
[15] Psalms 22:1, 6-7. That this Psalm forms a model for Mark's crucifixion narrative is clear to anyone who compares the two, cf. Ps. 22:8, 22:16-18.
[16] Wisdom of Solomon 2.12-22 & 5.1-8, 5.15-23. For those who understood (or were taught) the Jewish idea of sin and atonement, this would make even more sense, since in order for Christ's death to properly atone for all sins, his sacrifice had to be the most extreme imaginable--and hardly any sacrifice was more extreme than submitting to crucifixion. Such an atoning sacrifice was overtly anticipated in Isaiah: cf. Rom. 4:23-25, "it was written" that the Christ will be killed to atone, per Is. 53:4-6, 11-12; and Jesus had to die to be vindicated, per Phil. 2:5-11. For more on this whole scheme, see Richard Carrier, "Jewish Law, the Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day" (2002).
[17] This Danielic prophecy is alluded to by Suetonius (Life of Vespasian 4), stating that "an ancient superstition was current in the East, that out of Judaea at this time would come the rulers of the world," and Josephus (Jewish War 6.312-16), stating that the main reason the Jews made war on Rome "was an ambiguous prophecy found in their sacred writings, announcing that at that time someone from their country would become ruler of the world," and Tacitus (Histories 5.13), who writes that "in most there was a firm persuasion, that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers, coming from Judaea, were to acquire universal empire" and "these mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and could not be brought even by disasters to believe the truth." The prophecy's interpretation as anticipating Christ's death in 30 A.D. is attested by Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologer who laid it out two centuries later (§ 18.2, preserved by George Syncellus, cf. my note in Newman on Prophecy as Miracle (1999)). As one can plainly see from the text itself, the Danielic prophecy predicts two men, an "anointed" (a "Christ") who will be executed though innocent, and a "ruler" (a "Hegemon") who will destroy Jerusalem and its Temple, and conquer the world for a while, but then "come to his end" (Dan. 11:45), after which shall be the Apocalypse when all these injustices will be righted by God (Daniel 12).
[18] On Gentile sympathizers and admirers of the Jews, and converts to Judaism, see Margaret Williams, "VII.2. Pagans Sympathetic to Judaism" and "VII.3. Pagan Converts to Judaism," The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans: A Diasporan Sourcebook (1998): pp. 163-72 (cf. also pp. 172-79).
[19] See: H. W. Parke, Sibyls and
Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity (1989) and D. S. Potter, Prophets
and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius
(1994); as well as Robin Lane Fox, "Language of the Gods," Pagans
and Christians (1987): pp. 168-261.
| 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6. 2.7. 2.8 |
Two Key Problems Getting the Context Right Working Class Rabbi The Galilean Connection The Gospel of John The Role of Messianic Prophecy Why a Virgin Birth? Conclusion |
James Holding points out that "the Greco-Roman world was rife with what we would call prejudices and stereotypes," and far more starkly than we are used to in our own society. That is correct, but does not support a false generalization. Not everyone shared the same prejudices as everyone else. For example, Holding cannot really claim that Gentiles would not listen to Christians plugging a Jewish deity, since we already know that many Gentiles flocked to Judaism even before Christians came along, either converting to it, supporting it, or holding it in high esteem. We also know that Christianity was most successful in its first hundred years within exactly those groups: Diaspora Jews and their Gentile sympathizers (see Chapter 18).
Once Christianity had saturated that market apparently as far as it could (though still winning a few converts outside it), only then did it begin to employ the tactic of de-Judaizing the religion in order to make it more palatable to more Gentiles. We see this process begin in the early 2nd century, and some scholars claim to see it beginning already in the Gospels. This move was also increasingly necessary after the two Jewish wars had lost the Jews a lot of their earlier support and sympathy. But, either way, the tactic worked. Christians could then claim that old advantage of persuasion: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." And they could begin to make their religion more philosophical, more Hellenistic, and less Jewish, all the while claiming to have rendered Judaism obsolete. Thus, even when its Jewishness really did become a problem, Christianity quickly found a way to overcome the handicap. Of course Holding is right that had Christianity remained obstinately Jewish, it would have failed--and as a matter of fact, the original Jewish sects of Christianity did fail. That's why the successful Christian movements became increasingly un-Jewish--and why the Western Christian tradition became responsible for perpetuating the enduring bugbear of antisemitism.[1]
Holding does appear to concede as much, arguing only that Christianity "never should have expanded in the Gentile world much beyond the circle of those Gentiles who were already God-fearers." Of course, it didn't--that is, not much beyond--until later, once issues of evidence could no longer arise, and the successful sects began abandoning their Jewishness, even turning against Judaism. Even so, Christianity did make some early inroads into groups outside the category of Jews and their sympathizers, for the simple reason that Christianity made it easier to convert. A large deterrent against conversion to Judaism was its intense list of arduous social and personal restrictions and its requirement for an incredibly painful and rather dangerous procedure of bodily mutilation: circumcision (in a world without drugs or antiseptics). Once Paul abandoned those requirements for entry, he had on his hands a sect of Judaism that was guaranteed to be more popular than any Judaism had previously been. Thus, far from Christianity's increased success being impossible, it was guaranteed. This does not mean people flocked to it in droves--but it does mean that the already significant inflow of Gentiles toward Jewish religion was certain to become significantly greater for its Christian sect.
A second factor that Holding overlooks is what Paul was doing: throughout his letters the impression is clear that he wanted to create a community that would transcend racial and social prejudices and encompass everyone, essentially ending the unwelcome strife between Rome and God's People by finding a way to unite them in peace.[2] This was to be a New Israel, a community that would realize by its own efforts, yet without violence, a socialist utopia of brotherhood, free of the meddling influence and manipulation of the corrupt Sanhedrin or Priesthood or Rabbinate or the Roman powers-that-be (economic, political, or military), and certainly not spoiled by the very institutions that he saw destroying society--especially distinctions of wealth, status, and race. Paul was fanatic about this, and made heroic efforts to push this agenda by traveling and writing letters throughout the Roman world, putting out fires and strengthening communities. He sought every means of persuasion to realize his dream ("I become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some," 1 Cor. 9:19-23, 10:33). Is it really so surprising that he would succeed at this? Certainly he didn't win over the world. But he was selling a very beautiful and attractive idea, and he clearly had the skills and education to package it in whatever way any given audience would find most persuasive. I think every scholar today would agree that had there been no Paul, there would have been no Christianity as we know it. His role in rescuing Christianity from failure cannot be overlooked. If anyone could sell this new "Judaism Lite" to the Gentiles, it was him.
So not only did Christianity abandon almost from the start most of the things Gentiles found distasteful about Judaism, but it benefited from one of the most industrious and skillful salesmen the ancient world ever saw. That put Christianity in at least the same standing in terms of potential success as almost every other cult there was. Holding claims that "the Romans naturally considered their own belief systems to be superior to all others," yet the Romans were famous for accepting into their society literally every single foreign religion that crossed their doorstep--from the castrated priesthood of Attis (formally set up in the capital city of Rome by the very government itself) to the cosmopolitan Egyptian cult of Isis (which won the esteem of the otherwise-maligned Emperor Caligula, and became in the 2nd century the number one mystery religion among the Roman elite, well attested even as far off as the cities of Roman Britain) to the Syrian sun-cult of Emperor Elegabalus. The Phrygian Mithra won the hearts of many among the legionary elite. The Greco-Chaldaean theology of Neoplatonism won the minds of many of the later Roman intelligentsia. The backwater Black Sea cult of Alexander of Abonuteichos won the favor of Emperors and governors. Sure, there were intellectuals like Seneca who were horrified by all this, or who, like Plutarch, sought to alter the traditions to be more palatable, more "philosophical." Yet they could not stem the tide of elites and commons who embraced all these diverse foreign religions all over the Roman Empire. As far as foreign cults go, Christianity had stepped into a seller's market.[3]
It is true, as Holding suggests, that Christianity was much like a 1960's-style counter-cultural movement, but that was its appeal: the Christian missionaries were meeting a new market demand, of a growing mass of the discontented. They were not successful with those well-served by the social system. They were successful with those who were sick of that system, disgusted with it, and yet powerless to do anything about it. And observe how successful the 60's movement was, despite launching into full flower right on the wings of the most rabidly conservative McCarthy era, and facing violent opposition from every quarter. Christianity wasn't nearly as disruptive: the Christians organized no mass protests, engaged in no civil violence, dodged no drafts, and paid their taxes--indeed they didn't even advocate breaking any laws whatsoever, but submitting fully to all the authorities (Rom. 13:1-7; see further discussion in Chapter 10). As to other elements of stigma that might have dissuaded converts, we shall discuss those either below or in other chapters. But as far as the government was concerned, there was no real threat from Christians, and as a result persecution during the first hundred years, especially from the government, was unusual and typically unexpected (we cover this in Chapter 8; but the attitude of Gallio was typical: Acts 18:12-16). For now it is enough to note that there was nothing inherently shocking about Christianity, when compared with all the other strange foreign cults that flourished then--which included numerous sects of Jews, who found their own Gentile converts or supporters.
So there was nothing about being Jewish that prevented Christianity from achieving the small success it did in its first hundred years. But Holding offers a few other stigmas, which he claims would have handicapped it (besides still more that he assigns entire sections to, which we will deal with in their proper order). He rightly notes that many among the snobbish elite looked down their noses at working-class occupations like carpenter, and Jesus was a carpenter--which may indeed be a reason why Christianity won little support from the elite quarter. But other groups did not share this low opinion--and they were the ones the early Christians successfully evangelized: the working class, the poor, those who resented the rich and powerful--and, again, Jews and their sympathizers. For Jews greatly admired tradesmen, and usually expected their rabbis to master a trade. The greatest and most revered rabbis of the period had practical trades: Hillel was a woodcutter, Shammai a carpenter. This was typical throughout the great rabbinical tradition. Jehuda was a mechanic, Jose a tanner, and Jochanan the Sandelar was, as one can tell from his name, a sandal-maker.[4] Paul himself was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3). Does it sound like these people or their admirers would have scorned the idea of revering a carpenter? Not at all.
In the Mishnah, Rabbi Gamaliel said, "Fitting is learning the Torah along with a craft, for the labor put into the two of them makes one forget sin." Indeed "all learning of Torah which is not joined with labor is destined to be null and cause sin" (Mishnah, Abot 2.2a-b). Rabbi Jehuda said, "Whoever does not teach his son a trade teaches him robbery" (b. Gemara 29a). Rabbi Shemaiah said we should love work.[5] And every member of Essene communities was expected to ply a manual trade--this was part of its anti-elitist vision and one of the very reasons people joined it. And of Jewish sects, Christianity resembles the Essenes more than any other, both in its moral ideals and its consistently anti-elitist rhetoric.[6] Therefore, the profession of Jesus was no barrier to conversion. To the contrary, among those the Christians actually evangelized, it was an asset--and for some Jews it would have been a requirement.
However, the most important stigma Holding brings up here, since he names this entire section after it, is the fact that Jesus came from the Idaho of Judaea: the most hick-and-bumpkin county of Galilee. He summarizes the point very well, worth quoting in full:
Christianity had a serious handicap...the stigma of a savior who undeniably hailed from Galilee--for the Romans and Gentiles, not only a Jewish land, but a hotbed of political sedition; for the Jews, not as bad as Samaria of course, but a land of yokels and farmers without much respect for the Torah, and worst of all, a savior from a puny village of no account [i.e. Nazareth]. Not even a birth in Bethlehem, or Matthew's suggestion that an origin in Galilee was prophetically ordained, would have unattached such a stigma: Indeed, Jews would not be convinced of this, even as today, unless something else first convinced them that Jesus was divine or the Messiah.
Of course, even by the Christians' own inflated numbers in Acts, few Palestinian Jews were convinced. But besides that, hasty generalizations abound here. Yes, most of the Jewish elite, especially snobs, and very especially those who would feel particularly threatened by the popularity of any outsider, Galilean or not, gaining moral authority among the people, would balk and snipe at the origins of Jesus. And yes, some Jews of every rank would snobbishly or naively expect a messiah to hail from a famous city, just as they expected him to hail from royal blood (and the Christians did struggle to assert just such a claim for Jesus). But most of those receiving Paul's mission, for example, would have had neither prejudice--among Gentiles, by far most would know nothing of a past Galilean rebellion, nor would that be any stigma for those who despised the Roman order every bit as much as Judas the Galilean did; among Diaspora Jews, Galilee was nevertheless part of the Holy Land of Israel, and that was always more prestigious than not. In fact, along with Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and a dozen or more others, there was a distinct sect of Rabbis that originated and held authority in Galilee.[7]
Nor was Galilee such a disrespected hick region as some claim--apart from disagreements between Galileans and Pharisees attested in the Talmud (no more derisive than those between Pharisees and Sadducees), within the first hundred years of the Christian mission we have no actual criticism or disdain for the region of Galilee from any source, except one single Gospel: John. So also for Nazareth, which was not the tiny hovel it is often made out to be. A Jewish inscription from the 2nd or 3rd century confirms that Nazareth was one of the towns that took in Jewish priests after the destruction of the Temple in 66 A.D. (would priests deign to shack up in a despised hick town?), and archaeology confirms it had a large stone building even before then (probably the synagogue that Luke attests to being there in Lk. 4:16), as well as grain silos, cisterns, ritual immersion pools, storage caves, a stone well, and a significant necropolis. This was no mere hamlet, but a village inhabited by many hundreds experiencing significant economic success.[8]
In contrast, John is alone in having anyone declare anything like the concern of Nathanael, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46), yet this Nathanael is not mentioned in any other Gospel, or in Acts (so he was either not a real person or not a very important one in Christian memory). And yet even this lone snob is converted after a single conversation with Jesus, while Jesus still lived, and not by any evidence of his resurrection after he died (1:47-49). Since the only man on record scorning a Nazarene origin was still open to the possibility that Jesus was the Christ, and then fairly easily convinced of it, it follows that hailing from Nazareth was no great barrier to conversion, nor was anything like evidence of his resurrection required to overcome that barrier.
Likewise, though Josephus mentions Galilee a total of 158 times in his entire opus, not a single mention contains any hint that the region was looked down upon in the Roman period. In fact, it was the recipient of great honors under Herod: he lavished building projects on "Sepphoris, the security of all Galilee," which received the coveted and prestigious status of "metropolis," and he chose to build the great city of Tiberias there, in the very lifetime of Jesus. Herod would not insult Emperor Tiberius by choosing to build and name a new city after him in a scorned backwater.[9] Josephus reports that Galilee was renowned for its prodigious oil production, and the governorship of Galilee was highly coveted--for a time Josephus was governor of Galilee himself, and certainly appears to have been proud of it.[10] Even the respected Jewish scholar and sage Eleazar the Galilean came from there--indeed, the very fact that there was a Galilean scholar famous enough for us to know of him proves Galilee was no hick backwater. Eleazar was also famous for converting the Gentile King Izates to Judaism during the reign of Claudius--exactly when Paul was preaching Christ. So hailing from Galilee did not turn off even well-informed kings.[11] Finally, Josephus records that, combined with Perea, Galilee produced 200 talents in tribute a year, a substantial sum, and most of that came from Galilee. In fact, measured in terms of wealth and number of major cities, Perea was far more a hick backwater than Galilee--yet the revered John the Baptist hailed from and preached in Perea. So coming from a hick backwater was clearly no barrier to prestige or respect.[12]
So why is the Gospel of John the only source we have from the period that denigrates Galilee? Probably for exactly the opposite reason Holding thinks: John included that material deliberately, to exploit the disdain people have for elite snobbery. By playing up the snobbish rejection of any message from Galilee or any prophet from a small rural town, John is playing on popular disdain for exactly such attitudes. His audience would see the Jewish elite in his story the same way someone from a small, wholesome town in upstate New York sees Manhattanite snobs who despise anyone not from "the Big Apple." Indeed, the Republican Party in the United States often plays the "small town of mom and apple pie" against the "decadent New York elite" in exactly the same way John does. "See how they look down their noses at you? Don't you hate that? So don't follow them--follow us! We're the party of the common man, of true family values against the hypocrisy and corruption of the big city snobs!" That message resonated even more strongly then than it does today--and yet the same rhetoric still works today. It would work even better back then. Christianity was originally a movement for the poor and the disgruntled middle-class. It preached to the very people who despised the Jerusalemite snobbery that John went out of his way to depict. So representing the Jerusalem elite as despising the origins of Jesus actually helped the Gospel. It didn't hurt it. Having a hero from a "small town" was a big sell--it held out an alternative to elite snobbery: a hero just like the average man, who, just like the average man, suffered under the heel of these big-town jerks.
This is clear from the way John uses this material, repeated in no other Gospel (nor are any of the key characters ever mentioned in any other source, not even Acts). Consider John 7:41-52:
Some said, "This is the Christ." But others said, "What, does the Christ come out of Galilee? Doesn't scripture say the Christ will come from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" So there arose a division in the multitude because of him. And some of them would have seized him, but no man laid hands on him.
Already John is saying that though some rejected Jesus on these snobbish grounds, many were not dissuaded by that fact--enough in fact to create a "division" and prevent the Jewish officials from seizing Jesus. Thus, the argument was not that effective against accepting Jesus. And John's audience is meant to sympathize with those people who rejected the elitist argument. This is clear from the way the story continues:
The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees, but they said to them, "Why did you not bring him?" The officers answered, "No one told us to." The Pharisees therefore answered them, "Are you also led astray? Have any of the rulers believed in him, or of the Pharisees? But this multitude that doesn't know the law are accursed!"
In other words, John is using the fact that the elites (the rulers and Pharisees) rejected the message of Christianity as a point in its favor (which means it must also have been true). John was in effect arguing to the reader, "You common folk, see how they denigrate you, and say you are ignorant and accursed?" Thus, John attests not only to the fact that it is the non-elites who are converting to Christianity (not the snobs whom Holding quotes), but also the fact that this was the very reason they were converting: they despised attitudes like that of the Pharisees depicted here, and John is using that anger as a means to persuade them of the merits of the Christian message. And this is proven by the speech that John now includes in this narrative (in the mouth of Nicodemus, a Pharisee that John alone portrays as gradually coming over to Jesus's side, cf. 3:1-9, 7:51, 19:39):
Nicodemus (who came to [Jesus] before, and was now one of them) said to them, "Does our law judge a man before it first hears from him and knows what he does?" They answered and said to him, "Are you also from Galilee? Search, and see that out of Galilee no prophet arises."
Nicodemus thus champions the enlightened ideal of justice,[13] against the very corrupting prejudice the Pharisees are expressing here. To understand how a reader of John would react to this passage, we can rephrase it in a modern context:
Snob: "He's from Idaho. No great scholar has ever come
from Idaho."
Righteous Man: "What, are we going to judge him before we even know
what he's actually said and done?"
Snob: "You must be from Idaho!"
The insulting fallacy of responding to a valid call for the just and equal treatment of everyone, by accusing the one who makes that call of being a hick themselves, is exactly the sort of thing that enraged the lower classes back then, as it does today. John is getting the audience on his side, and turning them against the Jewish elite. We will examine this class conflict further in Chapter 12.
So the fact that Jesus hailed from Galilee was no barrier to Christian success. On the contrary, among those who actually did convert, it would have been either irrelevant or an actual asset, considering that Galilee was not really so scorned a place, but especially considering how authors like John exploited so effectively what scorn there was, using the very prejudice Holding points to as a weapon in Christianity's favor. Indeed, the entire Gospel of John is crafted to appeal to that universal human tendency toward reactionary anti-elitism described so well by Richard Hofstadter in the context modern America (though in that case with different social causes). Accordingly, Richard Rohrbaugh concludes from a survey of scholarship on John:
John is almost certainly a Galilean gospel...[aimed at] a group which exists within a dominant society but as a conscious alternative to it, [in particular] an alienated group which had been pushed (or withdrawn) to the social margins where it stood as a protest to the values of the larger society.[14]
That is the very target audience who would side with Nicodemus, not the other Pharisees. Holding's argument would be correct--of many Pharisees. But not of those who shared the view expressed by Nicodemus--and those were the people Christianity successfully evangelized, far more successfully than the Jewish elite, as John himself admits.
At the same time, an origin in both Galilee and Nazareth was exploited by some Christian evangelists in another way: as confirming that Jesus was the Christ. This is the tactic employed by Matthew, who tells us that the Christ had to come from Nazareth, "that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, that he shall be called a Nazarene" (Mt. 2:23). Although no such prophecy can be found in the extant text of the bible, there was no canon at the time, and we don't know what texts Matthew's audience may have relied on or how they interpreted them.[15] Matthew also claims (more credibly) that prophecy predicted a messiah who would come from "Galilee of the Gentiles," a land that was "previously held in contempt, but later made glorious" (Is. 9:1), and that he would preach out of the Galilean city of Capernaum (as all the Gospels depict him doing).[16]
Against this point, Holding argues that the Christians could still claim this prophetic "Galilee" connection and yet place the birth of Jesus "in Sepphoris or even Capernaum" for the prestige it afforded, rather than Nazareth. But this carries little weight. First, there is no reason anyone had to expect the messiah would come from anywhere but, at most, Bethlehem (e.g. Jn. 7:41-42)--and the only sources we have on his place of birth make every effort to place it precisely there (Mt. 2:1; Lk. 2:1-7). The prophetic anticipation of a messiah from Capernaum does not specify birth, but the light of glory, and accordingly all the Gospels place the origin of the Gospel there. Second, as we've seen, all evidence shows that the messiah was expected to be a despised person from Galilee. No prophecy expected a messiah from anywhere prestigious, apart from Bethlehem.
Holding's argument also assumes the Christians were eager to lie--which assumes too much, since his entire case depends on the premise that the Christians only told the truth (or at least told enough truth for him to rely on their records for making his case). It may be that Holding's point still carries weight against those who argue Jesus is a fiction. One might dispute even that, but I see no need to here. It might be true that in such a case a better place of origin would have been contrived for him. After all, once we grant that the Christians were fabricating, then we can certainly presume that an origin at Nazareth might not have occurred to them (though an origin in Galilee would, per Is. 9:1-2).
But Holding must suppose the Christians told the truth about his origins, so the prospect of inventing a better one is excluded. And for a real hero, his story (true or not) would far outweigh in its persuasiveness any trifle over where he came from--as it did for John the Baptist and the Rabbi Eleazar. We have seen already from the evidence above, that had Jesus really come from a small town in a lesser county of Judaea, telling the truth about that would not have harmed the Christian mission, at least with those who would readily sympathize with the rural and middle-class roots of this Hero of the Masses. To be snobbish about where you came from (or what you did for a living) was, indeed, the very kind of thing the Christians despised about the social system they found themselves in, and the very thing they were seeking to escape by creating their own community where all would be equal. This was their intended audience, and for them a Nazarene hero, indeed a hard-working carpenter who didn't live off the backs of others, would be an easy sell, not a difficult one.
Finally, almost as an afterthought, Holding raises the issue of Jesus's parentage, asking "How hard would it have been to take an 'adoptionist' Christology and give Jesus an indisputably honorable birth" instead of making the harder-to-sustain claim that he was fathered by God? Of course, many Christians did exactly that, i.e. preached some form of adoptionism. Indeed, it is not clear that Paul preached anything to the contrary, and he certainly makes no mention of anything but an ordinary birth into the Davidic line. So it cannot be said that Christianity's initial success had to be despite a claim to virgin birth--the jury is still out on when that idea entered the tradition. But Holding's question can be reframed as "Why would later Christians (like the author of Luke) add to the package something that would be harder to sell?" One reason is that an incarnated god was actually easier to sell to Gentiles than the more difficult idea of an Anointed, who was "Son of God" only in a particular esoteric sense intelligible mainly to Jews. We will address that issue in Chapter 9.
But presuming the Christians wanted to believe (and hence to preach) that Christ was God Incarnate, there is no other way the story could have sold except by positing a virgin birth to an unmarried woman--and thus the need for these circumstances nullifies any difficulty this idea would pose to persuading mockers. This is because Jesus could only have been God Incarnate if he was not fathered by a human being, and to impregnate a married woman would be adultery (and God cannot sin), leaving only four options: to impregnate a whore, slut, widow, or virgin. Of these, the last is the most miraculous and "pure," and the only one that could gain the Christians the rhetorical advantage of prophetic confirmation.[17] Although the whole idea of the virgin birth would, as Holding suspects, add ammunition to Christian enemies, it would at the same time add appeal to those groups who were more sympathetic to the idea of a Divine Man than a mere "Chosen One." The overall effect would be a net increase in the popularity of the cult, while only giving yet another reason to those who probably would never have converted anyway.
Holding says, "What it boils down to is that everything about Jesus as a person was all wrong to get people to believe he was [a] deity--and there must have been something powerful to overcome all the stigmas." But we have shown that there were no stigmas relevant to the very audience the Christians successfully targeted. To the contrary, everything Holding points to as making their mission harder, we have shown actually made their mission easier--or, among those who did flock to the faith, had no significant impact on its success at all.
[1] See: Todd Klutz, "Paul and the Development of Gentile Christianity" and Jeffrey Siker, "Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries," in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 168-97 (esp. 193) & 231-57 (esp. pp. 232-35). On Paul's criticisms of his fellow Jews (which paralleled that of other Jewish radicals, such as the community at Qumran), see Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1997) and Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (1992). On the development of antisemitism: John Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (1985); Peter Schafer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World (1997); William Farmer, Anti-Judaism and the Gospels (1999).
[2] For example, see: Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:15 (w. 3:16-4:6); Eph. 2:11-19, 4:1-6; and Rom. 2:10-11 (indeed, the entirety of Romans chs. 12 and 13).
[3] On all these facts, the evidence is thoroughly documented by Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., 1992; tr. Antonia Nevill, 1996), and Mary Beard, et al., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, A History and Religions of Rome: Volume 2, A Sourcebook (1998).
[4] Michael Rodkinson, "The Generations of the Tanaim: First Generation" The Babylonian Talmud (1918); and "Hillel and Shammai," Jewish Virtual Library (2004). Their trades are evident even in the stories told of them. For example, in b. Talmud, Shabbat 31a, Hillel drives someone off with a builder's cubit he happened to have in his hand.
[5] Indeed, his complete declaration is more revealing: "Love work. Hate authority. Don't get friendly with the government" (Mishnah, Abot 1.10b). This expresses the attitude of exactly those for whom Christianity was most attractive. Another example of this resentment of the elite appears in Rabbi Judah's declaration that even "the best among physicians is going to Hell" (Mishnah, Qiddushin 4.14l; the Christian tale of the woman who bled for twelve years reveals a similar criticism of doctors in Lk. 8:43). We might even see this attitude in the prominent disdain held for "the scribes" as a group throughout the Gospels: this may have been a jab at men who claimed authority in the Law yet did not hold what was considered a real working-class job.
[6] Philo, via Eusebius, Preparation of Gospel 8.11.5-12. See also: s.v. "Essenes," Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6 (1971): pp. 899-902; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (1997): p. 562; Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 262-69. Sources describe as many as six different factions of Essenes, each with slightly different beliefs. In addition, the ancient Therapeutae were probably a faction of the Essenes as well. See: s.v. "Therapeutae," Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 15 (1971): pp. 1111-12; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (1997): p. 1608; Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 2 (2000): pp. 943-46. Eusebius found them so similar to Christians that he mistook them as an early Christian sect in History of the Church 2.17. Scholars are agreed that the Qumran community was probably a faction of the Essenes. See: s.v. "Dead Sea sect," Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 5 (1971): pp. 1408-09. Some Roman elites regarded this counter-cultural community at Qumran with at least a little respect: Pliny, Natural History 5.73, and Dio Chrysostom, via Synesius, Dio 3.2. Finally, for some online guidance, see Sid Green, "From Which Religious Sect Did Jesus Emerge?" (2001).
[7] Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, History of the Church 4.22.7; Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin and Trypho the Jew 80.
[8] See: "Nazareth," Avraham Negev & Shimon Gibson, eds., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, new ed. (2001).
[9] Josephus, AJ 18.27 & 18.36 (JW 2.167).
[10] Josephus, Life 390, 228; JW 2.590 (where he also notes that Galilee contained 240 cities and villages).
[12] Josephus, JW 2.93, 3.44; Life 340; and see "John the Baptist," Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000): pp. 727-28, and corresponding maps. Note that when Herod Antipas received Galilee and Perea as his tetrarchy, he lived and set up his administration in Galilee, thus demonstrating its greater prestige, and when he held a birthday banquet for himself, it was the leading men of Galilee who were invited--we hear no mention of "leading men of Perea" (e.g. Mk. 6:21). For more on Galilee, see: "Galilee," JewishEncyclopedia.com.
[13] "He who decides a case without hearing the other side, even if he decides justly, cannot be considered just," Seneca, Medea 199.
[14] Richard Rohrbaugh, "The Jesus Tradition: The Gospel Writers' Strategies of Persuasion," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 198-30, quote from pp. 218-19; Gospel of John discussed: pp. 218-22. For the situation in modern America: Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). To be exact, it was not the actual values of the wider society that Christians set themselves against, but the corruption of those values by the elite and their supporters (see Chapter 10). "It is a mode of resistance" which "may take the form" of "passive symbiosis" as the Christian Church did: Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (1998): p. 7 (quoting Halliday); cf. "John's Antisociety," pp. 9-11.
[15] Some scholars think Matthew may have meant the prophecies that the Messiah would be rejected (which we have shown earlier was the case, and is geographically implied in Is. 9:1), in which case Matthew's tactic is identical to John's--exploiting the lowly origins of Jesus as a rhetorical advantage: s.v. "Nazarene," Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000): pp. 950-51.
[16] Mt. 4:12-16, citing Is. 8:21-9:2. Note that Capernaum is among the least prestigious cities of Galilee, thus prophecy did not anticipate a messiah from a prestigious city, undermining Holding's premise that everyone would expect such an origin.
[17] For an explicit reference to the
prophesy of his virgin birth as evidence Jesus was the Christ, see: Mt.
1:23 & Justin Martyr, Apology 1.33, who reports the pagans
believed Perseus was also born of a virgin (ibid. 1.22, 1.54; so also Dialogue
67). Obviously the more miraculous his birth, the more persuasive his
claim to divinity. Though, as with all the scriptural passages the
Christians used to persuade people Jesus was the Christ, Jewish
opponents could claim they were interpreting them incorrectly--see:
Richard Carrier, "The
Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy" (2003). This was a problem
faced by every sect of Judaism: the central issue in their
debates was always the interpretation of contended passages in
scripture, leaving victory to whomever was the more persuasive, which
differed depending on their audience--which is why Judaism never
unified itself in regard to how to interpret scripture. Different views
always had their loyal adherents. The Christians simply found theirs.
| 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. |
The Popularity of Resurrection How the Pagan Mission Changed Christianity Jewish Background Was There a Better Idea? Conclusion |
James Holding's next argument is that pagans would not buy a physical resurrection of the flesh. "Indeed," he says "among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible." Of course, this would be no problem for the mission to the Jews, since a great many Jews (though not all of them) already expected such a thing. But it is false anyway: many pagans regarded resurrection as not only possible, but desirable. And those were probably the very pagans the Christians converted. Even to begin with, the Jews had gotten the idea of a resurrection of the flesh from pagans: it was Zoroastrian in origin, and throughout the Roman period Zoroastrianism was the common national religion in the Persian Empire (in practical terms, everything east of the Roman Empire up to about India). Theopompus and Eudemus of Rhodes, both Greek historians of the 4th century B.C., described this Persian belief. Theopompus wrote in particular that "according to the [Persian] Magi, men will be resurrected and become immortal, and what then exists will endure through their incantations."[1] So the idea of a physical resurrection would be readily accepted by enough Jews and Persians to present no difficulty for the Christian message.
But even a great many Greco-Roman pagans were ecstatic about the possibility of being raised from the dead. We have so many stories and claims of physical resurrection within the pagan tradition that there can be no doubt the Christian claim would face no more difficulty than these tales did in finding pagan believers. Herodotus records the Thracians believed in the physical resurrection of Zalmoxis, and formed a religion around it that promised heavenly paradise for believers, and later on certain Italians came to believe in the resurrection of Aristeas of Proconnesus. Lucian records that the pagan Antigonus had told him: "I know a man who came to life more than twenty days after his burial, having attended the fellow both before his death and after he came to life."[2] Celsus, though himself a doubter, attested to a widespread belief in resurrected men among pagans, rattling off a list of those whom pagans believed rose again:
Zalmoxis in Scythia, the slave of Pythagoras; and Pythagoras himself in Italy; and Rhampsinitus in Egypt, whom, they say, played at dice with Demeter in Hades, and returned to the upper world with a golden napkin which he had received from her as a gift; and also Orpheus among the Odrysians, and Protesilaus in Thessaly, and Hercules at Cape Taenarus, and Theseus.
Later on Celsus added to this list the aforementioned Aristeas of Proconnesus--as well as the deified Dioscuri, Asclepius (see below), and Dionysus.[3] And we've already discussed the resurrections of Romulus, Osiris, Adonis and Inanna as well (in Chapter 1), and we could add several mortals who were resurrected in Greek myth besides the Dioscuri, such as Eurydice and Alcestis--and in legend, Theseus.[4] So it is plainly false to claim that no pagans would believe in a resurrection of the body, especially for a deified or divine man. Even Hercules, whose "resurrection" is usually portrayed only as an ascent to heaven, nevertheless ascended in his divine body, after its mortal material was burned away on the pyre.[5] In like fashion, Celsus reports that "a great many Greeks and Barbarians claim they have frequently seen, and still see, no mere phantom, but Asclepius himself." And not only was Asclepius a resurrected and deified mortal, but he was the preeminent "resurrector of the dead," and that was a prominent reason pagans held him in such esteem, prompting Justin to claim that, since he could not deny the fact, "the Devil" must have introduced "Asclepius as the raiser of the dead" in order to undermine the Christian message in advance.[6]
It goes well beyond this. Lucian and Apuleius both report the common belief that resurrecting the dead ("calling moldy corpses to life," as Lucian puts it) was one of the expected powers of a sorcerer, and sorcery was very popular among the majority of pagans. Hence Apuleius has his fictional sorcerer Zatchlas raise Telephron from the dead. But among historical claims, Apuleius relates a medical resurrection performed by Asclepiades. Apollonius of Tyana was believed to have risen a girl from the dead using a spell. In the 4th century B.C. Heraclides of Pontus recorded that through some mysterious art Empedocles "preserved the body of a lifeless woman without pulse or respiration for thirty days" and then "he sent away the dead woman alive."[7]
Pliny the Elder reports there were numerous such tales believed by many people, even without magic. He says Varro reported on two different occasions seeing "a person carried out on a bier to burial who returned home on foot," besides witnessing the apparent resurrection of his uncle-in-law Corfidius. Pliny also reports that a sailor serving Julius Caesar had his throat cut "and almost severed" yet returned from the dead that evening, to report on his visit to Hades. Plato records a similar story related by Alcinous about Er the Pamphylian, who "was slain in battle" and ten days later his body was recovered and brought home, then "at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day, as he lay upon the pyre, he revived" and "after coming to life he related what he said he'd seen in the world beyond." In a similar story, the Syrian commander Vouplagus rises from the dead on a body-strewn battlefield (despite having been stabbed ten times), as Roman soldiers were looting the bodies, and tells them about his trip to Hades. The Lady Philinnion returned to life to visit her lover. The villainous Aridaeus fell to his death but returned to life two days later to relate his trip to heaven, and was so transformed by what he learned there that he led a life of impeccable virtue thereafter. Timarchus spent two nights and a day in a sacred crypt, during which time he died, visited heaven, and returned. Ultimately, Pliny the Elder says he also knew of "cases of persons appearing after burial" but chose not to discuss them because his book was about "works of nature, not prodigies." This nevertheless proves such tales were transmitted and believed by many people. Pliny himself doesn't say what he believed, only that these stories weren't the subject of his book. But he still records numerous returns from death, and as we have seen there are many, many more.[8] The shear abundance of these tales reflects a widespread hope of returning to life within the pagan community.
The evidence is overwhelming: that one could return to life in the body that died, or in an even better body, was a commonplace belief among a great many pagans. It was not deemed "impossible," except by a few skeptical elites (such as the Epicureans). The point here is not what the true events were behind all these stories of resurrected men and women, but that many people clearly believed these were genuine risings from the dead, or that such a thing could and did happen, or was something they could imagine happening. Nor does it matter how much any of these stories resemble that of Jesus, for the relevant underlying concept remains the same: a bodily returning to life. Therefore Holding cannot maintain there was any significant resistance to the Christian claim among those pagans who actually did convert. To the contrary, they would have found a large and ready audience eager to believe just such a thing.
It is sometimes claimed that the Jews made a distinction between resurrection and mere resuscitation (even though there is no evidence such a distinction was at all widespread among the Jews), but that makes no difference here: anyone who would readily believe in the resuscitation of a corpse (and we see many pagans did) could easily believe (for example) in the subsequent improvement of the body rendering it immortal. The Zoroastrians believed this explicitly, and many of the Greeks and Romans did, too, in their conception of the divine body of gods and immortal heroes.[9] So there is no apparent barrier to conversion here as Holding claims. Indeed, even the New Testament proves this: when Paul preached at Athens, at the time one of the greatest centers of intellectual life and critical thought in the whole world, far from his message being rejected as ridiculous, only "some" of the Greeks "sneered" while others said "we want to hear you again on this subject" and "a few" even "became followers of Paul and believed" (Acts 17:30-32). That probably represents the true proportion of pagan responses to the entire Christian message: some sneered, exactly as Holding observes; but some remained curious and considered it; and a few even bought it and believed.[10]
Against this Holding declares that "the pagan world was awash with points of view associated with those who thought matter was evil and at the root of all of man's problems." Such a point of view did exist among a segment of the population, yes--especially among the more snobbish elite. It was the dominant paradigm among Orphic mystics and Platonist philosophers, and a feature of the more popular mystery religions. But as far as the evidence goes, those were the very people the Christians largely failed to evangelize in their first hundred years. Rather, their success was greatest among the middle and lower classes, among whom this Platonic and Orphic disdain for the flesh was less common. And yet even so, the earliest Christians sought to accommodate even these sensibilities, as we see in Paul's effort in 1 Corinthians 15:35-54, 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10, and Romans 7:18-8:18 to articulate a view of the resurrection that appealed to the very sensibilities of the Orphic mindset: we will leave the dirty material behind and get bodies made of superior, heavenly material instead. However you interpret what Paul was trying to say in these passages, it cannot be denied that what he says would have appealed to the very people Holding has in mind here, because it satisfied their desire to live forever without the stains and burdens of our present bodies.[11]
As Christianity evolved into numerous competing sects over the later first century, some went even further toward this Orphic disdain for the flesh accommodated by Paul (and we generally call these groups Gnostic, though not always correctly), while others went in the other direction, toward a restoration of the flesh that died (for whom I have coined the word Sarcicist, after sarx / sarcis, "flesh"). Concerning this split, Dale Martin demonstrates that "early Christian preaching about the resurrection of the dead" actually "divided the Corinthian church along social status lines." He shows how the elite members "influenced by popular philosophy to deprecate the body, opposed the idea of a resurrected body" while the lower classes more "readily accepted early Christian preaching about resurrected bodies," because Jew and Gentile alike "could find analogies" within "their own culture, especially in views apparently held by the masses and generally ridiculed by the philosophically educated," whereas to the lower classes such a view was "perfectly acceptable." In fact, popular concern to save the flesh is reflected in the popularity of personal and funerary beliefs that obsessed over the relative integrity of the corpse and body.[12]
Caroline Bynum, a leading expert on resurrection ideology in the West, argues that "one cannot say that Christians taught literal, material, fleshly resurrection because Christ rose thus," because "there is a full range of interpretation of Jesus's resurrection in the Gospels and Paul," so the choice made by any particular group still "requires explanation." And it appears that one leading motive of the Sarcicists was to maintain social hierarchy and control. Bynum demonstrates that Christians who explicitly defended a resurrection of the flesh after the 2nd century argued it was necessary to make sure, for example, that women remained subjugated to men. Jerome, disgusted by women using a Pauline doctrine to justify haughty declarations of sexual equality, implied that resurrection of the flesh was needed to oppose this, apparently to ensure women remained subjugated to men in the future world. In contrast, Paul envisioned the elimination of all distinctions of class, race, and gender in the end (Colossians 3:11). Even Paul's infamous misogyny was based on the inheritance of sin through Adam and Eve (1 Timothy 2:12-14), which of course would all be done away with in heaven--for once their body of Adam died (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45-50), women would no longer inherit the sin of Eve.[13] This was the original vision of the Christian movement: equality for everyone in a utopian future, against the elite use of class, race, and gender distinctions to oppress the people under the heel of injustice. But after its first hundred years this vision was hijacked by a sect obsessed with maintaining these inequalities, even in heaven. Since this development came many generations later, the story of why and how it took place can have nothing to do with what really happened to Jesus on that first Easter Day.
We cannot be certain whether that was the original motive for a shift away from Paul and toward a more radical Sarcicism in the first hundred years of the Church. It appears to have been a factor in its success later on (especially after the 3rd century, when Christianity became a religion of the government), but those first hundred years are inadequately documented to find out what happened or why (which is also a problem for anyone who wants to insist, contrary to the evidence of Paul, that the original church was thoroughly Sarcicist). But from the analysis of Dale Martin and others, and given the evidence of popular beliefs I surveyed above, it seems likely that many among the uneducated masses, and some among the educated class, were disturbed by the idea of losing their body. These groups were not impressed by highbrow attempts to argue for a disembodied immortality. To the contrary, getting their bodies back was more what they wanted and hoped for, and was easier to understand, defend, and explain, and that made them highly receptive to the idea. Judaism clearly offered it, and early Christianity was unmistakably a Jewish movement.
An influx of various Jews and pagans who were more attracted to the idea of a resurrection of the flesh would have inevitably influenced how some churches came to interpret the resurrection--and once persecution became more widespread (in the 2nd and 3rd century), many actual and potential converts who were happier with other modes of salvation might have found easier paths in accepted pagan cults and Jewish sects. This meant persecution may have caused Christianity to swell with those very people who wanted to get their flesh back--since Christianity was the only cult offering that on easy terms (Judaism offered it only on very hard terms). And these people would primarily have come from the most anti-elitist segments of the population--for it was precisely their disdain for the ivory castle argumentation of philosophers that led them to sneer at highbrow concepts of immortality and favor instead the more popular ideas, elevating the dreams and longings of the common man above the fancy rhetoric of the stuffy academics. The effect this had on the development of Christian dogma was probably significant (I discuss this further in Chapter 8.4).
Hence when Holding quotes the remark of Pheme Perkins that "Christianity's pagan critics generally viewed resurrection as misunderstood metempsychosis at best" and "at worst, it seemed ridiculous," we can agree: that does capture the range of attitudes among its critics. But those critics did not represent every view held in antiquity, and by definition they did not represent Christianity's supporters or converts. It is a simple matter of logic: those who sympathize will join or tolerate a creed, while those who have opposing ideas will use them to attack that creed. So we cannot claim what those critics say is what the converts believed. To the contrary, it almost certainly is not--that is why they converted. Thus, Holding's arguments do well to explain why some of those who refused to join the movement did not convert. But his arguments tell us nothing about why those who converted actually did so. So Holding's original premise must be restated: "among some pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible."
For example, Epicureans like Celsus had strong dogmatic reasons to hold resurrection in contempt. That is why we have no record of any Epicurean being convinced within the first hundred years, and why Celsus tries so hard to argue that resurrection was ridiculous. But Epicureanism was always a minority sect in antiquity. So Holding cannot use the arguments of an Epicurean to represent the entirety of the ancient world. Yes, for Celsus, as he himself said, "the question is whether any one who was really dead ever rose with a veritable body," but neither his Epicurean nor a Platonic attitude were commonplace among the masses, nor were they universal even among the elite--as his own argument attests, for Celsus is criticizing Christians for making the same claim of resurrection as many pagans, not a different one. As even Origen points out, "being an Epicurean, Celsus does not hold the same views with the Greeks, and neither recognizes demons nor worships gods as do the Greeks" and therefore his critique of Christianity does not represent the general attitudes of the Greeks (or Romans or Syrians or anyone else).[14] It represents certain segments of opinion, but a minority only. Epicureanism was perhaps the rarest dogma going. Platonism was more popular, but far more popular still were eclectic varieties of Stoicism and Aristotelianism, and the beliefs among the masses could be described as vulgarized amalgams of all these, with a rich variety of differing opinions. Christians simply won the hearts of those who had sympathetic opinions. And there were plenty of them, both pro-Pauline and pro-Sarcicist.
So much for the mission to the pagans. What about the Jews? Holding claims that among the Jews "there was no perception of the resurrection of an individual before the general resurrection at judgment." But that is not true. Individual Hebrew and Christian resurrections abound in scripture,[15] and many Jews had no trouble believing that Jesus might be the resurrected Elijah or John the Baptist--in fact, they expected the resurrection (or at least "return") of Elijah to presage the general resurrection of Israel. This is clear from the following conversation recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:
Jesus commanded them, saying, "Report this vision to no one, until the Son of Man has risen from the dead." And his disciples asked him, saying, "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" And he answered and said, "Elijah did come, and shall restore all things. Indeed I say to you, that Elijah has already arrived, and they knew him not, but did to him whatever they wanted. In such a way shall the Son of man also suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood he was talking about John the Baptist. (Mt. 17:9-13)
In other words, Jesus says he will rise from the dead, prompting his disciples to ask him, if that is the case, then why hasn't Elijah returned from the dead (or from heaven, where the dead go), since he is supposed to come first. Jesus responds by saying Elijah already did come. And that meant John the Baptist was the risen Elijah, and so the disciples infer. Thus, it must have been a standard belief that there would be an individual return to the land of the living, before the end, similar to Christ's (in whom resided the spirit of God rather than, in the case of John, the spirit of Elijah). We see this also when King Herod heard of the miracles performed by Jesus and his disciples, at which "he said, 'John the Baptizer is risen from the dead, and that's why these powers work in him!'" while "others said it is Elijah" or "one of the prophets" of old (who certainly died and were buried, even if Elijah wasn't), "But Herod, when he heard these things, said, 'John, whom I beheaded, he is risen'."[16] Does that sound like "there was no perception of the resurrection of an individual before the general resurrection"? To the contrary, it sounds like Jews and Gentiles were ready to believe in just such a thing.
Other sources confirm there were many Jews, even within the Rabbinic tradition, who expected the resurrection to take place in stages, not all at once. There were many different opinions as to how many stages and in what order they would rise. But in one scheme there would be four stages: first Adam, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then those buried in Palestine, then everyone else. Some Jews also thought their martyrs would rise before everyone else, too.[17] And, of course, as we already saw, the Gospels attest to a belief that Elijah or another of the ancient prophets would be first, heralding the approach of the end. But it is notable that the first expected to rise in one scheme was Adam--which might explain why Christ was regarded as the "new" Adam (1 Cor. 15:45). Either way, the idea of a staged resurrection formed the basis of Paul's apologetic for why Jesus rose before everyone else: "in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ, at his coming, and then the end comes" (1 Cor. 15:22-24). That Paul regarded Christ as the "firstfruits" entails he believed the resurrection of Jesus was the first stage of the general resurrection, for the firstfruit was always the first sheaf of grain in one general harvest, and in like fashion Paul emphasizes that the resurrection must take place in the proper order. Thus Paul, like many other Jews, believed the general resurrection would come in stages, and for them the resurrection of Jesus would (and did) indicate the general resurrection had begun--which is why Paul expected the end to come in his own lifetime.[18]
So there was no barrier here, either--many Jews were prepared to accept that a Christ might rise from the dead before the rest of Israel. However, Holding does raise a more nuanced argument: "A physical resurrection was completely unnecessary for merely starting a religion," he says, since "it would have been enough to say that Jesus' body had been taken up to heaven, like Moses' or like Elijah's." Of course, this argument requires supposing Jesus was fictional. If it is the case that Jesus was executed and buried as the Gospels say (and we have no great objection to believing that), then resurrection was the only claim available, since an actual public death and burial would prevent any other claim being made. In other words, if everyone knew Jesus was dead, then Christians could only claim he ascended to heaven by also claiming he rose from the dead. But even if Holding can wriggle out of that conundrum, there are three other important problems with his last argument.
The first problem with this argument is that it suffers from a common flaw in counterfactual history: it assumes only the easiest and most persuasive ideas win out. History decisively refutes such a notion: a great many zany ideas have gained widespread purchase and endured for centuries. For example, requiring castration to enter the priesthood was "completely unnecessary" for the success of the Attis cult, since it "would have been enough" to have, say, some sort of symbolic castration instead (exactly like Paul's device of replacing the true circumcision with a "spiritual" one, even calling that the better one, in Romans 2:28-29 & Philippians 3:3). But they didn't. And yet the cult flourished, at least as well as Christianity did in its first hundred years. In like fashion, unitarianism is much easier to sell than trinitarianism, yet the Church sided with the latter despite having to expend vast resources and foster tremendous strife and violence to win the argument. So religions often succeed by starting out with (and even sticking with) the position harder to defend.
The second problem with this argument is that it assumes there was no other reason for choosing the more difficult sell. As we already have seen, there were reasons why many people, among both Jews and Gentiles, wanted to believe in a resurrection of the flesh, or into a superior body, and those were the people who joined up, and many eventually formed the Sarcicist sects of the Christian church. Their reasons for believing something regarded as so odd by various others had more to do with their desires and expectations, and disdain for lofty philosophical systems, than with their being convinced by a decisive presentation of empirical evidence (a point we shall address in later chapters).
Both the first and this second problem negate Holding's argument because Christianity's success was not at all remarkable until the late 3rd century. Before then it was a struggling minority cult. Indeed, it barely even blipped on the radar of Roman society before the age of Trajan. We will demonstrate this in Chapter 18. Here it is enough to note that, when the evidence was still theoretically checkable and therefore relevant to Holding's case, Christianity only won a tiny fraction of the hearts and minds of the Greek, Roman, and Jewish world. That kind of humble success does not require Christianity to have been the most sellable product since the invention of beer. As long as it would sell at all, as long as a tiny fraction of the evangelized groups would find it attractive--and we've shown it would--then Christianity would succeed on the scale we observe for that first century. Just as the cult of Attis did. And we can certainly say that requiring men to hack off their testicles is a far stronger deterrent than preaching a Christ risen in the flesh, an idea a great many people already accepted as plausible.[19]
But the third and most important problem with Holding's last argument is that it places the Gospels before Paul--when we know the order is the other way around. Holding says "it would have been enough to say that Jesus' body had been taken up to heaven" in order to get the religion started, yet as it turns out, that appears to be exactly how it did start: Paul never makes any distinction between Christ's resurrection and ascension--and he also equates our resurrection with Christ's, and describes our resurrection as an ascension to heaven.[20] Holding asks "why bother making the road harder?" But clearly that is a question to ask for later Christians, not the Christians of Paul's generation--for maybe they didn't make it harder.
And as we have already seen, those who later deviated from Paul by reconceiving Christ's resurrection as a revival of his corpse, and then distinguished that event from his ascension, were not making the road harder--rather, they were making it easier--for their chosen target audience: the disgruntled, anti-elitist masses. Though this did make it a harder sell to many educated elites and their allies and sympathizers, we see that Christianity already had a very hard time winning such people over, exactly as Holding's argument predicts. In contrast, those few elite intellectuals who eventually did convert and told us why, do not give an account of their reasons that Holding wants: rather than being overwhelmed by what we would call empirical evidence, they were dissatisfied with all the alternatives (we will present this case in Chapter 17).
It is clear that, contrary to Holding's claims, a bodily resurrection, even of an individual, was not regarded as impossible by all pagans and Jews, but only some of them. Indeed, for many, especially among those groups the Christians most successfully evangelized, such a resurrection was eminently credible and often desired. Thus, Holding's argument fails even if we suppose the Gospels represent the original Christian belief--and we've seen reasons to suspect they do not.[21]
[1] This quote and the corroboration of Eudemus are preserved by the Roman historian Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 1.9. The best recent treatment of this aspect of Zoroastrian belief throughout Western history is provided by Alan Segal, "Iranian Views of the Afterlife and Ascent to the Heavens," Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (2004): pp. 173-203.
[2] Herodotus, Histories 4.94-96 & 4.13-16 (also in Apollonius, Miraculous Stories 2.2); Lucian, Lover of Lies 26. I discuss the issue of pagan resurrection beliefs in the "Main Argument" of Richard Carrier, "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004), and elsewhere. That worshippers of Zalmoxis, "King and God," obtain immortality is attested in Plato, Charmides 156d (Zalmoxis and his followers were also noted healers: ibid. 156e-158b).
[3] Origen, Contra Celsum 2.55, 3.26, 3.22. Celsus didn't believe in resurrection because he was an Epicurean (who, unless these are two different men, ibid. 4.36, 4.57, sometimes also adopted a Platonic point of view for his fictional critics of Christianity, cf. ibid. 1.8, 4.75; note also: Lucian, Alexander the Quack Prophet 1-3, 60-61).
[4] Eurydice returns from the dead but due to a flubbed promise is forced back, while Alcestis is returned to life by being either rescued or sent back from Hades, either way for selflessly exchanging her life for that of her husband (cf. Apollodorus, Library 1.3.2 & 1.9.15). Euripides wrote an entire play on the death and resurrection of Alcestis: cf. Euripides, Alcestis (esp. 1115-61; notably, once risen from the grave, she could not speak "until purified in the sight of the nether gods on the third day," 1144-49). As for Theseus, the famous Athenian king was seen by several soldiers risen from the grave to fight with the Athenians at Marathon: Plutarch, Theseus 35.4-36.2 & Cimon 8.5-6; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.15.3. The legend is discussed by Robert Garland, Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Religion (1992): pp. 82-98; and Emily Kearns, The Heroes of Attica (1989): pp. 120-4. The resurrection of Theseus appeared in Athenian art within 30 years of the event: cf. J. Neils & S. Woodford, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae 7.1 (1994): pp. 922-51; and H. A. Shapiro, Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens (1989): pp. 143-49.
[5] On Hercules ascending in his "divine" body while leaving the mortal part of his body behind, see: Lucian, Hermotimus 7, which must be read in the context provided by Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (1995): pp. 3-37, w. 115-17, 127-28; and Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Mortals and Immortals: The Body of the Divine," Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays (1991): pp. 27-49.
[6] Origen, Contra Celsum 3.24; Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin and Trypho the Jew 69. For attestations to Asclepius as both resurrected and resurrector, see Edelstein & Edelstein, eds., Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (1945): esp. § 66-93, 232-56 (and 382-91, 443-54).
[7] Lucian, Lover of Lies 13; Apuleius, Florida 15, Metamorphoses 2.28, Florida 19 (also referred to in Pliny, Natural History 26.8; and Celsus, On Medicine 2.6.15); Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.45 (the author expresses uncertainty whether she was really dead, but this proves he did not rule it out); Heraclides of Pontus, via Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.61, 8.67 (another account of this resurrection appears in Apollonius, Miraculous Stories 2.1).
[8] Pliny the Elder, Natural History
7.176-179. Er: Plato, Republic 614b. Vouplagus & Lady
Philinnion: Phlegon, De Mirabilibus 3 & 1. Aridaeus:
Plutarch, On the Delayed Vengeance of the Gods 563b-567f.
Timarchus: Plutarch, On the Sign of Socrates 590a-592e. There
might also have been a popular belief that the Emperor Nero would or
did return from the dead (Suetonius, Nero 57; Tacitus, Histories
1.2, 2.8; Augustine, City of God 20.19; some allusions in book
5 of the Sibylline
Oracles).
On resurrection as a common
theme in pagan sacred fiction as well, see: G. W. Bowersock, Fiction
as History: Nero to Julian (1994), and Note
39 from the "Main
Argument" of Richard Carrier, "Why
I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004). For example,
Petronius made fun of the theme by having his hero embark on a
pilgrimage to "resurrect" his penis (Satyricon 140.frg.2), and
Plutarch mentions a play attended by Vespasian in which a dog played at
dying and rising again from the dead (On the Cleverness of Animals
973e-974a).
[9] There was no such distinction between
"resurrection" and "resuscitation" in the Greek or Hebrew languages:
the same words meant both. For instance, the most distinctive Christian
word for "resurrection" (anistêmi and cognates) was used
just as often to refer to ordinary occasions of "getting up" from sleep
or rest, waking up from an apparent death (Ps.-Aristotle, De
Mirabilibus Auscultationibus 839a), or the pagan idea of revival of
a corpse (e.g. Phlegon, De Mirabilibus 3 says "anestê
ho Bouplagos ek tôn nekrôn," "Vouplagus rose from the
dead," the exact same terminology employed by Christians for Jesus).
The Christians themselves used the same word for mere revivification,
too (Heb. 11:35; Mk. 5:42, 6:14-16; Mt. 9:25; Lk. 8:55, 9:7-8; Acts
14:19-20).
So there was no distinction
in the vocabulary. And the conceptual distinction was hardly
commonplace or well-defined even within Judaism. I will demonstrate
this point in a forthcoming work ("The Spiritual Body of Christ and the
Legend of the Empty Tomb" in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The
Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, due for release in Summer of
2005), but in summary the general resurrection for some Jews was
identical to resuscitation, the only difference being that God would
change the laws of the universe so bodies would not die or decay
(exactly as the Zoroastrians believed), whereas other Jews (like Paul)
imagined instead that God would change our bodies to produce the same
effect--which was no different from what pagans imagined happening to
deified heroes (as is well argued in the two books cited in Note 5 above). See also: Richard Carrier, "Osiris
and Pagan Resurrection Myths: Assessing the Till-McFall Exchange"
(2002).
[10] Holding says "we can see well enough that Paul had to fight the Gnostics, the Platonists, and the ascetics on these counts," though it is unclear to me what he means. There is no case anywhere in the epistles, or even in Acts, where Paul debates with any of these groups by name, nor any example of any of these groups disputing the resurrection of Jesus (e.g. even his opponents at Corinth only denied the resurrection of the converted, not that of Jesus--Paul thus rebuts them by explaining how denying the latter was an unforeseen consequence of denying the former, which means he assumed they all agree Christ was raised: 1 Cor. 15:12-20). I can only suppose Holding means that Paul must have engaged such debates, even though we have none on record (except general allusions to them, e.g. Acts 17). That is probably true--at least, Paul must have debated the concept of resurrection with, for example, Platonists in Athens. It is less certain if he debated whether Jesus was raised with Christian Gnostics or Proto-Gnostics, since most such sects agreed he was. Paul might have debated the details with them, but there is no specific evidence of that. Nor is there any evidence he wrestled with Christian groups who actually denied the resurrection of Christ--I suppose that is possible, though explaining how there could be such groups so close to the evidence would raise an interesting conundrum for Holding.
[11] I make a brief case for this in "General Case for Spiritual Resurrection: Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh," Part 3 of Richard Carrier, "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004). But I demonstrate the point with decisive thoroughness in a forthcoming chapter: "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb" in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, due for release in Summer of 2005. Note that I do not argue that Jesus was believed to have risen as a soul, but that he left his flesh behind and entered a new body composed of spiritual substance, the substance of angels and other heavenly bodies. It is not necessary to agree with that conclusion here. It is enough to observe that, whatever Paul is saying, it is targeted at accommodating those who do not want to live forever in exactly the same bodies they have now, but in something more heavenly and pure, while at the same time satisfying those who do not want to live forever as a disembodied soul.
[12] Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (1995): pp. 107-08 (he also demonstrates the popularity of the resurrection of corpses among the pagan commons: pp. 111-12, 122-23). The same conclusion is reached, from different evidence and angles, in Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (1995). On popular funerary beliefs: Caroline Bynum, Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200-1336 (1995): pp. 45-47, 48, 51-58.
[13] Caroline Bynum, Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200-1336 (1995): pp. 26-27. Jerome's remark appears in Epistles 84.6. Similar sentiments were echoed in Tertullian, De Pallio 3-4 and Didascalia 19 (cf. 1-12), etc. For discussion, see: Bynum, pp. 90-91, 99-100.
[14] Origen, Contra Celsum 3.35. Similarly, all of N. T. Wright's evidence (to which Holding refers) comes only from a few literary elites, who were not representative of the ancient pagan world (indeed, much of Wright's evidence comes from the wrong period: four centuries before the Roman era! And the wrong place: the highly unique culture of Classical Athens).
[15] 1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:19-37, 13:21; Mark 5:21-43 [Matt. 9:18-26, Luke 8:40-56]; Luke 7:11-17; Acts 9:36-43 & 14:19-20; John 11:5-44.
[16] Mark 6:14-16; cf. Mt. 14:1-2. In Luke's account (9:7-8) we hear that "others" besides Herod believed Jesus was the resurrected John. That many Jews believed Elijah would return before the general resurrection is attested in Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin and Trypho the Jew 49, and was most directly based on Malachi 4:5, but also "interpreted" out of certain obscure passages in Zechariah.
[17] See: Hermann Strack & Paul Billerbeck, "Allgemeine oder teilweise Auferstehung der Toten?" ["Resurrection from the Dead: All at Once or in Stages?"] Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrash 4.2 (1961): pp. 1166-98; Adolf Jellinek, ed., Bet ha-Midrash (1967): 3.13; Chaim Meir Horovitz, ed., Bet Eked ha-Agadot (1967): 1.58; Solomon Wertheimer, ed., Leket Midrashim (1960): pp. 6, 12.
[18] See: Rom. 13:11-12; 1 Cor. 7:29-31; 1 Thess. 4:17. It seems every Christian generation for the next two centuries expected it to come in their own lifetime (see, for example: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians 1987: pp. 266-67).
[19] Besides all the evidence already given, consider the remark of Justin Martyr (emphasis added):
When we say that the Word, who is our teacher, Jesus Christ the firstborn of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem Sons of God. (Apology 1.21)
Justin could not make this argument it if wasn't true--which means even his own strictly Sarcicist notion of resurrection was neither new nor different for pagans, refuting Holding's claim that it was.
[20] Our resurrection just like his: 1 Cor. 15:13, 15-16, 20, 23, 35; Phil. 3:21; Rom. 6:5. Cf. 1 John 3:2. Our resurrection will be an ascension to heaven: 1 Thess. 4:13-18. That Paul never distinguishes the resurrection and ascension of Christ is evident from all his kerygmatic hymns and lists: his summary of the Gospel in 1 Cor. 15:1-8 mentions no ascension, only the resurrection (so also: Rom. 1:1-6); and his summary of the Gospel in 1 Tim. 3:16 mentions no resurrection, only the ascension--yet Paul could not exclude mention of the resurrection in any summary of the gospel, so he must have believed the ascension was the same thing (similarly for the "exaltation" of Christ: Phlp. 2:5-11). At the very least, there is no evidence Paul regarded them as separate events.
[21] I have omitted from the body of this
essay Holding's implication that Christians were persecuted because
they believed in resurrection, quoting N. T. Wright. Maybe that is not
what he meant by "one of the themes of that persecution was the
Christians' tenacious hold on the belief in bodily resurrection," but
if that is what he did mean (or if that is what anyone took him to
mean), his evidence does not relate to the claim. One must ask why
pagan persecutors would even bother with such elaborate attempts to
foil the resurrection of Christian bodies, if those pagans believed
their resurrection was impossible. But that aside, such treatment does
not mean Christians were persecuted because of this belief,
only that their persecutors were mocking their faith. Antisemites who
snatch a Jew's yamulka or the Imperial Guards who cut off the sacred
topknots of Samurai were not persecuting Jews and Samurai because they
wore yamulkas and topknots.
James Holding argues next that for the Romans, "Old was good. Innovation was bad," and "this was a big sticking point for Christianity, because it could only trace its roots back to a recent founder." But that isn't really true. Every Christian text aimed at persuasion, from the very beginning in the letters of Paul, connects Christianity intimately and profoundly with the Jewish scriptures, regarded even by pagans as among the most ancient oracles of man. Christianity never claimed to have been "founded" by Jesus--it always claimed that Jesus was merely the culmination of a divine plan that had been written down for millennia (e.g. Rom. 16:25-26), by an ancient God whose worship many Romans respected precisely because the Jewish religion could claim such great antiquity. As Fox observes:
Of the world's major religions, only Buddhism made a complete break with tradition at its birth: Christianity made no such claim. It could meet the traditionalist culture of pagan contemporaries on equal terms.[1]
Hence Christianity was potentially respectable--so long as the Christian was given enough time to explain himself, and his audience was open to such supernatural wonders as the Christian story contained, and was sympathetic to its anti-elitist ideals.
Holding is right, however, that as long as Christianity appeared to be a complete innovation, too few would have accepted it, and as a result it was often derided as "novel" by those who knew little about it. But as soon as anyone gave a Christian missionary the time of day, the appearance of novelty evaporated, and the cult then, and quite plausibly, claimed one of the most ancient and venerable origins of any known religion. As a result, Christianity was no more "new" to the Greeks and Romans than other apparently novel foreign cults, such as Mithraism from Phrygia or Manichaeism from Parthia or the worship of Isis the Egyptian or Attis the Syrian or Antinoös the Deified Lover of Hadrian or Glaucon of Abonuteichos (invented wholesale by Alexander in the 2nd century A.D., yet commanding a significant and respectable following for centuries) or any of the many Emperor Cults, particularly the most prevalent of them, the worship of the Divine Augustus, which had priests and temples throughout the Empire.[2] The Romans so frequently found ways to paint the new as old, that an endless stream of novel cults and philosophies came to permeate every inch of the Empire, even despite resistance from some among the elite--from Cato to Seneca to Juvenal--who found the unstoppable popularity of these novelties appalling.[3]
But unstoppable they were. So no appeal to a Roman resistance to the "new" can argue against the success of Christianity. If dozens of other new cults and philosophies could succeed in spite of this resistance, then so could Christianity. In fact, the most conspicuous elements of innovation in Christianity were its most popular features: it took the religion of Judaism, which was already winning converts from among the pagans, and made it even more attractive, by making it far less onerous; and it promised to subvert the most despised of elite values and produce an egalitarian utopia of justice for the common man (though for now only within the Church). Of course this would make it a loathsome superstition to most among the elite, and to many Jews. But among the disgruntled masses, Jew and Gentile alike, it could be exciting and attractive. The Christians even eliminated some of the worst complaints against Judaism that opponents like Tacitus leveled at it. For example, they abandoned the very laws Tacitus regarded as "sinister and abominable," especially circumcision, and they abandoned the racism and insular "group loyalty" that Tacitus singled out for derision.[4] So Christianity could only have been an improvement in his view.
In contrast, Holding is quite wrong to claim that Christian eschatology was new. Of course, it was entirely in accord with what most Jews had believed and taught for centuries, so Holding can only mean it appeared novel to pagans inexperienced with Jewish teachings. But this Jewish eschatology was clearly no barrier to winning over pagan sympathizers and even converts, so it could not have been a problem for the Christian mission, either. Moreover, the whole "idea of sanctification, of an ultimate cleansing and perfecting of the world and each person" derives entirely from pagan Zoroastrianism: it had been a staple of Persian religious life and society for nearly a thousand years, and had infiltrated Greco-Roman thought well before Christianity came along. For instance, the doctrine of a cleansing cataclysm of fire that would renew the entire universe and purify human souls was a common belief among Stoics (and Romans were more attracted to Stoic philosophy than any other), and some Platonists advocated the idea as well.[5]
Anyone acquainted with Christian literature (especially on the Garden of Eden) knows even the Christians believed "the past was the best of times, and things have gotten worse since then." They merely expected a cataclysmic improvement--but so did the Zoroastrians, many Stoics, and some Platonists. The popular Greco-Roman concept was that everything would start over again perfect, and play out again the same way (though perhaps with small variations). The Jews, following the original Persian scheme, merely tweaked this idea into a vision of a final material or heavenly paradise ruled by God, and the Christians simply borrowed that idea. Considering their target audience, this helped Christianity far more than hurt it: the common man would have preferred this vision of the future to any esoteric and unappetizing metaphysics of the despised elite (whose views could not claim anywhere near the same antiquity as those of the Jews and Magi).
In the end, Holding's argument that the Christian claim to antiquity still faced "a hurdle that Christianity could never overcome outside a limited circle...without some substantial offering of proof" is far too strong. Christianity's difficulty here was no greater than that faced by any other novel cult or philosophy, and yet dozens of those saw success well beyond "a limited circle." And Christianity often overcame this hurdle without any empirical proof, simply by applying the art of persuasion through learned scriptural exegesis (as we shall see in Chapter 13), arguing that they were the true Jews, faithful to the original and enduring vision of Jehovah. In this respect, Christianity actually had an advantage over other cults and philosophies, which could not claim so ancient an oracular foundation.
[1] Robin Lane Fox, Pagans & Christians (1986): p. 331. On Judaism, even Tacitus, notable for his loathing of Jews, admits their religion is ultimately "sanctioned by its antiquity" (Histories 5.5), and the Roman state passed laws respecting the "ancestral traditions" of the Jews, which included protecting their scriptures from sacrilegious theft or vandalism (Josephus, AJ 16.160-175). For more on how the Jews and their scriptures were perceived, even by their enemies, see: Menahem Stern, Greek & Latin Authors on Jews & Judaism: With Introductions, Translations & Commentary (1981).
[2] On the unstoppable introduction and
success of novel cults throughout Roman society as far as Britain, see:
Robert Turcan, The
Cults of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., 1992; tr. Antonia Nevill,
1996); Mary Beard, et al., Religions
of Rome: Volume 1, A History (1998).
Manichaeism was such a
successful innovation it had to be violently oppressed by both pagan
and Christian governments alike: cf. S. N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in
the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, 2nd ed. (1992).
Antinoös was Emperor
Hadrian's lover who drowned in the Nile, and out of grief Hadrian
founded a religion around the worship of his deified boytoy--though
probably the least successful of the religions here named, it is
notable for the fact that it was completely novel, yet officially
sanctioned by the Imperial government, and embraced by many Romans and
others. See: Origen, Against Celsus 3.36; Royston Lambert, Beloved
and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous (1984).
As for Glaucon of
Abonuteichos, see Lucian, Alexander the Quack Prophet and the
relevant material in C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian
(1986) and Robin Lane Fox, Pagans & Christians (1986).
In addition, all the Greek
schools of philosophy (Platonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism,
Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, and so on) were not only novel when
they were contrived, and yet phenomenally successful in the East, but
they were both novel and foreign when introduced to Rome, and
yet won her over as well.
[3] Like Seneca, whose own remark we quoted in Chapter 1, Tacitus only reveals the impotence of his disdain when he says that Christianity gained purchase in Rome, "where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular" (Annals 15.44). For all his protestation, Tacitus reveals the hard truth: that the "hideous and shameful" was nevertheless popular. Even in the very capital of the Roman Empire.
[5] This Stoic eschatology is described or
analyzed in Virgil, Aeneid 6.720-60; Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary
on Aristotle's 'Prior Analytics', 180.33-6 & 181.25-31; Tatian,
Address to the Greeks 6; Origen, Contra Celsum 5.20-21;
John Philopon, Commentary on Aristotle's 'On Generation and Decay',
314.9-12. Even before the time of Christ the idea is attacked by the
Epicurean Lucretius in De Rerum Natura 3.843-64. For sources on
Zoroastrian eschatology, see Note 1
in Chapter 3.
Every scholar of antiquity has noted the broad interest among the ancient Greeks and Romans in philosophies that promoted a strong moral order. Every great philosophy was morally demanding--in fact, that is precisely why they were as popular as they were.[1] As Martha Nussbaum accurately puts it:
The Hellenistic philosophical schools in Greece and Rome--Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics--all conceived of philosophy as a way of addressing the most painful problems of human life. They saw the philosopher as a compassionate physician whose arts could heal many pervasive types of human suffering. They practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual technique dedicated to the display of cleverness but as an immersed and worldly art of grappling with human misery. (p. 3)
It is very easy to see, especially examining the letters of Paul, how Christianity fit itself into this paradigm like a glove. It was following in the footsteps of the most popular philosophical traditions of its own day--and improving them, by answering the needs and desires of the lower classes (who far outnumbered the wealthy educated elite), and by abandoning the principles of doubt and freethought, replacing them with an absolute conviction and certainty that more people wanted instead (a point we shall examine further in Chapter 17).
It is therefore strange to see Holding claim that Christian ethics were so restrictive that "it is very difficult to explain why Christianity grew" while Jewish converts and sympathizers remained "a very small group." Though Gentile converts to and supporters of Judaism were not such a small group as he must think (see Chapter 18), the relevant fact here is that Christianity was far less demanding than Judaism. Thus, by Holding's own logic, it should have been far more attractive--hence far more successful in winning converts. And it was. It was a movement whose time had come. A moral vision of a just society was what most people in antiquity longed for. This was supposed to be provided by the laws and social customs, but those were failing, due to corruption at the highest levels--and a growing chaos at the lower levels, as in every region (and especially the cities) different peoples with different customs increasingly mixed and came into conflict. Indeed, by the 2nd century Roman society had actually codified two different systems of law: one for the rich and privileged and one for everyone else (an issue we shall raise again in other chapters). At the same time, the social and economic needs of "everyone else" were no longer being satisfied.
Enter Christianity. As we've noted, even Tacitus observed how the Jews had created for themselves their own just society of caring for each other like a family. This fact was not lost on the people of the Roman world--indeed, it was envied. And though for some, like Tacitus, that envy bred resentment, for others, like those Gentiles who supported or converted to Judaism, it brought longing. The Jewish "brotherhood" was something many people wanted--and would gladly have joined, if only it wasn't so hard to become and live as a Jew.
Thus Christianity succeeded precisely when it abandoned all those difficulties, while retaining the ideology of justice and compassion that people most wanted. By making that easier to obtain, joining the Christian brotherhood became an attractive option to a great many people who had become disappointed with the wider society. Yes, to obtain this they had to give things up, including the more liberal sexuality of the age, but this was no greater a sacrifice than the ritual and economic demands placed on them by every other religious movement--in fact, for some (especially women) it was an easier demand to meet.[2] But in exchange for this, what they got was family, brotherhood, equity, justice--in short, the joys of community, without the pains of the rat race, insulated from the tribulations of an uncertain and difficult world. Anyone who saw this trade as worthwhile would be inclined to join up. And those were the very people Christianity won over:
The continuing spread of Christianity, therefore, was not only due to its offer of goods which pagan "religiousness" had never centrally comprised. It was also due to faults in pagan society. In cities of growing social divisions, Christianity offered unworldly equality. It preached, and at its best it practiced, love in a world of widespread brutality. It offered certainty and won conviction where the great venture of Greek philosophy was widely perceived to have argued itself into the ground. By 250, it was still the persecuted faith of a small minority, but its progress was sufficient to reflect on a growing failure of the pagan towns.[3]
So Holding is wrong to suggest that Christianity would have been fatally unpopular because it "didn't offer nice, drunken parties or orgies with temple prostitutes" but instead "forbade them." In actual fact, many pagans frowned upon exactly those things. It is hard to find any elite author regarding them with approval--both drunkenness and sexual dissipation were far more often regarded with scorn.[4] There was a more liberal sexual ethic generally, more or less depending on the community, and to a lesser extent even among the elite. But Holding exaggerates it. It wasn't orgies and booze that most converts were giving up. Those who actually converted saw themselves as escaping the endless frustration, uncertainly and financial expense of sexual politics, which many an individual was willing to give up to better his life and save his soul. Not everyone--but enough to account for the actual scale of early Christian success (which we will discuss in Chapter 18).
Holding is also making a hasty generalization when he claims "the poor" would not care for Christian communist ideals "if they couldn't spend that shared dough on their favorite vice." Such a statement pretends that all human beings are reprobates. History proves otherwise: throughout the history of the entire world great traditions of austerity and compassion have flourished, from Buddhism to the Cynicism of Diogenes, without needing empirical proof of any divine miracle. It is true that Christianity probably did not win over any reprobates who were happy with their cursed lives--but like Buddhism, Cynicism, Marxism, it certainly did win over those who (like Justin Martyr) expected more out of life, or who (like Augustine) were tired of the misery of their own sins. And that describes a lot of people in antiquity (as it does today).
Of course, this may even concede too much. It is an obvious fact that most devoted Christians don't really follow the moral restrictions of their faith. There is as much adultery and sin within the Christian community today as within any other group. And from what evidence we have, of ancient Christianity as well as human nature generally, we can certainly infer this was hardly much different back then.[5] Many people did think they could join Christianity and gain its benefits without paying their moral "membership fee," and no doubt then, as now, many got away with that--even despite the best efforts of preachers like Paul to restrain the flock. In other words, Holding's argument assumes people could become Christian only by becoming morally austere, which is not true today, and probably wasn't then.
In the same fashion, especially by the end of the 2nd century onward, the rich could (and many did) enter the movement for the worldly advantages of power and prestige. There were fewer and fewer opportunities in pagan society for "big men" to lord it over others or enjoy the adoration of crowds, so the opportunity to enter such positions within a well-organized church hierarchy was probably sometimes seized for just that purpose. So, too, for the control of church wealth, much in the same way that corruption has seeped into the power structure of every other communist state--where there are no "rich people," where in fact that very idea is openly scorned, yet those in positions of authority nevertheless command a vast pool of wealth, and history proves they often behave little differently than if it were their own. Power not only tends to corrupt, but it lures. And once the Church had any real power to offer, its allure would attract sinister men as easily as the Church today attracts pedophiles--and for similar reasons. I do not wish to imply that this influx of the morally insincere, from among the rich and the poor, was the norm, only that it was certainly an inevitable factor in the rise of Christianity that any discussion of its "success" must take into account.
But I shall restrict my consideration now only to morally sincere conversion. Even in that context, Holding is wrong to claim Christianity wouldn't have succeeded because "it didn't encourage wealth" but "sharing," since that was actually what made the movement popular, especially among those groups it most successfully recruited from. Both the Christians and the Essenes were riding a wave of communist utopian longing that had deep roots in Greco-Roman society, especially among those outside the power structure.[6] The communist Essene communities were attractive for the very same reasons as Christianity: they exchanged uncertainty for security, loneliness for community, and traded the empty rewards of money and power for the more satisfying rewards of respect and compassion. The latter was even more true by the 2nd century, when wealth increasingly became a burden, as municipalities compelled the rich to engage monstrous financial outlays in support of the community, to the point of causing some wealthy families to flee or go bankrupt.[7] In such an atmosphere, the prospect of instead giving up that wealth in exchange for the security of a religious brotherhood became increasingly attractive, especially when you would enjoy the fruits of that benefaction yourself as a member, and escape the backstabbing world of politics for the comfort of a worldwide friendship.
After all, for many people, especially in troubled times, it becomes clear that their needs are far more important than any luxuries, and such needs include the comfort of friendship and community, and equity and justice, besides the obvious health and sustenance. So again Holding is guilty of hasty generalization. He says Christianity "would not appeal to the rich" because they "would be directed to share their wealth," but this is too broad an assertion: even if most of the wealthy would balk (and no doubt they did), there were still some who would actually find this attractive, especially considering the rewards being offered, in this life and the next, and the troubled times they found themselves in. And this became more true in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, precisely when Christianity began to win more hearts among the wealthy elite.
Which brings us finally to Holding's strange suggestion that Christianity would be hampered by the fact that "it didn't appeal to the senses" but "promised 'pie in the sky'." It should not need arguing that this was actually an asset, not a disadvantage. By literally promising the world, indeed everything anyone ever wanted--immortality, power (e.g. 1 Cor. 6:3), freedom from disease and want, security from every injury and injustice, and most of all: the comfort of a profoundly loving society--Christianity had put a very alluring product on the market. Of course, any movement that could actually provide all those things here and now would win everyone's allegiance, and in short order. But no such movement existed. So pie in the sky was the only thing anyone had to sell. Thus, it is true that a potential convert needed to be convinced Christianity really had this product in stock, but the real question is: What actually convinced those converts? We will discuss that in Chapter 13. For now it is enough to note that this same promise was made by many other popular religions at the time, from the cults of Isis or Mithra to the Eleusinian or Bacchic mysteries, and people flocked to them in droves, without needing decisive empirical proof that they really had the goods. So it clearly didn't take much to convince people of that.
In the end, the fact is that most people in the ancient world were miserable. Even at the top there was some discontent, and there was much more within the middle class, and most of all lower down the ladder. And apart from violent revolution (which, for example, the Zealots attempted, but that most wisely saw would always fail) human beings have always had, throughout history, only two strategies for coping with a life of misery and uncertainty: they can seek endless pleasure to dull the pain, or they can seek peace from their miseries by devoting themselves to a moral life of philosophy or religion.[8] We see both strategies applied in the ancient world, across all social groups, as in every other age and culture. Christianity would have appealed to those most interested in latter strategy. And that segment of society was certainly large enough to account for the entirety of Christianity's success within its first century, and the bulk of its success within its first two or three centuries (just look at the writings of Tatian or Justin).
[1] This is thoroughly demonstrated by Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (1994) and Joseph Bryant, Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece: A Sociology of Greek Ethics from Homer to the Epicureans and Stoics (1996).
[2] Most pagan cults required the same or similar sexual purity for limited times, in order to join rituals that procured salvation in this world or the next. In a sense, Christianity merely increased the efficiency of this system: whereas in some pagan cults such rituals might have to be repeated on a regular basis to ensure protection, Christianity simply required a constant state of holiness, thus guaranteeing a constant state of security. For many people this was less demanding economically and socially (it was free and required no time-consuming ceremonies or pilgrimages), and for others it was seen as a better guarantee against a horrible fate in this life or the next. See Robin Lane Fox, "Living Like Angels," Pagans and Christians (1987): pp. 336-74.
[3] Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1987): p. 335. He catalogues this discontent and Christianity's appeal to it in pp. 321-24 & 334 (and in pp. 325-31 he catalogues attractions of Christianity that support my general case throughout all the chapters of this critique). A more thorough case for exactly my point is made by Bruce Malina in The Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective (2000).
[4] This is exemplified by the fact that the pagans regarded the Roman sage Musonius Rufus to be the greatest wise man in history, second only to Socrates, and yet Rufus preached exactly the same ethics as the Christians. See: Richard Carrier, "On Musonius Rufus: A Brief Essay" (1999).
[5] For example, see: 1 Cor. 5; and: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1987): p. 374.
[6] On Greek longing for socialist utopias: Peter Green, "The Individual and Society: Slavery, Revolution, Utopias," Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (1990): pp. 382-95. On Essene communism and respect for it even among some elites, see: "Essenes" in Encyclopedia Judaica (1971): 6:899-902; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (1997): 562; Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000): 1.262-69; and for ancient witnesses: Philo, Hypothetica 11.1-18 & Every Good Man Is Free 75-88; Pliny, Natural History 5.73 (or 5.15 or 5.17 in some modern editions); Synesius, Dio 3.2; Josephus, Jewish War 2.119-61, Jewish Antiquities 15.371-79 (the sect was honored by none other than Herod himself), 18.18-22; Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.18.3-9.28.2.
[7] See: Naphtali Lewis & Meyer Reinhold, Roman Civilization: Selected Readings, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (1990): § 66 & 77.
[8] For discussion of this psychology in the
context of modern American spirituality: David Myers, "Faith, Hope, and
Joy," The
Pursuit of Happiness (1992): pp. 177-204.
James Holding then quotes DeSilva's comment that "the message about this Christ was incompatible with the most deeply rooted religious ideology of the Gentile world, as well as the more recent message propagated in Roman imperial ideology," and argues that, therefore, Christianity would have been "doomed" without something "to overcome Roman and even Jewish intolerance." Hyperbole aside, all this is basically correct--and we will see later what it actually took to convince people to abandon the most popular ideological assumptions of their day, and radicalize themselves (as desperate peoples tend to do) into extreme intolerance (the example of Islam comes to mind).
Holding's conclusion does need some tempering, however. First, in terms of number, we already know a large number of Gentiles had long been attracted to the "intolerant" monotheism of the Jews, and we have demonstrated that Christianity offered all the same goods at considerably less expense. Therefore, even with the "stigma" of monotheism, we know for a fact Christianity would have been significantly more successful than Judaism already was in winning Gentiles over. Likewise, Christianity's largest gains in its first hundred years came from Jews and their sympathizers, hence the stigma of monotheism had already been overcome within their largest target audience before the Christians even came along. Thus, that stigma was not in fact a large difficulty for early Christianity (we shall discuss the nature and number of converts during the first century in Chapter 18).
Second, as we've already discussed, from outside those groups already embracing monotheism, it was precisely because Christianity subverted "Roman imperial ideology" that it won as many converts as it did. That was a large part of its appeal to the oppressed and disillusioned. Thus, its intolerance in that regard became an asset, not a burden. In the same fashion, it was the increasing failure of popular ideology to meet the needs of Roman communities that Christianity most exploited. And Christian monotheism is the premiere example of the brilliance of this marketing strategy. Pagan ideology was an inevitable failure, as a consequence of statistics as well as human corruption, and Christian monotheism was the perfect "answer" as to why.
First: Statistics. Paganism was largely built on the backbone of votive cult and equivalent practices: the gods were supposed to help people in the here and now, by bringing justice, peace, health, prosperity, and fertile fields, and (conversely) warding off evil, war, illness, misfortune, and famine. To ensure this, pagan cult involved extensive prayers, rituals, sacrifices, and "vows" ("if you heal my cow, Lord, then I will donate a gold idol to your temple").[1] Since there are no gods, the actual outcome of these efforts is random: your efforts would fail as often as succeed, and divine rewards would "appear" to fall to villain and saint alike, without regard to merit, which was obviously perceived as capricious and unfair.
The pagan system did produce explanations for this. Of course, philosophers like the Epicureans used it as proof the gods don't care at all. But sorcerers claimed to have "spells" that would get the gods in line--for a sizable fee--while holy men blamed these apparently unfair outcomes on all manner of convenient causes, from boons and curses inherited by past lives or ancestors, to some obscure failure of ritual propriety that offended the gods, and so on, which could sometimes be corrected with further rituals.[2] Most people were sufficiently convinced the Epicureans were wrong--since the gods had answered enough prayers to "prove" they were real and responsive--and the "solutions" of sorcerers and holy men were statistically guaranteed to work more often than not, due to the Law of Regression to the Mean. The gods would become responsive, and when they failed again, a new explanation would be offered, and so on it went. This is a trap of superstitious thinking that has been scientifically demonstrated to ensnare even the rational and well-educated today.[3]
Nevertheless, it is easy to see how many would become frustrated by this system. So long as it was the best explanation they had of what was going on, they would stick with it and try to work the system as best they could. But Christians had an alternative explanation: the gods are capricious and fickle because they are evil. They are demonic entities out to exploit you through deception and allurements. They are just teasing you, using you.[4] Instead, if you join "our" community, who worships the one true god, your benefits will be more tangible, fairly distributed, and consistent, thus "proving" that ours is the true and only just deity.
This was an effective argument, for the evidence bore it out: since the Christian system had actual human mechanisms for effecting and distributing benefits fairly, its rate of success was obviously going to be better than chance, and therefore better than all the pagan gods combined. The Christians therefore had a powerful argument on their side--though one we now see as fallacious, nevertheless it would have made a lot of sense to a lot of people. Frustrated by the pagan gods, many would find appealing the notion that those gods are perverse. And by offering one supreme deity who is not, the Christians not only explained the pagan's problem, but immediately provided a solution that really appeared to work (especially considering the role miracles played in winning converts, an issue we will discuss in Chapter 13).
Second: Systemic Failure. Besides the obvious statistical anomaly the Christian message exploited, there was the more pervasive fact of systemic injustice. A large element of pagan religion was communal and served the explicit aim of supporting the power structure. To participate in cult was often to engage your devoted effort toward winning the gods' favor for those in power. The idea was that as long as the gods granted good fortune to your leaders, your community would benefit, enjoying peace, justice, and prosperity. Already by the 1st century, and even more in the 2nd, and far more in the 3rd (as we shall see in Chapter 18), this just wasn't cutting it: the powers-that-be were certainly seeing lots of good fortune showered upon them (and their cronies and collaborators) by the gods, but the more this happened, the worse things got for everyone else. The more the masses won the gods' favor for the community, the more oppressed, impoverished, and exploited they became, and the more unjust, corrupt, and insolent their leaders became. No doubt this bred widespread discontent.
Christianity exploited this fact by explaining it: the powers-that-be were unknowingly enjoying the benefits of demonic forces, and the common people were only helping them and thus making things worse. Instead, if the leaders would only turn to the one true god, then they would, like us, bring true justice and equity to all. This, too, was a very potent argument: the early Christians were notably more just and egalitarian in the way they organized their own "society," and it was an easy step of reason to say that, if those in power acted like these Christians, we would be a lot better off. Since the moral order embraced by the Christians was sold, and would often be perceived, as being a result of the blessing of their god (that was, after all, the pagan expectation: the blessing of the gods was supposed to be evident in a blessed leadership, which only the Christians appeared to have), pagans would find their argument rather compelling--the opposite of what Holding assumes.
Finally, contrary to Holding's declaration that "Jews and Christians held themselves aloof from public life, and engendered thereby the indignation of their neighbors," Christians actively engaged the public and were conspicuous in being open to all comers, much more than the Jews. Paul, for example, had no problem dining with Gentiles (1 Cor. 9:20-23, 10:27-32, Gal. 2:11-14), and it is clear that mixed marriages, between pagans and converts, were not unknown in the early Christian communities (1 Cor. 7:12-16). Though the Christians occasionally engaged a certain degree of necessary secrecy (as many cults did), it cannot be said they were ever "aloof" or not open to every neighbor, nor can it even be said (as it was sometimes said against the Jews) that Christians only practiced love and charity among each other. Far from breeding the indignation of their neighbors, Christians struggled in every way they could to win over their neighbors, and even failing that, were nevertheless kind and open to them (see relevant discussion in Chapter 10).
As usual, Holding's point--that monotheism was perceived as intolerant and contrary to popular ideology--does explain why Christianity wasn't more successful than it was, especially within its first hundred years. But, also as usual, this factor was not universally strong enough to prevent the scale of success Christianity actually enjoyed. To the contrary, the disadvantage that Holding describes was quite skillfully turned into an advantage, and actually contributed to that success. Though social strife did create friction against this, e.g. "Jewish families would feel social pressure to cut off converts and avoid the shame of their conversion" (in those cases where the family did not follow in a convert's footsteps, that is--which is why Christians recruited heads of household: see Chapter 18), Christianity appealed most to those who found the Christian family a better deal, and thus were willing to give up the family that frustrated, disappointed, or didn't satisfy them, and replace it instead with the ideal family the Christian Church tried so hard to create in its first century of development.[5] This trade-off was even easier for those who had no strong family connections anymore, such as the great number of widows who flocked to Christianity, as well as slaves, and migrants (such as those who were evidently willing to abandon their home towns to travel with Paul)--three groups that comprised a major portion of Christianity's early success. Add to them the inevitable many who were discontented with their lives--including their family lives--and early Christianity had quite a sizable base to recruit from.[6]
[1] That this was the staple idea of pagan religious life is thoroughly documented in: Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981); Robin Lane Fox, "Language of the Gods," Pagans and Christians (1987): pp. 27-264; and Mary Beard, et al., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, A History & Religions of Rome: Volume 2, A Sourcebook (1998).
[2] On the Epicurean use of this fact to argue against divine responsiveness, see: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2.1090-1104; 5.195-234, 1194-1240; 6.387-95; etc. On the responses of sorcerers to the failed expectations of pagans: e.g. Plutarch, On Superstition; Robert Turcan, "Occultism and Theosophy," The Cults of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., 1992; tr. Antonia Nevill, 1996): pp. 266-90. On the responses of holy men: E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951); Graham Anderson, Sage, Saint, and Sophist: Holy Men and Their Associates in the Early Roman Empire (1994): e.g., pp. 106-08.
[3] For a full discussion of how humans are naturally constructed to develop superstitious thinking like this, as a consequence of inevitable statistical laws (including regression to the mean): Stuart Vyse, Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition (1997).
[4] For instance, see the arguments to this effect advanced by the Christians Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians, esp. 26-27 (vs. 32-34) and Tatian, Address to the Greeks, esp. 8-10, 16-20.
[5] We see already that Christians exploited statements by Jesus that lent comfort and rationale to converts who had to give up their family to be saved: Mt. 10:32-39, 12:47-50, 19:29--cf. also Mk. 10:29-30 and Lk. 12:53 w. 14:26. Notably the Gospel that most clearly and frequently articulates this argument (Matthew) is the Gospel thought most directed at a Jewish audience. Therefore the Christians were appealing to people in this very predicament with plausible arguments that some would certainly buy, enough to account for Christianity's actual scale of success among Jews in its first hundred years.
[6] Holding also says "Jews and Christians
alike were accused of atheism," but I am not aware of any evidence of
that, despite having searched hard to find some. The only sources that
ever mention such an accusation against Christians are Christian
sources. As far as I know, without exception all the actual documents
from pagans against Christianity attack it for being a superstitio,
a vulgar superstition (an excessive "fear" of god and an obsession with
the supernatural), not atheism (the distinction between the two
charges is carefully drawn by Plutarch in On Superstition).
Since, as far as I know, those Christians who responded to the
accusation of "atheism" never mention or respond to the accusation of superstitio,
and yet the latter is the only accusation we ever find in pagan
sources, never atheism, it seems the most credible explanation for this
incongruity is that the Christians were consistently mistaking what
their pagan critics were actually arguing. So it seems no one in
antiquity believed the Christians were atheists. Many did believe they
held false beliefs about the gods, but that is not the same thing.
Likewise, persecution sometimes stemmed from a fear that Christian
disrespect of the gods would or did bring ill fortune upon the
community, but that is again not the same thing as believing they were
atheists.
However, I have not confirmed
these observations, so if anyone is aware of any primary evidence
contrary to my experience I would greatly appreciate hearing of it.
That everything gets exaggerated is typical for any story. ... All the greatest events are obscure--while some people accept whatever they hear as beyond doubt, others twist the truth into its opposite, and both errors grow over subsequent generations. -- Tacitus
This is true even today. Every story is subject to exaggeration. Many people accept what they hear without investigating the facts, or alter the historical record in various ways and for various reasons. And all these problems only get worse as time goes on. Tacitus knew it. Everyone knows this. So it is hard to believe James Holding would try to deny it.
Tacitus warned us not "to prefer the incredible things that get published and readily accepted, to the truth uncorrupted by marvels."[1] He knew fabulous falsehoods were readily accepted by enough people to be passed on, recorded, and believed, and this happened often enough to greatly annoy more careful scholars like Tacitus himself--and yet historians today find some of his own reports dubious. How much worse it must have been for those less careful. There is no ancient history that is entirely accurate and without lies, distortions, or errors. Every qualified historian today agrees with that. It is a universal principle accepted throughout the professional community that no ancient work is infallible. Even the most respected and trusted of historians--Thucydides, Polybius, Arrian--are believed to have reported some false information, especially when it came to private matters witnessed by only a few, and when material was important to an author's personal or dogmatic biases and presuppositions. And the further any ancient author is from these men in explicit methodology, by that much less are they trusted.[2] To claim otherwise, to claim against the widest consensus of experts in the field of ancient history, that any historical source is without misstatement, is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. Holding provides none.
This is not to say that Luke, for example, was a lousy historian. He was certainly better than average--though, like all other ancient historians, for each detail he was only as reliable as his sources. Moreover, Luke cannot be classed with the best historians of his day because he never engages discussions of sources and methods, whereas they did--and that is a major reason why modern historians hold such men as Thucydides and Polybius and Arrian in high esteem: they often discuss where they got their information, how they got their information, and what they did with it. It is their open and candid consciousness of the problems posed by writing a critical history that marks them as especially competent. Even lesser historians (like Xenophon, Plutarch, or Suetonius) occasionally mention or discuss their sources, or acknowledge the existence of conflicting accounts, and yet Luke doesn't even do that.[3] But despite all that, even if Luke were as reliable as the very best historians of his own day, that would still not be sufficient to carry Holding's point for the resurrection.
Holding's argument here not only requires the highly improbable assumption that Luke is infallible--and not importing any assumptions or dogmatic commitments into his reconstruction of the more private events of his narrative--but it also requires that everyone in antiquity--particularly actual converts to Christianity in its first hundred years--was also an excellent and studious historian, which is even more improbable. There is certainly no good evidence supporting either assumption. We shall examine them in reverse order.
There is a difference between what ancient people could have done (what they plausibly had the means to do) and what they actually did (what the available research paradigms were, and which paradigms were most widely preferred by the relevant social groups). For example, prospective converts in the 1st century couldn't check newspapers, because they didn't yet exist.[4] Conversely, though they could have confirmed miraculous powers using double-blinded placebo studies (the means to do this were certainly available), such a research paradigm did not exist and thus was not conceptually available to them. Therefore, we can be certain neither was done. And this makes an enormous impact on how we interpret ancient claims, in comparison with modern claims.
Modern claims have been made in a setting where the technological and practical means to check them--means available even to the common man, much less a scholar or government official--is a thousand times superior, as are the available research paradigms. Therefore, no analogy with the present day is possible. For example, we now know for a fact that miraculous healing can only be confirmed under double-blinded conditions tested against a comparable placebo, and where accurate medical histories are available for those healed, both before and after the "healing" event. For that very reason we cannot trust ancient claims of "miraculous" healing, since the ancient witnesses did not follow the necessary research protocol to rule out placebo and other effects (including fraud, delusion, and exaggeration).
Even when it came to recording what happened, ancient authors employed very different assumptions about what was plausible or probable, and had very different attitudes about what details were acceptable to invent. For instance, it was often acceptable to make assumptions about what was probable and then draw up a narrative that portrayed those assumed details as if they were observed facts reported in one's source--whereas today good scholars endeavor to make clear the distinction between what our sources say and what we deduce or infer, and we certainly eschew any blurring of the line between dramatic narrative and objective history. Yet that line was routinely blurred in antiquity, even by the best historians of the day. This is exemplified by the fact that Thucydides and all his successors felt at liberty to invent entire speeches, based on limited data in conjunction with assumptions about what they thought was "probable" (and that would depend on their religious, ideological, personal, and philosophical commitments). This would never be tolerated today, and with very good reason. Yet this blurring was accepted even outside the construction of speeches, extending to the addition of dramatic and narrative details (as, for example, in descriptions of battles).[5]
Besides differences between antiquity and today, there were also differences among the ancients themselves. They differed widely in what they wanted to do, what they knew how to do, and what methods they trusted or distrusted--just as there are differences today, as exemplified for example by the insider account provided by Karla McLaren of the chasm between the modern skeptical and New Age movements in terms of their preferred research paradigms.[6] McLaren demonstrates two particular facts: first, that the modern New Age community strongly prefers to trust emotion and intuition and to distrust reason, critical thought, and skeptical investigation; and, second, that the same community carries significant emotional hostility toward both skeptics and their methods. Skeptics are regarded as arrogant, obsessed with technicalities, and incapable of seeing the real truth, not only because of their arrogance and obsession, but also because of their prior emotional commitment to the dogmas of science and naturalism, preventing them from seeing the truth. As a result, the New Age movement does not listen to scientists or skeptics regarding the best methods to employ in investigating claims, but discards that advice as coming from an untrustworthy source. So there are strong divisions even today regarding which research paradigm should be applied to judging extraordinary claims.
It was the same in antiquity, and the earliest Christians were clearly more analogous to modern New Agers than modern skeptics (as we shall demonstrate in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17). So to assess the probability of Christianity's success, we have to know what research paradigm was employed by actual converts--not that employed by those who rejected Christianity. For the difference between acceptance and rejection may very well have been a result of adopting different strategies of judgment. This is in fact what both modern New Agers and ancient Christians blame as the very reason skeptics reject their claims--as we can see, for example, in 1 Corinthians 2: skeptics can't see the truth because their methods blind them (this and more such passages will be analyzed in Chapter 17). Therefore, Christians did not respect those methods. To the contrary, they regarded them as a handicap that one had to discard in order to be saved. Christianity thus appealed to those who rejected the elite paradigm in favor of something else, something (to their mind) "superior."
For that reason we cannot rest any argument on what "we" think "they" would have done. Rather, we must examine the evidence for what they actually did. And we have no evidence that any Christian in the first hundred years did anything like what Holding expects, as far as "checking the facts." So he cannot claim they did do such things, when there is no evidence of it. Moreover, when we look at the evidence of what they actually did do, we find essentially the opposite of what Holding claims (as we shall see in Chapter 13). Again, we must not fall into another hasty generalization here. What Greco-Roman writers did cannot be used as evidence of what all ancient Greeks and Romans did, much less those who became Christians in the first century. For the literate and scholarly elite belonged to a tiny and unrepresentative segment of the population. Even writers (many of whom were hardly skeptical or rigorous investigators) represent less than one thousandth of one percent of the population--roughly 1 in half a million people.[7]
Yet there were many gullible or uncritical writers in antiquity, so it is an even hastier generalization to draw analogies from the most scholarly or skeptical of them--especially since we have not a single known example of such a person converting to Christianity in its first hundred years. We must look elsewhere for analogies, if we want to draw any conclusions about what those converts did before deciding to believe. Conversely, though we know for a fact that most people rejected Christianity in its first century, and as far as we can tell all members of the scholarly elite did so, we do not have a single record directly from them as to why. So we cannot simply "assume" they rejected it for petty or insufficient reasons. They may well have rejected it because they checked the facts and found them wanting.
This puts Holding up against a Catch-22: either the scholarly elite rejected Christianity because they checked the facts and found them wanting (and therefore Holding's ultimate conclusion is thereby refuted: the evidence did not hold up under scrutiny) or they rejected Christianity without adequately checking those facts that Holding believes would have been "irrefutable." Obviously Holding must assume the latter. He has no choice. But that means he must suppose those who most above all people had the means, methods and drive to check historical facts, failed to do so. It then follows a fortiori that everyone else must have done even less to check the facts. And that refutes Holding's conclusion that converts would have checked the facts and therefore the facts must have held up. Either the evidence didn't check out, or it wasn't strong enough to convince the scholarly elite, or those who actually converted did little to check the facts. Holding must choose one. Yet any choice he makes destroys his case.[8]
An analogy can be drawn from ancient astronomy: the real cause of eclipses was well-known and thoroughly understood among the scholarly elite of the Roman period. The Emperor Claudius even had this cause described in a public inscription in order to fend off superstition among the masses. And there are many examples where those in-the-know were able to educate an ignorant public on appropriate occasions. So to discover the true cause of eclipses (lunar and solar) was quite easy, for anyone who cared to ask--any library, any elite scholar, and at least one known public inscription, would have provided the answer. It was as easily ascertained as any specialized historical fact (such as who held a particular office at a particular place and time). Yet a large portion of the populace never bothered to check, but simply continued believing the myth that eclipses were the work of magic or gods.[9]
If that is how a substantial portion of the population actually behaved, Holding cannot maintain Christianity would have hit a brick wall of skepticism. Clearly skepticism against the mythical causes of eclipses was neither widespread nor effective in preventing the success of the mythical explanation--despite the skeptics having very strong evidence on their side. We can expect the same outcome for any other claim, whether supporting Christianity or any other superstition of the age. Yes, there were strong and ardent skeptics. But Christians didn't win them over--at least, we have no evidence of this in its first hundred years. During that period they probably won, instead, people like those who blamed eclipses on magic or gods. Holding certainly cannot prove otherwise.
Ultimately, Holding cannot show that those who converted to Christianity in its first hundred years chose anything like the paradigm of inquiry revealed among the writings of elite scholars, nor any evidence that any convert remained a Christian who later adopted and employed such a paradigm. There is a positive case against these possibilities, too, which we will address in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17. But even without that, Holding has not made his case.
But now to the issue of ability. How would potential converts "check" Christianity's claims, even if they adopted a skeptical research paradigm available at the time?
That leaves only one other option: asking neighbors and visitors. Which probably meant asking those who had already converted to Christianity, since few others would know any relevant information, much less believe it. Thus, all a doubter probably had to go on was his or her perception of another convert's sincerity. Such sincerity could be feigned, but even more importantly it could be sincere but based on insufficient evidence, a fact not much open to a doubter's examination. The best a skilled doubter could do was engage in a carefully-crafted interrogation to explore the actual details known to the reporter, which would not be very welcome (it usually indicated a despised scale of hostility--just as modern day New Agers respond to such questioning with near-violent indignation) and somewhat limited in what it could accomplish. And even then, such skills of interrogation were not widely learned, nor is there any evidence of any Christian convert in the first century employing such skills before converting, or after.
As one example, Holding admits "people outside the area of Lystra may not have known enough about what happened in Lystra, or wanted to check it," or (I would add) had any means to check it, much less check something so specific as to the details--and even less to check those details in anything we would consider a reliable way. Probably they would just ask another Christian if it was true--and not question how they knew, nor explore whether their means of knowing was sufficiently thorough and accurate. This is how legends and myths arise even today, as stories get passed on without any critical control. We can be sure this phenomenon would be more common back then.
For another example, Holding claims that one would not lie about a "Sanhedrin member, or even a centurion being in your history (even if you don't name them; there were few enough of each of these that it would not be hard to make a check)." But that is not true. There were actually hundreds of such people--and if you've ever tried interviewing a hundred people, you know how not easy this is, and that's already assuming you are physically in their city, and they haven't died or moved, and they will deign to answer your questions. Thus, it would always be hard to check, for anyone outside of Palestine, and Christianity does not appear to have been very successful there (by far most Jews there remained Jewish, even before the Jewish War), at least as compared with its success in the Diaspora. Nor do we have any evidence that the relevant claims (to specific Sanhedrists or centurions being involved in any particularly relevant way) were ever made in Palestine. We only have evidence of such claims being made outside Palestine and, most likely (following the widest consensus of experts) after the destruction of Palestine by war, which made "checking" nearly impossible--and appears to have evaporated any significant Christian presence there anyway. That was the reality, and it does not support Holding's case.
Most of Holding's points pertain to Luke-Acts, and it is certainly true--as all commentators agree--that this is the only book in the New Testament that actually belongs to the genre of history. It alone claims to be a history (a diagesis...pragmatô, "narrative of events," Luke 1:1). It alone claims to have done the work of an historian for the purpose of establishing an accurate account (Luke 1:2-3). It alone follows any of the distinct markers of the historical genre (such as fixing dates, e.g. Luke 3:1). And Luke's preface consciously mimics those of known histories, and is an important marker of that genre--a marker absent from all other Gospels. In contrast, the other Gospels seem to fit the genre of mythic biography--in the specialized sense of a "didactic hagiography," an instructional account of a holy man, identical to the legends of medieval saints, or the sacred biographies of men like Pythagoras or Empedocles. The meaning of such texts could lay more in universal truths communicated symbolically than in particular claims to historical fact as we understand them today.[10]
Whether you agree with that or not, only Luke-Acts bears any definite claim to being a historical account. But was it a reliable account? Colin Hemer has made the most competent attempt to argue that Luke employed the best methods of his own day, i.e. that Luke followed the most reliable research paradigm available to him at the time he wrote (which Hemer tries to argue was the earliest date possible, around 62 A.D.).[11] Hemer's case rests on essentially two kinds of evidence: external corroboration of historical details in Luke, and evidence that some ancient historians declared and employed very exacting methods. The evidence he presents is generally accurate. But his conclusions do not follow from this evidence.[12] We will only briefly address that fact, since the conclusions of this chapter do not require the assumption that Luke-Acts was any worse in producing a history of events than any other decent historian of his own era--since all historians of antiquity were fallible and those of merely above-average talent (like Luke) were particularly fallible, in comparison with the quality of modern history. And most importantly: no historian can ever be more reliable than his sources. Thus, if Luke trusted an unreliable source for any detail, it would not matter how competent Luke was himself.
The first set of evidence Hemer presents does confirm that Luke possessed good skills and knowledge and thus was a very competent historian when it came to public and general facts. But it does not prove he was a critical historian, since one does not need to be critical to simply look up public records or local histories and use what they say, or to draw on your own or others' general knowledge of regional details. Nor does this evidence of doing research prove Luke was as reliable when it came to matters that were not general local knowledge or available in public records or histories--such as private events requiring the skillful interrogation of witnesses and a critical sifting of conflicting claims. Indeed, the fact that Luke simply, and to a very large extent, "trusts" the Gospel of Mark (and probably a list of sayings identified as Q, if not the Gospel of Matthew itself) proves that Luke was not doing much "interrogating" of eyewitnesses (and he never says he did--as we shall see below), but was simply pulling material from books and traditions that never even claimed to be history, much less produced by any eyewitness. And even had his sources been written by eyewitnesses (and Luke never says they were--again, a point we will address below), he could not interrogate or cross-examine a book or oral tradition anyway, no matter how skilled he was. And when we consider that evidence, in addition to the fact that Luke shows no awareness of conflicting stories (like the nativity or empty tomb narratives of Matthew) and never makes any effort to show how he chose what evidence to accept or reject, we can rightly say that Luke was probably not a critical historian.
This brings us to Hemer's second set of evidence. He does demonstrate, and quite rightly, that the best historians of the age employed very discerning methods that do indeed allow us to trust them more than most other writers of antiquity. But there were also many lousy historians who did not engage such methods, or who employed them with little skill--as Hemer himself proves, since much of the evidence for reliable historians comes from their criticisms of the sloppy or unreliable methods of other historians. Thus, proving there were good historians does not permit the conclusion that Luke was one of them. Nor does Hemer's first set of evidence permit such a conclusion, since evidence of exacting research is not evidence of critical research. Moreover, as the renowned biblical commentator C. K. Barrett wisely pointed out in a review of another book attempting the same argument, "It is enough to remark that the reviewer has read a large number of detective stories which were completely correct in their description of legal and police procedures--and pure fiction."[13]
Marking the most prominent and important gap in Hemer's logic is the fact that unlike all the best historians of the day, Luke never names any source (except two documents, neither of which is relevant to the divinity of Jesus), or any methodology, or any interest in a critical assessment of any evidence at all--even though it is precisely on such details that modern scholars base their evaluation of ancient historians! It is also notable that all ancient historians, again unlike Luke, told us who they were, which alone tells the reader something of their qualifications.[14] And in a few cases (as with Josephus and Appian, for example), ancient historians even listed their specific qualifications as an expert on the events they relate. Luke's preface is conspicuous for the absence of all this information, and thus looks more like the work of a very un-critical historian, the exact opposite of Hemer's desired conclusion. A close analysis of Luke's preface (Lk. 1:1-4) carries the point:
Since many took it in hand to bring together a narrative of the events assured among us, according to what they handed down to us who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the story, it is also my pleasure to write to you, most excellent Theophilus, in an organized way, so you may assess the truth of the stories you were told about in person, since I have closely followed everything accurately from the start.
What does Luke actually say here? First of all, he does not say he spoke with any eyewitnesses, or even knew them. Secondly, Luke does not say he did any kind of critical research, but quite the opposite.
As to the first observation: Luke only says the eyewitnesses handed down the information (1:2), not that Luke was the direct recipient of anything from them (nor even that the others were, either)--for he writes paredosan hêmin, "handed down to us," i.e. the present generation of Christians, not Luke specifically. There is no connotation here of his interrogating those witnesses or even knowing them. It is unlikely that Luke meant to include himself as a "witness" in the "events fulfilled among us" (peplêrophorêmenô en hêmin pragmatôn), since the hêmin logically includes the addressee (Theophilus, per 1:4) and again most likely means "us Christians" as a community or brotherhood--for the eyewitnesses are the ones who delivered this information "to us" in the next verse (1:2), so the "us" in 1:1 does not mean "those witnesses and me" but the same thing as the "us" in 1:2, hence every Christian of the present day (Hemer agrees: p. 326). Moreover, Luke does not actually say the events "took place" among us but that they were "fulfilled" among us, literally "were fully assured" or "were fully satisfied," which is a crucial distinction readers must not lose sight of: he is talking about events that are asserted ("assured") among us, and hence he is referring to a tradition, not experience.[15]
As to the second observation: Luke says he followed some unnamed and unidentified sources closely and accurately, in other words all but slavishly. There is no connotation here of exercising any sort of critical judgment in our sense, much less trying to reconstruct the true story himself by sifting and analyzing conflicting documents and accounts. To the contrary, the connotation is quite the opposite. Luke is saying that others have taken it upon themselves to "set in order" the very things the eyewitnesses handed down and "to write" these things down "seemed a good idea to me, too."[16] And Luke is implying that what he has written down, and what others have brought together from the tradition that was handed down, is a collection of stories (logoi) that Theophilus has already heard about (literally: katêchêthês entails hearing it spoken, not reading it). The reason Luke gives for doing this (writing everything down "in an organized way") is so Theophilus can "assess the truth" of what he has already heard.[17] That is the point of Luke's emphasizing the closeness, "accuracy" and thoroughness ("followed everything from the beginning") of his own account. By this he means he is not making anything up or being sloppy, but is making a precise record of what was handed down (perhaps more precisely than others, though the Greek does not entail such a criticism). That did not require critical historical judgment. In fact, it rules it out: for he is declaring his unwavering commitment to a prior tradition--which he is "following closely" and "precisely."[18] His only stated criterion of judgment is what was handed down from the beginning--and yet he says nothing at all about how he determined which stories met that criterion and which did not. So we are left with no evidence at all that Luke employed anything we would trust as a reliable critical method.
Contrast, as just one example, how Suetonius handles the existence of conflicting accounts of the birth of Caligula (in Gaius 8): Luke shows no such interests, methods, or skills, and presents no such efforts to us, nor names or assesses any sources pertaining to Jesus.[19] And yet Suetonius is notoriously regarded by modern historians as an often-unreliable gossip-monger. Therefore, a fortiori, we have every reason to expect Luke was no better, and probably worse, when it came to critical acumen. Here is the relevant passage, and one can only marvel at how incredibly different from Luke the method of Suetonius is in the writing of history:
Gaius Caesar was born the day before the Kalends of
September in the consulship of his father and Gaius Fonteius Capito.
Conflicting testimony makes his birthplace uncertain. Gnaeus Lentulus
Gaetulicus writes that he was born at Tibur, Plinius Secundus among the
Treveri, in a village called Ambitarvium above the Confluence. Pliny
adds as proof that altars are shown there, inscribed "For the Delivery
of Agrippina." Verses which were in circulation soon after he became
emperor indicate that he was begotten in the winter-quarters of the
legions: "He who was born in the camp and reared mid the arms of his
country, Gave at the outset a sign that he was fated to rule." I myself
find in the Acta Publica that he first saw the light at Antium.
Gaetulicus is shown to be
wrong by Pliny, who says that he told a flattering lie, to add some
luster to the fame of a young and vainglorious prince from the city
sacred to Hercules; and that he lied with the more assurance because
Germanicus really did have a son born to him at Tibur, also called
Gaius Caesar, of whose lovable disposition and untimely death I have
already spoken. Pliny, on the other hand, has erred in his
chronology--for the historians of Augustus agree that Germanicus was
not sent to Germany until the close of his consulship, when Gaius was
already born. Moreover, the inscription on the altar adds no strength
to Pliny's view, for Agrippina twice gave birth to daughters in that
region, and any childbirth, regardless of sex, is called puerperium,
since the men of old called girls puerae, just as they called
boys puelli.
Furthermore, we have a letter
written by Augustus to his granddaughter Agrippina, a few months before
he died, about the Gaius in question (for no other child of the name
was still alive at that time), reading as follows: "Yesterday I
arranged with Talarius and Asillius to bring your boy Gaius on the
fifteenth day before the Kalends of June, if it be the will of the
gods. I send with him besides one of my slaves who is a physician, and
I have written Germanicus to keep him if he wishes. Farewell, my own
Agrippina, and take care to come in good health to your Germanicus." I
think it is clear enough that Gaius could not have been born in a place
to which he was first taken from Rome when he was nearly two years old.
This letter also weakens our confidence in the verses, the more so
because they are anonymous. We must then accept the only remaining
testimony, that of the public record, particularly since Gaius loved
Antium as if it were his native soil, always preferring it to all other
places of retreat, and even thinking, it is said, of transferring
thither the seat and abode of the empire through weariness of Rome.[20]
This is how a critical historian behaves. His methods and critical judgment become transparent and laid out for the reader to see. He names or at least mentions or describes his sources: in this case, Gaetulicus, Pliny, the Acta Publica, and the letters of Augustus, as well as an anonymous oral tradition and a public inscription at Ambitarvium, all in addition to "the historians of Augustus." He analyzes the conflicting claims and tells us how he decided on one over the other--indeed, it is already important that he tells us there were conflicting traditions. He lists the evidence and criticizes it. He gives us information about the reliability of his sources--for instance, he tells us when a source is anonymous, and admits that is a mark against it, and he tells us what evidence any given author appealed to, and remarks on their possible motives. He quotes documents or sources verbatim. And he is openly attentive to chronological inconsistencies.
Luke does none of these things. He never even mentions method, much less shows his methods to us, or any critical judgment at all. He never names even a single (relevant) source, nor does he give us anything like a useful description of any of his sources, and he certainly never tells us which sources he used for which details of his history. And Luke must surely have known there were conflicting claims, yet he never tells us about them, but instead just narrates his account as if everything were indisputable, never once telling us how or why he chose one version or detail and left out others. For example, though Luke copies Mark, he never tells us he did, much less for which material, and he changes what Mark said in some places--which entails either that Luke is fabricating, or preferring some other source that contradicted Mark. So why don't we hear of this other source? Or of why Luke preferred it? Likewise, it is impossible to believe that Luke "closely followed everything" and yet had never heard of the alternative nativity account presented in Matthew (unless, of course, Matthew wrote after Luke and made it all up). Moreover, Luke tells us nothing about the relative reliability of his sources--for instance, he never identifies what if anything came from anonymous sources, nor does he ever show any interest in distinguishing good from bad evidence or certain from uncertain information. For example, why did he trust Mark in the first place? Who wrote it? What sources did they use? Luke doesn't say. He never even quotes any history nor shows much concern for establishing a precise chronology (essentially giving us only a single date in 3:1, which is tied only to John and is thus ambiguous as to any event in the life of Jesus).
Therefore, all the elements that lead us to trust an ancient historian are missing from Luke. Therefore, Luke cannot be elevated to their level.[21] He may well be an accurate historian. But that does not make him a critical historian. Only content like that of Suetonius above can identify a critical historian from a merely accurate one. Still, the quality of Luke as an historian need not be denied here--on matters that could be publicly checked, he may well have been impeccable. That does not mean his information on private matters transmitted solely by hearsay through an unknown number of intermediaries was as good, or that he did not import his own assumptions when describing details or crafting speeches. Yet all the evidence pertaining to the resurrection was private, not public, and was the central focus of dogmatic disputes--and therefore, of all things, the one detail most prone to distortion by importing the dogmatic assumptions of the author. And this is a crucial distinction, between public and private knowledge, and incidental vs. doctrinal data, a distinction Holding does not appear to grasp, as we shall now see from his own prize examples.
The gist of Holding's argument here is that "the NT is filled with claims of connections to and reports of incidents involving 'famous people'," which no one would have allowed had those famous people not really been involved, which in turn somehow entails the other details (the private experiences of converts and disciples) must be as reliable. There are two non sequiturs here: getting the public details right in no way entails the private details are also true (since the skills and methods required in each case are very different), nor could potential converts have really checked the public details anyway. We have addressed both points already from a general perspective. Now we can examine them from a specific example, which is clearly Holding's prize case, since he launches his entire argument with a quotation from the relevant scene: Paul's trial before Agrippa.
Already from the start we have grounds for suspicion: Holding avoids calling our attention to the fact that despite all these "connections to and reports of incidents involving famous people," not a single famous person was a witness to any of the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. To the contrary, that one claim remained private and uncheckable, even by those who might have had the means and desire to "check up" on all those "connections to and reports of incidents involving famous people." Holding is thus guilty of arguing from a giant red herring. Nor does that red herring lead to any of the other conclusions Holding wants to draw from it. That is the subject of the present section.
Holding's representative title quote comes from Acts 26:26, where Luke has Paul say at trial before Agrippa: "For the king knows about these things, to whom I am speaking freely. For I don't believe any of these things are hidden from him, since this has not been done in a corner." Holding implies that Paul is referring to the resurrection, but that is clearly not the case (as we shall see), nor if it were would this passage suffice to make Holding's case. For there was no such thing as a trial transcript for anyone to check to confirm Paul actually said this (the court documents we have recovered include only brief, formal statements of witnesses, not lengthy speeches). Though we could imagine Luke was there himself or heard all about it from Paul or some other witness, we can't be sure Luke or his sources are giving us a totally honest or accurate account. Since no one would be able to check exactly what Paul said before Agrippa, Luke or his source could pretty much make up whatever they wanted to.
Already this point is fatal, but we will set it aside. Holding asks, "Did Agrippa execute Paul for these statements? No, and he could not have if it was not true." I assume this is a typo, and that Holding meant to write "No, and he could not have if it was true," otherwise I don't see the argument here. Holding's point surely is that Paul could not claim "none of these things are hidden" from Agrippa if that was untrue, since Agrippa could execute him for perjury, therefore the evidence must have been so public that Agrippa himself was familiar with it.[22] But what "business" is Paul referring to that was "not done in a corner"? What are these "things" that Agrippa knows about and aren't hidden from him? Does anything Luke claims Paul asserted at this trial, which Agrippa "knows" is true because it was "not hidden" from him, have anything whatever to do with whether Jesus actually rose from the dead? No. Does Paul's defense, so far as Luke records it, even contain any historical assertion that would support the historicity of the resurrection? Again: No.
Take a close look at what Luke actually claims Paul declared to Agrippa at this trial: Paul has long been a devoted Pharisee (26:4-5); he was being accused of merely "hoping" for the fulfillment of scripture (26:6), even though all Jews share the same hope (26:7), which is the hope that God would raise the dead (26:8); Paul persecuted Christians (26:9-11), but then saw a blinding, audible communication from God at noon on the road to Damascus (26:12-18), and he obeyed this God's commands and preached its message "to repent and turn to God and do works worthy of repentance," first in Damascus, then Jerusalem, then "all Judaea," and then to the Gentiles (26:19-20); the Jews seized Paul for preaching this message (26:21), and now he's on trial, "saying nothing but what both the prophets and Moses said was destined to happen" (26:22). Not a single reference to the resurrection of Jesus. Every single fact here was obviously true, but of no relevance to Holding's argument. Yet these are the "things" Paul says Agrippa "knows" because they are not "hidden" from him.
Only at the very end of his defense does Paul mention the death and resurrection of the messiah (26:23), yet only as what "the prophets and Moses said was destined to happen," not as an observed event. Neither Christ's death nor resurrection is asserted anywhere in Paul's defense before Agrippa. Paul never says he is innocent because Jesus really rose, "and here is my evidence that proves it." No, all he appeals to is a private communication direct from God only to Paul himself affirming that the Savior lived (26:15), and statements from "Moses and the prophets" concerning "whether the messiah was destined to suffer and proclaim" a message of salvation to the world--not that any Christ has suffered or proclaimed anything.[23] Paul never asserts that, nor claims that such an assertion was anything he preached, or what he was being accused of preaching! His defense asserts only that he was preaching that scripture foretold such a thing and "therefore repent." That is a brilliantly slick defense: Paul deliberately avoids asserting anything that any reasonable Jew would doubt, and thus avoids giving cause to Agrippa or his accusers to "investigate" the facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. Thus, contrary to what Holding implies, this speech actually entails Paul could not prove the resurrection of Jesus (much less offer "irrefutable" evidence of it).
Of course, we might assume Paul believed this "predicted resurrection" was an actual event that was already fulfilled, but he still did not say this to Agrippa, or even that this was a claim he was accused of making. He carefully kept that whole debate out of court. Consequently, the only rebuttal Festus could offer is that Paul had "gone mad" (26:24-25). Festus does not bring in any rebuttal witnesses or challenge any evidence, because no relevant evidence was presented, nor indeed was any controversial evidence mentioned that anyone could have been a witness to--except Paul. Hence the only thing anyone could accuse him of was insanity. There was no way to prove he was lying about a private vision.
At most, Festus could have inquired as to why Paul's unnamed companions fell, or indeed who they even were. But Festus doesn't even do that. So though Paul says some nameless "those who journeyed with me" fell to the ground with Paul when he saw the vision (26:13-14), they are not there to testify, nor is Agrippa even told who they were, nor does Agrippa even ask to interrogate them, much less actually do so. Nor does Festus. Indeed, Paul carefully avoids saying those with him saw or heard anything--even though Luke says this on other occasions (Acts 9:3-8 & 22:6-11). That's a slick move. On the legal record, if Luke has it right, Paul claimed nothing miraculous whatsoever except a personal experience that no one could confirm or refute, even in principle. Paul never says "why" those with him fell (and indeed, Luke says elsewhere that Paul claimed they remained standing: Acts 9:7), thus implying something supernatural yet leaving himself a mundane explanation (if the witnesses were produced, Paul could simply say they dropped down to pick him up). All in all, there isn't a single thing here that supports the claim that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
So when Paul says of Agrippa that "none of these things is hidden from him," none of "these things" is the resurrection of Jesus, or any miracle at all. It's just not anything Paul asserted as a historical fact in this trial. His only reference is that scripture predicted it (26:22-23), hence Paul begins his defense by calling attention to Agrippa's thorough knowledge of the scriptures (26:3), not to any other evidence or witness. Paul never tells Agrippa that the resurrection of Jesus is something that happened, beyond what God told him privately, nor does Paul make any case proving it did. We certainly have no reason to believe Agrippa ever saw the resurrected Christ--or even inspected the empty tomb for that matter, or so much as asked about that. Why would he? Paul never mentions it. Or anything else pertaining to the resurrection. And when Paul makes his final appeal, he does not ask Agrippa, "Do you agree the evidence confirms that Jesus rose from the dead?" but instead "Do you believe the prophets?" (26:27). That's it. Scripture. The facts of the resurrection aren't even on trial. They aren't even an element of Paul's defense. Agrippa's ruling is not that Jesus rose from the dead. His ruling is solely this: that Paul violated no law in preaching that scripture predicted the Savior would rise from the dead (26:30-32). Yet even an atheist can agree with that!
Far from this statement to Agrippa proving anything about the resurrection of Jesus, the trial as Luke records it actually refutes Holding's argument, and by his own reasoning. Agrippa may have been joking when he said "you are quickly persuading me to become a Christian" (26:28), or more likely he never said it (it is the sort of thing historians of that day fabricated to make a good story), or most likely Agrippa thought what Paul had defended in the trial was Christianity--for there was no blasphemy in agreeing that "Moses and the Prophets predicted the suffering and resurrection of the messiah, and therefore repent." But whatever the case, the record shows Agrippa did not convert. So the fact is, Agrippa was unconvinced--despite having more resources to check the facts than any actual Christian convert ever did. Thus, if the facts were checkable and overwhelming, Agrippa should have converted. That he did not entails the facts either weren't checkable or weren't overwhelming. Holding's case is thereby destroyed.
This very same problem arises when we look at Paul. Holding's argument here makes no sense whatever of why Paul persecuted Christians. Why would he have persecuted them so vehemently if the evidence for the resurrection was already so extraordinarily good as Holding's argument requires? Why does Paul only believe after he himself sees a vision of the Christ telling him he is wrong? Why does Paul never mention any other reason for converting? Even in Acts, he never cites any evidence as having convinced him, except his own personal vision (besides the scriptures, of course). He never makes any references to checking the facts of the empty tomb story, or being persuaded by the testimony of other witnesses--not even in Galatians. In fact, in Galatians Paul goes out of his way to deny having done any such thing until, at best, many years after he was already converted. So why did it take a personal visit from God to convince Paul? We cannot say he was loony or stupid--from his letters we can see Paul clearly was neither. There can be no plausible explanation for his not believing the Christians except the fact that he had no reason to believe them. Which entails there was no evidence that could be checked at all, or what could be checked was inconclusive to any reasonable man like Paul.
And Paul was not alone: Israel in general was hard to convert, as Paul himself admits in Romans 11:25-31, and there is no reliable evidence the Church was actually all that successful in Palestine in the first century--we will discuss this in Chapter 18, but for now it is enough to note that Judaea, much less Jerusalem or Galilee, did not become Christian to any notable degree. That pretty much entails the evidence for the resurrection was not irrefutable--not by a long shot. Nor was even a single elite scholar of the first century persuaded to convert.[24] Had they been, the history of Christianity would have been very different: its literary tradition would have begun under the pen of famous names and great men, instead of obscure unknowns (like Paul) outside (or subservient to) the main avenues of power and influence; and vast monetary resources would have been wielded in its support from the beginning, which means (as it did for all other schools and cults that won the support of the wealthy) inscriptions professing the Gospel all over the Empire, perhaps even audiences and correspondences with the Emperor. Instead, the Christians couldn't even persuade the local elite in Jerusalem, much less anyone higher up the ladder. Not a single member of the Sanhedrin was persuaded (despite the fact that they were in the best position of anyone to collect and assess Holding's alleged "irrefutable" evidence), nor anyone of the local decurion class at all, i.e. "councilmen," Jews of sufficient social standing to have a right to local political power.[25] The evidence, therefore, could not have been "irrefutable."
Ultimately, since Paul was only convinced by actually "seeing" God himself, it is probable that this is exactly what convinced the original Christians, too (it is, after all, apart from scripture, the only evidence Paul says convinced anyone, as in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8). After that, it was solely a question of trust. Because there was no way to 'check' Paul's or anyone else's claim to having seen God. All you had was his word. You either accepted it like Agrippa, or rejected it like Festus, depending on your presuppositions about visions from God or your assessment of the sincerity of the witness. Because when it came to visions, ancient peoples--even those with excellent educations and every resource imaginable, even judges sitting at trial--didn't seem to bother with checking facts the way Holding has in mind. Neither Agrippa nor Festus even thought to interrogate Paul or other witnesses about his vision.
Likewise, when Pliny the Younger heard that Curtius Rufus had seen a vision of a goddess, he asks only whether it was an hallucination or a real encounter with the divine. The possibility that the story was made up never even enters his mind, nor does he engage any effort at all to check. Nor, apparently, did the historian Tacitus. On another occasion, one of Pliny's freedmen, and then one of his slaves, was "attacked" by ghosts who cut their hair as they slept, which Pliny took as an omen--it never occurred to him, apparently, to interrogate his staff to locate what was obviously a bedtime prankster.[26] If Pliny could be this gullible and slipshod in his investigations when it came to "apparitions," so could anyone lower down the social and educational ladder. Pliny simply trusted such witnesses. So would Christian converts.
"The point is," Holding argues, "the presence of those of greater social standing and notice, and the claims attached to them," because "it is impossible that Christianity thrived and survived without having its ducks in a row in this regard." We have already seen what's wrong with this argument. It simply doesn't hold water. Nor is it even relevant to whether Jesus rose from the dead--since none of these "ducks" have anything to do with that. Everything we have said so far can now be summarized by examining Holding's second 'star' example: the claim that Herod Agrippa "was eaten by worms" as Luke reports in Acts 12:20-23.
Holding claims that "copies of Acts circulated in the area and were accessible to the public" so "had Luke reported falsely, Christianity would have been dismissed as a fraud and would not have 'caught on' as a religion." Even if that were true, it is irrelevant--getting such a detail right in no way entails or even implies getting right the details of Christ's resurrection, since the evidence is categorically different in each case: public records vs. private oral tradition, and incidental color vs. doctrinally crucial detail. But Holding's claim isn't true anyway.
First, how Herod Agrippa the Elder died was not so open to investigation. Apart from all the general difficulties noted earlier, there were no death certificates, and most people had no access to anyone who might know the truth (a common Christian does not just walk up to a Jewish king and ask whether his dad died of worms). In fact, it is likely no one knew: there was no coroner, and no such thing as an autopsy (by the Roman period, autopsies were in fact illegal--since they desecrated the body--which is why Galen had to use apes to study human anatomy). Josephus merely reports that Agrippa died of stomach pains, and we know Josephus employed royal memoires and records. That the cause of death was "worms" would be a plausible inference, which no one could prove or refute, not even Agrippa's son. Indeed, death by "worms" was curiously so common for tyrants (including Antiochus IV, Sulla, Herod, Agrippa I, and Galerius) that historians are rightly skeptical of its historicity.[27] But even if the cause of death had somehow been confirmed, the only way Luke could know of it is by rumor or consulting published histories, neither of which would lend any credence to the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. So this whole issue is a red herring.
Second, "copies of Acts" did not "circulate" until long after the elder Agrippa died, after the Jewish War had completely destroyed the region, and most relevant witnesses were dead or sold off into slavery. Thus, it would have been exceedingly difficult for anyone to "check" this claim, and there is no evidence anyone ever did. In fact, most expert commentators agree: regardless of when Acts was written, it was not circulated to any notable degree until the mid-second century, and therefore would not have come to anyone's attention who would have cause to dispute the claim--much less Agrippa's son (who probably died before 93 A.D.).[28] Thus, when Holding argues that "Luke probably would have been jailed and/or executed by Agrippa's son, Herod Agrippa II" if Luke had lied about his father's cause of death, Holding must presume Luke made this claim in his son's presence or in any public manner likely to come to his attention in his lifetime, yet we have no evidence Luke did. Indeed, Holding's point here rests on a veritable mountain of blind speculations. For example, I am unaware of any evidence of anyone ever being executed for misreporting a cause of death (it is unclear how one would even prove such a claim false, since there would be no relevant evidence remaining). It is already a huge stretch to suppose Agrippa would be so incensed at such a trivial claim as to trump up some charge of treason to justify an execution, even supposing he ever heard the claim--which entails the improbable assumption that he was busy reading every book anyone ever wrote in his lifetime, or that he had a team of lackeys eager to report trivial errors concerning the record of his father. And to make matters worse, Acts went unsigned. So how would Agrippa know whom to accuse?
Not only does Holding get the facts of the matter wrong, but his entire argument is a non sequitur:
First, Christianity had already "caught on" as a religion long before Acts was even written, as Acts itself attests. The success of Christianity could not have been impaired by dishonesty in a book it had never relied on to sell the faith, which would not come to the attention even of most Christians until a century after the origin of the Church. So by the time any Christians used Acts in such a way, we are well into the second century, so far away from the events being reported that checking them would have been impossible. Nor would having a bogus book be a liability--for bogus histories of Christian "acts" sprouted like grass in that century, yet did nothing to arrest its success. If someone found a book in error on any detail, a Christian could simply disclaim the book and appeal to his own witness of the Holy Spirit, or argue the claim in question was merely symbolic or allegorical, or simply point out the obvious: that making a few mistakes as to the details does not discredit an entire story, much less a story whose truth has nothing whatever to do with those details. But this is moot anyway. As far as we can see, the actual evidence Christians used to win converts in the first century never included their own books, much less historical texts like Luke-Acts.
Second, and this bears repeating, whether Agrippa died of worms has nothing to do with the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. For instance, Paul's personal and direct testimony to having seen god himself would not have been undermined one bit by some other Christian getting caught lying about Agrippa dying of worms. This point carries for every other element of Luke-Acts, the only book in the New Testament that claims to be a history and that actually follows the markers of that genre (as explained above). The success of Christianity would not have been hindered at all by trivial lies there. At the very worst, if the book were exposed as full of lies, Christians simply would have abandoned it--as they did countless other bogus Acta.
On the other hand, it would be a rhetorical advantage to fill a book about private, unconfirmable experiences, with public facts that were demonstrably true. Indeed, the very fact that Holding himself is impressed and persuaded by this, even though it has no bearing at all on the truth of the resurrection itself, proves the point: it would be easier to sell a private resurrection claim by packaging it with a hundred public truths that actually had nothing to do with it. And as we just saw above, when the issue came to trial, Paul did not even try to present any evidence, much less public evidence, or claim any of the resurrection details as related by Luke in his Gospel. Apart from scripture, Paul appeals solely to his private revelation from god, which no one could confirm or refute--and, accordingly, no one did.
In the end, all these observations completely undermine the force of Holding's argument. He says "Christianity was highly vulnerable to inspection and disproof on innumerable points--any one of which, had it failed to prove out, would have snowballed into further doubt." Perhaps this would happen if anyone actually bothered to look for and actually succeeded in finding definitive proof that any such claim was false, and fellow Christians did not then disavow the book or convince them the passage was meant to be allegory or symbolic or that such trivial errors did not matter to the central claim of the Gospel. But already that's a whole slew of suppositions, for which we have no evidence. And even if we grant those assumptions, this would only explain why most people rejected Christianity, as in fact most people did. It would not prove that the few who converted did so because they checked all the facts and found them sterling. Moreover, every one of these checkable facts could well have been sterling--that tells us nothing about whether the private, uncheckable evidence for the resurrection was sterling, too.
Beyond historical trivia in Acts, Holding extends his argument by referring to a few public "miracles" reported in the Gospels, in particular: "an earthquake, a darkness at midday, the temple curtain torn in two" and "healings of illnesses and dysfunctions, even reversals of death, in highly public places." We will set aside "healings" and "reversals of death" since there were as many pagan claims to that and many natural causes exist for them, so even if we believe those accounts, they do not prove Christianity true.[29] The sole exception on record is perhaps the "healing" of a severed ear, so I will add that to Holding's list. I am leaving out the rest of Holding's trivia, such as whether Jesus was executed or buried by Joseph or received a public reception at Jerusalem, since all of that could be true even if the resurrection wasn't.
Of Holding's examples, only two can truly be called "public": the earthquake and the noonday darkness, which somehow only Christians ever noticed--indeed, some of them even missed it. The Gospel of John mentions neither, nor does either Mark or Luke mention any earthquake (Matthew is alone in making this claim: he even claims there were two earthquakes a day apart: Mt. 27:51-54 & 28:2), so the sources do not agree there were such events. Second, even if we trusted the account (and we have no good reason to), neither event is supernatural. A solar eclipse on Passover, much less of three-hour duration, would be supernatural, but only Luke uses the technical term for "eclipse" (Lk. 23:44-45), which could only be an inference--for there is no way Luke could confirm it was an "eclipse of the sun" rather than something else--and the other Gospels, including the earliest, only say "darkness" (Mk. 15:33; Mt. 27:45), which could be produced by inclement weather.[30] Likewise, the fact that Matthew says there were two earthquakes lends support to a theory of natural cause (since aftershocks are common). Third, neither an earthquake nor an extended darkness proves the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, and so they are essentially irrelevant to the truth of Christianity, even if we could prove they happened--and we can't.
But set all that aside. How would someone at the end of the first century (and even by that time we can't show the Gospels were at all widely known, even by Christians themselves) check the claim that there were earthquakes in Jerusalem in some unidentified year more than two generations ago? The Jewish War would have eliminated most if not all witnesses, and those who survived would be extremely unlikely to have lived long enough to be available, even supposing someone could find them to ask (or even bothered to try, and we have no evidence anyone did).[31] Merely "failing" to find the earthquakes mentioned in other sources would not "prove" Matthew a liar. And even then, Matthew never claims to be writing history anyway--so a missionary could declare the earthquake symbolic, and thus avoid the whole issue.
The same problems and response were available for the noonday darkness. By the time the Gospels came to be circulated (we first hear about them in the early second century) the ability to "check" even these highly public claims was unavailable. Its mere absence from other sources would not "prove" it false. And, of course, as far as we know, everyone who engaged any exhaustive effort to research these claims may have found them false and rejected Christianity--and only those who didn't check, believed. Holding cannot assume otherwise, nor can he prove otherwise. All the same could be said of Matthew's uncorroborated claim that "many" unnamed corpses of holy men rose and appeared to "many" unnamed witnesses (Mt. 27:52-53, mentioned in no other Gospel). That has nothing to do with whether Jesus rose and appeared to anyone. And it would be impossible to check Matthew's claim anyway. The reader isn't told whom to ask--so he couldn't even find much less interrogate everyone who was in Jerusalem at the time, especially when most of them were dead, and were visiting from unknown cities and nations, and it isn't even clear which Passover it was.
Then there is the semi-public miracle of Jesus restoring the severed ear of an unnamed slave of the high priest sometime in the 30's A.D. First, "healed" (iaomai) is ambiguous enough that it could have meant simply 'stopped the bleeding and pain', in which case there is nothing supernatural here--and such an interpretation would be an easy escape for Luke's defenders if the claim were challenged. But Luke probably had in mind something magical. However, he is alone in recording this (Lk. 22:51). It is not mentioned in any other account (Mt. 26:51), including the earliest version of the story (Mk. 14:47) and the most detailed version of the story (Jn. 18:10), even though all accounts mention the ear being severed, and John even claims to know the name of the slave whose ear was lost. So by modern standards the claim that Jesus healed the ear is probably apocryphal. And, of course, it is again irrelevant. That Jesus could heal severed ears does not imply he rose from the dead.
Finally, if we regard Luke as the most thorough and diligent in researching the facts--indeed, the only author even claiming anything like this--then we must conclude there was probably no earthquake or hoard of zombies. For this means Luke either found no such claims, despite his thorough research, or he excluded them from his narrative because he found them false. Either way, their absence from Luke's account entails they probably did not happen. Then, for the darkness and torn curtain, we know Luke's source: the Gospel of Mark. Yet Mark was probably writing a symbolic allegory, not history--or at the very least, we cannot establish otherwise. That eliminates all of Holding's miracles. Even the healed ear would be a perfect example of how ancient historians used probability as a criterion: since Luke would believe the greatest and most compassionate healer would not leave a severed ear untreated, he would believe Mark must have been remiss in excluding the fact that Jesus healed it. Therefore, Luke would believe that healing the ear was probably what happened, and so he would be justified in including it in the narrative. That sort of judgment, blurring the line between inference and sourced fact, was a widely accepted practice in ancient historiography.
But, again, set all that aside. How would someone at the end of the first century check Luke's claim? The high priest in question was long dead, and Luke does not tell the reader the name of the slave, or who among those present checked to confirm the ear was actually severed, much less actually restored. So who would you ask? What would they tell you? And how would you find that person, fifty or sixty years (and a devastating war) after the fact? And who would go through all that effort? There is no record of anyone even trying, much less succeeding at it. As far as we know, Luke felt far enough from the events to get away with embellishing Mark's unmiraculous story, knowing it would be very unlikely his fib would be found out by then, or Luke simply assumed Jesus would heal the ear. And, of course, as far as we know, everyone who did engage the exhaustive effort to research Luke's claim found it false and rejected Christianity for that very reason. Holding cannot assume otherwise, nor can he prove otherwise.
That leaves only one more miracle on Holding's list: the torn veil (Mk. 15:38; Mt. 27:51; Lk. 23:45; John makes no mention of it). That is, again, of no relevance to whether Jesus rose. It was also highly symbolic, so a Christian need not have regarded it as history. But even if one did, it would be impossible to check. Only the high priest and another priest sitting the Office of the Veil attended that veil at any given time, which was replaced due to wear at least twice a year.[32] Therefore, there could only have been at most two witnesses to the veil suddenly tearing in two at Passover, both of whom would have been long dead by the time the claim was circulated. Of course, had it actually happened, we might expect the whole priesthood to hear about it, and thence the rumor might spread and be passed down to subsequent generations. But a Christian could just as easily expect the two witnesses to cover it up, just as Matthew claims the Jews tried to cover up the resurrection of Jesus--which means even if a Christian found a living witness, he could dismiss their denial of this miracle as coming from yet another lying Jew. Either way, if it didn't happen, by the time the claim was circulated, there would be no way at all to prove it hadn't.
All of Holding's appeals to the availability of witnesses ignore the relevant facts above. He claims "there were also built in 'fact checkers' stationed around the Empire who could say something about all the claims central to Jerusalem and Judaea--the Diaspora Jews." But due to age and war, by the time the Gospel claims were circulated at all widely, few if any living Jews would have been in Jerusalem at the time of Christ. Obviously, had the public "miracles" actually happened, later generations might have heard of them as the tales were passed down (though even then it would be a chore to find someone who had such a connection--not everyone is a comprehensive library of oral lore). But if the claims were made up--and that is the only hypothesis in question--how would they be "refuted"? An aspiring Christian could ask a hundred Diaspora Jews in a dozen different cities, but all these Jews could tell them is that they had not heard any such stories--and that would not prove such things didn't happen. That is a far cry from having "built in fact checkers."
Another example is Holding's strangely contradictory argument that the public "miracles" took place before "attendant crowds numbering in the millions" and yet this is counted as taking place "in a small city and culture where word would spread fast." Since when do "crowds numbering in the millions" count as a "small" community? Indeed, doesn't rumor and misinformation travel just as fast? Holding apparently did not think about the logistics of this situation. First, such huge numbers actually make investigating a rumor all but impossible, since finding witnesses would be like finding a needle in a haystack--all the more so since most would be gone after the festival, to destinations unknown. Second, the same fact would make stopping a rumor all but impossible--such enormous crowds would be beyond anyone's control, and the rapid spread throughout them of any tale would far outrun any individual who might want to deny it. And then, only days later, the rumor would be carried off to countless foreign cities. No one could clean up such a mess. And how could "millions" witness a localized event anyway? This would be impossible even in a theater designed to allow large numbers of people to see the same stage or arena, since the largest such venues in antiquity never exceeded more than 80,000 spectators--and even then, how well would they be able to see any particular event? Not well enough to be sure of any miraculous details.
And that is precisely the problem: at most a few hundred could have been witness to any specific event, and very few of them would be capable of any reliable observation. But how do you locate a few, much less a few hundred, unnamed people in an itinerant crowd of millions who attended an event in some unspecified year five or six decades ago? Only earthquakes and darkness would be observed by all, and we've already examined the problems there. But there is something odd about that, too: if God had no trouble covering all Judaea with a miraculous darkness (and Holding must assume it was miraculous, or else it has no relevance to Christianity being true), how could God have had any scruple against having the risen Jesus appear to all Judaea? Isn't it peculiar that the only event that makes Christianity true was private and available only to a privileged few, while the only events that were at all public had little to do with Christianity being true, and even then were only "reported" generations later, only by Christians, and after a devastating war (not to mention the Neronian persecution) had eliminated just about any chance of checking the facts? Doesn't that look like a human rather than a divine hand at work in history?
Since it is relevant to Holding's opening quotation and prize example, we must note in the end that Paul includes none of the miracles examined above as among "those things" he says Agrippa knows about--but only "those things" Paul actually offers in his defense (see First Example: Luke on Paul's Trial above). Notably, Paul does not include the empty tomb in his defense, either. Though this was not miraculous in and of itself, certainly the Christians would have benefited from having a prominent witness to corroborate it. Yet no one is ever said to have observed the tomb empty except a handful of Christians and liars (Mt. 28:11-15). Indeed, it is most remarkable that the Christians associate the burial with a "famous" man (well, at least a prominent man), yet that same man is conveniently not around to confirm the tomb was empty. The Christians thus avoid linking even Joseph of Arimathea to any resurrection evidence. He never turns up in Acts as a witness for or against the Christian claim. So even that "fact" remained thoroughly private, and (once the story began to circulate with the Gospels) far beyond anyone's ability to "check."
Holding claims that "you start a religion by linking to obscure and nameless people," but it is unclear to me why anyone would have to do that. Is Holding presuming the only alternative is that the Christians made everything up? Why? The only claim at issue is whether Jesus rose from the dead, since that is the only claim that distinguished Christianity from every other sect of the Jews. Even supposing the Christians fabricated everything (and I see no need to suppose that--we can reject the resurrection claim without rejecting every other claim they made), why would they make up a bunch of momentous events in a small unknown, unnamed hovel featuring unknown, unnamed yokels? Wouldn't a prestigious location and cast of characters be more momentous, more awesome, more persuasive?
All Holding has to say against this is that it would have been more risky. But that's true only if the "famous" details had anything to do with proving Jesus rose from the dead--yet none did. And even granting Holding's "domino" theory, the only "risk" then would be preventing the recruitment of wealthy, highly-skilled scholars or legal magistrates who had the time and desire to check the facts in meticulous detail--yet there is no evidence any such people were recruited in that first century.[33] We also have no evidence that anyone who converted in that period did so after checking even a single historical claim made in Luke-Acts--much less all of them. We don't even have any clear evidence that they could. So where is the risk? The Christians did not have to make up any of these "famous" details, because none related to their claim that Jesus rose from the dead. And even had they made any up, there is no evidence any actual converts ever checked to find out, or even could have. Maybe those who rejected Christianity could have--but that lends no comfort to Holding's thesis.
The bottom line is, we can deny the resurrection without denying all these claims about famous people, since no events connected to such people have any bearing on whether the resurrection was true. Not even the darkness, earthquake, or miraculous curtain-ripping. Even if you believe those things happened--based on the unsupported assumption that (a) every convert could and did check, and then (b) actually confirmed these events, and (c) did so on evidence we ourselves would consider sufficiently reliable--none of these events even implies Jesus rose from the dead. So including famous people and events in the story was perfectly safe. Even assuming every such reference is entirely true, this does not tell us whether the resurrection itself is true. That remained a private claim impossible for anyone to confirm or refute, no matter how capable or diligent.
Of course, the first Christians could be offered as an exception, since they would have access to evidence no one else would have, but it is notoriously difficult to identify with confidence what the first Christians really believed, or why, since we only have the testimony of later Christians. Even Paul, close as he is to the first witnesses, does little to confirm many of the most contested claims of the later Gospels, such as the empty tomb or that Christ rose in a body of flesh or was seen flying up into heaven, and so on. And even with regard to the "ancillary" claims--associating the story of early Christianity with so many "famous" people--we have no evidence any of those claims were circulating before the Jewish War (after which, checking such facts would have been all but impossible, or moot). Nor is there any reason to suppose Christians needed to make any of these claims up--being ancillary, such claims could tell the straight truth, since they had nothing whatever to do with whether their essential claim was true (that Jesus rose from the dead); and being public, even a mediocre scholar could get such facts right, and still not get anywhere near the real truth behind the private and uncheckable evidence of the resurrection. Thus, even if the Christians "had their ducks in a row" regarding all these famous connections, since none of those famous connections bore any relevance to the resurrection of Jesus, such a row of ducks would offer no support to that claim. So even if potential converts could check these facts, that does not even imply they could "confirm," to any reliable standard, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus (never mind that we have no clear evidence anyone did, or even cared to, two points we shall examine in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17, respectively).
Holding has presented no evidence any Christian convert did any fact-checking before converting, or even would have done so. And for many of his own examples, Holding has not even made an adequate case that they could have. That there were people in antiquity who could and would is moot, since we have no evidence any such people converted. Holding has presented no evidence that any "checkable" claims involving famous people and events were employed to win converts before the end of the first century (as opposed to purely private claims that could only be trusted on one's word). Nor has Holding presented any evidence that the Gospels (much less Acts) were widely known at all, even by Christians, before the second century, a contingency his argument nevertheless requires. Holding has also presented no evidence that Luke and other authors did not add false, exaggerated, or unconfirmed hearsay to texts that otherwise contained well-researched public facts. Yet all the actual evidence of resurrection consists of unconfirmable hearsay alone. Therefore, even if every public, checkable claim in the New Testament was entirely true, it cannot be concluded that the private, uncheckable claims were as well. Therefore, we cannot conclude from any of this that evidence of Christ's resurrection was "irrefutable."
[1] All quotes taken from Tacitus, Annals 3.44, 3.19, and 4.11.
[2] For the fact that this is the standard consensus view, and a justified view, see: Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (1995); Charles Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (1983); John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (1997); Averil Cameron, ed. History As Text: The Writing of Ancient History (1990); Bruno Gentili & Giovanni Cerri, History and Biography in Ancient Thought (1988).
[3] See scholarship in the previous note, as well as: Michael Grant, The Ancient Historians (1970). A good survey of scholarship on ancient historiography is also presented by Colin Hemer, "Ancient Historiography," The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (1990): pp. 63-100. Hemer's use of this evidence for Luke-Acts is addressed later on in the present chapter.
[4] The closest approximations were the Acta
Diurna (or Acta Publica) and the Acta Senatus,
which only reported official events at Rome (court rulings, debates,
etc.), and only under the direction of the Roman government (i.e. they
involved nothing like "journalism," since the ancient world lacked any
such thing as journalists or even police detectives, in the modern
sense). The Diurna were probably painted on whitewashed wooden
boards from day to day--in Rome, and possibly each provincial
capital--and probably also kept on papyrus in official archives (to
which few would have been allowed access--a necessary precaution
against the fraudulent theft, destruction, or alteration of government
records). Publication of the Senatus was forbidden under the
Empire (it was made available only to Senators). See "Acta," The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): p. 10 (and the
sources there cited).
Though I am unaware of
evidence for "provincial diurna," it is possible there was such a
thing. If there was, certain details could be found in them such as the
appointment of Pilate to Judaea. But after the daily posting, only
allowed members of the government would have been able to check, and
only in a capital city housing a government archive (and Roman archives
in Palestine might not have survived the Jewish War). Moreover, it is
highly improbable the trial or sentence of anyone like Jesus or Paul
would be mentioned even in a provincial Diurna, since there is
no evidence the Romans even could have included the thousands
of trials involving men of middle or low status (publication of which
would have been prohibitively expensive given the technology of the
day, and probably beneath the contempt of even the local elite), nor
any evidence that they did. And these records would almost certainly
never have mentioned anything to do with the resurrection. At any rate,
there is no evidence such documents contained any relevant data, or
that any Christian convert in the first hundred years (including Luke)
had access to any public Acta. So, too, for all other
government documents (such as actual trial records).
[5] The scholarship in Note 2
discusses this whole issue in detail, but the locus classicus
for understanding speechmaking in ancient histories is still F. W.
Wallbank, "Speeches in Greek Historians," J. L. Myres Memorial
Lecture No. 3 (1965), who concludes that the most reliable
speech-preserver in antiquity is Polybius, and yet even he "shows
perhaps less critical judgment than we are entitled to expect" and
"there is no evidence that Polybius' protest" against other historians
taking greater liberties "had much effect in changing the current
attitude towards writing history" in subsequent centuries (p. 18). Many
scholars likewise find much to distrust in Thucydides' account, for
example, of the Melian Dialogue (in book 5).
Thucydides famously described
his own method thus (1.22.1; tr. from Wallbank, but emphasis added):
"my practice has been to make the speakers say what in my opinion
was demanded of them by the various occasions--or what in my opinion
they had to say on the various occasions--of course adhering as
closely as possible to the general sense of what was really
said," insofar as he knew (he preceded this remark by mentioning the
general nature of his sources). Few historians were as strict, and it
became a fashion soon after to disregard any interest in finding out
what as actually said, and instead compose speeches to serve only the
rhetorical or aesthetic interests of the author (the fact that some
authors attacked this practice only proves how common it was). A nice
summary of this point, with bibliography, and specifically assessing
the speeches in Acts, is provided by F. F. Bruce, "The Speeches in
Acts," The
Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary,
3rd ed. (1990): pp. 34-40 (note that the example he cites from Tacitus
in p. 35, n. 4, can present no analogy, since by the nature of the case
Tacitus was working from a physical inscription of the speech
officially produced by the emperor being paraphrased and still
available to Tacitus--a situation Luke, for example, could never have
enjoyed).
[6] Karla McLaren, "Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures," Skeptical Inquirer 28.3 (May/June 2004): pp. 47-52.
[7] We know the names of at most three
thousand authors--whether their writings survive or not--over the
course of a thousand years (from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 500). Yet in
that time, the population remained steady between 60 and 120 million
(throughout the territory encompassed by the Roman Empire at its
height), and given the average life expectancy of less than 50 years,
there would have been a complete turn-over of the population
approximately every half a century, for a total of about 1 or 2 billion
people. Therefore: 1000 years / 50 years = 20 average lifespans, and 60
to 120 million lives x 20 lifespans = 1.2 to 2.4 billion lives lived;
then, 1.2 to 2.4 billion total lives / 3,000 writers' lives = 400,000
to 800,000 people per known writer.
For population and lifespan
estimates, see: T. G. Parkin, Demography and Roman Society
(1992), esp. "Frier's Life Table for the Roman Empire," p. 144 (cf. Note 31); along with Bruce Frier, Landlords and
Tenants in Imperial Rome (1980), Ansley Coale, Regional Model
Life Tables and Stable Populations, 2nd ed. (1983), and Roger
Bagnall & Bruce Frier, The
Demography of Roman Egypt (1994).
As to the number of authors
in that period, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae contains every
extant Greek author within that date range, numbering 1,384. This
number includes authors known only in quotations or fragments, and most
of those known only by name. It is well known that the number of Latin
authors in that period is much smaller than for Greek, so more than
doubling the TLG number to 3,000 is without doubt a huge over-estimate.
[8] I hope not, but I fear Holding might resort to a known slander among Christian intellectuals today and claim that, then as now, all unbelievers (including Jews) are moral reprobates who willfully ignore evidence that they really know is sufficient, in order to avoid the "moral" consequences of belief. Such bigotry has no place in a serious historical inquiry. Holding cannot know there were any such secret psychological motives for ancient Jews and non-Christians (there is no good evidence of this even for modern Jews and non-Christians), and therefore to claim such is not a historical argument, but a mere dogma. On the facts as we know them, there is no reason to suppose any great division in moral values or sincerity between converts and doubters regarding appropriate responses to "irrefutable" evidence.
[9] I discuss this case in detail in my
Columbia University Master's Thesis: Richard Carrier, "Cultural History
of the Lunar and Solar Eclipse in the Early Roman Empire" (1998),
available in PDF format at the Office of
Richard C. Carrier.
However, the main passages
from ancient texts that relate to all the claims made here include:
Seneca, Natural Questions 7.1.2 and 7.25.3, Phaedra
788-94, Hercules Oetaeus 523-27, On Benefits 5.6.4;
Pliny, Natural History 2.54 and 25.10 (w. 2.53, 2.43); Statius,
Thebaid 6.685-88; Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.207-09 and
12.262-64, 14.365-68, Amores 1.8.12-14, Heroides
6.85-86; Lucan, Pharsalia 6.499-506; Plutarch, Advice to
Bride and Groom (Moralia 145c-d), Nicias 23.1-3, Aemilius
Paulus 17.7-11; Lucian, Lover of Lies 14; Hippolytus, Refutation
of All Heresies 37; Marcus Manilius, Astronomica 1.226;
Apuleius, Metamorphosis 1.3.1, 1.8.4; Apollonius, Argonautica
4.57-67; Aristophanes, Clouds 749-52; Plato, Gorgias
513a (cf. also: Papyri Magicae Graecae §34); Cicero, On
the Republic 1.23; Livy, From the Founding of the City
44.38.5-9; Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander
4.10.1-7; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 8.11,
11.1; Tacitus, Annals 1.28; Cassius Dio, Roman History
60.26.1; Frontinus, Stratagems 1.12.8.
[10] "Of all the NT writers, Luke is the
only one who merits the title 'historian'," F. F. Bruce, "Luke as a
Historian," The
Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary,
3rd ed. (1990): p. 27 (and cf. pp. 27-34, and pp. 35-46). On the genre
of the other Gospels, the decisive work is Charles Talbert, What Is
a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (1977).
But even without Talbert's
exhaustive analysis, it is apparent to anyone that none of the other
Gospels employ the markers of historical genre that Luke does: none
declare any purpose or method or show any historical consciousness like
that of Luke 1:1-4; none attempt to fix the date of any events in the
way Luke does in 3:1; etc. Instead, John begins exactly like a treatise
on theology (in fact consciously mimicking Genesis), not at all like
any history (Jn. 1:1-14), and Mark and Matthew do not declare their
books to be anything that meant "history," but an Evangelion (Mk. 1:1)
or a Genesis (Mt. 1:1). The latter means "Origin" or "Beginning" and
the phrase Matthew uses consciously mimics Genesis 2:4 & 5:1,
establishing this from the start as a work of theology, not "history"
in Luke's sense. The former, in contrast, means "Good Tidings" or
(literally) "Good Message," and Mark identifies immediately what he
means: the "Good Message" is the scriptural message of the
"Messenger" (Mk. 1:2), which was already known from the Bible long
before Jesus was even famous, much less risen from the dead (Mk.
1:14-15; hence 1 Cor. 15:3-4), and therefore the 'Evangelion' itself is
not a set of historical facts per se, but a cosmic or salvific meaning.
[11] Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (1990); cf. also Colin Hemer, "Luke the Historian," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 60 (1977-1978): pp. 28-51. The claims of the latter (and other published work by Hemer) are more reserved than the claims of the former, which in fact was never finished and only completed and published posthumously (see the foreword, pp. vii-viii). This presents a problem, since (speaking as a writer and historian myself) it is often the case that an author's conclusions become more reserved and careful in the final edit before publication (sometimes they even change), and therefore the book we have does not necessarily represent precisely what Hemer's actual conclusions would have been. But judging from his previous works, it is certain the book at least approximates his final conclusions, even if we can't hold a dead man to the precise wording he never officially approved for publication. Even so, the book as published is still full of great reserve and abundant qualification, and does not assert conclusions so much as assert their plausibility.
[12] This view is shared by the book's
expert reviewers, who all praise Hemer's scholarship and the great
value of his book in organizing and presenting a lot of valuable
evidence, but who also share the same relevant criticisms, in
particular:
In The Journal of
Theological Studies (41.1, April 1991: pp. 227-30), John Lentz says
"although promising to deliver a balanced study Hemer is, in this
author's opinion, too uncritical of the difficult historical problems,"
including the fact that, "unfortunately, not all ancient historians
were as exacting as Lucian or Polybius" and so proving the exacting
methods of a Lucian or a Polybius is not sufficiently relevant to
Hemer's argument. Lentz also observes that when it comes to Hemer's
attempt to make Luke's narrative fit the letters of Paul, he "leaves as
many questions as answers" and "his argument is so filled with the
phrases 'might be' and 'seems feasible'" that what we have is not
history, but conjecture. Even Hemer's attempt to claim Luke
interrogated witnesses, Lentz notes, "is interesting speculation but
seems out of place in this otherwise carefully argued work." Likewise,
Hemer's "insistence that Luke completed Acts during Paul's imprisonment
in Rome in 62 is not proved." Lentz also says Hemer relies too much on
A. N. Sherwin-White without addressing the subsequent scholarship that
criticized Sherwin-White's work: including A. H. M. Jones,
who once sided with Sherwin-White, but upon examination of the evidence
changed his mind, and other "material that is more recent than Jones
seems to argue against Sherwin-White" as well.
The same conclusions (of
praise and criticism) are reached by another specialist in the Journal
of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): pp. 726-29. There, Christopher
Matthews says Hemer's argument "does not emerge with any logical
necessity" from the evidence he presents, much of which is "singularly
unremarkable" or even "import[s] observations that already assume the
historicity of the narrative." Matthews also objects that Hemer's
entire argument largely ignores "the possible impact of theological
concerns on the composition" (a view shared by Lentz) while in general
Hemer's arguments are "at times hopelessly encumbered with dubious
suppositions."
[13] C. K. Barrett, review of The Trial of St. Paul, in The Journal of Theological Studies 41.1, April 1991: pp. 230-31.
[14] See, for example, my discussion of "What Good are 'Anonymous' Eye-Witnesses Anyway?," in Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story (5th ed., 2004). Also in the same place: "Was Luke a Learned Man? Would That Even Matter?."
[15] For plêrophoreô as "fully assured" rather than "completed" see plêrophoreô (and compare Rom. 4:21, 14:5; Col. 2:2, 4:12; and its nominal cognate in 1 Thes. 1:5 and Heb. 6:11, 10:22; the verb in 2 Tim. 4:5 & 4:17 does not mean "completed" but "satisfied"; there is not even a single case in the Bible where this verb means "completed" as in "happened"; and I am not aware of any cases outside the Bible, either, though if anyone thinks they have found one, please let me know). And for kathôs as "according to what" (i.e. "according as" or "according to how") instead of the usual (and ambiguous) translation "even as" see: kathôs and the link there to its synonym katha, which is the word's primary meaning.
[16] The verb anatassô means "bring back together" and thus "rehearse" or "recount," which can mean orally or in writing. That Luke says "me, too" might imply some of the accounts he is referring to were written (and we know for a fact at least one of them was: the Gospel according to Mark), but he might simply mean that organizing and relating the stories was a good idea he shared. Either way, Luke clearly intends to put himself in the company of these unnamed others. He is not criticizing them.
[17] The verb epigignôskô means literally "to look upon, witness, observe," and by extension to "recognize" or "take notice of" (and by further extension: "find out about," "discover"). It does not mean "to know" as is often translated. But it often means, when coupled with peri (as it is here), "come to a judgment about," hence "judge the truth about the stories you heard" (cf. epigignôskô). I use the more ambiguous "assess" to reflect the actual ambiguity in the Greek: Luke is either asking Theophilus to "take notice of" or "look over" the truth of the stories, or "to make a judgment" about it, or both.
[18] Some scholars (whom Hemer cites but
does not commit to, cf. op. cit. pp. 98-99, 322-28) take the key words
here out of context in an attempt to change their meaning in Luke. For
example, some cite Josephus, Against
Apion 1.53. But the context does not support the conclusion
that the same two words in Luke mean doing critical research.
The adverb akribôs
literally means "sharply" and thus by extension "precisely," "exactly,"
or "strictly." By itself it only means "accurately" in those
connotations--not in the English sense of analyzing disparate
evidence and figuring out the truth. For example, it is the antonym of haplôs
("loosely") and typô ("roughly" or "in outline"). See: akribês.
Therefore, the fact that good historians demand an akribôs
investigation only means they expect it not to be sloppy or rough, but
exact. For example, in the above passage Josephus includes 'accurately'
following the Old Testament scriptures as an example of doing akribôs
history, and in general his point is that you must follow the evidence
and sources exactingly. He is not referring to critical analysis.
Moreover, though Josephus does also discuss sound methods here, Luke
does not--therefore, just because Josephus demanded a good
method in order to be akribôs, it does not follow that
Luke did. Rather, in the context of Luke's use of the word, it
refers to following the handed-down stories with precision, thus like
Josephus following the handed-down stories of the Old Testament with
precision.
The other key word is the
verb parakoloutheô, which means literally "follow
closely" and has no connotation of critical analysis or interrogation
(cf. parakoloutheô).
For example, when Josephus uses the word in the above passage, he forms
the phrase "having been close to what happened" (i.e. "having followed
the events" and thus being one who himself "knows"). But this is
understood only from the context, where he distinguishes that from
asking others who "know." In contrast, when Luke uses the word, the
context makes such a reading impossible--since Luke was not
close to "everything from the beginning" but is one of the "us" to whom
everything was "handed down" by those who were, and, unlike Josephus,
Luke makes no distinction between asking those who know (he never even
mentions doing such a thing at all) and being one who knows (and he
never says he was such a person, and even implies he was not).
Therefore, how Josephus used the word cannot help us understand Luke's
use of the word, because the precise context is different, and whereas
Josephus tells us his underlying assumptions about method, Luke does
not, and therefore we cannot assume Luke shared the same assumptions
about method as Josephus.
[19] Even outside the subject of Jesus, Luke only ever identifies and quotes two sources, neither of which contains anything relevant to the life, resurrection, or divinity of Jesus: one (essentially anonymous) church decree (Acts 15:23-29) and one government letter by Claudius Lysias (Acts 23:26-30, which oddly doesn't even name Paul), and there are significant disagreements in the manuscripts as to the contents of both: dogmatic alterations were made to the decree (esp. to 15:24 and 15:29), and among other things the words "a certain Jesus" were added to verse 29 of the letter of Lysias in later manuscripts, thus "inventing" an official Roman reference to Jesus.
[20] From the translation of Rolfe and Arkenberg available on Fordham University's website.
[21] And as we've noted, unlike other
historians of his day, Luke never even tells us who he is. And unlike
all good historians of the day, who often say when they were
eyewitnesses or mention who they got details from when they weren't
eyewitnesses, Luke never says he so much as knew even Paul, much less
traveled with him. Such a conjecture arose only a century later,
probably from the fact that in three places involving journeys at sea
the narrative of Acts speaks in the first person plural ("we"). Maybe
that does mean the narrator (or his source) was with Paul on those
journeys--but we are not told this, nor told who the narrator was, or
what his relationship was to Paul. And commentators can't agree on what
to make of all this (since there are also arguments weighing against
Luke being a companion of Paul).
There is an additional
problem: there are two significantly different versions of Acts, a
Western version and an Eastern version, both equally ancient, and both
show signs of editing by later scribes. Indeed, the Western text is
nearly 10% longer, and "the early witnesses for the text of Acts
diverge more than those of any other New Testament writing" (John
Polhill, Acts:
The New American Commentary 1992: p. 39). So it is possible
that some historical details (including precise terminology), as well
as material of crucial dogmatic importance (e.g. data pertaining to the
nature of Christ's resurrection), were added by someone other
than the original author. This manuscript evidence is so problematic
that it has led some scholars to argue that Luke wrote two versions of
Acts, or that he never finished it, and only left disorganized or
incomplete notes that later scribes, eventually in two separate
traditions, put together into a coherent and polished form. Whatever
the case, all these problems make our position even worse with regard
to asserting the reliability of the received version of Luke-Acts.
For all the above details,
see: Ernst Haenchen, "The Text of Acts," The Acts of the Apostles:
A Commentary (1971): pp. 50ff. (cf. also his opinion on p. 85: "the
'we'...has been inserted in order to lend the narrative of the voyage
the appearance of a fellow traveler's account" and "was in fact used
here as a stylistic device"; on Luke not likely being a companion of
Paul: pp. 88-89, 112-16, 726-32); and Hans Conzelmann, Acts
of the Apostles: A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 2nd
ed. (1972): pp. xxxiv-xxxv, xxxix-xl, 127, 215; C. K. Barrett, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles
(1998): "the differences and problems...are more than sufficient to
cast doubt on the identification of our author with a Pauline traveling
companion," p. xliv (notably: "Luke's use of technical vocabulary
suggests, if anything, that he was not a doctor but a sailor," p. xlv);
F. F. Bruce, "The Text of Acts," The
Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary,
3rd ed. (1990): pp. 69ff.; and the very excellent, extensive, and
persuasive discussion of W. A. Strange, The
Problem of the Text of Acts (1992).
[22] I am not sure Agrippa had the authority to execute a Roman citizen (whether for perjury or anything else), much less someone who had already filed an appeal. But I will assume so for the sake of argument.
[23] Paul says ei pathêtos ho Christos ei prôtos ex anastaseôs nekrôn phôs mellei kataggellein (26:23) in indirect discourse, as what Moses and the prophets "said" was "going to happen" (elalêsan mellontôn ginesthai, 26:22), i.e. "whether the Messiah was subject to suffering, whether first from a resurrection from the dead he was going to proclaim a light..." That Paul is deliberately shy about asserting anything beyond what scripture says is clear from the carefully chosen words here: the particle ei is "used...to express a wish...usually either in conditions, if, or in indirect questions, whether" (cf. ei) and mellei means "about to happen," "going to happen," "is intended to happen," or "is destined to happen," always looking forward to a future time, even if only the immediate future (cf. mellô). Thus, Paul expresses the resurrection of Christ to Agrippa as a wish for the future attested in scripture, not as an actual event of the recent past.
[24] Aristides, Athenagoras, Tatian, and Justin Martyr (early 2nd century) are the first elite scholars to convert on record--hence anything like academic Christian literature (where deliberation regarding the truth of Christianity is significantly transparent as to both methods and sources) begins only with them and no sooner, and does not reach high levels of critical skill (comparable to that of elite skeptics) until Clement of Alexandria and Origen (late 2nd & early 3rd century). Justin and Aristides converted between 120 and 140 (hence roughly a hundred years after Christianity began), and are the first converts known to have engaged a careful examination of the available options before converting (as we shall discuss in Chapter 17). See: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians 1987: pp. 305-07.
[25] On the "decurion" class, see the entry
for decuriones in The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): pp. 437-38. On the
implausible argument that all of these people willfully ignored the
evidence, see Note 8.
There are, of course, the
dubious legends of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea each being a
"disciple" (Joseph "secretly" in Jn. 19:38, perhaps openly in Mt.
27:57, but merely a "seeker" in Mk. 15:43 & Lk. 23:50-51), but
neither was converted by evidence of a resurrection and there is no
evidence either remained a convert after the disciples claimed Jesus
rose (since both men are conspicuously absent from Acts). On Nicodemus,
see discussion in Chapter 2. As
for Joseph, even supposing he was a real person, it is unclear what his
status was supposed to be. John doesn't say. Matthew only says he was
"rich" (yet a "rich man" was supposed to attend the Messiah at
his burial: Isa. 53:9). Mark says he was a councilman (bouleutês)
of good reputation "who was also seeking the Kingdom of God himself."
Luke alone can be taken as alleging he was a member of the Sanhedrin
(the council of Jerusalem), but it would be unusual for a citizen of
Arimathea to sit on the council of another city, and Luke does not
actually say he did (only that he did not agree with their decision).
Therefore, if he was a bouleutês, he was probably a
member of the council of Arimathea. Still, that would at least make him
a member of the decurion class.
However, like Nicodemus,
Joseph of Arimathea is utterly unheard of outside the Gospels, which is
impossible: had any such person really converted (and the Gospels do
not agree he did), his financial and political influence would have
been central to the history of Christianity--and could not have failed
to be a prominent theme in Acts, for example. This plus the fact that
Joseph is not a convert in the earliest Gospel account is sufficient to
conclude that he probably did not convert. And even if he had, he
clearly converted before having any evidence of Christ's
resurrection, and therefore his conversion can prove nothing about that.
At most, he could perhaps have later attested to the empty tomb, though
he inexplicably vanishes before it is even discovered, never to appear
again--and we have no evidence anyone, Jew or Christian, ever found him
or sought him out to check his testimony.
Indeed, Holding's own
argument backfires here again. For why would Luke leave Joseph out of
Acts, unless Luke felt he could not get away with falsely claiming
Joseph remained a believer? Ditto for Nicodemus, who doesn't even make
it into Luke's Gospel, despite Luke claiming to have followed every
tradition carefully. Thus for all we know Joseph knew the tomb
wasn't empty, and there is no way Luke could include that detail in his
record. Stuck between a damning witness and telling a lie, according to
Holding's own logic, omission would be the only option left. If he was
a real person, there is no other plausible reason for Joseph to have
evaporated from Christian history. For even if he never converted, his
role in proving or refuting the empty tomb would be a vital element of
early Church history. Therefore, Holding's own logic leaves us with the
conclusion that, if he existed, Joseph probably knew there was no
evidence that Jesus rose.
For more on Joseph's role in
the burial of Jesus, see: Richard Carrier, "Jewish Law, the
Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day" (2002).
[26] Pliny the Younger to his friend Licinius Sura, Letters 7.27.1-3 & 12-14; Tacitus, Annals 11.21.
[27] Thomas Africa, "Worms and the Death of Kings: A Cautionary Note on Disease and History," Classical Antiquity 1 (1982): pp. 1-17. And see: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.346-50.
[28] See "Iulius Agrippa II, Marcus," The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): p. 779. As for Acts: only "its circulation in the churches from the second half of the second century onward is amply attested" (F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary, 3rd ed. (1990): pp. 11-12); Acts "remained in obscurity until published relatively late in the second century" since "the evidence suggests that Acts only emerged into public use after the mid-[second]-century" as "before that point there appears to have been no published and widely known version of Acts" (W. A. Strange, The Problem of the Text of Acts (1992): p. 182); one scholar even speculates "that the manuscript had to be kept secret for a considerable period of time" (Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (1998): p. 63). I personally believe Acts wasn't even written until after Agrippa's death (see: Richard Carrier, "Luke and Josephus" 2000), but that's debatable.
[29] See The Problem of Differing Research Paradigms above, for my discussion of miraculous healing (and relevant discussion in Chapter 13). There are plausible psychosomatic explanations for all the NT healing narratives (except one I will address): see Richard Carrier, "Beckwith on Historiography," which is Section 4a of my Review of "In Defense of Miracles" (1999). See also discussion of pagan healing miracles in: Richard Carrier, "Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels" (1997). On pagan "reversals of death," see: Richard Carrier, "V. How Do We Know He was Dead?," in Chapter 2 of Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story (5th ed., 2004) and the relevant examples in Chapter 3.
[30] The darkness is almost certainly a symbolic invention and not derived from any real event anyway. See my discussion in: Richard Carrier, "Thallus: An Analysis" (1999).
[31] In the ancient world, the average life expectancy (for anyone who survived into adulthood) was 48 years, while fewer than 1 in 100 would live to 70 (and fewer than 1 in 1000 would live to 85). Any witness, who survived the war and was at least ten years old by 36 A.D. (and thus could possibly recall the event with any kind of reliability), would probably be dead before 75 A.D., and would almost certainly be dead by 100 A.D. See "Estimated Life Expectancy in the Ancient World," adapted from "Frier's Life Table for the Roman Empire" (see Note 7). Likewise, Josephus himself says 20 years is enough time for witnesses to no longer be available to rebut a story (Life 360; cf. Jewish War 1.15 & Against Apion 1.55).
[32] Mishnah, Yoma 5.1, Middot 1.1h, and various sections in Sheqalim.
[33] For example, even the proconsul Sergius
was converted (according to Acts) without any investigation of the
facts of Christ's resurrection: see Chapter
13.
| 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. |
Social Foundations of Martyrdom Paul and Tertullian Where Holding Gets It Wrong Where Holding Gets It Right |
James Holding rightly downplays the issue of martyrdom, since legend and fiction abound in that arena, and the actual evidence from the first century does not support the conclusion that martyrs needed, much less had, what we would consider reliable evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. I have already addressed this in enough detail elsewhere.[1] Contemporary scholarship agrees: in the first century the persecution of Christians was much smaller in frequency and scale, and very different in nature, from that of later centuries, and it is folly to conflate different periods. Not only were the nature, scale, and causes of persecution notably different in later periods, but so was the Church itself, as well as the social, political, and economic circumstances of the Empire as a whole.
As DeSilva remarks, "rarely in the first century were Christians killed" and "far more rarely were they executed on official orders." Acts attests there was no formal Roman legal opposition to Christianity until the late first century at the earliest, and even then it was not as strong as it would become in subsequent generations. The only known Roman actions against Christians in the 1st century were the extra-legal acts of emperors whom even the Romans themselves declared as formally damned (i.e. the decisions of Nero and Domitian lost all legal force). Later, around 110 A.D., the Emperor Trajan instructed Pliny that declaring political allegiance to Christ over the Emperor was by then a crime (treason, no doubt), yet he says Christians were still not to be hunted down. Pliny himself says he was unfamiliar with the laws against Christians and had never had to deal with the problem before, so his response had to be improvised.[2] At the same time, it may well be that the earliest Christians faced death more for the moral cause than any historical claim, which was not a novel idea. "In the first two centuries C.E. there was a living pagan tradition of self-sacrifice for a cause, a preparedness if necessary to defy an unjust ruler, that existed alongside the developing Christian concept of martyrdom inherited from Judaism."[3]
In the case of the Christians, this especially made sense from a cultural and sociological perspective. Examining martyrdom movements throughout history, from aboriginal movements in the New World to Islamic movements in the Middle East and beyond, Alan Segal and others have found a common sociological underpinning. In every well-documented case, Segal observes, a widespread inclination to martyrdom "is an oblique attack by the powerless against the power of oppressors," in effect "canceling the power of an oppressor through moral claims to higher ground and to a resolute claim to the afterlife, as the better" and only "permanent" reward. "From modern examples, we can see that what produces martyrdom," as well as the corresponding "exaltation of the afterlife," is "a colonial and imperial situation, a conquering power, and a subject people whose religion does not easily account for the conquest," among whom are those "predisposed to understand events in a religious context" and who are suffering from some "political or economic" deprivation, or even social or cultural deprivation (as when the most heartfelt morals of the subgroup are not recognized or realized by the dominating power structure).[4]
The Roman Empire was tailor-made to breed exactly such resentment and deprivation, not only among the middle and lower classes--who were completely disenfranchised, as well as abused, exploited, and callously ignored, and all too often denied justice or even the means to live--but even in the higher echelons of society--for having wealth and status increasingly became, under the imperial system, no guarantee at all of real influence or control, much less safety or justice. Democracy was gone. Even the Senate itself could hardly take the initiative against the will of emperors, whose will was all too often anything but just, wise, or compassionate. Those of the Senatorial class serving administrative posts abroad would be even more distant from the base of imperial power. Regardless of your rank, at any moment, without warning, an emperor could decide you were a threat and have you eliminated or demoted or stripped of your dignity and property, as happened frighteningly often, a fact Tacitus documents in deliberate detail. Even beyond this ever-present fear, Tacitus also documents how the emperor could interfere with a governor's control of a province in any number of ways, often through intermediaries of substantially lesser rank, which produced a regular state of intolerable insult. For example, though a proconsul was far the social superior of a procurator (who was often a freed slave, or at most a member of the equestrian class), to cross the will of an emperor's procurator amounted to crossing the will of the emperor himself--and since the emperor was not there to see what was actually happening, his procurators held a tremendous amount of power over any proconsul, and could easily abuse that power, upsetting the proper social order.
At every level of social rank the same insult, injustice, insolence, and disenfranchisement could be found somewhere, affecting someone--even within the imperial army and administration. You basically had only two options: you could just "take it," or you could decide not to take it any more. The latter would form that segment of the population from which Christianity successfully recruited, especially in its first century. And this selection bias would have significant ramifications for the attitudes and behavior of Christians, who would inevitably differ markedly from non-Christians precisely because they already differed from their peers, in attitude and behavior, before converting. And indeed, they would differ in exactly that respect relating to martyrdom and suffering, as Alan Segal describes: Christians represented those who weren't going to take it any more. The behavior of Christians, and the attractiveness of Christianity as a movement, can only be understood within this context.
Moreover, the logic of the Christian situation (as with all other comparable movements in history) is impeccable: if sinners go to hell or oblivion, and the faithful go to eternal heavenly bliss--in fact, inheriting the earth itself, gaining all the power and plenty they always longed for, while watching their oppressors and exploiters suffer utter downfall and defeat--in other words, if "everyone gets what they deserve"--then nothing else matters, for everything else is temporary and insignificant compared to the eternal future. Anyone convinced of this will suffer anything. Period. They will endure any death, any torture, any discomfort, any indignity. And all the while they will smile inside, knowing their abusers will "get it" in the end, while they themselves will get twice the reward for having carried such a burden, remaining strong in the face of every effort of those evil powers to knock them down. In human history there has never been so powerful a motivator as this--a point well-taken by the Islamic authorities who found a way to exploit this motivation en masse to command entire armies, and mollify oppressed and exploited populations. The very same motivation led Buddhists to set themselves on fire to protest the Viet Nam war. Yet Holding cannot claim this entails there has ever been "irrefutable proof" that Islam and Buddhism were true. Indeed, he must deny they are true at all. So evidence of a willingness to endure brutal fates and enormous hardships cannot establish the truth of any belief.
Instead, combine the eschatological ideology with the scale of deprivation endured by the subjects of Rome, and all you will get is a powder keg. Had Christianity not arisen of its own, it would have been necessary to invent it--or something like it. For such a movement was all but inevitable under the socio-cultural conditions of the Roman Empire. It is human nature to long for peace, love, justice, and the control of your own life. Take all of that away from millions of people, and it is just a matter of time before rebellions break out. And there can only be two kinds of rebellion within a system like that of the Empire, which lacked true democracy or even a sufficient scale of freedom of speech: the violent or the cultural. But violent revolution is always an economic contest of military resources, which Rome would always win. And Rome always did. Therefore, the only rebellion that could succeed was a cultural revolution, which meant a war of ideas--and that was a war the rebels could win, so long as they had the better ideas and employed the right tactics on the battlefield of the mind. Such a war still had casualties (martyrs) and hardships (persecution), but it was still a war, and like all well-motivated wars, soldiers didn't give up simply because of the prospect of dying or suffering. Indeed, as in any righteous war, dying and suffering is exactly what soldiers are willing to pay for victory.[5]
Clearly the socio-cultural conditions of the early Christian willingness to endure persecution and martyrdom fit exactly those of every other comparable movement in history, matching every element of the above analysis perfectly. Yet it follows, since it holds in every other case known to man, that their motivation was not some particular historical claim or esoteric dogma: as in every other case, their motivation was rebellion against a corrupt social order in defense of a superior vision of society. The motive was a moral system, a view of the way society should function and structure itself. That was what attracted recruits to the Christian movement, that is what they suffered and died for--not "proof" that Jesus stepped out of a tomb. As far as motivation and attraction, that was incidental. It mattered only when it came to the particulars of dogma or theology, and as one can observe, the Christians themselves were hotly divided about the nature of the resurrection and the evidence for it.
Instead, as long as a missionary could convince someone already receptive to the Christian social message that their movement had the Backing of God, that was all they needed to win a convert for Jesus. Holding has not proved that "irrefutable" evidence of any sort of resurrection (much less a particular kind of resurrection) was necessary to achieve such persuasion--for there were scriptural proofs, miracles, proofs of sincerity, personal charisma, evidence of the church's ability to meet social needs, and any number of other arguments that would have been sufficient, alone or in conjunction with each other, for quite enough people to account for the actual scale of Christianity's success in its first century (as we have seen in several chapters already, especially Chapter 6, and we will see more direct evidence in Chapter 13).
We can see all this in two representative Christian sources on suffering and martyrdom: Paul and Tertullian. Paul, because he is the earliest Christian to write anything down; Tertullian, because he is the first Christian to articulate so well the actual psychological underpinning of Christian martyrdom. The Epistles often describe the Christian mission as a war, and missionaries as soldiers (Philippians 2:25; Philemon 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:18; 2 Tim. 2:3-4). But Paul wrote of his own persecution even by fellow Christians:
I know this shall end up in my salvation, through your prayers and the additional help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing shall I be put to shame, but in all boldness, as always, now Christ, too, shall be made greater in my body, whether by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, this shall bring fruit from my work. What I will choose I don't know, for I am stuck between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ--for that is far, far better--yet to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. (Philippians 1:19-24)
Thus, Paul cannot be put to shame, and doesn't fear struggle or death at all--to the contrary, he longs for it: death, to achieve his own reward in the future life; and struggle and shame, to satisfy his compassion by saving others before he goes. A longing for paradise and reward, and love of one's fellow man, producing a desire to make sacrifices for the common good--these are universal human attributes, not culturally specific ones. Paul struggles for others, not for some historical claim as to the nature of Christ's resurrection. Paul is willing to die for the reward, not because he thinks one ought to die simply to uphold a true proposition about an historical event.
Thus, for an attitude like Paul's, which was no doubt typical of early Christians, and admirable even to many pagans, all that was necessary was the belief that preaching Christ would procure this heavenly reward, for him and others. Yet as far as we can tell, very little was needed for Paul to be convinced of that. In his letters he only ever mentions three kinds of evidence that persuaded him or anyone else: a private "revelation" (which even Acts describes as an amorphous vision), the unlocking of secrets in scripture, and the working of miracles within the church community.[6] Therefore, it cannot be maintained that Paul or any Christians of the first century had any other evidence, or even needed any other. They might have had more evidence than Paul mentions, but the evidence we have is insufficient to prove this. As far as we can prove, visions, scripture, and miracle-working were sufficient for every actual convert to the faith in the first century. Therefore, their willingness to suffer and die tells us nothing about any other evidence, and therefore cannot establish that there was anything like "irrefutable" evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.
Paul also wrote:
For if I should want to shout aloud, I will not be a fool. For I will tell the truth. But I fear someone might hold me in greater esteem than what he sees of me or hears from me. And because of the great magnitude of my revelations, so I would not be esteemed too greatly, God gave me a thorn in my flesh, an Angel of Satan, so he might slap me, that I would not be esteemed too greatly. Three times I called upon the Lord about this, that it would go away. But he said to me, "My grace is enough for you. For power is fulfilled in weakness." And so I most gladly shout aloud all the more in my weaknesses, so the power of Christ will rest upon me. Therefore I delight in my weaknesses, in injuries, in frustrations, in persecutions and difficulties, for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am powerful. (2 Corinthians 12:6-10)
Paul never says he endures all this hardship because the tomb was empty or Thomas put his fingers in Christ's wounds or any such thing. He endures it because God told Paul directly, by revelation, that it was worth it. Period. Paul does not say he isn't worried because he has a ton of evidence, enough to be sure he's right. He doesn't need a ton of evidence. All he needs is a direct revelation from God--and all fellow Christians need is Paul's assurance of that fact, which Paul proves by his own behavior: his willingness to endure all these things! In fact, it is precisely that willingness that demonstrates Paul's power, the strength of his conviction, thus both proving he deserves God's reward and persuading others to find God's salvation.
This motivation, the achievement of salvation and favor from God, was the very thing that made the hardships of conversion not a liability, but an actual blessing--for all this suffering was worth it, and could even make the destined blessings of god all the greater, just as a crippled veteran might revel in his medals and honors. And the only proof that prospective Christians apparently needed here was evidence of a missionary's conviction, which in turn rested primarily on private revelations from God (as far as we can tell from the letters of Paul), not "evidence" in a modern sense, and certainly not "irrefutable" evidence. For visions and revelations from the gods were a common cultural phenomenon among pagans and Jews of the day, and thus not peculiar to Christianity. They also have known biological causes and therefore do not entail supernatural origin.[7] Of course, for most people this was not enough--which is why most people didn't convert. Rather, Christianity won over those for whom this was enough--because they had nothing better, and were fed up with their state of desperation and deprivation, and were thus ready for any hope.
A century and a half later, in chapter 50 of his Apology, Tertullian would summarize the whole case, drawing the very analogy that social historians have found in every other suffering movement:
It is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil.
Exactly. To understand converts to Christianity in the 1st century, one need only understand the soldiers who volunteered for every just war in human history. The psychology is the same. The motivation the same. Tertullian then lists numerous examples of pagans engaging in self-sacrifice and enduring hardship and torture, or admiring those who do, or exhorting others to do so, representing it as the admirable height of moral wisdom, thus proving this was a cultural ideal widespread at the time. Tertullian continues:
Go zealously on, good presidents, you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust. Your injustice is the proof that we are innocent....Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you. It is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow. The blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death....And who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? Who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? And when he has embraced them, who doesn't long to suffer that he may become a partaker of the fullness of God's grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all sins.
Every element is here: the motivation is a war, of the oppressed against the oppressor, and their suffering is their victory--it proves they are right, that they are courageous, and deserve every good thing, and it proves their abusers are evil, and therefore wrong. And the very fact that Christians were willing to die for this moral ideal was already a potent proof that their ideal was worth suffering for, and therefore it won even more converts. And those converts endured all abuse because the cause was just, and serving a just cause secured for them the eternal reward of God. Of course, for Tertullian, the "doctrines" he spoke of were "supported" by the evidence of the Gospels. But that means he had at hand no more evidence than we do now. Yet the Gospels do not necessarily represent most Christians of the first century, or those of the first two generations. Nor can Holding's argument, which pertains only to the origin and early success of Christianity, be sustained for Christians so far removed from the original evidence. By then, for example, "checking the facts" was simply not a possibility, while converts could be won over not only by exaggerated evidence, but by the very conviction of Christians themselves, as Tertullian himself observes, rather than by anything we would regard as reliable proof.
So when Holding points out that "the Jews would dislike you, the Romans would dislike you, your family would disown you, everyone would avoid or make sport of you," this doesn't really argue for there being "irrefutable evidence" of the resurrection of Jesus. For we've seen there were many other motives available to potential and actual converts, to endure such things. And, of course, I think Holding is overstating the case, as often he does. There is no evidence in Acts or Paul that being Christian led to "Romans" disliking you, and the evidence there is, in both Acts and Paul, demonstrates that all Jews did not share the hostility of those factions that pursued and harassed the church. I am also not aware of any evidence from the first century of any convert actually being "disowned" by his family (maybe in later centuries, but too many things had changed by then to draw any definite analogy), whereas there is evidence that at least some families remained intact even when divided by faith (it was a contingency Paul specifically responds to: 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, 10:20-32). And it is certainly not true that "everyone" avoided Christians--it is not even clear that anyone avoided Christians in the first century. Shunning never happens in Acts and is not a problem Paul ever had to deal with in the epistles--to the contrary, if anything he had to resolve quite the opposite problem (e.g. 1 Corinthians 8:7-13), and Paul had no apparent difficulty enjoying the company of non-Christians himself (e.g. 1 Corinthians 9:20-23), while Christians were exhorted to treat outsiders with kindness and humility (1 Thess. 3:12 & 5:15; Tit. 3:2). And were Christians ridiculed in the first century? Maybe by some people. So were Jews. And even some pagans (the Roman satirists made no end of sport of popular cults). Did that mean everyone ridiculed members of all these religions? No. And I am not aware of any evidence supporting such hyperbole. Nor did such social conflict prevent all those other cults from winning converts.
Holding also claims "men like Paul and Matthew, and even Peter and John, gave up lucrative trades for the sake of a mission that was all too obviously going to be nothing but trouble for them." Nothing but trouble? Anyone who reads Paul's letters--even from our quote of Philippians above--can see missionaries like Paul believed there were positive gains worth far more than any losses. Love of one's fellow man is a universal human attribute, and every culture has those who despise wealth. So "nothing" but trouble is more hyperbole. And did Paul and gang really give up "lucrative" careers? There is no evidence regarding how successful they were at their respective trades. It may well be they found an easier job they were better at, as many a preacher has done since. And there was certainly money in the church, so much in fact that Paul had to defend himself against charges of profiteering (e.g. 1 Corinthians 9:11-18; Acts 20:33-34). But money was not so highly regarded by devout men anyway (e.g. 1 Tim. 3:3, 6:10; 2 Tim. 3:2), and all the Apostles were no doubt such devout men even before they met Jesus--they probably despised money just like the Essenes, and sought a greater good, which became the very reason they followed Jesus in the first place.
Surely a man like Paul saw winning souls a far more valuable use of his time than winning cash, so the prospect of giving up the latter for the former would present no deterrent. Conversely, most entering the church would materially benefit from the loving, communist society it provided, and we already discussed the available motives of the few who would be giving anything up by entering (in Chapter 5). Finally, it was also possible to serve both careers: when in Corinth, Paul returned to his trade as tentmaker (Acts 18:1-3), and may have done so in other towns (Acts 20:34), as often as possible, thereby sustaining himself and his mission. Peter, John, and Matthew may well have kept regular jobs on the side, too, and certainly most actual Christians did--as far as we know, only those who were financially supported by the Church gave up paying jobs for missionary work.
Holding then confuses historical periods when he quotes Robin Lane Fox's discussion of events in the 3rd and 4th centuries. That can have no bearing on the state of affairs at Christianity's origin, or its development in its first hundred years. When Holding cites Fox for the claim that "Christians could expect social ostracization if they stuck by their faith" including "rejection by family and society" and "relegation to outcast status," Holding neglects to mention that Fox does not in fact demonstrate this, but only the existence of social tension between pagans and Christians within the same community or even the same family, and only in some cases, and only for later centuries. Thus, Holding's quotation is three times off the mark, not only referring to the wrong period, but far overstating what his source actually claims. The evidence does not support any kind of culture-wide "shaming" of Christians--for not everyone was their enemy, and their values were not as contrary to the higher ideals of most Greeks, Romans, or Jews as Holding implies. Many among all three groups did not like the inequities produced by the values of the dominant elite. Even where Christians differed from their peers among the lower and middle classes, those differences were not the sort to cause resentment or disgust, but more likely admiration or, at worst, indifference. In fact, the values of Christians were very close to the moral ideals of Greco-Roman philosophers, legendary sages, and revered Rabbis (for examples, see Chapter 5 and Chapter 2).
In like fashion, none of the passages Holding cites from the New Testament support the conclusion that the entire pagan society was ranged against the Christians--all of his verses refer to specific occasions of persecution, which were not representative of the way Christians were normally treated in the first century. But those passages do support my argument that these persecutions were willingly born because of an expectation of future reward, and a commitment to the moral ideals of compassion and justice. Hebrews 10:26-39 is a classic example (and suggests a time in the Church at least a generation or two after the conclusion of Acts), where assurances that the evidence was "irrefutable" never come up, only assurances of the Christian apocalyptic hope, with its attendant fear of hell and longing for heaven. In fact, the letter then immediately goes into why this hope should be trusted without evidence (Hebrews 11). This is not a verse that helps Holding's case. There is nothing here about a universal pagan antipathy to Christian values, nor any reference to having strong evidence as the reason for persevering.
Philippians 1:27-30 also speaks only of specific adversaries, not the whole society in which Christians lived, and says nothing of Christians being hated for their values. And Paul declares there that those who persecute them will go down to destruction while they, by persevering, will be saved, another example of the real motivation behind Christians enduring every attack. 1 Thessalonians 1:6 says nothing at all beyond that the Thessalonians suffered some great oppression that made them a model for other congregations to follow. It does not say what that oppression was, or from whom it came, or why. And since it refers to all this in the past tense, Paul cannot have meant a persistent cultural problem. In fact, when he elaborates in 2:13-16, it is clear that Paul means the Thessalonians were persecuted in a past incident by their own neighbors in a manner similar to the way certain factions of the Jews persecuted the Church in Judaea. According to Acts, these persecutions were not actions representative of the general population, but of a minority faction of adversaries. Moreover, Paul's analogy entails they were persecuted for theological doctrines, not their moral values. Similarly, 2 Thessalonians 1:4-5 doesn't say what prosecutions or oppression, from whom, or what for. But it does give the usual reason for enduring: the righteous gain heaven, their oppressors gain destruction (1:5-11). The reason given is never the strength of any evidence.
1 Peter 2:11-18 (which also comes from the later part of the 1st century) actually says the opposite of what Holding claims: it says Christians should win the praise of outsiders by their good behavior, thus refuting by their actions the false charges against them, and this entails fulfilling, not defying the values of the wider culture (including obeying the government and the entire social order outside the Church).[8] And 1 Peter 3:16 Holding takes out of context--it completes the thought begun at 3:13, which is exactly the opposite: "Who will harm you if you are zealous for what is good?" Only then does the letter go on to talk about those who are persecuted anyway, so already the letter is denying this was the norm. That is the context of the verse that exhorts Christians to be good "so when those people blab who disparage your good manner of life in Christ, they will be ashamed." Does that sound like Christian values were at odds with popular values? To the contrary, the fact that the author expected this disparagement to be unusual, and the fact that he expected persecutors would be ashamed to resort to it, both imply that Christians were living by values widely respected in Greco-Roman (and Jewish) society. And this is explicit in Titus 2:7-3:8, where Christians are specifically exhorted to follow popular values so outsiders will think well of them. Likewise, 1 Peter 4:12-16 says if Christians are to be persecuted, let it be for the name of Christ only, not for any evil deed. And, again, the motivation is immediately given (4:17-19) as the fate of heaven and hell, not the strength of any evidence. So none of this evidence supports Holding's point.[9]
One continual theme in these passages is that those who suffer ought to suffer because Christ did, and Christ is the best of men, the ideal all should emulate.[10] Yet we know from the Gospel stories (and the predicted fate of the messiah in scripture, as examined in Chapter 1) that Jesus was not persecuted because his values were unpopular, but for precisely the opposite reason: they were immensely popular, and it is only the wicked elite who attack him, and in so doing are charged as hypocrites. Hence Jesus was not executed because his values were despised, but because the elite had rejected the popular values of justice and compassion that Jesus represented and upheld. By being called to emulate him in their persecution, the message conveyed is that Christians are being persecuted by the same sorts of hypocrites who reject popular values (e.g. 1 Thess. 2:13-16), not by a society cherishing different values. And that was the point: Christians won converts because they were upholding the values that many cherished but their leaders did not--or, worse, rendered lip service to, but trampled in practice.
For all that, there is one thing that persecution and scorn did do to the Church: it changed it. Everyone who could find the same hope and moral vision in more accepted pagan philosophies and mystery cults would certainly prefer the easier road. It is only the desperate and fed up, who did not find these alternatives satisfying, who would find Christianity attractive at any price. And that gradually changed the character of the Church itself. Only the most radical or the most desperate filled the bulk of the movement--those who actually wanted martyrdom or weren't afraid of it but impressed and encouraged by it, those who found in Christianity something they wanted so badly but that neither philosophy nor paganism offered them, even those who (like Tatian) had actually grown disgusted with those alternatives, and took to Christianity as a backlash against elite arrogance. This may well be why Christianity so quickly became radicalized into a predominately Sarcicist religion (see Chapter 3): since that sect was the only religion guaranteeing a resurrection of the flesh on easy terms (Judaism offered it on very hard terms, while other Christian sects offered something different or more complicated), all the people in the Roman Empire who wanted that (having the desire, regardless of their beliefs) would have flocked to Christianity, while many others would find a better deal on even easier terms in pagan philosophy or salvation cults.
This selection effect in successful recruitment may also be a reason why Christianity was a slow starter. Because it appealed to a psychologically select segment of society, it never gained a very large following until centuries after its origin, after social conditions (and the Church itself) had changed enormously. To that extent Holding is certainly correct. Had Christianity won over a majority of the empire in a single century, then maybe he would have an argument (contrast, for example, the fantastically rapid and remarkably complete success of the Scientific Revolution). But Christian success came nowhere near that, least of all within its first hundred years (we shall examine its actual scale of success in Chapter 18). Persecution no doubt played a part in that poor showing. But it was not enough to keep the Church from growing, even to the extent that it did. There were plenty of deprived and disgruntled people it could appeal to, and it didn't need proof of the resurrection to win them over.
In the end, Holding is right to say that the hardships, though they mustn't be so exaggerated, were nevertheless enough that "it is quite unlikely that anyone would have gone the distance for the Christian faith at any time--unless it had something tangible behind it." This is always true. It has been true of every morally demanding idealistic movement in history, whether we're talking about the dawn of Islam or Soviet Marxism. But as we have seen, here and already in several other chapters, that "something tangible" did not have to be "irrefutable" evidence of an historical event, such as Jesus rising from the dead. In none of the mass movements throughout human history, involving a widespread willingness to suffer and sacrifice, has the motive ever been anything like that, but always a socio-moral ideal. Christianity was surely no different. Indeed, its social program was the one truly tangible thing it had to offer, and that was attractive and alluring all on its own.
Once the battle lines were drawn in this cultural war of compassion against insolence, brotherhood against exploitation, justice against corruption, equality against inequity, there would surely be plenty of volunteer soldiers fighting for the Christian side. And like all volunteers for every just war in history, they would be fully prepared to assume the burdens of battle, with all its attendant miseries, sacrifices, and risks. It's simply human nature. The shame is that the Christian Church eventually succumbed to the very corruption, villainy, and injustice it began its faith fighting against. Ultimately, however, even for its claim to divine backing there was ample evidence to meet the standards of those who actually converted (as we shall see in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17), so evidence of the resurrection itself needed to be no better than the sincere devotion of missionaries--and nothing more (see Chapter 7)--which in turn required no more than biologically and culturally explicable visions of the divine, or a passionate, compassionate belief in a greater social good (see Chapter 10).
[1] See: Richard Carrier, "IV. A Digression on Witnesses Being Willing to Die," in Chapter 2 of "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004).
[2] Quote from David DeSilva, Honor,
Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture
(2000): p. 44. For a summary and bibliography of the scholarship, see:
Caroline Bynum, Resurrection
of the Body in Western Christianity: 200-1336 (1995): p. 44.
For a more thorough discussion of the issue, see: W. H. C. Frend,
"Martyrdom and Political Oppression," The
Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 2 (2000): pp.
815-39; Mary Beard, et al., Religions
of Rome: Volume 1, A History (1998): pp. 236-44; and Robin Lane
Fox, "Persecution and Martyrdom," Pagans and Christians (1987):
pp. 419-92.
On the voiding of the legal
acts of Nero and Domitian, see: "damnatio memoriae," The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): p. 427; for the
Pliny-Trajan exchange: Pliny the Younger, Epistles 10.96-97.
Holding claims to find
evidence Paul executed Christians in Philippians 3:6, but I don't see
how--in the passage he cites, Paul gives a list of his qualifications
in parallel structure, such that the context does not fit that of
Maccabees, which never uses either relevant word in the way Holding
implies anyway: diôkô is used 11 times in 1 and 2
Maccabees, always in the sense of "chase," not in any context relating
to persecution (1 Mac. 3:24, 4:9, 4:16, 7:45, 9:15, 11:73, 12:51,
15:39; 2 Mac. 2:21, 2:31, 5:8; all are military actions); and zêlos
appears only 4 times, none in any context relating to persecution (1
Mac. 2:27, 2:54, 2:58, 8:16). As for Paul, he says only that "with
regard to zeal" he "pursued" the Church, just as "with regard to the
law" he was a Pharisee and "with regard to obedience" to the law he was
"blameless." The word for "pursue" here is ambiguous, with positive and
negative meanings, from "follow" to "hunt," though in formal
terminology it means "prosecute a case" (cf. diôkô).
Even if we assume Paul is using the term formally, he does not tell us
what charges he brought, or what penalties he sought, or even whether
he succeeded in winning any of his cases (so also for 1 Cor. 15:9, 1
Tim. 1:13, and Gal. 1:13 & 1:23, where Paul also "besieged" or
"endeavored to destroy" the Church, cf. portheô,
which are just as ambiguous in their meaning, telling us neither what
he actually did, or why, or whether it succeeded). Likewise, the word
for "zeal" means "jealousy," though usually in a positive sense, as in
"eager rivalry" or a "longing to emulate" (in this case, Paul would
mean emulating his fellow Pharisees, unless he is actually referring to
rivaling the Jewish ecclesia and is not speaking of persecuting
the Christian Church here at all--the context does suggest he meant to
list only his positive traits here), and by extension "fervor" hence
"zeal" (cf. zêlos).
Conclusion: Paul may well have been partly responsible for some
executions of Christians (as Acts claims). But we cannot prove this
from anything Paul said in his letters.
[3] W. H. C. Frend, "Martyrdom and Political Oppression," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 2 (2000): p. 818.
[4] Alan Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (2004): p. 314. His entire chapter on millennial and apocalyptic movements covers the evidence and scholarship, and links it to both Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam and several indigenous religious movements.
[5] All of this is apparent to any attentive student of human history. But Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) is still a best-selling discussion of it.
[6] For example: 1 Cor. 12 & 15:1-8; 2 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 1:11-12, 15-19 & 3:5; Rom. 16:25-26; Acts 9:3-9. This point is thoroughly examined from several angles in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17. See the entirety of 1 Peter 1 for the exact same reasoning, that Christians should endure persecution for future reward simply because scripture says so.
[7] On the cultural context: Robin Lane Fox,
"Seeing the Gods," Pagans and Christians (1987): pp. 102-67;
Alan Segal, "Religiously-Interpreted States of Consciousness: Prophecy,
Self-Consciousness, and Life After Death," Life
after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion
(2004): pp. 322-50; Peter Green, Alexander
to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age
(1990): pp. 408-13, 594-95; E. R. Dodds, "The Blessings of Madness" and
"Dream-Pattern and Culture-Pattern," The
Greeks and the Irrational (1951): pp. 64-101 and 102-34.
On the scientific background:
John Horgan, Rational
Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border between Science and Spirituality
(2003); and Eugene D'Aquili and Andrew Newberg, Why
God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
(2001) and The
Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience
(1999).
See also: Richard Carrier, "Craig's
Empty Tomb and Habermas on the Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus,"
which is Section 4e of my Review
of "In Defense of Miracles" (1999); and Richard Carrier, "From
Taoist to Infidel" (2001) and "Do
Religious Life and Critical Thought Need Each Other? A Reply to William
Reinsmith" (1996).
The debate between Origen and
Celsus (Origen, Contra Celsum 2.60) reveals this reality:
reasonable people seeing apparitions while awake is alone enough to
prove those apparitions were real (though note Origen says these
apparitions are therefore astral bodies, not flesh--since Origen did
not believe Jesus rose in the flesh, but had switched bodies, leaving
the corpse behind and donning a new astral body: cf. Contra Celsum
5.18-24, 6.29, 7.32; and Caroline Bynum, Resurrection
of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (1995): pp.
63-71; as well as my forthcoming discussion in: Richard Carrier, "The
Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb," Jeff Lowder
& Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave,
due for publication in 2005; see also discussion in the Secular Web
Forum Thread (in Biblical Criticism & History), "Carrier vs.
Craig on TV Saturday," 2004).
[8] In fact, contrary to Holding's claim, Christians were always told to uphold the values and social institutions of the wider society: Rom. 12:17-18 & 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:12-17 & 4:15; 2 Cor. 8:21; Gal. 6:10; Col. 3:22; Heb. 12:14.
[9] I have not examined Holding's citation of Revelations, because the entire treatise is a prophetic vision. But in the section Holding cites (the mention of tribulations in Smyrna and Pergamum in chapter 2) only very specific persecution events are mentioned, not a general state of cultural opposition (one synagogue of "false Jews" in Smyrna and the execution of one man, Antipas, in Pergamum: 2:8-10, 2:12-13).
[10] e.g. Heb. 12; Phil. 1:29; 1 Thess. 1:6;
1 Pet. 3:18, 4:1, 4:13.
James Holding then cites Earl Doherty for the argument that Jews would never believe "that a human man was the Son of God," much less deserved "all the titles of divinity and full identification with the ancient God of Abraham." Therefore, Holding argues, Jesus must have proved he was the God of Abraham. Of course, Holding neglects to mention that Doherty can use the exact same evidence to argue the reverse: that originally Jesus was never a literal human man, but always a heavenly being, an intermediary and representative of God.[1] Doherty's construction of the evidence is plausible, but not thereby proved. But neither is Holding's position proved. Therefore, the logic of Holding's argument here does not work: by the law of excluded middle, from what Holding presents we cannot decide whether Jesus gave "proof" of his divinity or whether early Christians rejected the very theology that later Christians developed. Both are consistent with the premise Holding gives in this section of his argument, but only one is consistent with Holding's conclusion, and to pick one theory over another is unjustified.
Holding could perhaps justify it by presenting evidence that the Christians of Paul's time believed what later Christians claimed. But there is nothing in the evidence from Paul himself that Jesus was ever thought to be God Incarnate while residing on earth--all the evidence there is consistent with the view that Jesus was merely a man, a Messiah possessed by the Spirit of God, who was adopted by God (either at his birth, baptism, or death) and thus was the "Son of God" only in a legal sense, not a literal sense. Indeed, Paul outright says that Jesus "was born from the seed of David in respect to the flesh" but "ordained the Son of God in power in respect to the spirit of holiness from the resurrection of the dead," i.e. from the seed of David he was a man, but after his resurrection he was appointed son of God--when he was not flesh, but spirit.[2] Thus, what evidence there is in Paul tends to refute Holding, not support him. It was standard Jewish understanding that every "Messiah" ("Anointed" and "King") was adopted by God at his anointing and thus became a Son of God, including David himself.[3] And the earliest Christians made this universal: Paul says every Christian, through joining Christ's spirit, became an adopted Son of God.[4] There is nothing un-Jewish about this.
We also know of some early Jewish Christian groups (like the Ebionites) who stuck to this view, against the emerging, largely Gentile "orthodoxy" of the second century, which saw fit even to doctor the Gospel of Mark in an attempt to eliminate its adoptionistic slant.[5] Even when the idea arose (whenever it actually did) that Christ was a preexistent spirit that descended into the womb of Mary to form the flesh of Jesus, the Christians were not deviating from what was acceptable to many Jews of the time: God could certainly create flesh, and the Spirit of the Lord could certainly inhabit a living person. This would not be the Nicene view of a literal identity between God and Flesh. But the Nicene view would be centuries in the making. In Christianity's first hundred years, insofar as it remained Jewish at all, there is no evidence supporting the exact formula of the Nicene creed. What reliable evidence we have is entirely compatible with a view that God remained incorporeal and enthroned in heaven even as his spirit animated the body of Jesus. That did not contradict Jewish ideology. Indeed, it conformed to it: for the Spirit of the Lord was expected to enter the body of Israel's human King, as well as the bodies of God's prophets.[6]
Nor was the idea of a preexistent spiritual Son of God a novel idea among the Jews. Paul's contemporary, Philo, interprets the messianic prophecy of Zechariah 6:11-12 in just such a way, which in the Septuagint says to place the crown of kingship upon "Jesus" and say "So says Jehovah the Ruler of All, 'Behold the man named 'Rising', and he shall rise up from his place below and he shall build the House of the Lord'," which pretty much is the Christian Gospel. Philo was a Platonic thinker, so could not imagine this as referring to "a man who is compounded of body and soul" but thought it meant an "incorporeal being who in no respect differs from the divine image" whom "the Father of the Universe has caused to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he calls the firstborn" and "he who is thus born" imitates "the ways of his father."[7] That sure sounds a lot like what the Christians were saying--and this from a Jew! Not all Jews were Platonists, either. Simply couple Philo's idea with the more common Jewish belief that the Spirit of God can "rest upon" ordinary human beings, and in fact must do so in the case of prophets and kings, and you have the early Christian Christology.
Therefore, we can prove nothing un-Jewish about what Christians taught in the first century. Certainly there would be Jews opposed to their idea, as there were numerous Jewish factions all opposed to each other--the Pharisees against the Sadducees, the Essenes against the Pharisees, the Scribes against the Baptists, the Jerusalem rabbis against the Galilean rabbis, and so on. In the words of John Barclay, "there was no universal template of 'normative' Judaism," even in Palestine, but especially in the Hellenized Diaspora.[8] And this proves quite the opposite of Holding's assumption: since there were many different ways to conceive of God and his mission even among the Jews themselves, no conclusion can be drawn about what "all" Jews would think, from the example of only a few--much less a few within only a few specific sects. And there is even less reason to focus only on Jews who were ideologically opposed to the Christian message. That can tell us nothing about what other Jews who were sympathetic to that message thought. You can't simply attribute to their friends the beliefs of their enemies. Especially when it is probably not a coincidence that Christ became more literally God Incarnate precisely as Christianity became less Jewish.
So much for the Jewish perspective. Holding then claims that even "in the Gentile world" the "idea of a god condescending to material form, for more than a temporary visit, of sweating, stinking, going to the bathroom, and especially suffering and dying here on earth" would be "too much to swallow!" I find that an astonishing claim. For Greek and Roman paganism was filled with the idea of ordinary men being or becoming gods. As to the idea of a "sweating, stinking, defecating" mortal who dies and then becomes a god, there are so many examples in Greco-Roman religion I can't believe I even need to cite them. As to the idea of a literal Son of a God who "sweats, stinks, and defecates" and then dies, becoming a God in Heaven, there are again so many examples in Greco-Roman religion I can't believe I even need to cite them.[9] There were some elites who balked at these ideas (especially Epicureans like Celsus and Platonists like Plutarch), but they represented a small minority of the population. The incredible ubiquity of belief in countless deified men and earthly divine sons proves this beyond any doubt. Christianity would hit no greater obstacle than every other popular cult worshipping divine men.
Lest there be any doubt, Plutarch says point blank that "it seemed credible to the Romans" (and was accepted on the mere testimony of one man) that Romulus was an eternal God who descended from Heaven, lived on earth as a mere mortal and died there, and rose again to rejoin the Gods. How is that any different from what the Christians preached of Jesus? Even in Acts (14:11-13), the Lycaonians readily assumed Barnabas and Paul were the gods Zeus and Hermes physically descended from Heaven, declaring that "the Gods have become like men and come down to us!" And the Maltans quickly concluded Paul was a God merely because he survived a snake bite (Acts 28:3-6). Likewise, Celsus knew several men who manipulated crowds by claiming to be "God or God's Son or the Spirit of God" descended from above, which could only have been a successful scam if the idea was acceptable to enough people to make it worthwhile.[10]
In the end, Holding has not made an adequate case that what Christians actually believed in the first century would have been incredible to all Jews, much less those Jews who actually accepted the Christian message. Nor has Holding shown that all Gentiles found the idea of a God Incarnate "too much to swallow." To the contrary, there is evidence the early Christian idea of the Savior and Messiah as Son of God was actually right in line with the thinking of many Jews at the time, and we've shown there can be no doubt that a great many Gentiles fully accepted the idea of a God Made Flesh. So there would be no need of "irrefutable" proof to overcome hostility to this idea among either group. Indeed, Holding's own logic argues against his own case: for the fact that most Jews and Gentiles rejected Christianity in its first hundred years would suggest the evidence was insufficient to persuade those who actually did scoff at the idea of incarnated Gods. In fact, there is not a single example on record of anyone in the first century who clearly scoffed at that idea subsequently becoming a Christian--yet only such evidence would offer any support to Holding's argument!
Even then, Holding would still have to present evidence that what changed their mind was "irrefutable" evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, rather than something less impressive to us today--like an argument solely from scripture. Holding can present no such evidence. Therefore his argument is unsuccessful. In fact, it is inherently dubious. For why would rising from the dead prove Jesus was God? How would Jesus prove he was literally God? N. T. Wright himself, a staunch believer and expert on the subject, warns that "it has too often been assumed that if Jesus was raised from the dead this automatically 'proves' the entire Christian worldview--including the belief that he was and is" God or God's son, but as Wright explains, it does not--there are Jews even today who believe Jesus rose from the dead (and did many other miraculous things), but conclude from this "that he was and is a great prophet to whom Israel should have paid attention at the time," and nothing more.[11]
Many who were not gods rose from the dead, even in Jewish legend (see Chapter 3)--in fact, from a Jewish point of view, such an event would sooner prove Jesus a great prophet than a god. Likewise for any of his miracles, which did not exceed in magnitude those of Moses or Elijah. So how would anyone come to believe he was God? There is only one possible way: God told them. In other words: visions and interpretations of scripture. Therefore, the only evidence that would ever convince any Jew that Jesus was the Son of God would be scripture and the word of contemporary prophets (confirmed by miraculous deeds), neither of which would we ever consider "irrefutable" evidence.[12] And a Jew who would be convinced by such evidence (and we know those were probably the only people Christians actually convinced, as suggested by the evidence in Chapter 13 and Chapter 17) would not even need any other evidence, since that was the only evidence possible for such a claim. Therefore, Holding cannot use "objections to incarnation" to confirm the strength of evidence for the resurrection, even in principle. At most it could only confirm the strength of evidence from revelations and scripture--which comes nowhere near "irrefutable" evidence, and is not evidence at all except to those who already accept that God talks to people, and then inspired the entire Bible as well as the Christian prophets.
[1] See: Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus, revised ed. (2000); Doherty's website: The Jesus Puzzle Online; and my critical review of his book: Richard Carrier, "Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity" (2002).
[2] Romans 1:3-4. The words are unmistakable: Jesus genomenos, "came into being," "was born" a descendant of David (cf. gignomai) and then horistheis, "was separated out," "distinguished," "marked," "ordained," the word in fact often meaning "deified" (cf. horizô) not in the flesh, but in the spirit, and not in life, but after death. It is true, however, that a few other passages from Paul imply preexistence, so (if we assume these other passages were not scribal interpolations) most scholars take this verse as representing the original Gospel, and Paul's view as a more Platonic development implying spirit possession (see discussion of Philo's "Son of God" later in this chapter).
[3] See, for example: 2 Sam. 7:14; Ps. 2:7 & 89:26-27.
[4] See, for example: John 1:12-13; Gal. 3:26-27 & 4:5-6; Rom. 8:14:17; 1 John 5:1. And see: Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003): pp. 408-09.
[5] See: David Horrell, "Early Jewish Christianity," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 2 (2000): pp. 136-67 (for the shift in the first century toward a predominately Gentile Christianity: Todd Klutz, "Paul and the Development of Gentile Christianity," ibid.: pp. 168-97); Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993), esp. "Anti-Adoptionistic Corruptions of Scripture": pp. 47-118 (note, for example, that one of the common features of known scribal tampering in Acts is the addition of Christological titles: see sources cited in Note 20 of Chapter 7).
[6] See, for example: Num. 11:25, 11:29, 24:2; Judg. 3:9-10, 6:34, 11:29, 14:6, 14:19, 15:14; 1 Sam. 10:6, 10:10, 11:6, 16:13, 19:20, 19:23; 2 Chron. 15:1, 20:14, 24:20; Isa. 11:2, 59:21, 61:1; Ezek. 11:5, 37:12-14 (which anticipates the Christian idea that at the resurrection God's spirit will inhabit all the saved, exactly as Paul says has happened); Mic. 3:8; Zech. 7:12. See also: Ex. 31:1-5; Num. 23:7 (in the Septuagint text); Dan. 4:8-9, 4:18, 5:11, 5:14 (all singular in the Septuagint text). And for context, see: "Son of God," Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period: 450 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.: pp. 596-97.
[7] Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 62-63.
[8] John Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE - 117 CE) (1993): quote from p. 83. See also: Morton Smith, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century," Israel: Its Role in Civilization, Moshe Davis, ed. (1956): pp. 67-81.
[9] On both, see examples (like Asclepius, Hercules, Zalmoxis, Attis, the Dioscuri, etc.) and sources on pagan religion (which cite many other examples) in Chapter 3.
[10] Plutarch, Romulus 27-28; Acts 14:11-12; Celsus, quoted in Origen, Against Celsus 7.9. And see Note 11 in Chapter 1.
[11] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003): pp. 720, 721 (cf. pp. 719-38). Wright's evidence, in that same chapter, for an early belief in literal incarnation is far weaker. But it is notable that even someone who is convinced of that, nevertheless still rejects assumptions like that of Holding, i.e. that proving Jesus rose proves Christianity true.
[12] And as we shall see in Chapter 10 and Chapter
13, this was the only evidence offered in any known case of
conversion in the first hundred years--in conjunction with the
"miracles" of missionaries themselves, which we have also discussed in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.
At this point James Holding argues that the very anti-establishment message Christianity preached would have prevented its success--when in actual fact, that was probably the primary reason it did succeed (to the extent it actually did). As I have shown in several chapters already, the society of the Roman Empire was producing such a scale of injustice and discontent, that a message of equality, of doing away with all those things people saw as the cause of their plight, would have been very popular among those whom Christianity actually won over--quite the opposite of Holding's conclusion. Nor was this message new: the Essenes already preached it, winning the praise of even elite Jews like Josephus, Philo, and Herod, and even some Gentiles like Pliny the Elder, thus proving the message was already attractive to some Jews and Gentiles. And there had been several pagan precedents as well in the centuries running up to Christianity, dreams of "equalizing" the social playing field to produce a moral utopia.[1]
Of the Essenes in particular, Pliny the Elder writes that even though they are celibate and thus do not restore their numbers by having children, still:
Day after day their numbers are fully recruited by multitudes of strangers that resort to them, driven thither to adopt their usages by the tempests of fortune, and wearied with the miseries of life. Thus it is, that through thousands of ages, incredible to relate, this people eternally prolongs its existence, without a single birth taking place there; so fruitful a source of population to it is that weariness of life which is felt by others.[2]
This proves exactly the opposite of what Holding claims: far from being unpopular, the communist message of Christianity could find recruits even before Christianity began. And as we observed in Chapter 2, the Christians made entry into such a life far easier and more attractive, by doing away with circumcision and all the arduous rules and separatism of Essene life. Thus, Christianity would have found many more converts than the Essenes did. The Christians also, unlike most (though not all) Essenes, recruited women and allowed marriage, thus doubling its pool of recruits as well as benefiting from the inevitable growth produced by raising children into the faith. All the improvements made by Christianity on the Essene social structure would have especially increased its attractiveness to Gentiles.
It is also noteworthy that Pliny was apparently a better sociologist than Holding, for he was keen enough to observe the motive for joining such a movement: people were getting sick and tired of the present state of society, and the miseries and difficulties it entailed. I have already addressed this fact in adequate detail in Chapter 5 and Chapter 8, so I won't repeat that analysis here. The conclusion is clear: the idea of eliminating social distinctions was clearly attractive to a significant segment of the population at the time, especially when it could be achieved without doing violence to the entrenched social system. James Holding certainly presents no evidence to the contrary.
That may be why Holding's only "evidence" consists not of any actual ancient witness or source, or any real evidence at all, but only a purely speculative theoretical argument that he bases without foundation on the otherwise sound sociological work of Malina and Neyrey.[3] But Malina and Neyrey do not make anything like the argument Holding does--they never argue the social context of early Christianity made recruitment too difficult. Rather, Holding merely uses what they do argue (that the ancient social context was different from ours) in an attempt to keep his own argument afloat. Yet what Malina and Neyrey argue does not support Holding. To the contrary, it provides a sound case against him. And that point will occupy the rest of this chapter.
Holding correctly describes the thesis of Malina and Neyrey, that "in the ancient world, people took their major identity from the various groups to which they belonged" rather than from the self-actualized individualism of many modern societies. "There can be little doubt," they say, "that our New Testament witnesses were collectivist persons living in collectivist cultures" (p. 11). Accordingly, Malina and Neyrey demonstrate: (1) "group goals naturally precede individual goals" (p. 11), so that (quoting Josephus, then Plutarch) "the welfare of the community must take precedence" over the individual's interests, and "no one is his own master" but everyone is "subject to some authority figure" (p. 3); and as a consequence: (2) individuals primarily defined themselves by their "group of origin" and their "place of origin" (p. 3) and "were attuned to the values, attitudes, and beliefs of their in-group, with which they shared a common fate" (p. 16), such that kinship and citizenship were the first and foremost elements of self-description (pp. 17-18); which meant: (3) that these two in-groups (one's household and political affiliation) "served as conscience and guide" to moral action (p. 18). All that is true. And as a movement, Christianity conformed to all these expectations (as we shall show).
However, Malina and Neyrey do not say that individuals have no individual thoughts or desires or aspirations, only that they tend to suppress them for the sake of social harmony (pp. 212-18). Yet this entails that there be social harmony. As soon as conforming to the group fails to produce what is expected--social harmony and communal good--all bets are off. The collectivist mindset is then motivated to reject the failing group as-it-is and seek reform or attachment to another, successful group--or create one, if no working group was already available, or internal reform was blocked. This is how collectivist societies evolve and change. Many examples fill history, from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the post-war industrialization of Japan. The successful introduction of Buddhism (a foreign Indian religion) into both Japan and China also provides a good model. So Holding cannot claim this kind of thing was improbable.
Malina and Neyrey also point out that in collectivist cultures an individual will still harbor individualistic desires, but merely lie to his in-group, telling them what they want to hear, while actually seeking his own self-interest (pp. 212-18). In fact, they argue, this practice of acceptable deception would be a common behavior (as we shall see regarding their discussion of prophets below), which creates a serious problem for Holding. For this means many could convert to Christianity for purely personal, individualistic reasons, and only tell others that their reasons were collectivist and harmony-seeking--or anything else that the group, given its values and presuppositions, would accept as a valid reason--such as that God told them it was the right thing to do. This also means the entire Christian religion could have been a morally acceptable deception, taking perfectly practical and rational plans to fix a broken social system and framing them within the very structure of religious miracle and revelation that would be acceptable to the general collectivist culture of the time. I am not here arguing that either is the case, only that if anyone agrees with Malina and Neyrey's analysis--as Holding must in order to rest his argument on it--both of these conclusions must also be accepted as real and credible possibilities. Malina and Neyrey are careful to explain that collectivist societies have a different idea of "truth" (as well as a different idea of proper behavior regarding the truth) than individualist societies like ours, and this is crucial to understanding Christianity's origin and early development. We shall examine this issue below.
Another conclusion reached by Malina and Neyrey that spells trouble for Holding is that "out-group persons have no right to in-group truth" (p. 215), which explains why the Gospel was hidden behind parables, not only by Jesus (Mark 4:11-12 & 4:33-34), but plausibly by later Christians, too. The Gospel of Mark, for example, may well hide the truth behind an extended parable, whose real meaning would be told only to mature initiates (e.g. 1 Cor. 2:4-8, 3:1-2; 2 Cor. 12:4), and concealed from everyone else.[4] Since Mark was the first Gospel to be written down, such a motive would be available, because access to oral tradition could be controlled, but access to a written document could not, therefore it would be necessary to conceal the true meaning of a tradition when it was written down, lest it fall into the wrong hands. Indeed, the "true meaning" might not even be explained to most Christians, but--as Paul says--only to the most "mature" in the Church.
Thus, when it comes to explaining the consequences of the Malina-Neyrey theory, Holding only tells half the story--leaving out the other half that undermines his case. In a similar fashion, Holding correctly describes Malina and Neyrey's point that "in a group-oriented society, you took your identity from your group leader, and people needed the support and endorsement of others to support their identity." But then he immediately departs from anything Malina and Neyrey actually say by claiming "Christianity forced a severing of social and religious ties," which is not true:
(1) First, there was never any command to sever social ties in Christianity, but quite the contrary: to obey and maintain the exterior social order, even while creating and entering a superior social order within the Church. Christians were to obey pagan and Jewish community leaders (Rom. 13:1-7; Tit. 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:12-17), remain slaves even to pagan or Jewish masters (Col. 3:22; 1 Tim. 6:1-2), keep their marriages (even to pagans: 1 Cor. 7:12-16) and their jobs (complete with pagan bosses and colleagues), and meet their civic duties (such as serving in the army or government and paying taxes, e.g. Rom. 13:6-7). Unlike many (though not all) Essenes, the Christians did not isolate themselves from the society they held to be corrupt, but lived openly within it and actively engaged it. Holding can present no evidence from the first century that becoming Christian entailed leaving one's social or civic in-groups--insofar as a convert had any, which many may not have.
Many widows, for example, without families or citizenship, had no social identity-group, which was a prominent reason Christianity was so successful in recruiting them; and there must surely have been quite a large number of men in a similar situation of social drift, migrants with no surviving family ties and no citizenship, for whom Christianity would offer exactly what a collectivist would most want: a strong social in-group to establish their identity. Likewise, even among those who had such ties, there would inevitably be many who did not benefit from them (citizens with no vote, children neglected in favor of their elder siblings, migrant laborers, and so on): since their belonging to such groups would then not meet their collectivist expectations, the prospect of entering an in-group that did meet those expectations would be attractive. Both situations (loss of social identity or discontent with that identity) no doubt explain recruitment into the Essene sect, for example. Malina himself appeals to both in his explanation of the origin and growth of the Church, in all his books on that subject.
(2) Second, few converts would see themselves as severing religious ties, but quite the contrary: Jewish converts would see Christianity as a perfected fulfillment of Judaism, not a new religious commitment. They were not "abandoning" their faith, but realizing it. Becoming Christian was no different for a Jew than becoming a Baptist or an Essene or a Pharisee. Consider, for example, how Josephus sampled them all (as well as the Sadducees) before choosing which "in-group" to join.[5] And there were numerous other sects besides these, all with different ideas of how to follow God's law, and all competing for "converts" from among the general population of Jews. In fact, many (if not most) Christian Jews in Palestine remained obedient to the Torah law. But those who accepted the Pauline doctrine of liberty were not doing anything unprecedented--most Jewish sects already rejected Mishnah law, and some even rejected Torah as well.[6]
How could the Jews have fragmented into so many competing sects on Holding's view? By his argument, that should have been impossible. Yet it happened. As for Gentiles, most would not have anything like strong religious ties--paganism was never exclusive or obligatory, in the way Judaism was for Jews. Not even the mystery cults were like that. And like those mystery cults, Christianity simply re-explained all the phenomena of paganism. All the gods still existed--they were now merely identified as agents of Satan, an argument already made by the Zoroastrians and repeated by Manichaeans, and generally shared by the Jews, whom we know already won over Gentiles on a regular basis, and Christianity would only have done better (as demonstrated in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4).
Of course, Holding also admits that Christianity "did provide its own community support in return" for severing other connections, though as already noted there is no evidence such severing was common in the first century, beyond the switching of group affiliations that was already going on in the ancient world all the time--in religion, politics, geography, the army. Indeed, Holding asks how the Christian offer of a superior in-group "explains why people join in the first place," which is a good question: What explains why anyone joined any new social group in antiquity? Why did so many become Essenes or Baptists? Why did Gentiles become Jews? Why did so many sons of freedmen seek to achieve a higher social class? Why did men in the army seek promotion to higher social and military status? Why did so many migrate to join new geographical communities? Why did so many migrants then seek to become citizens of their new cities? Or seek Roman citizenship for that matter? Why did so many slaves seek to become freedmen? Why did so many "barbarians" seek to Romanize or Hellenize themselves? Why did so many pagans join the religious societies of foreign cults like that of Isis or Cybele or Mithras? Why join the Epicurean Garden and thus "become an Epicurean"? Or a Stoic? Or a Cynic for that matter, which truly did entail severing social ties? Why did Lucian regard changing his status, from a stoneworker to an educated gentleman, to be the most excellent thing that could happen to anyone?[7] Holding's erroneous account of Malina and Neyrey's thesis is incapable of explaining any of this--yet this stuff was routine in the Roman Empire. Unlike India, for example, social status and position was highly fluid within the Roman imperial system. What Malina and Neyrey actually argue explains this perfectly--and thus explains conversion to Christianity perfectly, for the motives and causes were the same as in all other cases of voluntary social relocation (as we shall see below).
Holding likewise gets Malina and Neyrey right when he says "a person like Jesus could not have kept a ministry going unless those around him supported him," but then completely departs from anything Malina and Neyrey argue when he says "a merely human Jesus could not have met this demand." That is a non sequitur. Indeed, Jesus "must have provided convincing proofs of his power and authority to maintain a following, and for a movement to have started and survived well beyond him" as Holding says--but nothing supernatural would be necessary for that, any more than it was necessary to win converts to any other cult, school, or social group of the day. Were superhuman powers required for Epicurus or Zeno or Aristotle or Diogenes to found lasting philosophical communities? Did Essenes and promoters of the cults of Isis, Mithras, Cybele, all require superhuman powers to win converts? Were the Gentiles who entered or connected themselves with Judaism only persuaded by supernatural powers? Did Buddhists actually prove their supernatural might in order to win over large segments of the much-more-collectivist Chinese and Japanese populations? Quite simply: No.
We will discuss the actual Christian tactics of persuasion in Chapter 13. But Holding's reasoning (which is found nowhere in Malina and Neyrey) is that "a merely human Jesus would have had to live up to the expectations of others and would have been abandoned...at the first sign of failure," but Holding never explains how that conclusion follows from Malina and Neyrey's thesis. Instead, his argument actually ignores their sociological model in two crucial respects:
(1) First, there is no evidence Christ's followers ultimately perceived anything he did as a failure. As far as they saw it, he was a complete success--even his execution received group approbation as a success.[8] Since the group defines success and failure--and that is exactly what Malina and Neyrey argue--once Jesus had a following, whether anything that happened would be regarded as a "failure" would depend entirely on the perceptions of the in-group. Perceptions of everyone outside the group would not matter. As long as the in-group called his execution a success, it would be a success. Period. That is how groupthink works. And this follows even when there may be temporary wavering or doubt--though the Gospels portray the Disciples as abandoning Jesus (though there is no support for this in Paul and it may well be a dramatic invention), they also portray the Disciples soon having visions of Jesus reaffirming that his execution was a success. Since Jesus was their leader, this would define his execution as a success. And all other members of the in-group would believe what the Disciples, as appointed representatives of their leader, told them about this. We can debate whether these visions of Jesus were real and physical, or only imagined or fabricated (see below), but neither would make the success of Christianity any more successful, or any less. Because it made no difference.
(2) Thus, Malina and Neyrey's thesis can (and does) explain Christianity's success without requiring any appeal to anything supernatural. In fact, and this is his second mistake, Holding entangles himself a Catch-22 here. His own argument entails accepting that people would leave one group for another "at the first sign of failure," yet that is exactly how Christianity won converts: the social groups to which future converts belonged at the time, or that were available for them to join, were failing. Christians then offered a social group that wasn't failing (as explained in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). Thus, by Holding's own reasoning, conversion to Christianity, at least for as many as actually did convert, was entirely to be expected. It was not improbable at all. No supernatural evidence was required. The mere fact that their social in-groups were failing, and Christianity's social in-group was succeeding--at meeting the needs and expectations of the community--would be sufficient on Malina and Neyrey's thesis to account for the entirety of Christianity's success in its first hundred years, and beyond.
As Malina himself explains:
Why did a small group emerge around Jesus? Small groups emerge because some person becomes aware of a need for change, a desire for social satisfaction. That person shares this vision with others who mutually nurture a hope of success in implementing the change in a cultural context in which group formation is expected...[and after that] Post-Jesus associations...existed primarily to serve the needs of members: social, informational, support.
And though "they were not concerned at all to reform society" they were concerned to maintain a satisfactory society "within" society, which strove to be accepted by the out-society, while realizing ideal social values within the in-group, which would prefigure the perfect society of the cosmic future. "Compelling evidence" never comes up in Malina's explanation here, much less evidence of the supernatural, and even less that of the resurrection.[9]
And this is how Bruce Malina himself accounts for that success. He has never appealed to Jesus actually being God. He has never said the evidence of Christ's divinity or resurrection had to be compelling. Or anything like that. To the contrary, Malina has consistently argued through numerous books (see Note 3) that Christianity's success was due to the rhetorical skills of its missionaries, who properly contextualized the faith in terms both acceptable and attractive to their collectivist culture. The only reference he ever makes to the evidence Christians appealed to, besides missionary healing and exorcism, was the role of divine revelation--appeals to religious experience--which he connects to the Jewish prophetic tradition.[10] Never do the miracles of Christ's ministry or resurrection play any role in Malina's theory of Christianity's success. All he argues as necessary were a properly constructed (and properly presented) theology and appeals to private communications from God affirming that system (which we, today, can neither verify nor falsify as such).
Malina doesn't even appeal to miracles performed by Christian missionaries as important to their success, apart from healing and exorcism, since he generally treats miracle reports as symbolic rather than historical. Some miracle narratives were indeed purely or largely symbolic. But the Christian mission did require some genuine displays of "supernatural" power to prove its divine backing. Holding is right about that, since "divine backing" was essential to the Christian solution to popular social problems. However, when we look at what miracles were actually used by the Church (as seen in Paul and Acts), none required any supernatural power at all--only the perception of it (we will discuss this in Chapter 13). In fact, Malina argues, Christianity was no different in this regard than any other shamanic tradition throughout human history (see again Note 10).
Even so, contrary to Holding's reasoning, merely performing supernatural feats (even the resurrection of Jesus himself) would be incapable of winning converts. In a groupthink culture, those feats had to be acknowledged by the group as divine--rather than, for example, demonic, or the product of trickery. If the group appealed to was already hostile to the Christian message, it would not define any miracle, even a genuine one from God himself, as divine, but as demonic or fake. That's how groupthink works. As shown in Chapter 3, resurrecting the dead was an expected power of demons and sorcerers, and therefore could be attributed to demonic agency or explained away as a human trick. For instance, crediting trickery is exemplified in Matthew 27:62-66, 28:11-15. Another available explanation was misdiagnosis, i.e. some sources "explain away" resurrections by claiming the beneficiary was never really dead but just sleeping (even though there is no way they could know that).
Therefore, even on Holding's assumption that Christians performed real miracles--including a real, thoroughly-proven resurrection of their leader--according to Malina and Neyrey's analysis that would still be insufficient to account for Christianity's success. Christianity had to demonstrate its miracles were divine, rather than demonic or human, by appealing to values the out-group already accepted--hence the visible social success of the Christian brotherhood was a necessary cause of its further expansion. But as it happens, that was also a sufficient cause. By proving that Christianity was a successful social group--fulfilling the core values of various out-groups--it followed necessarily that Christianity had divine backing. For in the ancient view, the divine backing of a community and its success in fulfilling social values were synonymous. To be a success was to be of God. But it follows necessarily that any seemingly-miraculous feat would then be interpreted by an appropriate out-group as coming from God rather than demonic or human agency. And so nothing that Christians did had to be genuinely supernatural--it only had to seem so. And this is what Malina himself argues.
Already we have seen above how Christianity exploited its social context perfectly. Furthermore, in Malina and Neyrey's sociological model, we identified three peculiarities of ancient culture that must be taken into account by any correct explanation of Christianity's early success. The Christian message had to conform to the expectations of those social groups it successfully recruited from, but it did not have to conform to the expectations of other social groups it did not successfully recruit from (such as elite scholars). And to succeed, Christianity had to be perceived as successfully meeting the needs of those groups it successfully recruited from, and those groups had to perceive their current social system as failing to meet those needs. In other words, society had to be perceived as "sick" and in need of fixing, and then Christianity had to offer a "cure" that would fit the expectations of enough people to draw converts and grow.
Within that context: (1) Christianity's message had to place community welfare before individual desire, both in principle and in practice (the first defining feature of a successful social group), and it had to place every member of the group under a master who would consistently serve the welfare of the whole (the second defining characteristic of a successful social group); (2) its members had to be able to define themselves by "group of origin" and "place of origin," in other words by kinship and citizenship, and see themselves as sharing "a common fate"; and (3) this familial and political affiliation had to serve "as conscience and guide" to moral action, in a way that succeeded in meeting universal human needs (food, shelter, love, etc.).
There is no doubt early Christianity satisfied all of these conditions. Therefore, on Malina and Neyrey's thesis, Christianity would have had no trouble succeeding, at least in the manner and degree it did, without what we would consider "irrefutable" evidence of anything except its success in meeting social needs. And that is exactly what Christians appealed to: popular moral values were realized more truly in their brotherhood than in the wider social system as-it-was. Everyone's needs were cared for, and there was justice, harmony, and brotherly love. Those were ends that most social groups at the time professed to serve, but that none actually succeeded in achieving. Christianity won allegiance by appealing to that disconnect between concept and practice, and offering a solution. That solution did involve a change in certain subordinate social values and perceptions, but those changes were presented as essential in order to fulfill the core goals of society (justice and harmony), which everyone agreed were supposed to take priority over all other concerns.
We already discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 8 how the social system of the time was failing: though various social groups asserted certain values, those same groups, and especially their leaders, were failing to live up to those values. As a result, those groups would be compelled by their own groupthink to seek a solution to this problem, and that solution had to be either a cultural movement (bottom-up reform) or commitment to a leader who would restore the proper social harmony (top-down reform), or both. Philosophers attempted the former tactic, but did not succeed--precisely because they did not correctly frame their ideas in a way acceptable to the collectivist groups they appealed to. Pretenders to the throne (and various leaders of rebel military movements) attempted the latter tactic, but did not succeed--because the Roman military machine was at the time in perfect working order and thus unbeatable, or (in the case of pretenders who succeeded by using that military machine--e.g. Caesar, Vespasian, Severus) the ideas of the new leader were not sufficient to cure the disease, and in some cases even made it worse.
In contrast, everyone agrees that Christianity preached brotherhood and justice and the meeting of everyone's needs, and it is clear (from Paul and Acts) that it actually succeeded at practicing what it preached, at least enough to demonstrate (to anyone who cared to sincerely inquire) that the Christian group was succeeding where all other groups were failing. In fact, the small size of the Church in its first hundred years was probably responsible for its ability to practice so successfully what it preached--by following the successful "small town" model of social reinforcement (which is widely known to succeed where urban models fail, due to the problems of mobility and anonymity), and yet settling these small self-regulating communities within larger urban centers all around the Empire, where they could attract maximum attention. This allowed the Church to grow (in a way the Essene sect never could), due to its access to a greater number of fluid population centers, and by keeping the size of individual communities small, while still linking them together into a larger complex through authoritarian leaders like Paul (a system that was eventually structured into a formal Church hierarchy).
Once the Church became as large as other social institutions of the time, however, it succumbed to the same vanity, conflict, and corruption that they did--thus demonstrating it was not in fact up to the task of solving society's problems (in much the same way that Marxism once looked so promising, yet its inevitable outcome proved to be worse than the disease). But in its first few centuries Christianity did look like it was working, in a way the wider social system was not--especially since the major social institutions of the time were increasingly failing, getting worse and worse, in exactly those same centuries, which made Christianity look increasingly better, even supernaturally prescient, by comparison (which is an example of the role luck played in securing the ultimate success of Christianity, as we shall examine in Chapter 18--a comparable analogy is how Islam arose at precisely the point when the military capabilities of surrounding empires were in sharp decline, a mere coincidence that nevertheless made sweeping Islamic victories "appear" supernatural, which further secured its ideological success).
In many ways Christianity fit the Malina-Neyrey model perfectly in its first century--that crucial period where a movement will either fail and collapse into obscurity, or gain a stronghold that succeeding generations can then exploit. For example, Holding is quite right that "in the ancient world, it would have been foreign to the mind to not stand in some sort of dependent relationship," which is precisely why subservience to Christ as Lord was so central to the Christian solution to its society's problems. "Let's work together to fix what's wrong" would never have worked in the social context of antiquity, because appeals to individual self-mastery ("An Army of One") could not motivate collective action. It was necessary to follow a strong leader, who embodies, serves, and thus realizes the group's ideals. In actual practice, most leaders of the time fell into selfish corruption or aloof insolence, and utterly failed to embody or serve, much less realize, the most important values of their society. The behavior of Emperors had already demonstrated by the time of Christ the inevitable decline that was seen to pervade the nature of the entire world: they would start out good, but grow corrupt or unresponsive with time. The history of Jewish kings, as well as the successors of Alexander, set the same example. Human leaders could never be trusted.
Therefore, since only God can be trusted, God must be our leader, and we must make ourselves totally subservient to Him. In Jewish terms this meant God in his role as Anointed King--a Christ (which means "Anointed")--and in his role as a Jesus (which means "Savior"). Jesus Christ is the eternal Anointed Savior and therefore the Perfect Leader, to whom all Christians pledged subservience. This is why Jesus is described with every leadership title there was at the time, all the way from Shepherd to God. He was the ultimate leader, who would never fail in his appointed role. To follow him was the only way to fix society. Christians probably proposed this solution because it solved the evident problem not only of failing leaders, but of human middlemen (like the Priesthood, and the Pharisees and Scribes, as well as the administrators of local and imperial power), which were increasingly seen as failing in their duty to uphold the values of their society, and thus were perceived as the very problem in need of solution. By cutting out all human middlemen and serving God's Anointed directly, each individual would be placed under the leadership of the only incorruptible leader there was, and therefore such individuals would collectively constitute a properly-functioning social group. That was probably why dependence on Torah law could be done away with: since the entire basis of that law was a dependence on the Temple cult and the human middlemen who ran it (not only the priests, but the merchants, for example, who sold the animals that Torah law required individuals to buy for atonement sacrifices, etc.), to cut out those middlemen and directly serve under God negated any rationale for the Torah system. It became socially obsolete.
Thus, the need for a subservient social relationship was met by Christianity, and met in a way that would be obviously superior in the eyes of those social groups the Christians evangelized--those who could or did understand, and accept, the existence and social role of God as King (hence Jews and sympathetic or otherwise sincerely religious Gentiles). Likewise, when Holding points out that Christianity sought to erase all social distinctions, he misses the fact that they sought this only within the community of the Church itself--Christians never argued for erasing those distinctions outside the Church, but in fact argued they should be maintained as much as possible--to ensure peace and harmony (Romans 13:1-7; Colossians 3:22; Titus 3:1-2; 1 Timothy 2:1-2 & 6:1-2; 1 Peter 2:12-17). On the other hand, Holding rightly adds that Christianity also sought to erase all individual distinctions, even of "appearance and charisma." This conforms perfectly with Malina and Neyrey's thesis: Christianity was a thoroughly collectivist movement. The individual was being completely subsumed and replaced by the group. The Church becomes the new group, the new social unit, in which there are no true individuals, only limbs joined to one purpose, acting as one body (Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 3:6 & 5:30). Malina and Neyrey note that this is the case for many collectivist societies even today (quoting Triandis): "the self is coterminous with...a group the way a hand is related to the person whose hand it is" (p. 10), which is exactly the way Christians described themselves. This was the very social ideal they sold to potential converts. There was nothing radical about that. It was exactly what the society of the time could understand and embrace.
Likewise, Holding rightly says that "in a group-oriented society, you took your identity from your group leader, and people needed the support and endorsement of others to support their identity," but he misses the fact that Christianity fulfilled this requirement, too: Christians did take their identify from their group leader--Christ, hence they took the name christiani,[11] literally as his adopted children (John 1:12-13; Rom. 8:14-15 & 8:23; Gal. 3:26-27 & 4:5-6; Eph. 1:5; 1 John 5:1); and Christians did seek and enjoy the "support and endorsement of others" to ensure their identity: the Church community itself reaffirmed and maintained their group identity as the Children of Christ, the members of One Body in Christ.[12] As long as the groups to which you already belonged, and their leaders, were failing to practice what they preached, failing to realize social harmony and justice, the attraction of entering a group that wasn't failing would be strong. And this is why people sought to enter into new social groups in the Roman period, whether military, political, social, geographic, economic, or religious--in a quest to gain those things all human beings want: love, admiration, justice, economic security. That very same quest could lead them to Christianity just as easily, and for all the same reasons--especially if their desperation or deprivation were great.
Finally, Christianity conformed to the social expectations of its day not only by offering converts an improvement in their most essential source of identity--a new and better family (just as many Romans longed for adoption into families of higher rank)--but also an improvement in their "place of origin," for they became not only "brothers" but also "citizens of heaven" (Phil. 3:20), which was the best citizenship you could have. Every other city and kingdom was corrupt and dysfunctional, yet countless people sought to acquire one or another citizenship and thus to enter into a new social group that would give them a sense of identity, as well as (many hoped) meet their most basic human needs. The exact same motivation would serve Christianity, too: for not only was its citizenship a better deal (since it lasted forever and was open to anyone and completely free) but in the living Christian brotherhood such a citizenship more obviously met those basic human needs that many were not finding satisfied by any of the worldly alternatives. And then the Christian "citizenship in heaven" promised to meet those needs to perfection in the coming afterlife. This was not a novel idea. Philo says those who joined one particular Jewish sect (very similar to Christianity) became "citizens of heaven and the cosmos," while for all Jews the true "home and country" of the saved is "the most pure substance of heaven," as we are mere tourists on earth.[13]
And as expected, this superior kinship and political in-group affiliation that Christianity offered not only supplied the necessary moral guidance, but tied everyone to a common fate: a future life, when any remaining imperfections in Christianity's present realization of the Kingdom of God would be removed and the society purified and perfected by divine justice. In that sense, heaven and hell were not fates faced individually, but collectively. Those who were unjust or rejected the message of perfect justice, and were therefore "outside" the group or unfaithful to it, collectively met their deserved end: destruction. But those who entered and remained faithful to the group would inherit the true Kingdom of God when it finally arrived. This added a dire element of urgency to the Christian message: your decision to enter the group or not would decide your fate once and for all, and in the most spectacular way, by determining which group you would belong to in the end, and hence which group's fate you would share. The idea certainly appealed to individual interests (as Malina and Neyrey point out, those in a collectivist society still have such interests--they just don't express them to the group), and thus retained the same motivating power it has today. But the Christian gospel framed this appeal in collectivist terms as well: as what was fated and appropriate for each entire group, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the chaff. Hence to threaten someone with hell was literally to accuse them of membership in a dysfunctional group.
After Malina and Neyrey establish the point Holding wants to emphasize (though misuses), namely that groupthink limits what people would consider acceptable, they go on to observe that "deviations from such general orientations readily stand out" and "this is especially notable in the case of the prophet in collectivist cultures" (p. 216), a point Holding fails to mention. In fact, Malina and Neyrey say, all the "prophets" of both the Jewish and Christian tradition "seem to be speaking their individual minds regardless of consequences to their groups or to themselves," thus going against the collectivist expectation of saying only what maintains harmony. Instead, they upset the social order by criticizing it. Though this may be why they were often persecuted, it remains a fact that such prophets were nevertheless always revered--indeed they were often granted the highest status in any scale of reverence. Malina and Neyrey explain this by pointing out that the prophet is driven to this extreme by failures in the social system which can no longer be tolerated. He then succeeds in being heard by concealing his individual opinion within the collectivist expectation by attributing it to divine inspiration.
This is why they have to claim to be prophets, supernatural transmitters of the Word of God--who rules over, embodies, and represents the community--rather than individual men with their own good ideas arguing from objective evidence and reason. Because they can't do the latter and get away with it. No one would listen. According to Malina and Neyrey's analysis, to assert that your ideas come direct from God is the only successful way within a Western collectivist society to object openly to failures in the social system, and thus effect change. That is why we do not see individual visionaries arguing for change, ever--in Jewish history or even pagan history--except in the unusual, and thus much-distrusted (and therefore ultimately unsuccessful) context of the elite rationalist subculture of the philosophical schools. Instead, in Western collectivist societies all popular movements for change or reform are attributed to revelations from God.
In other words, according to Malina and Neyrey: (1) To claim a revelation from God was the only way to have any impact on society, since it was the only way to contextualize your ideas that your fellow collectivists would be attuned to accept; and: (2) It is typical in collectivist cultures to see no wrong in lying to the group in order to tell them what they want and need to hear (in fact, according to Malina and Neyrey, this kind of "deception" was practically obligatory). From those two facts comes the conclusion that most if not all "revelations" or "visions" from God could be pious fabrications, a culturally necessary expedient in order to reform collectivist-minded societies that are experiencing structural failures in their social system.[14]
Of course, this can manifest as a deliberate or an accidental causal relationship: the need to couch reformative ideas in prophetic context (and the acceptability of saying what the group wants to hear even if it isn't the truth) can cause the prophet to claim to have had a communication from God; but it could also cause him to experience a communication from God, through dreams, hallucinations, or an ecstatic or other altered state of consciousness. In the one case there is a conscious rationale, a conscious lie for the greater good (which, according to Malina and Neyrey, a collectivist community might not even consider a lie). In the other case, cultural presuppositions subconsciously guide the prophet's mind to experience exactly what he needs to in order to achieve his goals. Such "experiences are found among 90 percent of the world's population today, where they are considered normal and natural, even if not available to all individuals" whereas "modern Euro-American cultures offer strong cultural resistance" to such "experiences, considering them pathological or infantile while considering their mode of consciousness as normal and ordinary," and so moderns like Holding stubbornly reject such a possibility only by ignoring the difference between modern and ancient cultures--for contrary to modern hostility to the idea, "to meet and converse with a god or some other celestial being is a phenomenon which was simply not very surprising or unheard of in the Greco-Roman period," and the biology and sociology of altered states of consciousness is sufficient to explain this.[15]
It is certainly impossible to rule out pious fabrication in the case of visions resolving internal disputes, driving doctrinal developments and schisms within the Church. But wouldn't visions responsible for conversion be another story? Not necessarily. Just as the early Russian Marxists endured incredible suffering and gave their lives by the millions, knowing full well their only personal reward was eternal oblivion, all for the sole benefit of advancing history toward a utopian state in the distant future of mankind that they would never experience, a Christian missionary could have been willing to bear all and give all for the chance to advance society toward the same result, and (like the Marxists) for no greater reward than that. In other words, anyone who believed the moral and social vision of Christianity was in itself worthwhile, would probably be willing to suffer and die for that alone, and therefore might be willing to fabricate any pious deception they thought would succeed, if it would help organize people toward that desired future state.[16] In fact, groupthink makes this highly probable, since to sacrifice yourself, and your own interests, for the communal good is then expected.
Of course we can't prove this in any given case. But we can't refute it either. The terrible problem Holding faces is that we have no reason to expect Paul or any other Christian witness to tell us the truth about this: for in a collectivist culture like his, "people are expected to tell others in the in-group what they believe those others want to hear, rather than what they really think" (p. 213) and "individuals are enculturated not to express what they personally think but to say what their...audience needs or wants to hear from their in-group" and so "saying the right thing to maintain harmony is far more important than telling what seems to be the truth to the private self" (p. 214). Only "individualists value being objective in speech," whereas collectivists hold that the communal good is "far more important than 'telling the truth'" (p. 215). In other words, when Paul says he saw Jesus, we can't necessarily take him at his word--because he may merely be speaking in the language his audience expects of him, telling them what they want and need to hear.
In this and many other respects, Holding goes against what Bruce Malina actually argues. Holding claims "changes in persons (such as Paul's conversion) were abnormal," but Malina and Neyrey never quite say this, and Holding presents no evidence in support of it. Maybe Holding can quibble about what "abnormal" means--certainly, stand-out people who move social changes are rare even in individualistic societies. Most people follow. Only a few lead. That is a universal truth of human nature. But changing social position or group affiliation, and thus (by Malina and Neyrey's thesis) changing identity, was relatively common in antiquity. It was especially visible in the act of joining a philosophical school or mystery cult or burial club, in a Gentile becoming a nominal or practicing Jew, in a Jew aligning himself with one particular sect over all others, and in numerous examples of social mobility within the Roman political and military system, including adoption or manumission, and the acquisition of citizenship itself. Even by marrying, a woman entered a new social group, and by migrating (from one region to another, or from country to city), a man entered a new social group. The widely visible process of Hellenization and Romanization itself exemplifies switching from one cultural group to another, which entailed changing language, dress, customs, and values. And affiliating with a new group, in all these cases, entailed changing or altering one's identity according to Malina and Neyrey. So "changes in persons" were normal, not abnormal. Even the specific idea of religious "conversion" was a known phenomenon of the time, and though not typical, neither was it rare.[17]
Likewise, when Holding claims that "the erasure or blurring of these various distinctions...would have made Christianity seem radical and offensive," where is the evidence of such an objection being voiced by any critic of the movement? If the "the erasure or blurring" of social distinctions was so offensive, why does no one mention it among their objections to Christianity? Why do Christians never defend themselves against such a charge? This makes no sense. Unless there was no such charge--and therefore, no such offense (not least because Christians didn't in fact call for the erasure or blurring of social distinctions outside their own group).
There were certainly snobs who looked down on the pretensions of lower class, poorly educated Christians, or those who took great offense at Christians accusing them of vanity, immorality, and ignorance, and attacking their elite culture as corrupt. And critics did find a lot about the Christian message that seemed ridiculous to them. But by and large, the known objections fell into two categories: those based on incorrect beliefs about what the Christians actually did or taught, and those based on the insufficiency of the evidence. "You're actual social values will destroy society" never comes up as an argument.[18] So Holding's claim that it must have is unfounded. Critics did argue that what they mistook as Christian values would destroy society, but that evinces ignorance, not hostility to the actual Christian message--and obviously only those who correctly understood that message, and liked it, converted. As far as our evidence can show, those who rejected Christianity did so either because they didn't really understand it, or there wasn't enough evidence to convince them (which certainly refutes any notion of the evidence being "irrefutable").
In fact, Bruce Malina argues the exact opposite of Holding here. Malina's entire case for the origin and success of the Christian movement rests on his well-proven conclusion that the Christian message was not offensive but attractive--to those who converted.[19] Once again, that it was offensive to its enemies tells us nothing about how it was perceived by those who eventually did convert. And again, consider the Essenes: according to Holding's argument, the Christian message of social equality would have been too offensive to win converts, yet the Essene sect continually found converts by preaching that very same message. How could that be? Malina provides the answer in his many books. In fact, my analysis throughout all the chapters of this critique is based on Malina--which only goes to show that Holding has not made an adequate effort to understand him.
Speaking of slaves and paupers (and we can infer this should include all others who were experiencing some disquieting state of deprivation, regardless of wealth or status), Holding claims--again directly contrary to Malina--that "even from a Western perspective, joining the group did not do anything to alleviate their condition in practical terms." It is hard to fathom how Holding can say this. For it gave them exactly what they wanted: brotherhood, equality, and salvation--in other words: happiness. True, Christianity did not free slaves, but it gave them love, companionship, support, and hope, as well as a place where they could belong and be treated as equals, thus alleviating the misery they otherwise had to still endure--which, of course, became all the easier to endure because it was only temporary, for soon they would enjoy paradise. And so, too, for everyone else whose particular miseries could not be eliminated: for those miseries were nevertheless compensated by benefits they could find nowhere else--imperfectly in the present, but completely in a promised future. And still for many, their miseries were alleviated by the Christian community: paupers could eat, and bury their dead at no charge, and never wanted for shelter or good company; the sick and disturbed found a hope that healed or soothed them; even some of the rich could find escape from a system that had turned against them, or flee the otherwise inescapable miseries of the rat race by retreating into a quiet, simple life of contemplation--as had many a philosopher before them. On all this, see again Chapter 5.
Thus, when Holding argues that "shattering these social distinctions would have been a faux pas of the greatest order--unless you had some powerful cards to play," the fact is: granting real-world and future-world happiness, and an escape from present miseries and future doom, was a powerful card. Powerful enough to persuade thousands among the downtrodden and weary (who far outnumbered the successful and content), thus accounting for the actual rate of Christian expansion. And Holding is incorrect when he argues "it would also not have occurred to such persons as a whole that their situation could be changed, since all that happened was attributed to fate, fortune, or providence." That it is entirely the opposite of what Malina and Neyrey argue. For changing one's situation for the better was exactly what fate, fortune, and providence were expected to do. Indeed, if Holding's claim here were true, why did people seek to improve their social status at all? Once again, why did slaves seek to become freedmen, and their sons to become magistrates? Why did people move to new territories or towns, much less seek the citizenship? Why did soldiers seek to become centurions, or even join the army in the first place? Why did merchants seek to prosper or win greater honors? Why did Celts Romanize themselves? Or Jews Hellenize themselves? Why did anyone join any philosophical school? Why the flow of converts to the Essenes? Or to the Cynics? Or from paganism to Judaism? Why the interest in salvation cults, whereby converts changed their situation for the better in the afterlife?
Holding's argument simply makes no sense at all of any of this behavior--yet this behavior was ubiquitous. Malina explains this perfectly. If only Holding would pay attention. Or simply think things through himself. For how could someone deny that their misery in the present life would be alleviated by joining a Christian brotherhood, when the evidence of miserable people improving the quality of their lives by joining that brotherhood was plain to see? Holding's entire case depends on the assumption that even collectivists could be persuaded by irrefutable evidence, yet here was irrefutable evidence, right before their very eyes. Therefore, Holding's own assumptions refute him. And while thousands upon thousands were continually joining salvation cults, creating new social group identities through rebirthing and initiation ceremonies--all for the security of the mere assurance that their present miseries were but temporary and would eventually be alleviated for all eternity--why would Christianity be any less popular or successful for offering exactly the same thing? Indeed, even more: for unlike most other such cults, Christianity offered "a sample of the goods," a glimpse of the future good life they would receive in the future world, by realizing that vision in Christian practice.
Holding also attempts to argue that "it is an anachronism of Western individualism to suppose that a slave or the poor would have found Christianity's message appealing" on the basis of its "erasure" of social distinctions. But once again, this is exactly the opposite of what Malina and Neyrey say. As already explained earlier, their argument is that a slave or pauper would not claim to find Christianity's message appealing for this reason, but would instead claim (regardless of their actual motives) that their alignment with the Christian group was good for the society as a whole, and that it was necessary to escape a failing social system in which harmony and communal good were forgotten or poorly realized, and to enter instead into a group that was setting things right. The Christian would not see himself (or at least would never portray himself) as rebelling against existing social values (though we can understand him in that way), but as reasserting those very social values, truly realizing them, which the wider society was failing to do. The Christian would not claim he was abandoning one set of values for another, but that the wider society had already abandoned its own values, by succumbing to individualistic greeds and lusts, and therefore it was necessary to join the Christian community in order to reestablish those core values.
That is why Christianity was never really sold as "new" (see again Chapter 4) but as a restoration of what were the original and proper social values intended by God. And that was key: Holding is correct that there would not have been any successful mass movement based on an argument from reason that certain values were proper and should be realized--which is why philosophy was unsuccessful as a social movement for the reform of society. A mass movement for social reform could only appeal to a collectivist mindset by attributing the idea to a universal God, who by that status alone was the supreme master over all, and therefore the supreme representative of the group. In such a way the Christian avoided making any sort of individualistic, idealistic claim to progress, and instead contextualized his movement as coming from a universal lord, and therefore collectivistically appropriate for all to obey. This is exactly what Malina and Neyrey argue. Holding apparently skipped that part.
Finally, Holding tries to claim there would be a double-whammy for Jewish converts, in that "strict observance of the Torah became Judaism's own 'defense mechanism' against Roman prejudices, their way of staying pure of outside infuences" yet Holding admits that in "the era of Antiochus...Jews often capitulated to Hellenism," as in fact did Hellenized Diaspora Jews even in the time of Christ. How can Holding account for that when his theory renders it impossible? And how can the abandonment of Torah relate to the ministry or resurrection of Jesus, when it came after both, and from private revelations, not from any flesh-and-blood Jesus? The fact is, Christ did nothing in life, or by rising from the dead, that gave support to the abandonment of Torah law. Therefore, Holding cannot bootstrap a case for the former by appealing to the latter. For the only evidence supporting that innovation was a subjective vision or dream, long after the resurrection, which no one can confirm or refute as coming from God, and which few today would regard as reliable evidence at all, much less "irrefutable" evidence.
In The Social Gospel of Jesus Bruce Malina argues with persuasive force that the Christian message made perfect sense in its time, to a great many people, and was not only inherently attractive--even to a collectivist society bound by groupthink--but was so skillfully presented as to be certain of success in that context regardless of the evidence. For its popularity was due to its social message far more than anything we would call "evidence" that Jesus rose from the dead. Indeed, the only evidence Malina ever even considers relevant to Christianity's success is the experiences certain missionaries had through altered states of consciousness. Apart from healing and exorcism, nary a miracle ever enters his analysis, much less the miracle of the resurrection itself, beyond its being spiritually "witnessed" by prophets, both ancient and contemporary. It is unacceptable for Holding to use only those points of Malina's analysis that suit him, and to ignore the others that count against him.
Instead, Holding's distorted version of the Malina-Neyrey thesis makes a useless caricature of their theory, one that utterly fails to explain the actual behavior of ancient Jews, Romans, and Greeks, and completely ignores what Malina and Neyrey themselves say about the causes of Christianity's development and success. In actual fact, they argue that Christianity conformed perfectly to the collectivist expectations of its time and society and was successful for that very reason. The need to manipulate groupthink was precisely why Christianity came to be presented as it was: as a revealed command from God Almighty, rather than a rational or empirical argument for practical action. Whether consciously or subconsciously motivated, appealing to visions and communications from God (which included scripture, as his revealed word) was the only way Christianity could succeed in its environment.
Ultimately, Holding has presented no evidence confirming his conclusion over what Malina actually argues himself. And what evidence we do have certainly appears to contradict Holding and support Malina. Therefore, groupthink would have presented no barrier to Christian growth. To the contrary, it would have enhanced that growth, in exactly the same degree, and for exactly the same reason, that it impeded the growth of rational philosophy among the wider population of the time. Supporting this argument is the fact that early Christians repudiated the core values of rational philosophy (including its dependency on objective evidence and reason) and lauded quite a different path to discovering truth (as we shall demonstrate in Chapter 17).
[1] See the evidence and sources cited in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 (especially Note 6).
[2] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.73 (or 5.15 or 5.17 in some modern editions).
[3] Bruce Malina & Jerome Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (1996). Page numbers in parentheses in the body of this chapter refer to this book. Malina's theories of the origin and development of Christianity can be further pursued in: Bruce Malina, The Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective (2000) [on which see Note 19 below], The New Jerusalem in the Revelation of John: The City As Symbol of Life with God (2000), and Christian Origins and Cultural Anthropology: Practical Models for Biblical Interpretation (1986); and Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003) and Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel on John (1998). See also: Bruce Malina & John Pilch, Social Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation (2000).
[4] This was a common device in ancient religion. For example, see: Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 58, 78 (Morialia 374e, 382e-f). Similar evidence of secret doctrines concealed behind public stories can be found in Herodotus, Dionysius, Apuleius, and others.
[6] Rejecting Torah were the Nasaraeans and Ossaeans (cf. Epiphanius, Panarion 18-19; the Nasaraeans are not to be confused with the Nazoreans, which appears to have been the original name for the Christians: Epiphanius, Panarion 29; Jerome, Epistles 112.13; Acts 24:5). We know the names of over thirty Jewish sects in the time of Jesus, which I survey in the forthcoming work: Richard Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb," Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (due in 2005).
[7] As Lucian explains in glorious, autobiographical detail in The Dream (aka Lucian's Career).
[8] As explained in Chapter 1, and by Holding's own favorite scholar: David DeSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (2000): pp. 51-55.
[9] Quotations from the conclusion of Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (2001): pp. 217, 216. So, also, his conclusion to The Social Gospel of Jesus, pp. 141-61. Of later Christian missionary work he references healing, exorcism, and revelation as elements employed to win converts, which we have addressed already in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, and shall address further in Chapter 13.
[10] See his excellent summaries in Bruce Malina & John Pilch, Social Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation (2000): pp. 1-13, 19-24, 41-44. I cannot emphasize more: these three sections are required reading for anyone who intends to engage in biblical interpretation. See also Portraits of Paul (Note 3): pp. 212-18. Note also his priceless introduction to The Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective (2000): pp. 1-13.
[11] The word christianus is formed from a person's name (Christus) and a terminator (-ianus) in a construction typical in antiquity of political or kin affiliation (e.g. the Flaviani are members of the Flavius family, and the Pompeiani were those who supported Pompey against Caesar in the Roman Civil War).
[12] DeSilva (Honor,
Patronage, Kinship) agrees with Malina here (emphasis added):
"intense in-group reinforcement and mutual commitment makes the verdict
of the group, not the verdict of society, the one of ultimate
importance for the individual" (p. 60) which is why the kinship
structure of the Christian Church was "such that perseverance with the
group remains an attractive option even when the pressure to defect
is high" (p. 200) and "affirming one another's worth as God's
children" served to counter "the power of society's resistance with
mutual support, encouragement, and affirmation" (p. 211). In fact,
DeSilva documents all the ways Christians coped with the external
pressures Holding refers to (though exaggerates), yet none
involve appeals to the strength of their evidence. According to
DeSilva, they appealed to evidence of their group's moral superiority, not
evidence of empirical or historical facts (p. 71): Christians were more
just, more compassionate, more selfless, more loyal, more brotherly,
and therefore more godly, which entailed that whatever they
heard from God must indeed have come from God (pp. 199-239). DeSilva
never mentions any empirical evidence for the resurrection or miracles
of Jesus as playing any role in Christianity's success.
On the role of adoption, see Chapter 9. This social function of
adoption is also why Christianity, like many other cults of the day
(see sources in Note 3 in Chapter 2), incorporated a ceremony and
ideology of "rebirth" (through ritual baptism): just as you are born
into a clan or race or geography or culture or social rank, so you
could be reborn into a new social group, a new "family" (hence all
Christians are "adopted" by God and thence called "brothers"). This
ceremony and ideology was so crucial to Christianity's success
precisely because it was the only way to make the transition into a new
social group acceptable to a collectivist society. That is why other
cults employed similar ideas (see Chapter 16).
[13] Philo, On the Contemplative Life 90, Questions and Answers on Genesis 4.74.
[14] A really excellent case for the exact same conclusion has been made by Evan Fales, who can link this with subconscious motivators for ecstatic states (exactly as Malina does, e.g. Note 10 above, e.g. The Social Gospel of Jesus, pp. 129-31). See: Evan Fales, "Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences, Part I: the Case of St. Teresa," Religious Studies 32 (1996): pp. 143-163; "Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences, Part II: The Challenge to Theism," Religious Studies 32 (1996): pp. 297-313; and "Can Science Explain Mysticism?" Religious Studies 35 (1999): pp. 213-227. See also: Alan Segal, "Religiously-Interpreted States of Consciousness: Prophecy, Self-Consciousness, and Life After Death," Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (2004): pp. 322-50; and I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (1989).
[15] Bruce Malina & John Pilch, Social
Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation 2000: pp. 5, 43.
Malina explains all the appearances of Jesus in terms of
altered states of consciousness, i.e. visions (besides material
in Note 10, see: Bruce Malina & Richard
Rohrbaugh, Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003): pp. 140,
369, 398-99; and Social-Science
Commentary on the Gospel on John (1998): pp. 282-85).
In fact, schizotypal
personalities would be the most prone to hallucinations guided by such
a subconscious mechanism, and therefore the most likely to gravitate
into the role of "prophet" in their society (as Malina himself argues:
see Note 10 above). Paul, for example, so
often refers to hearing voices in his letters (often quoting God's
voice verbatim) it is quite possible he was just such a person. Indeed,
the "Angel of Satan" that Paul calls a "thorn in his flesh" may have
been an evil voice he often heard and had to suppress (2 Corinthians
12:6-10). But there are many opportunities even for normal people to
enter the same kind of hallucinatory state, especially in religious and
vision-oriented cultures: from fasting, fatigue, sleep deprivation, and
other ascetic behaviors (such as extended periods of mantric prayer),
to ordinary dreaming and hypnagogia (a hallucinatory state experienced
by normal people between waking and sleep).
On schizotypal personality (a
relatively common form of non-debilitating schizophrenia) and the other
factors above, see sources cited in Note
7 in Chapter 8.
[16] I have discussed such motives before (as a subconscious cause of actual visionary experiences) in: Richard Carrier, "I. Paul's Vision: Causes and Motives," in Chapter 3 of "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story" (5th ed., 2004). I elaborate the social situation Christianity responded to in more formal detail in: Richard Carrier, "Whence Christianity? A Meta-Theory for the Origins of Christianity," Journal of Higher Criticism 11.1 (Spring 2004).
[17] This was well-documented long ago in the still-masterful study by A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (1933). On social mobility in general, the relevant facts can be gleaned from: Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations: 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 and Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2nd ed. (1998).
[18] See the concise yet thorough summary of anti-Christian polemic before and during the time of Celsus provided in: R. J. Hoffmann, Celsus on the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the Christians (1987): pp. 5-49. And see, for example: Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 3 (note, also, how Athenagoras assumes the Emperor would approve of actual Christian values, ibid. 11-12 & 31-32, and does not think it necessary to defend them; so, too, Justin Martyr, Apology 1.4-7 & 1.16-17). Only once does Celsus use an argument that Christianity would be bad for society if universally adopted, but not because of social equality, but only because their pacifism would prevent them winning wars! (Origen, Against Celsus 8.69-70) Even then, Origen responds that Celsus has misunderstood Christian teaching.
[19] The case is excellently made in: Bruce
Malina, The
Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective
(2000). I cannot recommend this book more. It is essential reading on
the subject of Christianity's origin and success.
| 11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 11.4. |
No Evidence Women Were a
Problem Testimony of Women Was Trusted Why Mark Places Women at the Empty Tomb Conclusion |
Now James Holding argues that "if Christianity wanted to succeed, it should never have admitted that women were the first to discover the empty tomb or the first to see the Risen Jesus" nor should it have "admitted that women were main supporters" or "lead converts." But why should that be a problem? Holding claims it would be a "stigma" that Christianity would have to overcome. But he never makes any sense of this argument. There is no evidence Christians ever used any female testimony to promote the gospel--as Holding himself admits when he cites 1 Corinthians 15: the only evidence Christians actually appealed to when winning converts was the eyewitness testimony of men. Therefore, there would not have been any stigma to overcome, even if having women as witnesses would have presented one. And a closer look at the evidence does not support Holding's contention that having women as witnesses was embarrassing, even if Christians had mentioned the fact when persuading others to convert.
To begin with, not only were the Gospels written long after Paul's day (hence after Christianity was already spread across the Empire), but in the first hundred years as far as we can tell they were only available to mature converts. In that period there is no evidence anyone else heard of them or was able to read them, or that any specific content from them was used to convert anyone, beyond what is said by Paul in his letters, and the Christian missionaries in Acts, none of whom ever mention women in their sermons. Thus, already Holding cannot establish that there was a stigma to overcome, even if the involvement of women was a stigma. And once converted, no one would have left in disgust after hearing that women were involved. Holding presents no evidence anyone did. And in truth, the involvement of women in Christianity's history was no greater than in the history of Israel, from Mariam to Sarah to Ruth--and let's not forget the Prophets Deborah (Judges 4) or Huldah (2 Kings 22:12-20), or Rachel the Mother of All Israel (Genesis 29-35). Yet Jews did not abandon their faith in disgust, because women took such a prominent role in their history, nor did Gentiles cease supporting or converting to Judaism at this news, either. So Holding's argument is a wash even from the start.
Secondly, women were a major target of the Christian mission. Historians agree that "many more females than males were converting to Christianity in its first centuries" and recognize "Christianity's appeal to women as an important factor in its success." Indeed, "in the first Christian centuries the new belief system used women and their position in the family/household environment to transmit and reproduce itself."[1] This was true even before Jesus died--as Holding himself admits when he cites Luke 8:3 (and to that we could add numerous other examples: e.g. Mark 15:40-41)--and certainly after, as Holding again admits by citing Acts 16:14-15 (and again to that we could add numerous other examples: e.g. Acts 17:4, 17:12).
Holding's choice of Acts 16 is particularly apt, since it reveals a well-known truth about the early Church: it depended on the largesse and generosity of wealthy or revered female members. Paul openly admits this in Romans 16:1-4 (as well as 16:6 & 16:12), and in 1 Corinthians 16:19 and Colossians 4:15 Paul reveals that women of means were providing housing and meeting space for the Church. Would incorporating women into the story of the movement's creation reduce or increase conversion by such women? Obviously, if anything, the latter. Indeed, it would have been a matter of honor to appease these women who risked their lives and property, deserving such prominent mention and praise from Paul, by placing women in the story deliberately, especially if the place they held was not important to establishing the truth of the gospel itself and thus would do no harm. And that is exactly the place women take in the story: not a single item of the gospel Paul preached depended on these women, and their role is consistently secondary and subservient. Christian women in the written Gospels all behave exactly as women ought to in the eyes of the Mediterranean cultures of the time (or otherwise got what they deserved, e.g. Acts 5:1-11). And no stigma could ever result from depicting women behaving exactly as men expected them to!
Holding might perhaps insist that having women as prominent converts and members of the Church would be embarrassing. But why would that be? Women were prominent in numerous other cults of the day. A great many priesthoods, some holding considerable prestige, were open only to women. Indeed, women were routinely worshipped: for there were numerous female deities who were widely revered. That caused no embarrassment. Nor did the admission of women into schools and philosophical sects--and by the Roman period, every major philosophical school admitted women, and we know the names of several prominent female philosophers. The Jews also held many women in respect, even in their own scriptures (as noted above), and as wealthy donors to synagogues, while some sects admitted women into worship exactly as the Christians did.[2] Even though many bigots certainly had a problem with this, there is no evidence any actual convert to Christianity had a problem with it, especially since men still controlled the Church, women in the Church still behaved as they were expected to, and no element of the gospel "by which all are saved" depended on the testimony of women (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).
Nevertheless, Holding argues that "a woman's place was in the home, not the witness stand," but that has no relevance to his argument. Just because it was unseemly for a woman to appear in court does not mean her testimony was not trusted. Confusing the two is a popular error, made by numerous Christian apologists. The fact of the matter is, the evidence proves quite the opposite of Holding's assumption that "women were regarded as 'bad witnesses' in the ancient world." The evidence does not support such a blanket distrust of female testimony, but shows instead that female testimony was often trusted, even in a court of law.
Of course, it is already improper to argue from courtroom decorum to everyday credibility. The Gospels are not court documents. They are, at best (in the case of Luke) histories. Not the same thing. And when it came to this context, of using women as sources for historical claims, there is no evidence of distrust--any more for women than for men of comparable status or condition.[3] Josephus, for example, has his entire account of the heroic sacrifices at Gamala and Masada from no other source than two women in each case--yet shows no embarrassment at this. Josephus often forgets to tell us who his sources were for a particular story, yet here he goes out of his way to report his only sources were women. That makes no sense, unless Josephus regarded his sources as quite respectable, and therefore actually worth mentioning, which is quite the opposite of a woman's testimony being an embarrassment.[4] Of course, as a snob himself, Josephus may have scoffed at the testimony of humble women, just as he would that of humble men, but such elite snobbery was more widely disdained than emulated (as we shall see in Chapter 12, and have already seen in Chapter 2).
Otherwise, even the Gospel of John attests to how readily the testimony of a woman could be accepted: "many of the Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus because of the account given by the woman who testified" to his psychic powers (4:39). Of course, when a pretentious bigot harrumphed at such a thing, he could always invent male testimony to replace a woman's, exactly as later Christians did.[5] But when Luke (and Luke alone) has the men doubt the women because what they said sounded "silly," we cannot assume this was because they were women, rather than because their story was in itself incredible--if men had reported it, they may have been thought just as silly. Already for dramatic reasons it was necessary to paint the disciples as both ignorant and hopeless, in order to make their return to the faith all the more "miraculous" and therefore all the more persuasive and glorious. But since none of this is in Mark or Matthew, Luke is probably contriving here: at best, he is appealing to elite skeptical values (and snobbery) by inventing the kind of evidence they expected. There was no need of this kind of evidence to persuade the masses (as we saw in Chapter 7 and will see again in Chapter 13).
Finally, since there was (then as now) a lower standard for history than for law, the fact that a woman's testimony was accepted even in law refutes Holding's argument a fortiori. Holding quotes Malina and Neyrey, who claim that, "In general Greek and Roman courts excluded as witnesses women, slaves, and children" and "according to Josephus" women "are unacceptable because of the 'levity and temerity of their sex'."[6] But Malina and Neyrey made a serious mistake here (which in turn betrays the fact that Holding is ill qualified to assess the value of his sources for ancient history). In support of their claim, not only do they cite scholarship that is literally a hundred years old (!), but two of their three sources pertain only to Classical Athens--whose conclusions therefore do not apply even to the Hellenistic, much less the Roman era--while their third source doesn't prove what Malina and Neyrey claim, but something quite different--namely, that it was unseemly to compel a respectable woman to appear in court, or to let a woman act as a lawyer, but the very same evidence proves a woman's testimony was sought in court and was as valid as any man's, and that in fact many women did engage themselves as lawyers, and even won their cases![7]
For example, in his trial against Verres, Cicero calls several women as witnesses, and shames Verres for having forced him to compel respectable women to appear in court to testify against him.[8] His objection is clearly against disturbing women of station, and the shock of women appearing and speaking in public in a traditionally male venue, not against trusting a woman's testimony--to the contrary, Cicero certainly trusts them, that's why he is calling them to testify! We even have actual court documents from the time of Jesus and Paul that include summaries of female testimony given at trial.[9] Examples aside, Roman law was quite explicit in permitting women to swear oaths and testify in court.[10] In fact, they could even represent themselves at trial, and until the time of Christ could advocate on behalf of others as well. Valerius Maximus lists several famous cases where women took others to trial, spoke in court, stood as witnesses, and won--indeed, he titles an entire chapter: "Women Who Conducted Their Own Cases before Magistrates on Their Own Behalf or Others."[11] This was regarded as scandalous, of course, necessitating the standardized Praetorian Edict (issued every year) to include a prohibition against women representing others in court (beginning sometime in the first century A.D.)--yet even this expressly allowed women to continue representing themselves, as defendants or (in most civil and even some criminal cases) as prosecutors.[12]
So the claim that women could not testify in Greco-Roman courts is completely false. In every instance, the situation is clear: what men objected to was women taking the role of men in traditionally male spheres, not women being trusted as witnesses. That is why the prohibition created in the 1st century (which did not become permanent for yet another hundred years) only sought to ban women from acting as lawyers, but not women testifying in court, or even defending themselves or prosecuting their own cases. And that is why Cicero regards it as shameful to have to summon proper ladies from the quiet of their homes to make his case, but not to have women giving evidence, or trusting what they say. So it was at least mildly shocking for a woman to speak in public, or appear in court. But that had nothing to do with whether she was believed when she did.
Even the one exception proves the rule: women were not qualified to be witnesses to a will under Roman Law, but not because they weren't trusted--rather, because under the law you could not be a witness to a legal action that you were not yourself qualified to undertake. Since a woman could not attest her own will, she could not attest anyone else's will. But even this was not set in stone: Augustus established criteria by which a woman could gain legal emancipation, and be free of any guardian. Since emancipated women could then make their own wills, they probably could have testified to the wills of others, too.[13] Moreover, a woman's incapacity to write her own will had nothing to do with her incompetence as an eyewitness, but with the perception that a woman was subject to bad judgment in making decisions. Once again these are different things.
So we must distinguish not only between objections to a woman's reliability as a witness, and objections to a woman appearing in a courtroom, but also between trusting a woman to testify to what she has seen, and trusting a woman to use good judgment in deciding what to believe from hearsay or persuasion. These are not at all the same thing. Hence evidence of scoffing at the latter (which one can certainly find in antiquity) cannot be used as evidence of scoffing at the former. Yet the standard Roman manual on legal principles and procedures dispels even that judgment:
That which is commonly believed, namely that women are very liable to be deceived owing to their instability of judgment and that therefore in fairness they should be governed by the authority of guardians, seems more specious than true.[14]
Gaius then catalogues evidence that women were perfectly competent, and could even sue their own legal guardians. Even so, we can find many attacks on women as gullible dupes. But gender by itself never comes up as grounds for distrusting what a woman says she saw.
So much for the Gentile perception of women as witnesses. What about the Jews? Palestinian Jews were certainly more hostile to women than their more enlightened Gentile peers, but Hellenized Jews are another story--and even in Palestine, the snobbery of the Pharisees found plenty of opposition from other sects, and the masses. So caution is in order when drawing conclusions from Pharisaic law--since Christianity banked its popularity on opposing that very law. Christianity preached to those who thought this very law, which exceeded the Torah by adding the opinions of men to the commands of God, was the problem, not the solution, and therefore it didn't matter if Christianity included elements in its stories that the more snobbish of Pharisees would have objected to. To the contrary, thumbing their noses at the corrupt Pharisees and their oppressive laws was exactly the Christian strategy for winning recruits from like-minded Jews among the disgruntled masses.[15]
Nevertheless, even the Pharisees did not regard the testimony of women as inherently untrustworthy--to the contrary, even under their stuffy law a woman's testimony could carry the same force as a man's. Rather, just as for the Romans, it was courtroom propriety most Jews were concerned with. All statements against women appearing in court were based on perceptions of how a woman ought to behave, and on the need to separate male and female social spheres--it was not based on disdain for their competence to testify. In fact, Torah Law contains no prohibition against women even appearing in court (and most Jewish sects rejected all law but Torah), while Mishnah Law specifically did not include women in its list of those unqualified to testify (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 3:3), and even under Talmudic interpretation "women are admitted as competent witnesses in matters within their particular knowledge" especially "for purposes of identification" and "in matters outside the realm of strict law."[16] In fact, since we find no blanket distrust of female testimony in pre-Talmudic legal sources, what we find in the much-later Talmudic record may not have been common in the 1st century.
As it happens, historian Judith Wegner finds exactly the opposite of what Holding claims: just as in Roman law, "the Mishnah's framers grant women the right to bring and defend a lawsuit" and "the sages acknowledge both a woman's mental competence and the reliance to be placed on her oath and testimony" and their "assessment of a woman's ability to give a truthful and accurate account reflects their recognition that her mental and moral capacities resemble those of a man." Though, as for Romans and Greeks, it was unseemly for a woman to appear and speak in public, her testimony could be delivered by a male representative. That is why "the list of intrinsically incompetent witnesses makes no mention of women" and there are many cases on record where the testimony of women was accepted, even under oath.[17] Rather, most objections to a woman testifying were based on principles of modesty, not a lack of trust. As the Talmud puts it (b.Gittin 46a), some Rabbis held that "a man should not mind the indignity of his wife appearing in court" while others held that "a man is averse to subjecting his wife to the indignity of appearing in court." Obviously, this debate only makes sense if was legal for a woman to appear in court.
In actual fact, the Rabbis disputed such things as whether a single woman's testimony was enough in certain cases--since usually the testimony of even two men was required--but even here the Rabbis were evenly split: some said a single woman's testimony in certain circumstances was trusted, while some said she needed a second witness (man or woman) to corroborate her account, as would be expected even of a man.[18] Clearly such a debate makes no sense unless the testimony of women was otherwise allowed in court under the same rules as men's. In a similar vein, the Talmud says:
Wherever the Torah accepts the testimony of one witness, it follows the majority of persons, so that two women against one man is identical with two men against one man. But there are some who declare that wherever a competent witness came first, even a hundred women are regarded as equal to one witness...but when it is a woman who came first, then two women against one man is like half-and-half.[19]
This does mean a woman's testimony was valued less than a man's, but only by some and even then only when it contradicts a man's testimony (especially testimony already taken before any women came forward). Otherwise, even these more bigoted rabbis accepted a woman's testimony in all other respects, and apart from those few who took such a view, everyone else held a woman's testimony as equal to a man's and even capable of refuting a man's testimony under the same rules applied to men. This at least was so for every case where the Torah allowed the testimony of a single witness, as would be sufficient in any case outside a court of law--like testifying to finding a tomb empty (since this did not involve condemning someone who claimed not to be guilty of a crime, which was the reason for requiring two witnesses, to outweigh the contrary testimony of the suspect who, as his own witness, denied the charges).
The only evidence authors like N.T. Wright offer to the contrary fails to relate to the issue of trusting testimony in court, and this is a common problem with Christian apologists: they often don't check their sources, or the context, before proclaiming something that suits their agenda. Look at Wright's only evidence:
(1) Mishnah, Shabuot 4:1 only pertains to a special kind of oath established by Leviticus 5:1. For women can take every other kind of oath, even those taken at trial (Mishnah, Shabuot 3:10-11, 5:1, 7:7-8). But in this one limited case, to take the "oath of testimony" is to swear that you know of no sin committed by a particular person (ibid. 4:3-13), in order to fulfill the law that if you know of a sin they have committed and don't report it, you are guilty (like an accomplice after the fact). Because of that law, party A can demand party B take an oath that party B has not violated Leviticus 5:1 with respect to party A, therefore this would be testimony that party A has not sinned (and party B then becomes liable if they conceal a sin they know party A committed). For whatever reason, you could not compel a woman to take such an oath. This does not mean a woman's testimony to something she did see was not admissible, but that a woman could not swear to have not seen a particular person sin over a given period of time. Since "those who are not suitable" to bear witness in court are distinguished as a separate category of those disqualified from an "oath of testimony," clearly the reason women were exempt from the law had nothing to do with being unsuitable. More probably it had to do with the assumption that women (who ought to be good little girls and stay in the home and not gossip) could not be expected to have sufficient direct knowledge of their neighbor's affairs. Otherwise, in all other criminal matters the Shabuot says a woman's oaths and testimony are admissible. Indeed, in the Talmudic commentary on this law, the Rabbis ask "do only men and not women come to court?" as if it was surprising that women didn't also come to court, and the response is only that "it is not customary for a woman to go to court," not that they did not or could not, nor anything to do with the value of their testimony.[20]
(2) Mishnah, Rosh Hashshanah 1:8c says of various scofflaws that "all evidence that cannot be received from a woman cannot be received from" these scofflaws either, with regard to testifying that the new moon was seen, which implies (at the very least) that women were not qualified to testify to the moon being new (i.e. fully dark yet not in eclipse). Since witnessing the new moon called you to the duty of traveling to the Temple to report it, even to the point of violating the Sabbath if necessary (ibid. 1:3-2:3), this entailed taking a public religious role (including remaining in the Temple for a whole day and sharing a communal meal with men: ibid. 2:5), which all no doubt entailed a boldness that was unseemly for a woman. At the same time, witnesses were interrogated on minute astronomical details (2:6-2:8) suggesting that significant technical knowledge was necessary for your testimony to count, knowledge a woman was not supposed to have, and certainly was not expected to have.[21] Since the evidence that women could testify in court on non-technical matters is clear and unambiguous, the law regarding new moons has no relevance to the role women played as witnesses in early Christian tradition. In fact, nowhere does the Talmud ever say women were disqualified because they weren't trusted. Even where the Talmud says women were sometimes disqualified as witnesses, it never says why--except in one case: there, the rabbis conclude that a woman's testimony is to be trusted when she actually saw what she testifies to, but is not to be trusted when she only inferred that something had happened (b.Yebamot 114b-115a), which fits the view already noted above that, for many, a woman's judgment was inherently questionable, but not her honesty.
(3) The Babylonian Talmud has two passages in the Baba Kama (88a, 114b) concerning an unusual case when a woman and a child testified to the origin of a swarm of bees. Rabbi Johanan ben Broka (early 2nd century A.D.) says their testimony was trusted, and asks "Are, then, a woman and a minor qualified to be witnesses?" To which Rabbi Jehudah responds: "This case was when they ran after it, and the two in question had showed him the place where the swarm of bees was coming from, but they were not called as witnesses." The actual question, therefore, is not answered, but is dismissed as irrelevant, since the case in question was not a trial (and yet, notably, their testimony was trusted). Wright and others take the context to imply, however, that a woman's testimony was not admitted in a court of law. But that does not follow. The question pertains to the testimony of two witnesses, one of whom is a minor, and comes from a specific case involving a woman and a boy. Since normally two witnesses are required in a court of law--even when they are men--Johanan is asking whether a child (normally disqualified) can count as a second witness, especially in conjunction with a woman (probably a relative, and the testimony of mutual relatives is sometimes not admitted). So nothing can be deduced from this as to any general legal standing of women as witnesses in a court of law. To the contrary, only a few sections earlier in the Baba Kama there is a discussion of what to do when a woman is summoned to court and does not appear (she is charged with contempt of court).
That exhausts all the evidence N. T. Wright produces, yet clearly these passages do not establish any disqualification for female testimony in general or in any way relevant to early Christianity. And against these vague and irrelevant passages we have the clear and relevant passages from the Mishnah and Talmud proving women were qualified as legal witnesses. Though there is evidence in the Talmud (and only the Talmud) that some Rabbis did not permit the testimony of women in a court of law in some cases, that same evidence proves that a woman's testimony was nevertheless often permitted and routinely trusted.
What about Malina & Neyrey's quotation of Josephus? In fact, that confirms everything I have been saying. When Josephus summarizes the law of testimony, he says two or more witnesses were always required to establish a fact at trial, then he says "there shall be no testimony of women, because of the levity and boldness of their gender," and then he says slaves should not be allowed to testify because they were likely to lie.[22] It is notable that this is not the reason he gives for excluding women, and therefore he does not mean women were untrustworthy. Unlike slaves, Josephus is saying that women should not appear in court simply because it was unseemly--essentially saying that women were liable to giggle or scold or otherwise violate the proper demeanor of the court. Even this passage from Josephus therefore offers no support to the view that the testimony of women was not trusted. As we saw above, Josephus certainly trusted the testimony of women. And the Talmudic and Mishnaic evidence confirms their testimony was trusted in court as well, even as much as a man's--just as it confirms the view that women appearing in a courtroom was improper. But that is not the situation in the Gospels.
Holding finally argues that "it would have been much easier to put the finding of the tomb on the male disciples," if there really was a discovery of an empty tomb.[23] But as we've seen, there would not have been any great need to do this if the drama of the narrative made putting women in the scene more appropriate to the message intended by the author, and this addition also increased its appeal to female converts. In other words, Holding's premise is false if creating evidence of a historical fact is not what Mark was doing. And there is sufficient evidence to believe that, in fact, inventing a witness is not what Mark was doing. Subsequent authors (like Luke) apparently believed he was reporting a historical fact, but I do not believe Mark thought he was.[24]
The first and foremost reason Mark has women first at the tomb, and first to learn the truth, is to fulfill the very gospel itself, that "the least shall be first" (Mark 9:35 & 10:31). That is the whole point, not only of this particular narrative, but of the entire gospel. And Mark declares from the outset that he is writing a Gospel, not a History (Mark 1:1). Notice how the parables of Jesus are chock full of this theme, of "reversing" the readers expectations.[25] And notice how Mark records with definite approval Christ's program of concealing the truth behind parables:
"The Mystery of the Kingdom of God is given to you,
but to those who are outside everything is produced in parables, so
that when they watch they may see but not know, and when they listen
they may hear but not understand, for otherwise they might turn
themselves around and be forgiven" ...
And with many parables like these he told them the word as they were
able to hear it, and he did not speak to them without a parable, but in
private he explained everything to his own disciples.[26]
This is a clue to the reader: the truth is being concealed behind parables, and only explained to insiders, in secret. One may balk at the notion, but Holding cannot prove this is not what Mark was doing with his entire Gospel. And since the central theme of the gospel was reversal of expectation, contrary to Holding's assumption, having women first at the tomb is exactly what Mark would invent, to carry through the gospel message that the least shall be first.
In other words, the empty tomb story may well be a parable all in itself, whose meaning does not lie in whether it actually happened, but in what the narrative teaches you. And the fact is, Mark's Gospel is full of similar and quite blatant reversals of expectation: James and John, who ask to sit at the right and left of Jesus in his glory (10:35-40), are replaced by two thieves at his crucifixion (15:27); Simon Peter, Christ's right-hand man who was told he had to "deny himself and take up his cross and follow" (8:34), is replaced by Simon of Cyrene (a foreigner, the exact opposite of a disciple--and from the opposite side of Egypt no less, a Jewish symbol of death) when it comes time to truly bear that cross (15:21); instead of his family as would be expected, his enemies come to bury him (15:43); even Pilate's expectation that Jesus should still be alive is confounded (15:44); and contrary to all expectation, Christ's own people, the Jews, mock their own savior (15:29-32), while it is a Gentile officer of Rome who recognizes his divinity (15:39). Thus, it is simply more of the same when Mark decides to say it was the male disciples who abandon Christ (14:50 and 66-72 vs. 14:31), while it was the "least" among them, mere lowly women, who attend his death and burial, who truly "followed him," and continue to seek him thereafter (15:40-41, 15:47, 16:1). Indeed, Mark ends his Gospel with the mother of all reversals, with the women fleeing in fear and silence, and not delivering the good news (16:8), the exact opposite of the "good news" of the "voice crying out" of the "messenger who will prepare our way" with which Mark began his Gospel (1:1-3). All of this sure looks like literary license to me. It is brilliant fiction, deeply meaningful. But fiction nonetheless.[27]
Indeed, in such a context, regardless of the actual facts, in Mark's narrative the tomb has to be empty, in order to confound the expectations of the reader, just as a foreign Simon must carry the cross instead of Peter, a Gentile must acknowledge Christ's divinity instead of the Jews, a Sanhedrist must bury the body, and women must be the first to hear the Good News. But there is another reason to suspect the women are an invention: their names. Salomê is the feminine of Solomon, an obvious symbol of supreme wisdom and kingship (and the builder of the Temple), and wisdom was often portrayed as a feminine being (Sophia). Mariam (Mary) is the sister of Moses and Aaron (Micah 6:4, 1 Chronicles 6:3, Numbers 26:59) who led the Hebrew women in song after their deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 15:20-21), which represented the Land of the Dead in Jewish symbolism. Magdala is a variant Hellenization of "tower," the same exact word transcribed as Magdôlon in the Septuagint, in other words the biblical Migdol, representing the borders of Egypt (and hence of Death), near which the Hebrews must camp to lure the Pharoah's army to their doom (Exodus 13:1-4), after which "they passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness three days" (Numbers 33:7-8) on their way to the "twelve springs and seventy palm trees" of Elim (33:9). "Mariam the mother of Jacob" is an obvious reference to the Jacob, better known as (you guessed it) Israel. So the two Mary's represent Egypt and Israel, and (on the one side) the borders of the Promised Land and the defeat of death needed to get across, and (on the other side) the founding of a new nation, a New Israel--both linked as sisters of Moses (the first savior) and Aaron (the first High Priest), and mediated by Wisdom, manifested here as a symbol of supreme kingship and the building of the Temple.[28]
This seems a highly improbable coincidence, there being exactly three women, with exactly these names, which evoke exactly those scriptures, and triangulate in exactly this way, to convey an incredibly convenient message about the gospel and the status of Christ as Messiah and miraculous victor over the Land of the Dead. What are the odds? Maybe you are not as impressed by all these coincidences as I am. But you don't have to agree with my theory here. The only thing that matters is that it cannot be ruled out--there is evidence for it (Mark expressly approves of concealing deep symbolic meanings behind narratives, and the names and events of his narrative fit the deeper meaning of the gospel with surprising convenience), and no evidence against it. It therefore provides an available motive to invent a visit to the tomb by women, especially these particular women, which forbids us from assuming the Christians would instead have invented a visit by men first. We cannot demonstrate that they would. For inventing a visit by women carried even more meaningful symbolism, and was even more in accordance with the gospel message itself.
Ultimately, Holding has not demonstrated that the admission of women into the Church or its core traditions presented any obstacle to its actual scale of growth in its first hundred years or beyond. His claim that women were widely devalued as witnesses is false. Both Gentiles and Jews trusted the testimony of women, both in and outside the courtroom. And his assumption that Christians would sooner have invented a male visit to the empty tomb is unjustified: such a place in the story had no bearing on the gospel itself, every element of which was based on the testimony of men; the prominent and important role women played in the success of the Church, especially women of means and station, would have strongly urged including women in the story, especially when their role was not crucial and conformed perfectly to the expectations of their society; and Mark had strong and evident reasons to specifically place women and not men in his empty tomb story--which is the first anyone appears to have heard of an empty tomb, much less any role of women as witnesses, long after the Church had already spread throughout the Empire. Finally, there is no evidence Mark's gospel, or the story it contains, was ever used to win converts in the first hundred years, and no evidence either was widely known even within the Church itself in that period. Ditto for Luke-Acts. Therefore, there is no sense in which having women in the Church or its founding myths would have presented any difficulty for the original Christian mission.
[1] Gillian Cloke, "Women, Worship, and Mission: The Church in the Household," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 422-51 (quotes from p. 423). For more on women in the early expansion of the Christian church, see Chapter 18. Note, also, that women could even hold the office of deacon within the Church (Rom. 16:1; 1 Tim. 3:1-13, esp. 3:11; and Pliny, Letters 10.96.8).
[2] See: Richard Carrier, "What about Women?" in Reply to McFall on Jesus as a Philosopher (2004) and the sources cited there, as well as: "Women in Cult" and "Women in Philosophy," The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): pp. 1624-26. For a Jewish sect that admitted women: Philo, On the Contemplative Life 90, Questions and Answers on Genesis 4.74 (Philo in fact praises this, rather than frowning on it).
[3] For example, the oft-cited passage from Origen, Contra Celsum 2.59-60, does not show Celsus objecting to Mary's testimony because she was a woman, but because she was not of sound mind, hence Celsus dismisses the testimony of Thomas and Peter on exactly the same grounds.
[4] Masada: Josephus, Jewish War 7.399. Josephus lists their qualifications the same way he would for a male witness: one is an elder, the other is famously sensible and well-educated with respectable connections (we can assume the five children who survived would not have made useful witnesses even if they were trusted). Gamala: Josephus, Jewish War 4.81. The qualifications of the two women in this case: they were the granddaughters of an eminent man.
[5] John 20 and Luke 23-24 both add multiple male witnesses to the empty tomb, a fact not attested by Mark or Matthew. They probably preserve the female witness because Mark had already established the tradition, and they could not deviate too far from that. But it was only when the resurrection belief changed into a rising of the flesh that the empty tomb would become an important piece of evidence and thus only then that male corroboration became necessary. See Note 11 in Chapter 3.
[6] Bruce Malina & Jerome Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (1996): p. 82.
[7] The only three sources they cite are: Robert Bonner & Hansen Harrell, Evidence in Athenian Courts and Public Arbitration in Athenian Law (1905): pp. 27-28, 32; Robert Bonner, Lawyers and Litigants in Ancient Athens: The Genesis of the Legal Profession (1927 - which makes this their most recent source, at 75 years obsolete!): pp. 185-88; and A. Greenidge, The Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time (1901): pp. 482-83.
[8] Cicero, Against Verres 2.1.94 (the testimony of women is approved again at 4.99).
[9] A papyrus from 49 A.D., copied from an official government archive, shows that a woman's testimony was entered into the court record and a sworn affidavit with her signature was accepted, and a ruling made that relied on both: Jane Rowlandson, ed., Women & Society in Greek & Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (1998): § 91 (pp. 117-18) = P.Oxy. 1.37 (Egypt, 49 A.D.). A papyrus from 10 B.C. shows a woman was able to testify in a suit against her husband for divorce on a charge of wife-beating and squandering her dowry: ibid. § 257 (pp. 324-25) = BGU 4.1105 (Alexandria, 10 B.C.).
[10] Digest of Justinian 12.2.3.3, 12.2.26.pr., 12.2.28.7, 12.2.30.2.
[11] Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 3.8.6, 8.2.3, and 8.3.
[12] Digest of Justinian 3.1.1.5 (cf. 3.1.2-3). Section 48.2 only prevents women from directly bringing criminal cases to court (and even then it lists several exceptions--and unlike today, many crimes--like theft--produced civil rather than criminal charges anyway). See discussion, with numerous examples of women acting as lawyers in Roman courts during the Republic: Richard Bauman, "Women in Law," Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (1992): pp. 45-52.
[13] See the relevant entries regarding women, incapacity, testamentum, testimonium, etc., in: Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (1953).
[14] Gaius, Institutes 1.190-91.
[15] Like many other Jewish sects, Christianity sold itself as specifically anti-Pharisee: Mk. 2:18, 2:23-28, 3:1-6, 7:1-23, 10:2-12; Mt. 12:1-45, 15:1-14, 19:3-12, 23:1-36; Lk. 5:30-33, 6:1-11, 11:37-54, 14:1-6, 16:14-18, 18:9-14; Jn. 5:9-16; etc. I have argued in several chapters already the general theme of Christianity opposing the corrupt elite and advocating for the common man.
[16] From: "Witness," Encyclopedia Judaica (1971), vol. 16: p. 586.
[17] Judith Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (1988): pp. 119-127. Even the lengthy Talmudic lists and discussions of disqualified witnesses never mention women (e.g. b.Sanhedrin 24b-27b), except one "anonymous" opinion that opposed allowing women to testify in capital cases (ibid. 27b; perhaps opposing their testimony in other cases, too, though none are specified). I suspect this may have been because this gave women an unacceptable power over men (since her testimony could then condemn a man to death) or gave her a male role in society (if condemning anyone to death was seen as a man's job). At any rate, the Talmud does not say what the reason was, much less that it was because a woman couldn't be trusted.
[18] On the requirement of two witnesses (regardless of gender): Deut. 17:6, 19:15; Mt. 18:16, 26:60; Jn. 8:17; 1 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28. On women testifying in court, see: Mishnha, Ketubot 1:6-7, 2:5-6; Yebamot 15:1-16:7; Eduyyot 3:6; and also: Talmud, b.Kiddushin 65b, b.Yebamot 88b, b.Sotah 31b (and Mishnah, Sotah 6).
[19] Talmud, b.Mas. Sotah 31b.
[20] Talmud, b.Shebuot 30a. As before, the objection is to propriety, not trustworthiness: "Do not women ever come to court?" to which the rabbis reply, "You can say it is not usual for a woman [to do this], because 'all glorious is the king's daughter within' [Ps. 45:14]," in other words, it was unseemly for a woman to leave the home and appear in court--but it was still legal. Hence the next section (30b) discusses a case where a woman appeared in court.
[21] This must be the law Holding had in mind when he declared: "Women were so untrustworthy that they were not even allowed to be witnesses to the rising of the moon as a sign of the beginning of festivals!" But the law in no way says the reason for disqualification was that women were untrustworthy, nor is the context just any rising of the moon, but a very technical observation of lunar phase (after all, when exactly is the moon officially "new"?), and not just any legal testimony, but a very particular religious duty that would have been improper for a woman to undertake.
[22] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4.219.
[23] Again Holding's argument requires the presumption that Christians were wanton liars who only told the truth when they couldn't get away with it. But if we assume instead that Christians were honest, even at best all this argument could achieve is evidence that there was an empty tomb, which would not establish that there was a resurrection. See, for example: Richard Carrier, "Jewish Law, the Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day" (2002), which will be significantly updated in: Richard Carrier, "The Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law," in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave (Prometheus: 2005); and see: Richard Carrier, "The Guarded Tomb of Jesus and Daniel in the Lion's Den: An Argument for the Plausibility of Theft," Journal of Higher Criticism 8.2 (Fall 2001): pp. 304-18, which will be substantially updated in "The Plausibility of Theft," in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave (Prometheus: 2005).
[24] The following evidence and argument summarizes what I present in more detail in the forthcoming work: Richard Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb," in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave (Prometheus: 2005). There I also detail how the empty tomb narrative in Mark is constructed from Psalms and the Jacob's Well narrative in Genesis, as well as passages from Ezekiel and 2 Chronicles, in a way that produces powerful symbolic rather than historical meaning, and how the narrative parallels the burial liturgy of the Orphic mysteries.
[25] For example: Mk. 4:30-32, 7:15, 10:29-30, 10:44, 12:1-11; also: 8:35, 10:30.
[26] Mk. 4:11-12 & 4:33-34. A parabolê is a "comparison" or "analogy" and thus is not the truth itself, but something that shares relevantly similar properties to the truth. A historical narrative that conveys the truth only in its structure, and by analogy to stories and ideas in scripture, for example, is thus a parable: the meaning is hidden and has to be sussed out (or communicated in secret). So to treat the story as a historical narrative is to miss the very point. We discussed the common role such a device played in ancient culture in Section 10.2 of Chapter 10.
[27] See also: Richard Carrier, "Review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark" (2000).
[28] I document these symbols and more in
the forthcoming work cited in Note 24.
James Holding argues next that "Peter and John were dismissed based on their social standing," citing Acts 4:13, which "reflects a much larger point of view among the ancients," of hostility to "country bumpkins." But this is simply a repeat of Holding's argument regarding "the problem of having Jesus hail from Galilee and Nazareth," which we already addressed in Chapter 2. It certainly helps explain Christianity's failure to recruit many elites. But it has nothing to do with Christianity's success among non-elites, who did not share the same snobbish attitudes, but quite the contrary: disgusted by elite snobbery of just this sort, those among the oppressed would be even more receptive to a hopeful movement begun and run by their own. That is what the Christian movement was all about:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, who has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, and sent me to mend the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and sight to the blind. (Septuagint text of Isaiah 61:1, quoted by Jesus in Luke 7:22)
This would have been obvious had Holding actually looked at the context of his own quotation from the Talmud. Regarding "people of the land" ("commoners") the Pesachim (49a-b) says:
To marry the daughter of a commoner is a repulsive and
unacceptable thing. Let him not marry the daughter of a commoner
because they are detestable and their wives are vermin and of their
daughters it is said "cursed be he that lieth with any manner of
beast." ... We do not commit testimony to them; we do not accept
testimony from them;[1] we do not reveal a
secret to them; we do not appoint them as guardians for orphans; we do
not appoint them stewards over charity funds; and we must not join
their company on the road. Some say, "We do not proclaim their losses
too."
The Rabbis taught: "A man should sell all his possessions and marry the
daughter of a scholar...to be assured that his sons will be scholars,
but he should not marry a daughter of a commoner...or his children will
be commoners." ... Rabbi Akiba recalled, "when I was a commoner I said,
'If I could lay my hands on a scholar, I would maul him like an ass!'"
... Rabbi Eliezer said: "If the commoners did not require us for their
own welfare, they would kill us!" and Rabbi Hyya taught: "A man who
occupies himself with the study of the Law in the presence of a
commoner evokes as much hatred from him as if he had stolen his
bride...For the enmity of a commoner toward a scholar is even more
intense than that of the heathens towards Israelites, and the hatred of
their wives even greater than that!"
What is clear here is that the snobbery Holding refers to is not an attitude the commoners themselves had. The commoners did not despise themselves as vermin or regard marrying each other as repulsive and detestable or refuse to accept each other's testimony or to walk together on the road. No, this was an attitude held by the Jewish elite, which was so snobbish, arrogant, and contrary to the Torah that it was widely despised by commoners--as the above passages also prove, since Akiba reports what his own opinion was when he was a commoner: he wanted to kick the living hell out of these snobby bastards--until he became one. This hatred commoners had for the Jewish elite is even more amply attested above. It is doubtful that all elites were such jerks as this, or that commoners were all so bloodthirsty and irate. But even if they all were, that would tell us nothing about how the Christians were perceived by the commoners and middlemen they actually converted.
Holding's only piece of evidence confirms the point: in Acts 4 it is not the people or any converts who were bothered by Peter and John being "illiterate laymen"[2] but the enemies of the Church--the Jewish elite (Acts 4:1-6; for the same reason, Holding's citation of the Pharisaic snobbery of the Talmud is also irrelevant). Instead, "the people" stood by them and prevented any harm being done to them (Acts 14:4, 14:21; so also 5:26; in fact, according to Acts 5:13, "the people praised them"). Moreover, the Christians then declare a lengthy diatribe against the wicked elite (Acts 14:22-31), and immediately Acts goes on to praise the exemplary anti-elitist lifestyle of the Christians that the people so admired (Acts 14:32-37). We have seen in several chapters already how this anti-elitism was Christianity's greatest asset. Thus, it is significant that here Acts celebrates that, instead of reveling in the strength of any other evidence of the movement's "truth." For the only evidence referred to is this "great power" with which the apostles delivered their witness of the resurrection (Acts 4:33), meaning their passionate conviction and continuing miracles, not evidence the resurrection itself was true--for which all anyone really had was the apostles' word.
Accordingly, as Acts 4 says, it is not evidence of the resurrection the Jewish elite "could say nothing against" (even though Peter appealed to it: Acts 14:10), but only the fact that Peter and John could heal the sick (Acts 14:9, 14:14), and it is only that which their enemies consider "a famous miracle, obvious to everyone in Jerusalem" which they therefore "cannot deny" (Acts 14:16), and it is only evidence of this that they seek to suppress (Acts 14:17-18). Evidence of the resurrection is never a concern: the Jews do not say that was a famous miracle they could not deny, nor do they bother attempting to suppress any evidence of it (even Peter appeals only to his own healing miracles as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus: Acts 14:9-10). Thus, it was continuing miracles in the Church that was considered persuasive, not any actual evidence of Christ's resurrection. We shall discuss this appeal to ongoing miracles in Chapter 13. It suffices for now to point out that since pagan gods could heal just as well as the Christian god could, the efficacy of Christian healing is not "irrefutable" evidence that Jesus Lives.[3]
Ultimately, Holding presents no evidence that the illiteracy or lay status of Christian missionaries "would have hindered their preaching" among those whom they actually evangelized--primarily, other illiterate laymen, but even beyond that, always those outside (or marginalized within) the elite power structure (I have discussed this point in numerous chapters already, and shall again in Chapter 18). So when Holding claims "the Jews themselves had no trust in such people," he is yet again engaging in hasty generalization: as we just saw, even his own evidence proves that "the Jews" by and large did trust such people (and often distrusted the educated elite), and that it was only the tiny minority of those in power (and who thus had a vested interest in defending that power against the growing popularity of lay missionaries) who didn't approve--and even then Holding's evidence doesn't say these elites didn't trust Peter, only that they didn't like what he was saying. And as Acts intimates repeatedly, they didn't like it because by preaching it Peter was usurping elite authority. Which means it must have been a fact that a great many Jews trusted men like Peter--after all, that was the problem.
[1] This cannot be a reference to
qualification to provide legal testimony, since we have countless
examples of commoners testifying in court (even Acts shows Peter being
allowed to testify in court, yet Holding makes a point of Peter's
status as a commoner) and the lists of disqualified witnesses never
include being a commoner. If not a mere hyperbole, the reference is
probably to seeking a witness to one's own faithfulness to the law,
under the provision of Leviticus 5:1 (see Chapter
11). In other words, in applying the "oath of testimony" under
this law, they would not deign to ask a commoner to vouch for them, nor
would they deign to vouch for a commoner. It is thus not a declaration
that commoners were not trusted so much as a declaration that it was
unseemly to associate with them (as it was unseemly to appoint them to
respectable positions in the community, marry their daughters, let them
in on their secrets, or talk to them on the street).
This is further confirmed by
the fact that the actual word used in the Talmud here does not actually
mean "commoner" in Holding's sense, but anyone who held no
regard for Pharisaic purity laws, and thus the term frequently included
even the High Priest himself. As the Encyclopedia Judaica says
(s.v. "'Am Ha-arez," vol. 2: pp. 833-36) the "commoners" here referred
to "cannot be identified exclusively with the peasant, since townsmen
and aristocrats were included among them" (vol 2: p. 835).
[2] The word agrammatoi means literally "without letters," i.e. unable to read or write, hence "illiterate" (and by extension "uneducated"); and idiôtai means literally "one who is by himself" and thus "private person" and by extension any non-professional, thus "commoner" and "layman" both capture the sense. It generally indicated someone who had no skill or trade, hence it could carry the derogatory sense of "bumpkin," etc. It did not mean "ignorant" in a sweeping sense of stupid or clueless, but in a technical sense of lacking formal knowledge (Greek had 31 words meaning "ignorant" yet idiôtai was not one of them).
[3] I have also discussed this appeal to
miracles in Chapter 7: see The Problem of Differing Research Paradigms
& Arguing from the Miraculous.
| 13.1. 13.2. 13.3. 13.4. |
Boiling away the Hyperbole Evidence from Acts Evidence from Early Apologists Conclusion |
James Holding revisits an earlier argument, by claiming that "Christian claims would have been easy to check out and verify" because everyone in antiquity was such a nosy busybody everyone would know everything about anything that ever happened. I have already addressed much of this argument in Chapter 7. Here I will limit myself to the more particular claims that (1) people knew everyone's business and (2) people actually did check the facts. The truth is not that "no one would have cared to find out such things" but that, regardless of what they cared to do, actual converts (as opposed to those who rejected the faith) did not engage any kind of fact-checking relevant to Holding's argument.
First, I have no quarrel with the view that privacy was not of great value in antiquity (compared to today), especially in regard to enforcing moral behavior. But when Holding claims "privacy was unknown" he is easily refuted by the fact that the ancient world was awash with secret initiations, secret doctrines, and secret meetings. If he really thinks you couldn't keep a secret, or do things in secret, or conspire in secret, he has a truly perverse idea of human nature and human history, and is certainly deviating completely from anything Malina & Neyrey argue. Indeed, Jesus himself advocated secret doctrines and secret behavior (Mk. 4:10-11; Mt. 6:4, 6:6, 6:18), and after his death "appeared" only in secret, behind closed doors, or off in the wilderness, away from the prying eyes of outsiders (Jn. 20:19, 20:26; Mt. 28:17; etc.).
Holding also ignores the fact that Malina & Neyrey argue the opposite of what he concludes here. Far from claiming that everyone knew everything, they argue that secrets were of paramount priority in groupthink cultures, far more so than even today, and that outsiders often would not even be told in-group truths, much less personal truths.[1] What Malina & Neyrey mean when they discuss public scrutiny is just that: scrutiny in public of the behavior of others. Though this does mean there was a strong public suspicion of secrecy--such that everyone avoided the appearance of keeping secrets--that only meant secrets were kept even tighter in antiquity than today. The mere fact that you had secrets would often be kept secret. But keeping secrets was still a reality, and an accepted one.
For example, when we look at the cultural values expressed in the Bible we find the opposite of what Holding wants. Rather than it being okay to be a "busybody" and investigate what everyone was doing, it was actually quite immoral to partake in gossip--not only to gossip yourself, but to listen to gossip. "A tattletale exposes secrets, but those of loyal spirit conceal the matter," "a twisted man sows strife, and a tattletale separates best friends" and "he who covers up a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates even friends," "he who goes about as a tattletale exposes secrets: therefore, have no fellowship with him who entices with his lips," "do not disclose a secret to another," "where there is no wood, the fire goes out: so where there is no tattletale, strife goes away" (Proverbs 11:13, 16:28, 17:9, 20:19, 25:9, 26:20). And the New Testament shares this scorn for gossiping: "not only do they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not" (1 Timothy 5:13) and "let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's affairs" (1 Peter 4:15: allotriepiskopos = allotrios + episkopos = an overseer of someone else's affairs). Thus, someone who goes around spying on people was equated with murderers and thieves and evildoers in general. You were not even to associate with tattlers. And you were expected to shut your mouth and keep secret the affairs of family and friends.
Of course, it is still true that privacy as such was not valued, and the public always kept its eye on what was going on within public view. But the aim of this was only to enforce moral order--it was not curiosity, nor a desire to seek knowledge, much less of everyone's private affairs. So we have to reduce Holding's hyperbole once again, and when we boil away the exaggerations, what we have left is this: it is indeed wrong to suppose that "no one would care" about what the Christians were doing (before or after Jesus died), but this does not mean "everyone would know" what the Christians were doing (before or after Jesus died), nor does it have anything to do with going out and fact-checking every amazing claim. So Holding's evidence here does not justify his conclusion. Rumor would certainly spread (and possibly exaggerate) the public acts of Christians, as of Jesus. But for all those events that only the privileged in-group got to witness, Malina & Neyrey's thesis actually entails that it is highly improbable the truth would ever be found out by those not admitted to the group.
This leaves us with only one other way to check Holding's claim: to examine what prospective converts actually did when faced with the amazing claims of Christians, and to see what kind of evidence actually persuaded them. Here I agree with Holding that in antiquity strangers had to validate and verify their status as trustworthy--but this in no way entails they did this the same way we do today. And the evidence confirms they did not. Strangers established trust by shows of sincerity, moral propriety, knowledge of cultural lore and custom (e.g. scripture), and good deeds. Anyone who met those criteria would be trusted--because people believed no one capable of all that would lie.[2] Whether a stranger could still be viewed as mistaken would then depend on the evidence they presented, and that is where Holding's argument runs into serious trouble, because the standards of evidence most people followed back then where quite unlike those we follow today. This is a point I have already addressed in Chapter 7 and shall examine more specifically in Chapter 17. And below we shall see it in action.
Finally, in his many other books, Bruce Malina explains how Christians often sought converts by first persuading groups they shared associations with (e.g. local Jews) and then leapfrogging from there to other groups who shared associations with that group (e.g. family members of converts, fellow townsmen of converts, etc.).[3] I will discuss this a little more in Chapter 18. But here it is enough to note that Holding seems to assume ancient Christians acted like modern Jehovah's Witnesses and just went knocking on random doors to cold-sell the faith. That is not what they did. Instead, they mostly relied on groupthink to sell the faith. By first appealing to a group they were already a part of, they were not seen as strangers, but comrades (in respect to whatever relation was being exploited at the time, whether family, race, trade, etc.). Then, once they were accepted into that group locally, that group could then introduce them to their neighbors. So again the Christians were not perceived as complete strangers, but as friends recommended by friends. Though Christians did not always rely on this tactic, it was their most common and important strategy, and it greatly reduced the burden on them to prove their merit and thus win trust.
I've already explained why we can't trust Acts to be any more reliable than the average histories of the day, which were certainly not paragons of reliability.[4] Even the Histories of Herodotus is superior to Acts as a critical history, and yet quite prone to reporting the ridiculous.[5] We can therefore expect no better from Acts--indeed, we have every reason to expect less. But it is the only historical record we have of the early Christian mission, so when we want to examine how and why people converted, Acts is our only useful source. Except where I explain below, I will assume Luke has the basic facts straight about this--that whatever embellishments he or tradition may have added, there is a genuine record somewhere behind each episode. I may be wrong about that, but as you shall see, even granting that much, the evidence from Acts pretty much kills Holding's argument.[6]
In effect, Holding claims prospective converts would have fact-checked before believing, or at the very least would have done so after committing to the faith. This is an empirical prediction, which if true should be born out in the evidence: the historical record of Acts should show people behaving exactly as Holding predicts they would. But Acts contains not even a single example of this prediction being fulfilled. Worse, what evidence it does present confirms exactly the opposite. Thus, the empirical evidence completely refutes Holding's theory. It is falsified decisively, and by his own evidence.
As far as Acts reports, Christian conversions never took place after days of careful research and investigation--much less weeks or months of correspondence and travel, as would have been required for most--but immediately, upon the direct witness of a missionary's words and deeds. Indeed, as we shall see later on below, when we examine those few cases (which only appear about a hundred years after the Christian mission began) where we can document careful deliberation before conversion, even these show no sign of the kind of research Holding has in mind.
Simply survey all the reports of conversion in Acts. Even assuming Acts is entirely accurate and true, it thoroughly refutes Holding's argument:
That's it. Never once does Acts report anyone checking any facts pertinent to the resurrection before converting. To claim they did such checking but that Acts simply doesn't say so, not even once, is circular reasoning: there is no evidence they did, therefore Holding cannot claim they did and then use that mere assertion as "evidence" for the resurrection. Indeed, Acts rules out any such tactic, since Acts says again and again that conversions are won on the very same day the gospel is preached--there are rarely any delays of days or weeks or months as would be required for evidence to be gathered, witnesses sought out and questioned, letters exchanged. And even when any such duration is mentioned, there is still no indication that any such efforts were engaged in that time. None at all. So the facts, even from his own sources, fail to support Holding, and actually do a fair job of refuting him.
Indeed, we have the same conclusion from the other direction: for in Acts the only occasions where any kind of inquiry is conducted are the many trials, and the debates at Athens. And yet on none of those occasions was any convert won, except a "few" only at Athens--far, far away from Jerusalem, and we find no mention there that these converts conducted any sort of inquiry beyond simply interrogating Paul, who wasn't even an eyewitness of the risen body of Jesus or the empty tomb. Nor does the account of Athens say Paul ever referred to anything we would consider empirical evidence, much less "irrefutable" evidence. So even if Holding is right that "Christian claims would have been easy to check out and verify," his own evidence, the book of Acts even exactly as it is written, proves quite soundly that no such checking or verifying ever took place. Maybe those who rejected Christian claims checked the facts. But as far as Acts reveals, converts never did. Even at our most charitable, it is still an irrefutable fact that Acts provides no evidence whatever that such checking or verifying preceded, or even followed, any conversion. And Acts contains the only evidence to be had on this point. So Holding has no ground to stand on when he claims that converts checked and verified the facts.
To the contrary, Acts shows that converts were won not by giving each one a complete dossier on all the evidence and witnesses proving Jesus rose from the grave, complete with home addresses and signed affidavits and transcribed depositions. Not even close. All that was needed was the same three-point sales pitch: "scripture says Jesus would rise, our ability to prophecy, heal, and speak in tongues proves we're not lying, and our leaders say they saw Jesus--in some sense or other, they never specify details, but you can trust us!" That would not fly today. Scripture is hopelessly ambiguous, and can be used to prove anything--especially if you cherry-pick the information you want and ignore all the rest, and put your own spin on it all, exactly as the earliest Christian missionaries did. And the miracles Christian missionaries performed were the same kinds of things pagan holy men could pull off, too. And today we know there are natural causes of such phenomena. Had we been there, we would have been able to gather the information needed to "test" whether these were genuinely miraculous in any sense--but now all that information is lost, so we have no way left to check. And it is simply not possible for us now to "check" the nature, much less the origin (natural, demonic, or divine), of private visions to a privileged handful of religious zealots. Yet, back then, that was all the information one needed to immediately convert hundreds if not thousands of people all over the Roman Empire. Clearly these were not critical thinkers, by any standard, much less a modern one. And there is certainly nothing here we can call "irrefutable evidence."
The only sorts of evidence Acts directly mentions as convincing anyone (none of which we can count as "evidence" that Jesus rose from the grave) are scripture and visions, current miracles, and the exemplary moral life of the Christians themselves, which won them the "favor of all the people" and convinced many to join (e.g. Acts 2:44-47 & 4:32-37). We already explained in Chapter 6 and Chapter 10.3 that in groupthink societies the moral success of a community is synonymous with divine sanction for that community and its message, and thus such moral devotion would have been decisive evidence to people of those days that the Christians were telling the truth when they said they saw Jesus or that God told them Jesus lives. Of course, we know today this is a non sequitur. But it was potent logic back then. Likewise, we are frequently told of the success of appeals to scripture in winning converts. For example, in Acts 17:1-4, Paul "reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and citing passages that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead," and in Acts 18:24-28, Apollos "powerfully refuted the Jews" by "demonstrating from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." Sure, clever exegesis could persuade ancient Jews, but it does not impress an objective investigator today.
As for the miracles, none of them was truly miraculous--at least, we cannot confirm they were, since all the data we would need to test for such a conclusion is not preserved (as explained throughout Chapter 7). The miracles that won converts (apart from the vague art of "speaking in tongues") were predominately exorcism and the healing of the "blind and lame" (and on one or two occasions the causing of blindness), events which we know today can be natural phenomena. Not only were exactly the same miracles routinely performed by pagan gods and sorcerers, but blindness and paralysis are the most typical psychosomatic phenomena and thus the most likely to respond to purely psychological treatment (i.e. "faith").[7]
Of course, the implied realities of exorcism we have very good reason to doubt, since despite centuries of research, medical science has failed to uncover any evidence that such a thing as demonic possession even exists. Once again, it probably denoted a psychological condition that could be corrected by a culturally-acceptable psychological "treatment." And on the matter of healing, we also have good reason to doubt, since even according to Acts none of the healings that won converts actually regenerated any observable lesion or wound: all the conditions healed had no visible signs of medical trauma or disease apart from the behavior of the afflicted, who merely claim (and may really have believed) they were unable to see or move, or suffered from some other ailment they perceived as a disease. But again we have no evidence on record that this was any more than a psychological condition. No lost limbs are restored, no victim of swordplay is brought back to life, no open wounds are sealed up before anyone's eyes, no withered corpses revived.
But all this is diversion anyway, since the moral decency of Christians, the prescience of scripture, and the ability of disciples to "work miracles" is irrelevant to us. None of this is evidence that Jesus walked out of a tomb. Yet in Acts, these three "proofs" are the only empirical evidence that persuades people to believe Jesus did that. The only other evidence used at all is the unverifiable word of the Disciples that they alone "saw" Jesus--which for all we can know, amounted to nothing more than what Paul or Stephen meant when they said they "saw" Jesus: namely, a "vision from heaven."[8] Look at all the trials and public speeches documented in Acts: not a single one appeals to any confirmable piece of empirical evidence, much less anything "irrefutable."
Seriously. Look at what was actually said to the public or the authorities. In Acts 2:14-40 we have Peter's first, and longest, public presentation of the case. Yet his argument consists entirely of irrelevant appeals to their private, unverifiable claim to have "seen" Jesus in some unspecified sense, and to an obscure exegesis of the Psalms, and to various other "miracles" that actually have no bearing on whether Jesus rose. That's it. According to Peter's exegesis of scripture, a descendent of David had to rise from the dead (Acts 2:24-31 & 2:34-36), and Jesus must have been that descendent simply because "we" saw him, though (conveniently) "you" only get to see us speaking in tongues (Acts 2:32-33). He tacks on as a final flourish a typical ad baculum fallacy that they'd better believe or they're doomed (Acts 2:38-40). That is a feeble argument. Yet (supposedly) it wins thousands of instant converts.
Apologists do try to see in Peter's speech an appeal to the empty tomb in Acts 2:29, but this requires supposing that Luke here, suddenly, for no reason, became ignorant of all his otherwise apparent education in the principles of rhetoric. For by the standards of speech-making in antiquity, if you had evidence like an empty tomb, you would use it explicitly and directly to potent rhetorical effect--exactly as Luke does when he has Peter repeatedly remind the audience of the evidence they have been witness to (e.g. Acts 2:22 & 2:33). Even when he refers to what only insiders got to see, he does not include finding an empty tomb. Indeed, the absence of any appeal to the evidence of an empty tomb in Peter's speech lends merit to this speech deriving from an authentic tradition, especially when the rather un-Lukan distortion of the Septuagint, and related scribal interpolations, that clumsily introduce the word "flesh" into the speech are discarded as bogus, as rightly they should be.[9]
Otherwise, the pattern remains the same throughout Acts. For example:
We've just skimmed all the major speeches in Acts, even official trial defenses under oath, many recorded at substantial length, and not one iota of "irrefutable" evidence is mentioned. The same can be said of all the other trials and speeches. That pretty much refutes Holding's contention that there was such evidence to be had. If amazing evidence of any sort existed, surely we would have it mentioned in these sections of Acts. But we find none.
In the end, all of Holding's predictions are contradicted or fail to pan out, even when we look at his own evidence--the only evidence there is for the early Christian mission: the book of Acts. For example, Holding claims "the empty tomb would be checked." Yet we have not a single example in Acts of any convert ever checking this fact, before converting or after. We don't even have one single example of any convert asking for evidence there was an empty tomb. The story Luke tells in his Gospel has at least a few Disciples checking, but this evidence is curious for its absence all throughout Acts. Instead, from both the Epistles and Acts it is clear the empty tomb was never used as evidence, nor ever questioned by anyone. Thus, Holding's prediction fails. In a similar fashion, Holding claims "Matthew's story of resurrected saints would be checked out." Yet there is no evidence in Luke that this event even happened, nor any evidence in Acts that anyone ever checked it in any way whatsoever, or even so much as asked anyone for testimony on the matter. In fact, there is no evidence anyone had even heard of such a claim until long after Paul's death. So, again, Holding's claim fails to find any support in the evidence we have.
Likewise, Holding claims "Lazarus would be sought out for questioning." Yet there is no evidence at all that anyone did this, either. Indeed, a real Lazarus is only ever mentioned in one document: the Gospel of John, by all accounts the latest and last of the Gospels. So as far as Holding can actually prove, the story didn't even exist until long after the facts could be checked. More troubling for Holding's case is the fact that Luke is the only other author to mention anyone named Lazarus, yet only as a fictional person in a parable (Lk. 16:20-31), which mentions his resurrection only hypothetically. In fact, as Luke presents it, the entire point of the Lazarus parable was that scripture is the only evidence people will have that the Gospel is true. This confirms what we have said above against Holding's assertions to the contrary. The parable even ends with the moral that, "If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if Lazarus rises from the dead." Thus, Luke's story specifically denies that the resurrection of Lazarus would even be accepted as evidence, even had it happened--and its entire point is to defend the fact that the only evidence prospective converts will ever have is scripture. Yet as we observed in Chapter 7, Luke is, if anyone is, the most reliable recorder of the Jesus tradition, such that if he does not include an actual record of Lazarus rising (but only a hypothetical parable of such), then probably that was the truth, and John's elaboration is the fiction. After all, Luke supposedly followed all the stories exactly--so if there was a story of Lazarus actually being raised, we can conclude that Luke probably found it false (and the same goes for Matthew's zombies).
In Chapter 17 we shall see that the Epistles confirm our conclusions here. For the scant evidence the Epistles offer regarding how converts were actually persuaded offers no support at all to Holding's hypothesis, but abundant support for quite the opposite. We find empirical fact-checking is practically despised, and replaced instead with scriptural exegesis and appeals to miracles and visions, none of which can be verified as anything but natural phenomena. In the Epistles we find no references to any relevant, empirical evidence being checked at all, much less examples of the application of critical reason and inquiry upon that evidence. We can only conclude that Holding's argument is at best without foundation, and at worst complete poppycock.
That sums up the only relevant sources we have for the Christian mission in its first hundred years, and we found no support for Holding's thesis, and much to contradict it. Once we go beyond that time frame, we are way beyond the reasonable possibility of converts checking, much less confirming the relevant facts, in the way Holding has in mind. Even so, surely the most educated and inquisitive converts would still have done their best at doing all this historical fact-checking Holding insists they did. And we can certainly say that in the 2nd century Christianity finally started attracting bona fide elite scholars--not many, mind you, but at least some, and by their very nature they left us highly articulate accounts of their reasons for converting. Yet when we look at the first generation of these men, the first elite scholars to join the fold and believe, we still fail to find evidence of Holding's thesis. Once again, what we find is quite the opposite. The first four elite scholars we know became Christians, all before the year 150 A.D., are Justin, Athenagoras, Aristides, and Tatian. All wrote lengthy treatises that survey their reasons for converting. Yet we look in vain for even one single example of "fact-checking" in any respectable sense.
Justin appeals almost exclusively to scripture--his entire apology rests almost entirely on the single argument "scripture says so, therefore it is true." Occasionally he makes references to some vague gospel tradition, but never once mentions ever checking the claims in that tradition against objective, independent sources. Never once does he discuss determining who the gospel authors were or even where they got their information, much less making any effort to determine whether their claims were true. He never mentions speaking to anyone at all--no descendants or colleagues of any witnesses, hostile, neutral, or friendly, to any element of the Christian story. The closest he comes to citing any sources at all are one casual reference to the census returns under Quirinius, and a confident citation of the Acts of Pilate as a reliable authority. The latter is an infamous forgery, and the fact that he trusts this document reflects very poorly on Justin's competence to "check the facts" as Holding would want. And the former source tells us nothing as to whether Jesus rose from the dead--or anything supernatural at all.[11]
Justin makes it quite clear that if scripture "said" it, he believed it was true--period. He needed no further checking as far as we can tell. As Justin says, "this should now be obvious to you--that whatever we assert in conformity with what has been taught us by Christ, and by the prophets who preceded Him, are alone true, and are older than all the writers who have existed" and therefore take precedence over all other beliefs. End of argument. In fact, for all we really know, every single thing Justin believed about Jesus he learned from scripture, not historical investigation. As he says himself:
So in these books of the prophets we found Jesus our Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying, and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and both being, and being called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that even among the Gentiles men should believe in Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5000 years before, and again 3000, then 2000, then 1000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose.[12]
This reveals that he could find everything he believed in scripture, and that he accepted as a fundamental methodological principle that everything found in scripture was true. And he was serious. You can read Justin's two apologies back to front and never once find any other methodological principle or source of his faith. That's it: that is the sum of his "fact-checking." The Bible Says It, Therefore I Believe It. If this is how a highly educated elite could come to convert--and it clearly was--then we have no hope at all for the uneducated masses employing any more effective principle of inquiry. Holding's theory is utterly smashed.
This is confirmed when we read Justin's own autobiographical account of his conversion. He tells us he actively studied every philosophy, and reports with regret either that faith in God was devalued by the philosophical schools, or they demanded money, or they required him to study the sciences, a demand he openly regards with anti-intellectual scorn. Clearly this was no critical thinker nor any admirer of careful empirical inquiry. He ends up a Platonist only because it agrees with his fundamental (and ultimately unexplained) assumption of a mystical, non-empirical approach to knowledge. And then from there he "thought" his way to Christianity, after conversing either with himself or an actual Christian elder. If we read between the lines, Justin is telling us he chose Christianity because it was the only philosophy that placed God first, taught its doctrines for free, and didn't require any research or advanced study. He adds, as the final blow that converted him, the fact that Christianity was based on the oldest and thus most venerable of prophetic books.[13] At no point in his own account of conversion is evidence ever mentioned. And none of his reasons for converting--not even a single one--is rational or valid, whether logically or empirically. "Fact-checking" appears nowhere in Justin's list of methods or arguments. It played no demonstrable role in his conversion at all. And there is no reason to believe other Christians, from the very beginning, would not have converted for the same illogical reasons as Justin.
As I've said again and again, above all things it is scripture that wins Justin over. He spends most of his time arguing from that, and that alone. In fact, the very reason his dialogue is a debate between Christianity and Judaism--not paganism--is the fact that pagans can boast no oracles so ancient as the Bible, and therefore Judaism is the only alternative even worth considering. The Bible's antiquity, and nothing else, is logically sufficient in Justin's eyes to secure its absolute authority (hence see again Chapter 4). The closest Justin ever comes to citing anything like empirical evidence in support of Christianity is when he argues from the present efficacy of Christian exorcism and other dubious miracle-working (already discussed above). And yet even here we find only a maddeningly superstitious line of reasoning:
It is also manifest to all, that we who believe in Him pray to be kept by Him from strange, wicked and deceitful spirits, as the word of prophecy, personating one of those who believe in Him, figuratively declares. For we do continually beseech God by Jesus Christ to preserve us from the demons which are hostile to the worship of God, and whom we of old time served, in order that, after our conversion by Him to God, we may be blameless. For we call Him Helper and Redeemer, the power of whose name even the demons do fear; and at this day, when they are exorcised in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, governor of Judaea, they are overcome. And thus it is manifest to all, that His Father has given Him so great power, by virtue of which demons are subdued to His name, and to the dispensation of His suffering.
...
[From such power each Christian also receives] gifts, each as he is worthy, illumined through the name of this Christ. For one receives the spirit of understanding, another of counsel, another of strength, another of healing, another of foreknowledge, another of teaching, and another of the fear of God.... Accordingly, we who have received gifts from Christ, who has ascended up on high, prove from the words of prophecy that you, "the wise in yourselves, and the men of understanding in your own eyes," are foolish, and honor God and His Christ by lip only.[14]
The "wise" and the "men of understanding" are common epithets for philosophers and scientists and scholars. Thus, all learning, all research, all science is foolish. Only the Bible is worth our attention. That's Justin's message. And that Christians have correctly interpreted the Bible is proven by the mere fact that they can exorcise demons, heal, and prophesy--the only "gifts" he lists that could ever be imagined as supernatural (and yet, as we discussed above, cannot be proven anything of the kind)--but even the fact that Christians are gifted with ordinary human strength, talent, zeal, and inspiration Justin sees as "proof" that Christianity is true. That's how bankrupt his logic is. His reasons for believing make no logical sense. Yet they are reasons so compelling to him that they stir him to passionate and unshakable belief. And Justin was not some rare nutjob. He is representative of the early Christian mindset. These were the sorts of people who were becoming Christians. Not the Lucians or Ciceros or Plinys of the world. As far as we can tell, those people who actually believed in fact-checking stayed clear.
We find nothing different in any of the other elite scholars on our list. Consider Athenagoras: once again, no mention, anywhere in his works, of fact-checking or even what we would consider empirical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. Instead, in the summary he gives of his reasons for becoming a Christian, we find only this illogical line of argument:
The unity of the Deity is confessed by almost all, even against their will, when they come to treat of the first principles of the universe, and we in our turn likewise assert that He who arranged this universe is God...[and] we are able to demonstrate what we apprehend and justly believe, namely that there is one God, with proofs and reason accordant with truth. For poets and philosophers, as to other subjects so also to this, have applied themselves in the way of conjecture, moved, by reason of their affinity with an inspiration from God, each one by his own soul, to try whether he could find out and apprehend the truth. But they have not been found competent fully to apprehend it, because they thought fit to learn, not from God concerning God, but each one from himself. Hence they came each to his own conclusion respecting God, and matter, and forms, and the world. But we have for witnesses of the things we apprehend and believe, prophets, men who have pronounced concerning God and the things of God, guided by the Spirit of God. And you too will admit, excelling all others as you do in intelligence and in piety towards the true God, that it would be irrational for us to give heed to mere human opinions, and cease to believe in the Spirit from God, who moved the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments.[15]
Translation: Screw you, all you academic lunkheads, and screw all your logic and science and scholarship. We have the Law and the Prophets. Everything else is obvious. End of argument. Like Justin, Athenagoras is persuaded Christianity is true simply because scripture persuades him. He never once mentions any historical evidence playing any role at all in confirming the truth of Christian doctrines. Instead, Athenagoras operates on the following assumptions: God must exist and logically must be one, therefore only prophets who attest to God's unity are guided by the spirit of God and thus can attest to his plans, and therefore such inspired prophets know the truth and independent thinkers and scientists do not. All that remains, then, is to figure out whose prophets are real prophets--and in that contest, once we limit the field to monotheists (as logic alone dictates we must), the oldest always wins. And it also helps, as it did for Justin, that Christians are purportedly paragons of moral virtue. From these assumptions, Athenagoras can declare not only belief, but the outright irrationality of not believing what the Bible says--in fact, it is irrational to ignore the Bible and "give heed to mere human opinions." In other words, science and philosophy and reason are for suckers. The Bible is the only sourcebook worthy of trust.
Athenagoras never elaborates as much as Justin does as to why he believes what he does about Jesus, but when he does, the only evidence he cites is "scripture says so" (e.g. § 10). Does this sound like someone who "fact-checked" before believing? What facts did he check? Where does he discuss such investigations? Or even the principles that would guide such an investigation? Indeed, in his Treatise on the Resurrection (cf. 1-2) Athenagoras actually argues at length that one must have a sound theory of method and truth before deciding what to believe. But then he presents his theory as simply this: logically God exists, therefore everything not impossible for God nor contrary to his will should be believed. That's it. Actual fact-checking or research never comes up. Evidence, as we would accept it, is barely relevant. If God can and should raise people from the dead (cf. 12-15), he will. End of argument. Such bizarre, illogical reasoning bewilders us today, but was common then. Indeed, we have every reason to believe it typified the Christian convert in antiquity (as we shall see in Chapter 17).
Just like Athenagoras, Aristides only argues from bare logic, and the moral caliber of Christian life, that Christians alone must have the truth. He never refers to any other evidence, apart from an unidentified "gospel" handed down attesting to God's incarnation, death, and ascension to heaven. Aristides is convinced by nothing else than these three things. I'm not kidding. Like Justin, he surveyed all the alternatives and found them illogical, and he observed the Christian lifestyle and found it godly. Then he read the Gospels and was convinced. Those are the only pieces of evidence he offers to his audience, which was supposed to be a Roman Emperor (either Hadrian or Antoninus). Never once does he mention checking the facts. Never once does he say, as Holding imagines, "You know, I looked into these crazy Christian claims--asked around, checked documents and such--and to my surprise their stories are all true!" To the contrary, that kind of reasoning appears utterly alien to Aristides. Logic and moral stature are sufficient to convince him, and are all he deems worthy of mentioning when attempting to prove his religion true--for that is all he drones on about chapter after chapter. He does appeal to the Gospels as a source, but he is completely credulous as to their content--he declares that simply from reading them he was fully assured of their truth.[16] So much for Holding's theory that he would check the facts in them first!
Finally, we have Tatian, who gives us a direct and complete account of his conversion that simply says it all:
Wherefore, having seen pagan activities, and moreover also having been admitted to the mysteries, and having everywhere examined the religious rites performed by the effeminate and the emotional, and having found among the Romans their Latiarian Jupiter delighting in human gore and the blood of slaughtered men, and Artemis not far from the great city sanctioning acts of the same kind, and one demon here and another there instigating to the perpetration of evil--retiring by myself, I sought how I might be able to discover the truth. And, while I was giving my most earnest attention to the matter, I happened to meet with certain barbaric writings, too old to be compared with the opinions of the Greeks, and too divine to be compared with their errors. And I was led to put faith in these by the unpretending cast of the language, the inartificial character of the writers, the foreknowledge displayed of future events, the excellent quality of the precepts, and the declaration of the government of the universe as centered in one Being. And, my soul being taught of God, I discern that the former class of writings lead to condemnation, but that these put an end to the slavery that is in the world, and rescue us from a multiplicity of rulers and ten thousand tyrants, while they give us, not indeed what we had not before received, but what we had received but were prevented by error from retaining.[17]
That's it. No fact-checking. No research. No asking around. He converted simply because he found other religions morally repugnant and illogical, was impressed by the antiquity of the Bible, found the Christians to be the most moral followers of that most ancient text, and therefore concluded that they had the right interpretation of the most authoritative book--authoritative for no other reason than "our philosophy is older than the systems of the Greeks" (§ 31) and is the most morally attractive (e.g. § 32). End of story. Nowhere in his entire treatise does he ever once mention investigating anything, even though he devotes chapter after chapter to detailed proofs of the antiquity of the Bible and the moral superiority of Christians. In fact, nowhere does the issue of "evidence" ever arise for him at all--outside the "evidence" within scripture, and of the antiquity of scripture, and of the current moral superiority of Christians. Not only does Tatian show no interest at all in checking the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus, but spends a lot of ink arguing that philosophy and scholarship are a stupid waste of time.[18] Once again, this appears to be the typical mindset of the early Christian converts. These are not the fact-checkers of antiquity. These are the morally self-righteous despisers of scholarship, who zealously embrace Christianity for wholly illogical reasons (at least by empirical standards).
Those four men were the most educated Christians before the later 2nd century. Before them were only lesser lights, none of whom, as far as we can tell, conducted anything like the research into philosophical systems and alternatives that Tatian, Aristides, Athenagoras, and Justin conducted. Yet these four men, the first on record to make a complete survey of the alternatives, to actually attend the schools, never conducted any research into the claims of the Gospels. They simply believed what they were told. As long as what they were told was told them by men of moral stature and conformed to what was "predicted" in the oldest available oracles of God, they believed it. No other investigation was required. No other investigation mattered.
This same anti-empirical attitude is confirmed by one other man of letters: Papias, who did not (as far as we know) achieve the level of study of the other four, but did at least conduct something that could loosely be called research. From surviving quotes (and one can rightly wonder why the original books were not preserved), Papias tells us that as a Christian himself he asked around. He could find no witnesses still living, but spoke with several people who knew them. Still, he simply believed whatever he was told. He never "checked" if what he was told was true, by any means we would regard as credible today. Indeed, he tells us his criteria, and they have no proper connection with empirical standards:
I shall not hesitate to put down, along with my interpretations, whatever instructions I received with care at any time from the elders, and carefully stored up in my memory, assuring you at the same time of their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth; nor in those who related strange commandments, but in those who appealed to the commandments given by the Lord to faith and proceeding from truth itself. If, then, anyone who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings--what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord's disciples, which Aristion and the presbyter John now say as disciples of the Lord. For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.[19]
He says his criterion was not "whose statements checked out against documentary evidence and the testimony of neutral witnesses" or any such thing. Indeed, he rejects books and documents as not even worth his time. Rather, his criteria were simply: those who didn't blabber too much to be suspicious must be telling the truth, so long as what they said agreed with accepted dogma. Neither of those criteria are logically or empirically valid, yet they are his only criteria. And he took them seriously. So even though he "questioned carefully" those who had things to say (though only ever Christians, never Jews or other neutral parties), he never went any further than that--he never even asked how he could confirm what they said was true. And there is no evidence he ever made any such effort. No wonder he related patently absurd traditions as if they were true, bringing the Christian scholar Eusebius to conclude that Papias was a man of "very little intelligence." Yet he was clearly among the most educated of the early Christians--a member of that elite few who actually could and did write books.[20] If this is how other converts examined Christianity--and as far as the evidence suggests, it is--then Holding cannot maintain any convert "checked the facts" in any reliable way. The evidence simply does not support such a claim.
We have shown that the ancient world was not "a society where nothing escaped notice," but in fact a society where secrets were expected to be kept, and where a man's word was trusted without empirical evidence so long as he proved himself a man of knowledge and virtue. Holding claims that the ancient obsession with spying on everyone to make sure they conformed to moral custom also meant there was "every reason to suppose that people hearing the Gospel message would check against the facts," but we have shown this was not true. It is, indeed, a non sequitur--since to spy on what people do in public to enforce moral behavior is categorically different from researching the evidence behind the factual claims people make. These are entirely different activities, with entirely different motives and methods behind them.
As we have seen, the evidence even from Acts and from the first elite scholars to join the faith, shows that no such research was ever done, by anyone, before converting--nor is there any clear example of such research being engaged after converting, either. Indeed, the one fact Holding observes--the social obsession with moral propriety--leads more to the opposite conclusion: those who demonstrated themselves to be morally just were perceived as honest and trustworthy, and as a result their word could be sufficient to persuade. In a later section Holding says that "whenever we go back to the key texts for evidence of why they persisted in such an improbable and dangerous belief they answer: it is because Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead." But that was their belief, not the evidence offered for that belief. Yes, many persisted in believing this against all manner of threats and difficulties, but there is no evidence this confidence was the product of careful empirical research--and plenty of evidence it was the product of irrational, superstitious thinking.
In contrast to all of the evidence we have assembled above, what does Holding offer? Nothing relevant at all. For example, he completely misses the difference between scriptural and empirical evidence when he argues that "if the Pharisees checked Jesus on things like handwashing and grain picking" then "how much more would things like a claimed resurrection have been looked at!" But none of these examples pertain to researching claims or checking empirical evidence. Jesus does not provide the Pharisees with empirical evidence supporting his views on washing and gleaning. He simply argues from scripture and tradition. Thus, if we accept Holding's own analogy, anyone convinced by Jesus on washing and gleaning, would be convinced he rose on the same evidence: scripture. And as we have seen, that is clearly the evidence that counted most. At the same time, when Holding appeals to the fact that "large crowds gathered around Jesus each time he so much as sneezed," this tells us nothing about what they did to test the claim of the resurrection--which conveniently none of them saw, despite the fact that they otherwise "gathered around Jesus each time he so much as sneezed." When he sneezed...but not when he rose from the dead? Maybe the crowds had their priorities all out of whack. More likely, Holding is just spouting another non sequitur. When it comes to the resurrection, all we can establish from the Epistles and Acts, and the earliest elite scholars, was that converts required no other evidence but scripture, and the words and deeds of the Apostles. Of those in the same period who had any higher standards on record than that, none became Christians.
[1] I already demonstrated this in Chapter 10. But see also: Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003): "Gossip," pp. 366-68; and "Secrecy," pp. 402-03.
[2] This point is made, e.g., in: Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (2001): pp. 40-42.
[3] For his most relevant books, see Note 3 in Chapter 10. This same point is made by DeSilva, another of Holding's own favorites.
[4] In The Problem of Luke's Methods as an Historian in Chapter 7.
[5] Unlike Luke, Herodotus often mentions his sources or methods (e.g. 2.123; 1.5, 4.195), or even names his sources (e.g. 1.20-21, 2.29, 4.14, 4.29, 5.86-87, 6.53-54, 8.55, 8.65), or gives different accounts of the same event (e.g. 1.3-5, 2.20-27, 5.86-87, 6.53-54, 7.148-152), and often expresses a healthy skepticism (e.g. 2.45, 3.16, 4.25, 4.31, 4.42, 4.95-96, 4.105, 5.86, 7.152). Yet Herodotus reports without a hint of doubt that, just a generation or two before he wrote, the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs; the sacred olive tree of Athens, which had been burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm's length in a single day; a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon; a horse gave birth to a rabbit; and the Chersonesians witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish (8.37-38, 8.55, 8.129, 7.57, and 9.120, respectively).
[6] We will not concern ourselves with those who became believers before Jesus died, since that tells us nothing about the strength of evidence for his resurrection, and it is the latter that Holding claims to be "irrefutable."
[7] Observe: Acts 2:43, 3:1-11, 4:30-31, 5:1-16, 6:8, 8:7-13, 13:11-12, 14:3, 19:11-12, etc. The standard reference on psychosomatic conditions throughout history is Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (1992). A good discussion is also available in Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1987): pp. 327-29. And for more on this point, see also: Richard Carrier, "Beckwith on Historiography," in Review of In Defense of Miracles (1999).
[8] Acts 26:19 (cf. Acts 9:3-9, 22:6-11, 26:13-19; Gal. 1:11-12 & 1:15-16) & Acts 7:54-60.
[9] As far as we can tell, the actual speech
Peter gave probably appealed only to a vision, not an empty tomb (as I
argue elsewhere: Richard Carrier, "General
Case for Spiritual Resurrection," in Why
I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story, 5th ed., 2004). For the
references here to "flesh" are apparent interpolations--added to the
speech by later scribes, or by Luke himself, who would have "assumed"
Peter would say such things (and that was exactly the accepted standard
of speech reporting among ancient historians: cf. Note 5 of Chapter
7). There is at least enough evidence to cast sufficient doubt
on the authenticity of this material:
(1) Luke can only get Peter's
scriptural argument to prove a resurrection of the flesh by
making Peter butcher the text of the Septuagint, which would surely
have made him the laughing stock of his Jewish audience, for they would
know very well he was wrong about what their sacred text actually said.
So it is highly improbable that Peter ever attempted such an
argument, and even more improbable that it would succeed in persuading
anyone in his audience. Therefore, this part of the speech is probably
fiction. In particular, as is his usual practice, Luke has
Peter correctly quote the Septuagint text of Psalms 16:10 in Acts
2:26-27--yet then Luke has Peter alter the text completely in Acts
2:31, changing a verse originally about "the holy one's soul" (psychê)
into a verse about his "flesh" (sarx), a verbal deception no
educated Jew would have bought.
(2) As a clear proof of
concept, this very section of Acts is rife with known scribal
interpolations in extant manuscripts, proving not only that scribes
were willing to doctor the text to add a reference to flesh, but that
they actually attempted such doctoring. For example, "God swore
to raise the Christ in the flesh" was added to Acts 2:30 in numerous
manuscripts--and that is obviously bogus, since the Septuagint
text in question includes no such promise from God. Indeed, some
manuscripts added merely "swore to raise the Christ" without the
reference to flesh. Either way, textual critics are unanimous that the
original work probably included neither phrase.
(3) Just like the known
forgeries in Acts 2:30, in Acts 2:31 the phrase hê sarx autou
("his flesh") can be cut straight out of the text without harm to the
sense, and in fact such a removal restores the original meaning of the
actual Septuagint text, and also restores the original parallel
structure of Peter's speech: the sentence "that he was neither
abandoned to Hades nor saw destruction" uses the same subject for two
verbs, whereas inserting "his flesh" changes the subject from "he" to
"flesh" and thus breaks the parallel structure of the sentence.
The fact that Peter would not
butcher scripture this way in a public appeal to Jews, and the fact
that we can easily restore the correct sense by striking the suspect
phrase exactly where it stands, and the fact that we have proof
that later scribes were willing and eager to add references to the
flesh here, all together make it more probable than not that Peter did
not say such a thing. Therefore, more probably than not, the original
speech of Peter made no reference to a resurrection of the flesh, and
thus no reference to an empty tomb. That leaves only a reference to
visions, as implied in 2:17. Further confirming this conclusion: had it
been Peter's intent to argue that Jesus rose in the flesh, as evidence
he would surely offer his own testimony that the tomb was empty and the
risen body had been touched and handled and dined with them for many
weeks. But these details are conspicuously absent from Peter's speech.
[10] For more on this trial before Agrippa, see First Example: Luke on Paul's Trial in Chapter 7.
[11] Justin Martyr cites the census records
and the Acts of Pilate in Apology 1.34 &. 1.35,
respectively.
That a man named Jesus would
be born in Bethlehem under Quirinius is not remarkable, even supposing
this could indeed be confirmed. Archaeological evidence suggests the
name of Jesus was so common that around 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 Jews had
that name, and between 1 in 79 and 1 in 312 had that name as well as a
father named Joseph (see: Richard Carrier, "The Bonebox of
James: Is It Physical Evidence of the Historicity of Jesus?,"
2002). In any given year, between 4% and 10% of any town's population
would consist of newborn babies (see sources cited at Note 31 in Chapter
7). Bethlehem was significant enough to have a population of at
least 500-1000, for a total of 20-50 babies in any given year. This
number increases enormously if, as Luke claims, everyone born
at Bethlehem had to register there, even if they lived elsewhere. But
ignoring that, the available estimates produce odds between 6% and 47%
of a Joseph with baby Jesus in Bethlehem in any given year, simply by
chance. In fact, odds are there would be one such pairing in Bethlehem
every 2 to 16 years. That's far from remarkable.
But Justin doesn't say he
checked the records himself anyway. He doesn't say where these records
were kept or how he could gain access to protected government
documents--and there is no plausible reason to believe he could (Romans
kept most government information secret, and surely did not allow
citizens, much less suspected rebels, the opportunity to doctor or
destroy official records: see Note 4
in Chapter 7 and Note
9.35 in Richard Carrier, "The
Date of the Nativity in Luke," 4th ed., 2001). Rather, since Justin
is writing to an emperor, he was probably assuming this
tradition was a fact (his information appears to derive solely from
Luke), and therefore the emperor--who certainly did have access to
government records--could confirm it. There is no evidence anyone ever
actually checked these records, much less confirmed the claim.
[12] Justin Martyr, Apology 1.31 (previous quote from 1.23).
[13] Justin Martyr, Dialogue of Justin and Trypho the Jew 2 (conversion: 3-8; the venerability of scripture convinces him: 7-8).
[14] Ibid. 30 & 39, respectively (on Judaism being the only plausible competitor to Christianity: 8-9).
[15] Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 7 (scripture is his only source of "evidence": cf. 9-10).
[16] cf. e.g. Aristides, Apology 2 & 16. There is an extended Greek "quotation" of Aristides in a work of later Christian fiction, which extensively "adds" to the complete Syriac translation of the original speech. Scholars conclude the Greek extract is not a trustworthy version of the actual speech. On this and Aristides in general, see the scholarly introduction to "The Apology of Aristides the Philosopher," by D. M. Kay in vol. 10 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
[17] Tatian, Address to the Greeks 29.
[18] Ibid. 1-3 & 25-26 (and he knows this because he studied it all, e.g. § 35, the only "research" he appears to have conducted, which is completely irrelevant to whether Jesus actually rose from the dead or anything else claimed in the New Testament).
[19] This comes the from introduction to Papias, The Sayings of the Lord Explained, as quoted in Eusebius, History of the Church 3.39.3-4. Eusebius rightly concludes (ibid. § 1-2 & 5-7) that Aristion and the presbyter John were not witnesses, but students of witnesses, and thus Disciples only by pedigree.
[20] Ibid. 3.39.13. In 3.39.11, Papias
reasserts that oral tradition was the only source he had or trusted.
For an example of his gullibility, Papias apparently reported with
confidence that "Judas walked about in this world a sad example of
impiety. For once his body had swollen to such an extent that he could
not pass even where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by a
chariot, so that his bowels gushed out" (as quoted by Irenaeus Against
Heresies 5.33.4).
James Holding here argues that "if you want a decent deity, you have to make him fully respectable" yet "ignorance of future or present events" is embarrassing and would be a big hurdle to overcome in selling Jesus as God. This is by far Holding's weakest argument. He never proves this was a problem in the first hundred years of Christian preaching. Indeed, he doesn't even establish that the statements in question were at all widely known even among Christians in the first century, much less an element of any conversion speech, even less an objection anyone raised until elite scholars took notice in the 2nd century. Those same elite scholars attacked all popular religions for exactly the same reasons: the precious myths the common people believed about their gods depicted those gods as exhibiting human weaknesses, including ignorance of things they should have known. Obviously, though this annoyed elite scholars, it was never any barrier to the success of widespread belief in these gods. So why should it have been a problem for Christians?
That is sufficient to nullify Holding's point. But there is a further problem worth discussing: Holding does not take into account the probability of evolution in Christian ideology. When the sayings of Jesus first began to circulate, the early Christians probably had a very different conception of who he was than Christians a century later did. As already discussed in Chapter 9, the earliest Christians may not have believed Jesus was literally God. Mark appears to deny it in 10:18, 13:32 and elsewhere. And only once does any Pauline letter directly call him God (Romans 9:5), rather than a son, king, or intermediary between man and God, and that one direct attribution may well be a scribal interpolation--the fact that it is unique in the Pauline corpus suggests this, as does the fact that magnifying the Christological titles of Jesus, especially adding the appellation "God" (theos), is one of the most commonly documented interpolations, with numerous examples in extant manuscripts.[1] Even 1 Clement, written at the end of the first century, never claims Jesus was literally identical with God, but always portrays Jesus as a chosen intermediary. So it cannot be confidently proven that in the early days of the Christian mission Jesus was thought to share in the omniscience of God, any more than any other prophet did. Thus, a few sayings suggesting his ignorance would present no barrier to believing that Jesus was the Chosen One of God, Lord and King of Kings, Anointed Son of God, and so on. For Jesus was not expected to share all the divine attributes during his days on earth, until much later in Christian history.[2]
Likewise, Holding's only evidence is the fact that the Gospels suggest Jesus might not have known some things, and depict him showing "weakness." But this is not relevant to what the Christians were actually saying about Jesus from the beginning. The entire purpose of God's incarnating and taking on flesh was to suffer.[3] This is clear throughout the Epistles. His death could not logically atone if he could not physically suffer, and therefore signs of weakness (including weakness of mind) are necessary to God's plan, not indications against the divinity of Jesus. It would be meaningless (in fact, heretical) to believe Jesus took on a human body that was indestructible, all-powerful, and impervious to pain. Nor did most pagans believe such things of their own incarnated gods (as discussed in Chapter 9). To the contrary, to be incarnated meant to them, as it did to the Christians, that a God voluntarily (or, often, by fate of birth) took on many of the weaknesses of flesh, until shedding that flesh and adopting once again the true divine body (as Christ did at his Resurrection).
Ultimately, Holding fails to prove any obstacle was created for the Christian mission in its first hundred years by these details of the Gospels. Nor does he show that these details were widely known even within the Christian community, or that they played any role when persuading anyone to convert. Nor does he show that Christians in the first hundred years even taught that Jesus was literally identical to God, sharing all the divine attributes during his sojourn on earth, which means Holding can't even demonstrate that prospective converts would have been bothered by a Divine Man who shared in human weaknesses. To the contrary, the Christians were preaching that he had to share in these weaknesses for his salvation to work its magic. Only as Christianity grew more distant from its Jewish roots, and aspired more toward winning over more studious elites, did the role of Jesus as "suffering servant" recede into the background, and the need to build him up as a superman came to the forefront. But by then it was too late. There would be no way to check. But even then, most people would have no difficulty, just as most had no difficulty worshipping pagan gods with similar foibles.
[1] See scholarship and cross-reference in Note 5 in Chapter 9 (the whole of that chapter is relevant here as well).
[2] Indeed, logic suffices here: obviously Jesus did not posses God's attribute of omnipresence. Therefore, there is no logical reason why Jesus could not have lacked other omnible attributes. In other words, to argue that Jesus could not be God because he wasn't omniscient is no more logical than arguing that Jesus could not be God because he wasn't omnipresent. Anyone unimpressed by the latter argument, would be equally unimpressed by the former argument. And Christianity only won over those who were suitably unimpressed by such highbrow nitpicking.
[3] e.g. Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 1:5; 1 Pet. 1:11,
2:21, 3:18, 4:1, 4:13, 5:1; Heb 2:9 & 13:12; and see Chapter 1.
Not much needs to be said about Holding's next point, which simply duplicates what he already argued earlier: that "Jesus endured disgrace--and thereby also offended the sensibilities of his contemporaries" by being mocked and humiliated by the authorities, by being convicted of blasphemy and sedition, and by being buried dishonorably as a convicted felon. We already addressed these issues in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. The bottom line: Christians taught that Jesus was completely innocent, and received all this treatment unjustly--but voluntarily--exactly as scripture required. This message had genuine appeal to many groups, even as it remained repugnant to still other groups--especially those in the elite upper classes. Consequently, exactly as Holding's argument entails, Christianity succeeded only among those groups who were receptive to its message, and failed to find favor among those groups who found such a messiah beneath their contempt. But there were more than enough people in the former category to fully account for the actual scale of Christian success in the first century (which we shall discuss in Chapter 18). So there is nothing "improbable" about Christianity's success on this score.
Holding then throws in a hodge podge of miscellaneous difficulties we might categorize under the general argument that "Christian teachings were too radical to be popular." That may be true--after all, Christianity wasn't, in fact, popular. In its first century, its scale of success was so small it was barely even noticed--a point we shall make in Chapter 18. For now it is enough to note that the Christians themselves routinely admitted they were a small, oppressed, and misunderstood minority, even after a hundred years of earnest preaching and recruitment. Thus, there is no need to explain some universal "popularity" of Christianity, because there was no such thing. Rather, what requires explanation is the attraction of Christianity to those few who flocked to it despite the distrust or condemnation of their peers. And we have already answered different elements of this question in nearly every chapter so far (see Table of Contents).
Some of Holding's grab bag of objections are simply nonsense. For instance, "the theme of being 'born again' was a real shocker," Holding claims--indeed "preaching a 'new birth' would have been inconceivable!" This is a typical foot-in-mouth kind of statement from a man who makes no effort to actually study ancient culture and check his own assertions against the evidence. For in actual fact, far from being "inconceivable," rebirthing was an accepted symbol in pagan mystery religion--that is surely a major reason why the Christians adopted it. For example, Apuleius gives us a detailed account of the ceremony of initiation into the cult of Isis and Osiris, which was one of the most popular religions of the day: the initiation, he tells us, resembles a "voluntary death" (instar voluntariae mortis) after which one is "reborn" (renatus). After you are baptized, the day of initiation became a new "day of birth" and the priest who initiated you became your new father.[1] So much for all this being shocking and inconceivable. To the contrary, it was a popular idea!
Some of Holding's notions are dubious. For example, he argues that "for Jesus to say [the Temple] would be destroyed, and by pagans at that, would have been profoundly offensive to many Jews," yet it was Jews who predicted that very fate in their own sacred scripture: Daniel 9:26. Why would it be okay for the Prophet Daniel to predict this, but not the Prophet Jesus? Holding's argument makes no sense. What's worse, many scholars reject these statements as having been added after the Temple was destroyed, and thus not originally spoken by Jesus, which completely moots Holding's argument, even if we could make sense of it. Moreover, even if Jesus did say some such thing, Christians clearly saw the statement as having nothing to do with the actual temple anyway (John 2:18-22), and regarded its literal interpretation as a slander, and not what Jesus really meant (Mark 14:57-59). So the remark could only be "offensive" to those who didn't inquire as to its meaning--but all converts surely did, so it would present no barrier. One can debate all these issues, but the fact remains that they are not resolved to any sort of consensus among experts, and so no strong argument can be built on such a point.
Some of Holding's arguments are circular. He asks, for example, "Why did the early Christians make such a bold political stand part of their established belief system?" and finds the only answer to be, "They must have truly believed that Jesus was the Lord of this world, and that His resurrection from the dead proved it." Indeed! By definition all Christians believed Jesus was Lord because he was raised from the dead.[2] That's what it meant to be a "Christian." The fact that Christians believed this cannot be used as proof it was true. That's circular reasoning--for it begs the question whether their belief was justified, by any respectable modern standard. Perhaps Holding means that Christians couldn't have locked horns with their peers and authorities in such a bold culture war if they were merely "pretending" to believe. That's debatable (see note above). But we could concede the point happily--for even Holding must admit that many Muslims really believe martyrs gain paradise, that many Hindus really believe they will be reincarnated, and so on, yet their belief is false. Thus, Christians could certainly throw themselves pell mell into a dangerous culture war because of a false belief. The issue is whether their belief was false, not whether it was sincere.
Holding is also guilty of withholding facts, especially in his use of Malina & Rohrbaugh. For example, though he quotes them saying "departure from the family was something morally impossible in a society where the kinship unit was the focal social institution," he curiously fails to mention that they go on to explain how Christianity offered an even better family to be loyal to and thus fulfilled the expectations of their society--proclaiming to do so, in fact, better than existing social institutions.[3] And in actual practice, Christians rarely asked people to depart from their families anyway (as we discussed in Chapter 6 and Chapter 10.2). Indeed, on every point Holding quotes them on, Malina & Rohrbaugh say much more than he lets on. They do not agree with Holding at all that these radical ideas (which were not unique to Christianity--similar proposals were advanced by various sects and philosophical schools) could not have won converts without "irrefutable" empirical evidence. To the contrary, Malina & Rohrbaugh's message, throughout all their commentaries, is that Christianity found a following because its progressive moral vision was actually appealing--it purported (and in many cases genuinely appeared) to solve real social problems. Holding will search Malina & Rohrbaugh in vain for any argument that evidence was a factor in Christianity's actual success. But he will hardly be able to turn a page without finding them remarking in one way or another on the attractiveness of the Christian moral message as the real key to its success--among those groups who were desperately eager for some solution to the failures of their own social institutions.
And this one-sided use of Malina & Rohrbaugh exposes the most pervasive error Holding makes: most of his observations miss the entire point of a culture war in the first place. For example, Holding argues that the "teachings and attitudes of Jesus and early Christianity" were "contrary to what was accepted as normal in the first century," but that isn't exactly true--ancient society was highly cosmopolitan, with numerous different cultures and value systems intermingling and living together. One man's "normal" was another man's anathema. Accordingly, in many ways Christianity gained an audience because it opposed certain values among the elite that were often despised by outsiders as producing a dysfunctional, unjust society. Obviously the elite didn't think so, which is why almost none of them joined up. Yet in other respects, Christianity actually appealed to popular values, religious beliefs, and cultural symbols and expectations--it was deliberately sold as their truest realization, against the corruption and failure of other religious sects. Both tactics are proven winners in the game of cultural warfare. So there should be no surprise that Christianity won many adherents.
Holding doesn't seem to grasp the multiculturalism of antiquity, or the nuances of just what the Christians were actually arguing. "Think of how people react when someone burns Old Glory," he asks, offering this as an example of radical behavior that breeds cultural outrage. But somehow he manages to forget the fact that there are a lot of people who don't care whether someone burns the flag (in fact, most people don't), and still a lot who see it as symbolically appropriate, and even many who actually cheer the flames. That is why the flag is burned. Thus Holding is engaging in yet another hasty generalization, pretending everyone was exactly alike in their values and beliefs, when in fact the Roman world, just like modern America, was awash with battles between numerous conflicting cultural values. And even then, most of the ancient culture war, again just like today, wasn't really a clash of different values, but a clash of different perceptions of whether those values were actually being realized. Most flag burners in the United States are usually patriots: they burn the flag to protest the fact that the present government is not living up to the very values it professes to serve. The same holds for any contemporary issue you care to mention--whether it's war, capital punishment, abortion, school prayer--in every case, there really isn't a difference in values, for both sides profess to value compassion, and liberty, and freedom from oppression, and equality before the law. Rather, there is only a difference in perception: one side says the other's behavior violates their own values, of compassion or liberty or freedom from oppression or equality before the law. So it was in antiquity: Jesus and the early Christians believed and preached that their apparently "radical" behavior and teachings were actually a fulfillment of the ordinary and beloved values of the wider society, and that what others in that society thought was fulfilling those values was actually trampling and destroying them. It was a debate. Some cried poppycock. Some rubbed their chins and nodded. Some cheered. Christians recruited from the cheering section.
So, for example, it is certainly true the Christian movement was an attempt to supplant the Jewish Temple cult, as Holding details. Indeed, the Christians were not shy about this: their language on the matter was explicit. It was, in fact, their primary message. Many other Jewish sects also attempted exactly this--the Samaritans, for example, as well as the community at Qumran. But that was because the Temple cult, and the system it entailed, was seen by many as a major cause of society's problems. I elaborate on this point elsewhere.[4] Here it is enough to cite the fact that the Temple cult was perceived by many as commercialized and hypocritical, and it had become a focal point of violence. Thus it was a major social problem. So to get rid of it was often seen as a viable solution--to those who were locked outside of the system that controlled it. Insiders--like the Pharisees and Judaean Rabbis--were appalled, of course. But that's a typical elite response to popular unrest. Citing how shocked the elite were tells us nothing of how the discontented masses felt about the matter.
And that's really the most important point here. Holding can certainly claim that Christian teachings "would have shocked most" listeners, but that only serves to explain the actual fact that "most listeners" didn't become Christians. Even by the middle of the 3rd century, after 200 years of vigorous missionary activity establishing hundreds of churches throughout the Roman Empire, the Church comprised less than 1% of the Empire's population (see Chapter 18), which means even then (much less in its first hundred years) 99 out of 100 people (and that is certainly "most") rejected the Christian message. The few who accepted it, did so because they approved of its anti-elitist message, in all the ways I have already explored in previous chapters. Flag burners in the United States serve as a perfect parallel: their numbers and motivations are largely the same--a tiny minority who believe the larger society has failed to live up to its own values. Ultimately, Holding cannot offer the fact that "by far most" rejected Christianity as evidence that Christianity had "irrefutable proof" that Jesus rose from the dead! Nor can he claim that the tiny minority who were persuaded, did so only because the proof of this was irrefutable--for there were numerous other motives available, and as we have seen in several past chapters, the evidence shows those other motives were operating, fully explaining the actual scale of Christianity's success.
[1] Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.21-25. Apart from the language just quoted, he describes the ritual in such terms: "I approached the border of death, and once the threshold of Proserpina was crossed, I was conveyed through all the elements, and came back" (ibid. 11.23; Prosperpina is the Goddess of the Underworld and as such is a personification of the Land of the Dead); all this is again called a "rebirth" in 11.16.
[2] Or maybe--as Malina & Neyrey explain, not all Christians would necessarily have to really believe this, in order to find the movement worth every sacrifice. They could merely profess to believe it, in order to support and promote its superior cultural agenda. See Chapter 10.
[3] Bruce Malina & Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (2003): "Surrogate Family," p. 414 (though the same point is made throughout the commentary).
[4] Richard Carrier, "Whence Christianity? A Meta-Theory for the Origins of Christianity," Journal of Higher Criticism 11.1 (Spring 2004).
| 17.1. 17.2. 17.3. 17.4. |
Holding's Bogus Evidence Method as Revealed in Paul Survey of Passages Relating to Method Conclusion |
As his last point, Holding claims that "throughout the NT, the apostles encouraged people to check" and "seek proof and verify facts." This is blatantly false. Indeed, the only evidence he can adduce for this absurd claim has nothing to do with "facts" and actually implies the opposite attitude toward method that Holding intends. Holding begins his case with 1 Thessalonians 5:21, which says (in context, i.e. 5:19-22): "Do not extinguish the Spirit, do not scoff at acts of prophesy, but put them to the test, and hold fast to what's good, and push away every kind of knavish thing." Is Paul talking about checking the evidence for the resurrection? Or in fact any empirical claim? No. He is talking about testing ongoing prophesies in the Church,[1] and the test he refers to is not empirical, but moral: believe any prophesy that is morally good, and shun any prophesy that is morally bad. That kind of test is not even relevant to Holding's argument.
The test in question is the same described or alluded to by other New Testament writers (e.g. 1 John 4:1-5:13; 2 Peter 1:19-2:22), and no other test (distinguishing true from false prophesy) is ever mentioned in the New Testament. The Gospel of Matthew has Jesus himself describe and promote this "moral" test for prophesy: the sole criterion is whether the prophesy produces good or evil fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). No mention is made of doing empirical research or logical analysis or anything like that. To the contrary, Christians are told that false prophets will come bearing all the same evidence true prophets will (Matthew 24:23-29; Mark 13:21-23), therefore only a moral test will tell them apart. The assumption is that false prophesy produces lawlessness and abandonment of love (Matthew 24:11-12). This reflects again the irrational groupthink assumption that a well-behaved man can't lie and a morally successful group must have the approval of God (see again, for example, Chapter 6 and Chapter 10). The only exception to be found in the New Testament is when a false prophet is exposed the same way Moses proved the greatness of his God: in a contest of miracles (Acts 13:6-12)--not by researching or logically analyzing what he claims, but simply seeing whose miracles work. Period. No other evidence or investigation ever comes up, or is at all required to convert even an elite (as discussed in Chapter 13).
Indeed, in the most explicit instruction, John uses the same vocabulary as Paul when he tells Christians to "test" prophetic spirits by seeing whether they promote or stifle love. Indeed, his test is absurdly circular: "every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God, but is the spirit of the Antichrist" (1 John 4:1-3). As standards of inquiry go, this hits rock bottom. The only further test subsequently offered is the criterion of whether the spirit promotes love or worldly desires (1 John 4:4-5:13), since only the former comes from God. It is impossible to accept any of these tests as evidence today. Whether someone in a prophetic trance confesses Christ and advocates love has no bearing at all on whether Jesus really rose from the dead. Indeed, the mere fact that these tests were more than sufficient for Christian converts proves exactly the opposite of Holding's point: they were satisfied with far, far less than anything we would call "irrefutable" evidence. So long as people had visions of a Christ telling them to love each other and give up worldly lusts, that was enough to prove Christ lived. Maybe they would require a missionary to perform some miracle before being truly convinced (as discussed in Chapter 13). But the Christians themselves admitted that even false prophets could do that! Therefore, even empirical evidence was inadequate. Only the moral (and thus thoroughly natural) success of the movement really counted.
The only other piece of evidence Holding has to offer is just as fatal to his case. Holding claims that "when fledgling converts heeded this advice" to check the facts, "not only did they remain converts (suggesting that the evidence held up under scrutiny), but the apostles described them as 'noble' for doing so," citing Acts 17:11. But that passage says the opposite of what Holding thinks: it says these "nobler" Christians accepted the gospel "readily" ("with all willingness"), in other words not skeptically. And it says the only test they conducted, the only research they engaged, the only fact-checking they carried out, was "closely examining the scriptures on a daily basis" as to "whether these things were so," and from that alone "many of them therefore believed, and many among the respectable Greek women, too, as well as not a few of the men" (Acts 7:12). That's it. They checked scripture. And that was enough to persuade them to convert--on the spot. Not a single bit of actual research was required, nor was any engaged. No letters were sent. No inquiries made. No empirical evidence demanded. There wasn't even an interrogation of the apostles as witnesses--to the contrary, their stories were "eagerly" believed, and as soon as what they said matched what the scriptures said, that was sufficient to convert everyone who did convert, even "respectable" men and women. And this is what Acts praises as most noble--not skeptical inquiry as we understand it.
All the evidence from Acts and beyond corroborates this same picture, as demonstrated already in Chapter 13. So even if we completely trust what Acts says, it still proves exactly the opposite of what Holding argues: no empirical research of any kind was required or undertaken, even by wealthy converts, and in fact Christians were hailed as especially "noble" who simply "accepted" the message, confirming no more than that it agreed with scripture. Just as the Gospel of John says, "Because you have seen me, you have believed, but blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe." The greater praise, in other words, went to those who rejected the skeptical standards of Thomas and simply trusted what they were told. That entails a hierarchy of empirical values quite the reverse of what Holding pretends.
That concludes all the evidence Holding can find. There is no other evidence. And even these two passages utterly fail to support his point. As it happens, like these passages, the collective evidence of the New Testament, especially in the Epistles, supports quite the opposite conclusion. Never once is anyone ever "encouraged" to "check" or "seek proof" or "verify facts" at all. No empirical method or standard of critical inquiry gains any praise. To the contrary, those who advocated such methods, and the principles of reasoned doubt and investigation, are pretty much on the receiving end of condemnation. Christianity, after all, targeted those who scorned the "wisdom of the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:17-31), not those who cherished the forensic standards of the super-educated lawyers, historians, and scientists of the day.
And this is born out in evident practice, as Paul could demonstrate any point he wanted by simply articulating a clever proof from scripture, or, failing that, all he had to do was claim a revelation from God. No other evidence really mattered. At most, if he really needed some corroboration, he would appeal to the fact that he suffers for the faith, therefore he "must" be telling the truth, and he can perform "miracles," therefore God "must" approve what he says. Try as you might, search every verse, and not once is any other kind of evidence offered for any claim he makes. These are not fact-checkers. These are mystics. And the standards of mystics are wholly alien to any respectable empiricism.
Read the Epistles and see. Paul and his audience do not seem very impressed by rational, historical, scientific, or dialectical evidence (check out 1 Corinthians 2), so these get no significant mention in his letters. Instead, Paul always 'proves' the truth by appealing to the efficacy of apostolic miracle-working, to subjective revelation, to scripture, and to his upstanding behavior or 'suffering' as proof of his sincerity.[2] That's pretty much it. After all, Paul and his flock believed 'truth' had to be grasped spiritually, on faith (1 Corinthians 2:15-16), not skeptical investigation. Consider the argument of Galatians:
I am amazed that you are so quickly abandoning the one who called you in the grace of Christ, for a different gospel, which isn't really another gospel, except there are some people who trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be anathema! As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preaches to you any gospel other than that which you received, let him be anathema. (Galatians 1:7-17)
Here we have a serious situation: Christians are abandoning the faith for some alien gospel. Surely here of all places Paul would pull out all the stops in emphasizing the proper empirical methods for checking the truth of what Jesus really said and did, and hence what the true Gospel really was. Yet what do we get? A circular criterion of blind dogmatism: anything you hear that contradicts what we told you is false. Period. No fact-checking required. Even a vision from heaven won't cut it! Paul is so adamant about this criterion that he repeats it twice. This is clearly the criterion of truth he and his congregation should and do employ. Yet it is exactly the opposite of the empirical standards Holding wants to pretend Paul advocated.
Paul continues:
For I make known to you, brethren, regarding the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not according to a man, neither did I receive it from a man, nor was I taught it. Rather, it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it: and I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son inside me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, right away I did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go over to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.
Think about this argument for a minute. Paul is surely using the best argument he knows will persuade his audience, and get them back into the fold--so we know his audience must have found this line of reasoning more persuasive than anything else he could think to say. But his line of reasoning is the exact flip-side of empirical standards: whereas a good critical thinker would only trust a man who immediately went and checked all the facts before believing, Paul not only explicitly declares he did not do that at all, but the fact that he didn't is actually his very argument! In other words, he expects his audience to be impressed by the fact that he didn't fact-check! So important is this point that he actually goes out of his way to insist, "I'm not lying!" (Galatians 2:20).
Thus, Galatians 2 expresses values exactly the opposite of what Holding wants. Paul and his audience are thoroughly uninterested in Holding's idea of "fact-checking." To the contrary, the testimony of men, indeed even of angels, is inherently suspect--so suspect, in fact, that they can dogmatically reject it a priori. What is persuasive is simply and only this: that God spoke to Paul in a private revelation. That is the only kind of evidence his audience will accept--indeed, even so much as a hint that Paul checked the facts before believing the vision would destroy Paul's credibility entirely. For if he showed any doubt at all that the vision was true, if the vision was so insufficient that he had to seek reinforcement or additional instruction from mortal men, then this would cast doubt on the vision being an authentic communication from God. After all, his audience were the sort of people who thought God punished Zacharias (by striking him mute) for merely asking for evidence (Luke 1:18-20). That's how hostile the Christian mind was to Holding's dream of "fact-checking." The Christian moral was that Zacharias, and hence all of us, should simply trust a vision--no questions asked, and no facts checked. The same twisted logic also makes sense of Paul's tactic of pointing out how he did a total 180 from enemy to friend, as proof that his vision must really have been from God. The fallacious logic here would impress many people back then. But we have no good reason to buy it today.
Paul's bizarre anti-empirical assumptions reflect the fact that Christian epistemology was fundamentally centered on faith over evidence. For "the righteous shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17, quoting Habakkuk 2:4) and so "we walk by faith and not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). This is an attitude that offers little encouragement to "checking the facts first." To the contrary, when questions arise, far from being encouraged to fact-check, the Christian is told to "ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind" and "such a man cannot expect to receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways" (James 1:6-8). Ask in faith. Ask without doubting. The man who doubts is aimless and unstable and worthy of no help from God. This is exactly the opposite of encouraging critical inquiry. It quite clearly discourages it.
Far from being told to check things out, the Christian is told "you have no need for anyone to teach you" because Christ "teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as this has taught you, you abide in him" (1 John 2:27). In fact, don't even pay attention to what anyone else says, just what we tell you, for "we are of God, and he who knows God understands us, while he who is not of God doesn't understand" and that is our criterion of truth, for "by this we know the spirit of truth" and can distinguish it from "the spirit of error" (1 John 4:6). This is dogmatism, not empiricism. Fact-checking is portrayed here as all but ungodly. Instead, believe what we say. End of story. That's indeed the only criterion implied in 1 Corinthians 15:11: after reciting the claims grounding the faith, Paul does not mention any facts having been checked or being checked or needing to be checked, all he says is "so we preach, and so you believed." That's considered enough.
At the same time, the principles of philosophy and science and logic and forensics are lambasted as foolish. People who rely on them "become futile in their speculations" and though "professing to be wise" they are really just "fools" (Romans 1:21-22). Christians are openly discouraged from learning and developing and employing skills of interrogation and investigation and examination. Anyone who attempts to do that merely "deceives himself" for all that stuff is "foolishness before God." In fact "it is written" that "the reasoning of the wise" is "useless," that God "will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing," making fools of "the wise man" and "the scribe" and "the skilled questioner" (1 Corinthians 1:18-20 & 3:18-20). This isn't exactly an encouragement to follow in the footsteps of philosophers and scholars and skilled inquirers.
Indeed, Christians are specifically told to reject logical analysis, since "wrangling over words" is "useless" and brings only ruin (2 Timothy 2:14), and it's all "fruitless discussion" anyway, and whoever entangle themselves in it "neither understand what they are saying nor grasp the matters about which they make confident assertions" (1 Tim. 1:6-7). Examining alternative accounts and claims is discouraged, too:
If anyone advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, having a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-4)
Thus, the very sort of person who asks questions, and seeks precision in description and terminology, or even suggests the truth is other than the Christian leaders say it is, is just plain evil. How can you check any facts, when any fact contrary to dogma is automatically a lie, born only of evil, arrogance, ignorance, and greed?
So fact-checking is practically ruled out a priori. Anything contrary to the "knowledge of God" and "obedience to Christ" must be destroyed (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). Not checked. Not looked into. Just destroyed. All mundane knowledge is suspect: "if anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know" (1 Corinthians 8:2). And the cure is not employing some critical method to gain reliable knowledge, but to simply reject everything contrary to dogma. The Christian is simply told to "make sure no one makes a captive of you through philosophy and senseless deception according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the natural world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8).
In fact, the earliest Christians conveniently constructed an epistemology whereby any evidence or testimony that contradicts their dogmatic beliefs could be rejected out of hand. For anyone who says anything contrary to the claims of the apostles is surely deluded, "for God has sent upon them a deluding influence so they would believe what is false" (2 Thessalonians 2:11), for they are all hypocrites and liars and victims of deluding spirits and the puppets of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). Christians are even told, point blank: don't debate (Galatians 5:20-26), even though debate is the lifeblood of critical inquiry. Likewise, instead of checking out the facts and developing well-researched refutations, "false teachers" are simply to be "shunned" (2 Timothy 3:5), and so anything contrary to dogma won't even be heard--much less looked into. As Timothy is instructed, "guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith" (1 Timothy 6:20-21). In other words, trust what you were told. Don't even listen to anyone else. Rather than being told to investigate them, Christians are instructed to simply reject what stories they may hear (1 Timothy 4:7).
One can certainly try to sugarcoat all this, spin it to one's liking, make excuses, and ultimately argue that these declarations only apply to certain contexts, or whatever. It still won't change the fact that these are the only encouragements regarding method to be found in the Epistles. And not a one encourages anyone to "check the facts." Instead, when we catch glimpses of the actual methods that Christians respected, we find mysticism trumping empiricism every time. Consider Paul's moving appeal:
When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom when I proclaimed to you the testimony of God.... My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of god. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)
Thus, Paul openly disavows the established rhetorical principles of evidence and argument, and says instead that the miracles of the Holy Spirit are all he came with, and all that God wants Christians to trust as evidence. Miracles and revelations and the apostle's word were always sufficient. No research was necessary, for "the Lord will give you understanding in everything" (2 Timothy 2:7; e.g. Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12, 21:13-15). Like modern New Agers (see Chapter 13), Christians are exhorted to ignore the evidence of their senses, and trust instead in the invisible certainties of their heart (2 Corinthians 4:18), since that is where God speaks to you. Indeed, Paul gives away the game when he says "what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?" (1 Corinthians 14:6) Funny how "evidence" and "logic" don't make the list. Paul is saying outright that if a claim doesn't come by revelation, prophecy, inspiration (gnôsis), or tradition, it is profitless and not even worth mentioning. So much for fact-checking.
Apart from Scripture, the Holy Spirit is their only sourcebook:
For to one God grants the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge (gnôsis) according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another workings of power, and to another prophecy, and to another interpretations of spirits, to another different kinds of utterances, and to another the interpretation of these utterances. (1 Corinthians 12:8-10)
Wisdom. Knowledge. Faith. All come from the Holy Spirit. Not from research. Not from making inquiries. Not from questioning witnesses accurately and weighing different kinds of testimony. Indeed, when Paul declares the hierarchy of reverence, the list goes: "first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, then the ability to help, then to administer, then varieties of speaking in tongues" (1 Corinthians 12:28). Again, fact-checkers don't even make the list.
Christianity's earliest critic certainly noticed the problem, and it is well worth looking at what he said on this matter, and what the Christian apologist Origin had to say in reply, even though this comes two hundred years late. When Celsus attempted to investigate the claims and doctrines of Christians, he kept running into this same wall: Christians would simply exclaim "do not question, just believe!" They expected converts to simply trust in Jesus--without evidence or demonstration. And Origen does not deny it. To the contrary, he defends it! He says, point blank: "we admit that we teach those men to believe without reasons." So much for the supposed encouragement to "check the facts" first.
Origen does claim that Christians believe in inquiry into the meaning of their prophetical writings, the parables of the Gospels, and "other things narrated or enacted with a symbolical signification," but mentions nothing about checking witnesses, documents, physical evidence, histories, or anything empirical at all. And what's worse, not only is "study of scripture" the only inquiry Christians engage in, Origen declares that most people don't even have the time for that (since people worked long hours in antiquity just to get by), and "therefore" the Christian exhortation to "simply believe" is actually a good policy! So rather than refute or even challenge Celsus on this point, Origin defends the very anti-empirical policy we have found throughout the Epistles, on the dismal argument that faith is good for people.
By wasting no time on "fact-checking" before committing to the faith (or even afterward!), people can gain salvation and moral improvement. "Isn't it better for them," Origen insists, "to believe without a reason, and then become reformed and improved" rather than "not to have allowed themselves to be converted on the strength of mere faith, but to have waited until they could give themselves to a thorough examination of the reasons?" Origen says it is indeed better to "just believe," because most people could never complete such an examination, and therefore would remain wicked and die unsaved. So it is better they simply have faith, and not waste time checking the facts.[3] So much for Holding's argument.
In conclusion, there is no evidence the apostles were "actively encouraging people to check out their claims" in any sense we would find relevant today. To the contrary, as best we can tell, they were encouraging the rejection of the methods of critical and empirical inquiry advocated by elite scientists and philosophers, and instead advocating the pursuit of entirely different criteria of truth--criteria we know today are full of holes and incapable of actually getting at the real truth about anything. Their standards were mystical (appeals to scripture and revelation), moral (appeals to the virtue of the speaker as proof his story is true), and superstitious (appeals to the miraculous "powers" of the speaker as proof he's right), never anything validly empirical.
Obviously this won no one over who already valued the skeptical and empirical standards of the philosophical schools. But that is precisely why these people are condemned as fools. The Christians found favor instead with those who despised elite philosophy and cherished in its place entirely different standards of inquiry, standards focused on God and spirituality and moral development. And that is all the more reason why we can't much trust what the Christians claimed. By its very design Christianity excluded rational and critical minds, driving most of them away with every insult, while sucking in droves of what we would today call New Agers, people who prefer to "feel" their way to the truth, through blind faith in dreams and oracles and superstitious assumptions about God and man and the universe. These were people who were annoyed with the uncertainties of real knowledge, and preferred to find refuge from the anxieties of doubt and the rigors of research by clinging to the absolute certainty of unquestioning faith. Their standards were incapable of ascertaining the truth--about anything, much less the resurrection of Jesus. And for that reason we cannot conclude they would only believe it if it was true. Indeed, from what we can see of their methods, that isn't even probable.
[1] Ordinary converts would prophesy as a standard Church practice at the time: Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 11:4-5, 13:9, 14:1-39.
[2] Miracles as Criterion: 1 Cor. 2:4-5 ("my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so your faith would not stand on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God"); 2 Cor. 12:12 ("truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, by signs and wonders and mighty works"); 1 Thess. 1:5 ("how that our gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, even as you know what manner of men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake"), Heb. 2:3-4 ("...what was spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by them that heard, and God bore witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will"). Moral Virtues as Criterion: 2 Cor. 11:23-27, 12:7-10; 1 Thess. 1:5. Scripture as Authoritative: Rom. 15:4, 16:25-26; 1 Cor. 4:6, 15:3-4; 2 Tim. 3:15-16. Revelation as Authoritative: 1 Cor. 2:6-16, 12:8, 13:2; 2 Cor. 12:7-9; Gal. 2:1-2 (note how Paul occasionally distinguishes between his opinion and instructions from God, e.g. 1 Cor. 7:12, 7:25 vs. 14:37), see also Eph. 3 & 2 Peter 1:16-18. Examples in Acts of Trusting Visions: 7:55-56, 10:1-7, 11:5-14, 12:6-11, 16:9-10, 22:17-21.
[3] Origen, Against Celsus 1.9-10
(Galen makes a similar observation about Christians in On the
Different Pulses Kühn 8.579 & 8.657). Origen even appeals
to the very fact that Christianity improves men's morals as sufficient
proof that it's true--because no doctrine could do that unless God
approved of it. This is the same pseudo-logic I've discussed in other
chapters: from Origen's cultural point of view, to be good, and to be
approved of God, are synonymous and inseparable. So good men can't lie,
nor even be mistaken in their doctrines--for if they were, they would
not be good. Vicious logic indeed. In contrast, Celsus advocates the
view that we must "follow reason and a rational guide, since he who
assents to opinions without following this course is very liable to be
deceived." Notice how we never find any statement like this in the
Bible.
| 18.1. 18.2. 18.3. 18.4. 18.5. 18.6. |
Assumptions Numbers: What the Christians Say Numbers: What the Experts Say With Whom Did Christianity Begin? The Rise of World Christianity Conclusion |
We have sufficiently demonstrated in previous chapters that there was nothing improbable about Christianity's success--entirely natural factors that are well-attested in the evidence supply all the explanatory power needed to account for the actual course of history. I have not examined the issue beyond the first hundred years of the Christian mission, because after that period very little of Holding's argument remains relevant--the ability to check the facts would be, by then, all but impossible, and greatly thwarted by an overabundance of bogus history, while the nature of Christianity had substantially changed as well, as did the social circumstances surrounding it. Nevertheless, below I will address very briefly the next few centuries of Christian development, which secured its future as a major world religion (a fate that was never definite until Constantine).
But the central point of this chapter is to address two underlying assumptions that run through Holding's entire case. For one thing, he wrongly dismisses the role of luck in deciding the fate of nations and social movements. Holding is correct that we should not simply assume luck was a factor, nor declare luck as solely responsible. That has to be demonstrated, usually through appropriate contrafactual reasoning. And I shall demonstrate below that luck played a significant role in the eventual success of Christianity (i.e. its growth after mid-2nd century). But another, and far more important assumption in Holding's argument is that Christianity, right out of the gate, was as successful as sex in the sixties, winning over millions of people in just two or three generations.
Holding never actually commits to any numbers, but many of his statements strongly imply that Christianity was literally running away with Greco-Roman culture. For it makes no sense to argue that Christianity must have had supernatural backing because "most people" wouldn't buy it, when in fact most people didn't. Surely Holding must be assuming that most people did buy it, or at least so many as to defy all expectation. I would have to say he must imagine Christianity won at least 10% of the population within a hundred years, although I get the impression he actually imagines as much as 20% or more. That's patently absurd. But nothing else makes sense of many of his arguments. If fewer than 1 in 10 people bought it, even after a hundred years of sales, it can easily be said that Christianity was only appealing to the fringe radicals of the going culture. After all, pick any culture throughout history, and you'll easily find 1 in 10 members of that society following the beat of a different drummer. No conclusions about what the other 9 out of 10 would do will have any bearing on the response of the rest. And most of Holding's arguments amount to drawing conclusions about the other 9 out of 10, not the 1 in 10 who actually converted. Thus, there is something fundamentally illogical about his entire case--unless he really does mean to imply that Christianity won over far more than even 10% of the population by mid-2nd century.
But the reality is, even 10% is an absurd estimate. In fact, the evidence is pretty clear (as we shall see below) that Christianity won over less than 1% of the population before the middle of the 2nd century. That means more than 99 out of 100 people thought it was false, and less than one in a hundred believed. It escapes me how anyone can claim this as a "supernatural" success. Even by their own account, Christians remained for centuries a small minority cult almost universally rejected or opposed, especially by the educated elite. Its very country of origin rejected it almost universally, as Paul himself lets on in Romans 11:25-31. Judaea, much less Jerusalem or Galilee, never became "Christian" to any notable degree until the 4th century--at the earliest.
For example, Josephus records the history of these regions in considerable detail right up to the Jewish War (66-70 A.D.), yet Christians never once feature in the narrative of the war--everyone encountered anywhere during the conflict was either Jewish or pagan. More importantly, his numerous digressions on the geography and demography of Palestine never mention them. Even the dubious passages that do mention them, say nothing of their numbers or location. Archaeological evidence secures the case: though vast amounts of material evidence has been uncovered of unmistakably Jewish occupation throughout Palestine, as well as considerable evidence of pagan inhabitants, absolutely no material evidence of any Christian population can be found there until later centuries. In fact, only in the 3rd century does material evidence of a Christian presence, anywhere in the Empire, begin to match that of even minor pagan cults. Therefore, from both observations it follows that if Christians inhabited Palestine in the first century their numbers must have been truly negligible. And to carry the point home, even the most biased of Christian sources make no claims to the contrary. Acts suggests the mission was taken to the Gentiles because Jews simply weren't buying it anymore.[1] This looks pretty bad for Holding. Where Christianity was most open to being checked against the facts is where it was least successful. Hmmm.
Even taking in the compass of the whole Roman Empire, Holding himself quotes N. T. Wright that belief in Christ's resurrection "was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire." That's not an impressive rate of success. In fact, it's downright dismal. One might contrast this with the success of the Scientific Revolution, when modern scientific principles launched from a controversial fringe movement in 1600 to near-universal praise and acceptance from every echelon of society by 1750. Christianity only wishes it had seen that kind of triumph. In the end, it could only gain that scale of success after numerous centuries, and even then only by force and intimidation.
There is no good evidence on the number of Christians in the first century. Acts neglects to mention or even estimate the rate of losses and has every reason to exaggerate the scale of Christianity's success, yet still only claims the Church began with about 120 members after the death of Jesus (Acts 1:15), while the largest actual number on record for the size of the Church in Palestine is 5,000 total members (Acts 4:4). All subsequent growth is described only in vague terms, and Acts loses complete track of the matter once even those few Palestinian Christians "scattered" and eventually fled (Acts 8:1, 11:19).
At one point (Acts 21:20) we are told a Christian elder boasted that "myriads" of (presumably local) Jews have converted, but unfortunately "myriad" can mean 10,000 or just "thousands" or even "more than I can count!" and so this cannot be treated as a useful or precise estimate. There is no evidence of an actual internal census (otherwise Luke would have more precise numbers to quote), and it would be a Herculean feat even to count thousands, much less tens of thousands, by hand. Consequently, any such announcement had to have been a guess--and a Christian would always guess optimistically. Moreover, outright hyperbole would be typical in such a context--and notably, Luke only puts this claim in someone else's mouth, and thus does not commit to it himself. Similarly (outside the context of Palestine), when Tacitus reports a "huge number" (multitudo ingens) of Christians were found in Rome for the Neronian persecution of 64 A.D. (Annals 15.44), this only means the number was uncountable--possibly one or two hundred, as would befit the fact that the population of Rome was one of the largest cities in the world, and one of the primary locations Christians targeted for evangelism.[2] But "hundreds" out of nearly a million people is still socially microscopic.
Other evidence that is sometimes cited is pretty much useless for arriving at any actual number. The riots under Claudius, driving him to expel the Jews from Rome, cannot be linked to Christianity except by implausible speculation.[3] And even if it were linked, Acts reveals that only a handful of Christians, even a single man, was enough to launch riots in Ephesus and Jerusalem (Acts 19 and 21). So riots in Rome would not prove any greater numbers. Another useless piece of evidence is the book of Revelations, which says there will be a total of 144,000 Jews saved (Rev. 7:4 & 14:1-3). But there is no reason to believe the unknown author of this text was using any kind of actual count or data--for the book is a record of a mystical vision, and about the future (Rev. 1:1-3), and not a historical fact drawn from any kind of real "source." We also don't know when the book was written, or when the author imagined this count would be reached. Moreover, the number is calculated mystically: exactly twelve thousand Jews will come from each of the twelve tribes (Rev. 7:5-8), every single one of them a virgin (14:4). Clearly we are not looking at any kind of historical report here. Likewise, when Aristides wrote an address to emperor Hadrian (between 117-138 A.D.) in which he called the Christians a new "class" of people, this offers no hint of what kind of numbers Aristides had in mind, since the appellation has nothing to do with number or size, but with categorical distinction: the Christians constituted a new category because their customs and beliefs differed from the traditional categories of the ancient world (such as Barbarian, Greek, or Jew). Aristides makes no clear statement about the number of his brethren--and at any rate, this document falls well outside the first century, and is explicitly apologetic and thus subject to hyperbole. So, again, there is no useful data here.
Some have argued that an anonymous quotation in the 5th century text of Sulpicius Severus really comes from the lost books of the Histories of Tacitus, and since the passage says the Romans specifically destroyed the Jewish Temple to eradicate the Christians, this implies a substantial Christian presence in Judaea as of 70 A.D.[4] But Severus does not say he is quoting Tacitus. It is only by dubious stylistic speculation that the passage is attributed to Tacitus at all, and most scholars believe the passage was redacted by Christians anyway. So this evidence is tainted and unreliable. Even the action proposed--destroying the temple--could not plausibly have crushed the Christian movement, so the story is inherently unbelievable.
But even if it were genuine it doesn't help us--for we would still not know what drew the ire of the Romans on that occasion. Since Acts suggests the Christians could make a substantial nuisance of themselves even when very few, the fact that Romans like Nero (only six years earlier) found a reason to get rid of them did not entail it was their vast numbers that annoyed him. Nero may well have found Christians to be the handiest scapegoats for the burning of Rome because they preached that the world would soon be set on fire (e.g. 2 Peter 3:5-13), and because Paul, all by himself, had personally secured Nero's attention by causing a riot in Jerusalem (Acts 21 & 28), which would make Paul (and therefore his "movement") a visible cause of unrest in a troubled province on the brink of a rebellion only two years away. Moreover, if Titus believed the Christians were responsible for burning Rome (a crime they had been convicted of only a few years earlier), that would be reason enough to want to get rid of them, no matter how few of them there were--and given all the fires and riots and complaints from the Jewish leadership, Titus could easily have thought the movement was larger than it really was. But even if numbers were the issue, the five thousand Christians alleged to exist in Acts would constitute almost an entire legion--certainly enough for a Roman general to worry about--but not enough by 70 A.D. to constitute an impressive popularity for Holding's purpose, even if we were to make all the groundless leaps of speculation needed to get that far.
It has also been claimed that laws would not have been passed against Christians unless there were a lot of them. But even if that were so, how many would there have to be? Any answer would be a purely subjective judgment. Given the fact that Christians routinely engaged in bold and public behavior in several major cities, it would not require many to gain legal attention. Again, Acts shows a mere handful could and did cause several riots, illegal plots, and official charges under Roman law (16:16-40, 17:5-9, 18:12-19, 19:23-41, 21:27-23:25). And, again, a hundred per city in seventy cities would be more than visible enough to warrant a government response--yet is still only a total of 7,000 out of 60 million. So, yet again, even with very small numbers they could make a public nuisance of themselves. Indeed, a single man--Paul--sends the entire city of Jerusalem into chaos and gets nearly every Roman official involved all the way up to (presumably) the emperor. And Christians were certainly a known presence in Rome by the time of Nero. So even if there were laws specifically against being Christian, that tells us nothing useful about how many Christians there were.
There is also a Catch-22 here: Holding's argument requires premise P1: "unless evidence of divine support was overwhelming, large numbers of people would not become Christians if it was a capital crime." The argument then follows P2: "if being a Christian (in and of itself) was a capital crime, then Christians existed in large numbers." And since P2 contradicts P1 unless "evidence of divine support was overwhelming," Holding's conclusion is thus upheld, if P1 and P2 are true. The problem is that any advocate of P2 must then contend with the fact that it was also a capital crime to rob graves. In fact, from the first two centuries we have far more evidence of those laws than for any laws mentioning Christians.[5] But P2 analogously entails that if there were laws against robbing graves, then hundreds of thousands of people must have been graverobbers, which proves P3: "hundreds of thousands of people would engage in lethally dangerous and socially despised behavior without overwhelming evidence of divine support." P3 refutes P1. Therefore, one must retreat from this fatal assumption and admit to P4: "only a tiny fringe minority engaged in graverobbing." And that is probably true--certainly fewer than 1/10th of 1% of the population could ever have been graverobbers. But if P4 is true, then mutatis mutandis P2 is false, and laws could be passed against tiny fringe minorities. Therefore, even if there were laws specifically against Christians, this would not entail that they were more than a tiny fringe minority. You can only escape this conclusion by denying P4, but denying P4 entails denying P1, which refutes Holding's entire thesis. Something has to give, and for Holding, that must be P2. Therefore, Holding cannot argue from the existence of laws to the conclusion that Christians existed in vast numbers.
But the fact is, there is no evidence of any actual law against Christianity anyway, until the mid-2nd or early 3rd century. Prior to that, Christians were rarely prosecuted at all, and even when they were, it was for other generic crimes against Rome, and not simply for "being Christian." Paul, we are told, ended up before Gallio on a vague charge of soliciting criminal behavior, and is charged as a Jew (Acts 16:20-21). Even Nero had to formally charge Christians with arson to get away with killing them.[6] Even by the early 2nd century, when Pliny asks the emperor Trajan what the law was against Christians, Trajan replies, "it is not possible to establish anything in general that has a specific form, so to speak." In legal jargon that meant there was no actual law, and so Pliny had to use his own judgment. Hence the only general test Trajan suggests is the same one Pliny came up with on his own even before he knew why Christians were criminals, which is to test whether the accused is a member of an illegal society: first by asking them to renounce this, then--to make sure they are telling the truth--asking them to do something otherwise trivial that he was told members of their association would never do. This means Pliny understood Christianity as already violating existing laws against illegal associations, and therefore no specific law against Christianity was required. It was already a capital crime, since any formal association required an approval or a special license issued by the government, which sought assurances that the association was not a covertly treasonous movement against the Roman order.[7]
This explains why Pliny regarded "obstinacy" (a refusal to renounce a social affiliation) as sufficient evidence of guilt. This also explains why it appears they were tried for the name "Christian," since Christiani can mean "members of the party of Christ," in the same way the Pompeiani were the supporters of Pompey against Caesar, and Pliny's "test" of their loyalty (renouncing their affiliation and proving their sincerity) is considered sufficient proof of innocence or guilt. This corresponds perfectly to the charge against them specifically identified in Acts: "acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar by saying there is another king, Jesus" (17:7). In fact, if even a single man went around all by himself proclaiming he was a Brutian--a supporter of the party of Brutus--Pliny could have executed him on the charge of being a Brutiani, not because there was any law specifically against being one, but simply because it was illegal for anyone to support a political party other than Caesar's. Therefore, the Pliny-Trajan correspondence entails there was no specific law against Christians. Indeed, Trajan outright says there is no such law, and then he specifically tells Pliny not to hunt Christians down--so this was not a government that supposedly wanted them exterminated (for more on Pliny's letter, see the next section).
So we are left with no useful evidence of the size of the Christian movement in the first century. Even the only definite number we have--the 5,000 in Acts--comes from an unknown source, and is reported by an author with an obvious bias toward exaggerating the popularity of his movement. We also have no idea how such a number could have been known to Luke. Who counted? Even if we set all that aside, we still don't get as far as we need to in order to prop up Holding's case. Reasonable estimates for the total population of (the whole of) Palestine in the first century approach 2.5 million. So a Church of even 25,000 members (five times the largest size Luke himself dares to claim) would make up only 1% of the population there. In reality, it is doubtful the Christian Church ever maintained even that size throughout Palestine in the first century, and there is no reliable evidence it did. Meanwhile, outside Palestine we have no numbers at all, not even from Luke. All we get is a general impression of winning converts here and there--but whenever anything more precise is said, we rarely hear of more than several households per town. Even at our most optimistic, that doesn't look good. We could perhaps imagine a hundred Christians per city by the year 100, which would be a shockingly visible presence, given the small size of ancient towns and the "nosiness" of ancient cultures (as Holding himself makes a point of, cf. Chapter 13). But even by the most optimistic estimates, Christians had then penetrated fewer than 70 towns or cities across the whole empire--and that only makes for a total of 7,000 people. Again, that's socially microscopic.
A quick survey of important considerations and scholarship regarding the actual rate of growth of Christianity in its first century is presented by Rodney Stark.[8] He notes that the highest estimate of Christian numbers ever in bona fide scholarship is 15 million believers...in the year 300 A.D. Scholarly consensus, however, trends quite strongly toward half that figure, or even less. Given the best estimate of the total population of the Roman Empire as 60 million, this means that even by the most favorable scholarly estimate on record, Christians comprised only 25% of the population even after nearly three centuries of evangelism. And most scholars agree the ratio was probably closer to 10%. Even so, all scholars agree a ratio higher than 25% is completely unsupportable. As Stark rightly points out--and he is a sociologist by profession--a final number like this allows us to predict the average rate of growth over the previous centuries from known historical precedents and scientific models. Stark does the math, and demonstrates that only a rate of growth of around 40% per decade fits the actual data we have as well as known precedents (it roughly matches the rate of growth of the Mormon Church, for example).[9]
Stark surveys the evidence from antiquity that corroborates this estimate, and he is probably right--for there is no evidence to contradict him, and what little evidence we have supports him. Indeed, as Stark explains, the strongest evidence we have--Roger Bagnall's hard data from Egyptian papyrological documents--essentially agrees with Stark's growth curve. Moreover, most experts agree with Stark's conclusions--we shall mention Hopkins, Fox, and Finn below. So there is no plausible case to be made against Stark's estimate. No evidence counters it. All relevant evidence supports it. One could still "insist" the numbers were higher, and that somehow no real evidence of this survives, but any argument based on a blind conjecture is itself a blind conjecture, and that won't suit Holding's argument at all. The fact is, the evidence we have agrees only with Stark--so if we reject Stark, we still have no evidence the numbers were higher.
Yet Stark's conclusion entails there could not have been more than 8,000 Christians in the Church by the end of the first century, which fits the above picture of 100 Christians in each of 70 towns--more than enough to be a visible problem, but nowhere near enough to make Holding's case. However, we must not confuse this number with the number of converts in the first century--for almost all converts made in the 40's would be dead by the year 100 and there is also the inevitable question of apostasy. In both cases Stark is assuming their members are replaced. So if, for example, 75% of those converted throughout the first century were no longer alive by 100 (a reasonable assumption), then by Stark's own estimate the Christians actually won 32,000 converts over its first hundred years. If we add the hypothesis that 1 in 4 converts eventually left the faith voluntarily (out of disillusionment, disagreement, persuasion by outsiders, or simple fear), and that should be a fair assumption even if Christianity was 100% true (roughly 1 in 4 Americans is not a serious Christian today, and Holding would probably argue that they have access to sufficient facts to know they are mistaken), then according to Stark the Christians could claim to have appealed to as many as 40,000 members of the population, which over that same period of time would have included at least 120 million adults overall. That's it. Only 1 out of 3000 people--less than 1/10th of 1 percent--were ever impressed enough to join. That's a trivial scale of success. Indeed, even if we exaggerate beyond all proportion and imagine Stark's math is off by a factor of ten, and Christianity appealed to 400,000 people in the first century, we still are at far less than 1% of the population, which we can never claim to be more than a tiny fringe minority.
We should perhaps allow for more apostates--enthusiasts might profess nominal allegiance, receive a free baptism as yet another egg in their basket of supernatural security, and then find out the truth or think things through. Christian sources obviously avoid admitting that anyone abandoned the faith, and in fact the only useful observation we have on this phenomenon comes from Pliny the Younger, in his highly rhetorical epistle to Emperor Trajan (Letters 10.96). Pliny's account of his investigation into local Christianity reveals that there was a significant number of Christians who did not remain converts--they left of their own accord, even without persecution. Pliny found locals (around 112 A.D.) who had ceased being Christians "two or more years ago, and some of them even twenty years ago" (10.96.6), and still more were quick to abandon their beliefs once Pliny threatened them with execution. So we know Christianity had to contend with making up losses. It didn't create some miraculous landslide of unshakable belief.
But even more telling is the fact that Pliny starts right off by admitting, "I have never been present at an examination of Christians." In fact, he says he knows nothing about how they are to be punished or even charged (10.96.1-2). This is proof positive that Christians must have been extremely scarce--to the point of social invisibility. Pliny had been governor in Asia Minor for some years already, had previously done a long tour as an officer in Syria, and of course had lived in Rome much of his life, and even served as Consul of the Empire.[10] Yet he knew absolutely nothing about Christianity--he doesn't even know why Christianity was illegal! This means he never once saw a trial or a riot, nor had a Christian brought before him, nor ever heard the issue discussed in the Senate or courts or porticoes or by any of his peers--not in Asia (until this occasion), nor Syria, nor Rome, not even when he held the highest office in the land. That is simply impossible. Unless Christians were barely there. That does a lot to corroborate Stark's conclusion.
Some apologists do try to use Pliny's exaggerated panic as evidence that Christianity was a huge hit. For Pliny claims "temples had for a long time been almost entirely deserted" and "sacred rites had been allowed to lapse" and "scarcely anyone could be found" to buy sacrificial animals (obvious rhetorical exaggerations), "but," Pliny declares with relief, these have all become popular again. Is Pliny saying Christianity had practically eclipsed paganism all around him? That's impossible. For had that been so, how could he know nothing about it? And why would he need informers and anonymous lists to find the Christians? Throughout his letter Pliny appears shocked and surprised to suddenly be finding Christians all over the place--though he doesn't say how many, his astonishment makes no sense if it had become a major local practice. The fact is, Pliny does not say this decline in pagan worship was the consequence of people flocking to Christianity--apologists simply read that inference into the text. Rather, with classic rhetorical flourish, Pliny is claiming that piety in general had declined into apathy, but people were finding religion again, and that was a good sign because it meant they would stop straying into barbaric superstitions like Christianity and return instead to zealous patriotism. Otherwise, as Pliny's story plainly reveals, you had to look pretty darned hard even to find a local Christian.
A more thorough survey of the evidence and scholarship pertaining to Christian numbers was provided in a landmark paper by Keith Hopkins.[11] Hopkins rightly explains that no one can claim anything definite on this subject, at least for the first two centuries. Anyone who says anything about Christian numbers is speculating, and not asserting a fact. This is a fatal problem for Holding, whose argument requires factual premises, not speculative ones. The best we can hope for is to arrive at conclusions that do not contradict any relevant evidence and that agree with all the relevant evidence, in the light of known historical precedents and scientific models--exactly the standards employed by Stark. And, in fact, Hopkins demonstrates the accuracy and plausibility of Stark's conclusions. Thomas Finn also agrees with Hopkins and Stark, and adds further corroborating evidence, while Robin Lane Fox surveys every kind of evidence of Christian numbers one could expect to find (especially archaeological), and finds that Christians were practically invisible until the 3rd century.[12] We can apparently trust the eye-witness testimony of the Christian scholar Origen that by the dawn of the 3rd century "only a very few" had joined the Christian movement.[13]
In addition to all this, especially the direct numerical corroboration of Stark's model from Bagnall's papyrological survey, we have one other statistic that is probably exact and accurate: Bishop Cornelius of Rome tells us the exact size of the Church at Rome in a letter he wrote around 251 A.D, which Eusebius quotes at length.[14] In passing Cornelius gives a list of the personnel which is so exact it surely derives from financial record books, and altogether the total comes to 60 priests of various grades, an additional staff of 94, "over" 1500 beggars and widows on the Church dole, and other members "too many to count." The fact that only dependents and staff were counted means even at this advanced stage in the Church's development, no effort was being made to count the size of its membership--so all earlier counts surely can't be any more than optimistic boasts or guesses. But from this hard data, different scholars have variously estimated the Roman Church at between 14,000 and 30,000, or even 50,000 members, in the year 251. No one argues for anything more than that, and even those numbers are probably too high. With only, at most, a hundred men qualified to lead or supervise services each week, and given that the largest meeting spaces available to Christians at the time could accommodate no more than 100 people, the Church at Rome probably could not have claimed more than 11,000 believers--which is pretty close to Stark's model, which predicts 14,000. There is absolutely no evidence it was larger than that.
Even so, I'll be freakishly optimistic and run with the largest estimate on the scholarly record (that of Edward Gibbon, over 200 years obsolete and pretty much universally rejected by modern experts) and so just "assume" this same data suggests a Christian population in Rome of 50,000 in 251 A.D. All scholars agree the population of Rome at this time exceeded 700,000. Christians, therefore, could claim barely 7% of the population of Rome even by the mid-3rd century--even by the most flawed and exaggerated estimate on record--which mathematically entails the Church was far smaller in the 2nd century, and even smaller in the 1st. In order for there to be only a 7% penetration of the population of Rome after more than 200 years, mathematically requires an average rate of growth no greater than 50% faster than Stark's--any faster would require implausible phases of zero or even negative growth over several decades in order to fit the facts. Yet increasing Stark's rate of growth by 50% still leaves us with no more than 17,000 Christians throughout the entire Roman Empire by 100 A.D., which entails a total tally of "converts" in the first century of roughly 63,000 (using the same assumptions stated earlier). In other words, barely 1 in 2000 people found Christianity attractive even assuming the most inflated interpretation possible of the best data we have.
Stark begins his progression from an initial base of 1,000. But what if there really were 5,000 in 40 A.D. as Luke claims? Stark's model would then predict no more than 38,000 members by 100 A.D., which means fewer than 200,000 conversions throughout the whole of the 1st century, which amounts to little more than 1/10th of 1%. Still no good for Holding. What if we started with the wholly unsupportable assumption of 25,000 Christians already by 40 A.D.? Wouldn't that get us higher estimates for the year 100? Of course, that starting number is extremely implausible, and no expert today would accept such a claim. But even if we assume it anyway, it follows mathematically that if Christianity had 25,000 members in the year 40, then the hard data we have entails Christianity must have grown far more slowly than even the Stark model predicts. For any faster rate of growth would fail to fit the best information we have regarding the size of Christian populations in the 3rd and 4th centuries--unless, again, we posit unusually long periods of zero or even negative growth to balance the numbers out. But that does just as much harm to Holding's argument. If more people were fleeing Christianity than joining it, at any time in its first two centuries, that would still be bad news for the Holding thesis. So would years and years of zero net converts.
But even worse, though dinking the rate of growth around in some voodoo seesaw like this might get you higher numbers in the first century, where is the evidence the rate fluctuated so wildly? Holding cannot say "Christianity was miraculously successful in the first century because I said so." It seems the only way to turn is either to accept the Stark model, or a model with even slower net growth than his--or abandon any assertions at all about how many Christians there were in the first century. No one can claim to know, and since Holding's argument requires knowing, his argument fails for lack of data. Any conclusion that actually has evidential support, even if we start with 25,000 Christians in the year 40 (and we have no good reason to), must still fit projections for the 3rd and 4th century, and when we do that--when we use the evidence we have--we never even approach 1% of the population by 100 A.D. In fact, we can barely pass 1/10th of 1%. The evidence simply does not exist to push the numbers higher.
The fact that larger numbers have no support does not entail the numbers weren't larger, only that we cannot claim to know they were. And this still means Holding can't claim to "know" the scale of Christianity's success was miraculous. Even in the realm of pure speculation we find little help for his argument. Earlier we could estimate 400,000 total converts in the 1st century only by multiplying Starks' prediction by ten--for no reason whatsoever. This would allow for at most 100,000 members in 100 A.D., but again we're just making this up. We're not arguing from any evidence. But even if by chance we're right, that's still only 1 in 300 people converting over the course of the entire century. That means the largest credible estimate for the whole empire by the end of the 1st century could never be greater than half of 1%. And again, such a size by 100 A.D. would entail a subsequent rate of growth far less than Stark's, even to meet the wildly inaccurate estimate of Gibbon for the size of the Roman church in mid-3rd century, much less any of the plausible estimates, or Bagnall's data. And that's already stretching the evidence rather far. Otherwise, less than 1/10th of 1% is the only estimate that actually fits the data well. So no matter how we try to tweak our growth model, the actual evidence permits only one conclusion: in the first century Christianity was probably attractive to little more than one out of every thousand people it encountered overall. That's simply not miraculous, or even surprising.
Another important point worth a brief survey is the fact that Christianity's limited success in the first century was only among specifically targeted groups who already had their sympathies in the right place. And that meant Jews and Jewish sympathizers, and people for whom the social system was not working--especially the working class. As Paul admits, "not many who are wise in the flesh are called, nor many who are great or noble" (1 Corinthians 1:26). Those weren't Paul's target audiences. And as James writes, "did not God choose them that are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?" And "do not the rich oppress you, and drag you into the courts?" (James 2:5-6). The social identity of first-century Christians is pretty clear in these remarks. I've discussed different aspects of this fact in several previous chapters already. So I will only round out the point here.
First, to say that Christianity appealed to the disgruntled lower classes, and not the elite, must not to be mistaken for claiming that Christianity was only successful among the poor, or that no rich people were attracted to it. A significant number of the middle class would be among the same groups sympathetic to the Christian message, including educated men, and men with middle-management positions in the government, who could easily become disillusioned with a system that wasn't working for them. As long as they were in a position to feel powerless within an unjust social system, despising and unable to enter or overcome the power and influence of those higher up the ladder, they would sympathize with the idea of an unjustly crucified hero, among many other elements of the Christian message. And their sympathy would be even greater if they already shared the point of view of those Jews who already accepted an ideology of martyrdom and expected a suffering savior.
Modern scholars are agreed on the lower-class origins of the Christian movement. As John Polhill argues, Luke "had a concern for people who are oppressed and downtrodden," like "Samaritans and eunuchs," and "one of Luke's main concerns in Acts was to portray a church without human barriers, a community where the gospel is unhindered and truly inclusive."[15] Richard Rohrbaugh adds, "John is almost certainly a Galilean gospel" written for "a group which exists within a dominant society but as a conscious alternative to it...an alienated group which had been pushed (or withdrawn) to the social margins where it stood as a protest to the values of the larger society" (or the corruption of those values, as I have explained in previous chapters), while Matthew targeted educated Jews and "the retainer class" among Greeks, and Mark targeted peasants and other members of the "agrarian class," among both Jews and pagans.[16] Christianity was most successful in finding sympathizers in these very audiences--those on the bottom, and those stuck in the middle, who were growing weary of the failure and corruption of the entire social system.
Christianity made little headway into the scholarly, administrative, or economic elite, until it had positions of power and authority to offer them, within a wealth-generating Church hierarchy (by the mid-to-late 2nd century), amidst an otherwise collapsing social system (in the mid-3rd century), which we will discuss below.[17] Rather, on the upper ends of the ladder Christianity was mainly attractive to the artisan class, and appealed to values held by them, and not shared by the elite. This is evident in Acts, as Ben Witherington observes:
The favorable attitude toward artisans in Luke-Acts was not a typical attitude of many in the upper strata of society, but it was typical of how artisans and retainers viewed themselves, and how Jews in general viewed work so long as it was not ritually defiling.
In fact, Witherington concludes that Luke himself "is not among the elite of society," since he "addresses Theophilus in a mode associated with a person who is willingly or unwillingly in a subordinate position to a person of rank in Roman society," most probably a member of the Equestrian class (in our terms, the upper middle class) since this would explain the widely favorable treatment of the values of artisans throughout Luke and Acts: Luke is playing to his audience.[18]
Thus, when we hear about "respectable" men and women converting (Acts 17:12), this implies no actual formal status, but refers to people of means who sought and held a good reputation in their community. Of course, Acts has obvious apologetic reasons to inflate Christianity's success among "respectable" people. Even so, the artisan class had its share of "respectable people" and it is clear that Christianity found friends in that community. Likewise, while we hear of Pharisee converts (not just Paul but others in Acts), it should be obvious that these were not the ones writing Talmudic precedent or running Rabbinical schools, but those who were (like Paul) marginalized within the Pharisee community, given relatively less authority and respect by more prestigious members of the sect, and who were therefore quite ready to sympathize with criticism of the ungodly snobbery of their peers.
At the same time, Christianity targeted mainly Jews and Jewish sympathizers, and worked its way through family acquaintances. "Early Christianity," DeSilva argues (Holding's very own source), "was basically a 'household' movement first in that it sought after the conversion of heads of households, whose dependents would follow them into the new faith" (p. 226). In fact, DeSilva goes on to document this fact from the NT itself in substantial detail. And, of course, I have already discussed the effective tactic of targeting women in Chapter 11. Any religion that secures the source of children, especially children of the masses (who far outnumber those of the elite), is going to have a tremendous social advantage.
It is also no accident that Christianity was most successful in the first century among prepared audiences: namely Jews and Jewish converts and sympathizers, who already had a good grounding in scripture, were already awed by the divine authority of that scripture, and already attracted to the relevant Jewish ideals (such as the heroism of martyrs and the value of moral austerity). It is notable, for example, that Paul converts only "some" Jews, but "a great multitude" of Judaized pagans, in Acts 17:1-4. The implication is that those who already showed a propensity to radically relocate themselves in the social environment were the ones most ready to buy the Christian message. Likewise, after their disheartening failure to gain significant headway in Palestine, most Christian success in Acts is gained in the Diaspora--and not just geographically, but ideologically: Diaspora Jews had the most cosmopolitan outlook, and had either been pagans or understood pagan ideals quite well. It should not surprise us that they were the most receptive to the Christian mission, which highly syncretized the best of Jewish and pagan ideals into a potent new faith, which sold itself as the perfect culmination of the oldest of all faiths.
Therefore, all these factors must be taken into account in any explanation of Christianity's limited success in its first hundred years. The correct explanation must explain not just where Christianity succeeded, but also where it failed. Holding's theory fails this test. According to his theory, those most able and willing to check the facts should have been the most impressed by Christian claims. Instead, they are the least impressed. Elite scholars and Palestinian Jews just weren't profitable markets for the early Christians. In contrast, my theory, which is also the theory advanced by many of Holding's own sources (Malina, Neyrey, Rohrbaugh, and DeSilva), and which nullifies Holding's theory, proposes that Christianity deliberately gave short shrift to elite values, perceptions, or expectations in order to appeal to the significantly different values, perceptions, and expectations of the lower classes, and of those in the upper classes who were located outside the echelons of real power or control--such as middlemen, women, and the slaves of prominent men. This theory predicts that Christianity would get a very cold, even hostile response from the elite, but find receptive audiences among prepared groups outside the elite. Only my theory fits the actual facts of history.[19]
In the 3rd century the Roman Empire withered under fifty years of constant and devastating civil war and massive economic depression from which the empire never really recovered.[20] By the end of that century, every social institution was in ruins. Even the economy collapsed, as the value of gold, silver, and coin plummeted so low that draconian measures had to be taken by the government even to keep basic services functioning. Numerous endowments for schools went bankrupt, so fewer were being educated. Artisans were increasingly drafted into armies and killed, thus breaking traditions of art and craft. Fascism was instituted, and the aristocracy was so ravaged by war, assassination, and lethargy that the military pretty much took over--not merely deciding who would rule (as it often had done before), but actually supplying new emperors and leaders from then on out. In the past, a glorious Senatorial career was the path to honors and power--now, a career in the government or the military was increasingly the only way to obtain either. What's more, the Empire fractured into two. Though occasionally reunited, the division only became worse over time, until it was complete. Then the Western Empire was destroyed, while the Eastern Empire slowly deflated into oblivion--meeting a slow death of a thousand years of shrinking talent and territory.
This collapse of a once-trusted social system, and the ensuing atmosphere of turmoil, ruin, and uncertainty, became perfect soil for the success of the Christian Church. Christianity could flourish during all this because it was a well-organized, empire-wide social-services institution that was not connected to or dependent on the system undergoing collapse. That was a powerful advantage. Had any other religion thought of this instead, and achieved this entirely natural advantage for itself, it might have replaced Christianity as the religious victor of the Western World. For because of this, Christianity could offer not only a current refuge and a future rescue from a world gone wild, but also a convenient explanation for why it was going to ruin.
The Christians had set out from the beginning to create a "Kingdom of God" within the "Kingdom of Rome," a new community wherein society worked the way the poor and disgruntled wanted it to: realizing communism in place of capitalism, and erasing the privileges of class (exploitations of the system by the Church hierarchy notwithstanding). Once the Roman social system was going to ruin, even more members of society became poor, disgruntled, disenfranchised, or disillusioned than ever before--hence the very groups Christianity most appealed to, were now the fastest growing! And the Christian Church had an established quasi-utopian system in place for them to flock to. For it had always sought to give these groups exactly what they most wanted, and by the 3rd century it was in a better position to provide it than any other institution.
The crisis of the 3rd century also threw the game to Christianity because Christians so fervently recruited women and the working classes. This was far more brilliant a move than the disastrous decision of Mithraists to target only men and to focus primarily on the army. They lost their investment when the army ended up utterly devastated over the course of the 3rd century. While Christians were winning over twice as many candidates, by appealing to two genders, and also earning a huge return on children born and raised into the faith by female converts, Mithraists were seeing none of that action, while watching their numbers get hacked away by fifty years of ceaseless civil war. Even a dunce can see who was going to win in that contest.
But it gets even worse for Mithraism: First, constant military disaster and hardship, without a consistent victory in sight, for two whole generations, was widely understood in antiquity to signal the failure of your religion--therefore, by historical fate alone, Mithraism was doomed to be abandoned, because it was predominately supported by the very soldiers who were losing and thus seeing no benefit from their piety. Conversely, massive military losses had to be made up with fresh recruits--but who had been recruiting from the remaining pool of manpower? And who was now having more children for recruiters to draft? The Christians--thanks to their special attention to winning over women and the working class. Therefore, by the end of the 3rd century, thanks to the ordinary exigencies of historical fate, Mithraism became increasingly unpopular, while the armies, once bastions of Mithraism, were compelled to become increasingly Christian--at precisely the time when most new leaders of the empire were coming from the military.
This is not to imply that I imagine Mithraism could have been the Christianity of the future. Mithraism never incorporated the elements of evangelism that constantly drove Christianity--right to the point of compelling belief on pain of death, torture, or intimidation. I see nothing in Mithraism that would ever have spawned such behavior, and consequently, had there been no Christianity, I suspect there would have simply remained the same religiously-diverse society that so well served Rome for hundreds of years before that disastrous 3rd century. I focus on Mithraism only to provide an example of how Christianity got lucky breaks over its competitors, which played right into its hand. Of course, one could always claim God ruined society in order to secure Christianity's success, much as Christian apologists have claimed God arranged the murder of millions of Jews simply to bring about the formation of Israel, but I sure hope you have a more rational view of God. For surely an omnipotent being could have brought about both ends without all the pointless misery--and a compassionate God by definition would have. At any rate, historians have no trouble finding sufficient causes of these events in natural historical facts. So appeals to God are gratuitous.
The 3rd century was decisive in securing the grandiose success of later Christianity, and was indeed a lucky draw from the deck--since nothing about Christianity itself, or caused by it, had anything to do with bringing that crisis about. This was a crisis of the pagan world's own doing. So we can't blame Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire. The triumph of Christianity was a symptom of that fall, not its cause. But there was also a sense in which Christianity exploited this niche by design. Though the early Christians had no way of knowing how everything would fall apart in two hundred years, they certainly saw the cracks forming, and specifically sought to repair them, with their moral vision of social reform. And for that very reason, in its first few centuries Christianity did look like it was working, in a way the wider social system was not--especially since the major social institutions of the time were increasingly failing, getting worse and worse, in exactly those same centuries (thanks to increasing, unchecked corruption--of the very same sort that would lead to the collapse of the 3rd century), thus making Christianity look remarkably good, even supernaturally prescient, by comparison. Their timing couldn't have been better. Luck strikes again.
Had the Empire maintained the Pax Romana of the glory years, with the wealth and progress of the 1st and early 2nd century--if by the 3rd century, instead of fifty years of civil war, the Senate established a stable constitutional government (as the movie Gladiator pretended was the real plan of Marcus Aurelius), I suspect Christianity would have been doomed--not to oblivion, but at least to obscurity. Today, Christians would perhaps be a small fringe cult, as they had been before, competing for customers with scores of other cults and sects (assuming the West remained as religious as it actually has). I suspect this because, if the Roman armies were victorious and prosperous, instead of decimated and ruined, Mithraism would have been vindicated, and would not have lost its hold on the army (though, as I've said, I doubt it would have become a universal religion, even within the ranks), while Christianity would not have had as much to offer anymore, as peace and prosperity would gradually claim more and more potential converts by giving them what they wanted: material happiness and security, at the hands of a successful--and therefore "obviously" divinely-sanctioned--pagan government.
It wouldn't be that simple, of course--any number of unexpected things could happen in the absence of what actually did--and I am assuming such a period of peace and prosperity in Rome would have opened the door to realizing the trends, advocated among the philosophical elite, toward greater justice and equality and reason, instead of Roman society becoming more unequal, unjust, superstitious, and socially polarized as in fact it did. I might be wrong about that. But I doubt I am wrong about the clear advantages the chaos of the 3rd century gave to Christianity, as against its competitors--particularly when we factor in the very convenient timing of the fact that its natural rate of growth accelerated Christianity's numbers to significant levels exactly during that very century (as Stark, Hopkins, and Finn explain), and when we take into account the fact that everyone is eager to try something new, when everything old has failed. Had everything old not failed, "new ideas" like Christianity would have ceased to gain much purchase. And had the natural progression of steady growth not coincided so well with the collapse of pagan society, it is probable that the forces opposed to Christianity would have succeeded in, if not destroying it, certainly changing it into something very different (as had happened to many other imported cults). Instead, with Christianity's victory over society, elite ideals were vanquished. And a thousand years of ruin ensued.
Holding wrote his essay to respond to the contrary claim that Christianity originated, and originally flourished, among "suckers," people so gullible they'd believe anything, no matter how absurd. As usual for Holding, that's an exaggeration of what his critics really say. Those who converted to Christianity did indeed have a backwards method of inquiry and fervently clung to anti-empirical values, they were substantially ignorant of most of what they really needed to know to make a sound judgment, and they held very different assumptions about God, man, and the universe than we do. But this does not mean they would have believed anything. It only means that the things they would be inclined to believe--and in fact did believe (even apart from Christianity)--were not limited to the truth, but in fact encompassed a great deal of nonsense. After all, these were people who really thought God lived in outer space and that the whole universe revolved around his only created earth, people who believed that demons possessed their neighbors and caused madness and disease, that supernatural beings inhabited the air and spoke and appeared to people or worked spells on them, and that all bad people were puppets of Satan. Clearly they had a lot of false beliefs. Claiming their belief that "Jesus rose from the grave" was false, too, is hardly a stretch.
And that's the real issue here: Holding is upset by early Christians being called "suckers" and early Christian ideology "absurd," but the fact is these are relative terms. From their point of view they were not suckers, but fortunate--most of them got what they wanted, or very near to it: a brief glimpse of happiness and comfort within a surrogate family that really met their needs, emotionally and materially, with a hope of even more in a utopian future. And they took a shot at what they honestly thought would right the wrongs of their dysfunctional society. They were wrong. But then, being wrong about a grand plan to fix society puts them in good historical company. Likewise, converts didn't think a Christian's claims were absurd. That's why they converted. These ideas were only "absurd" to those committed to worldviews very different from the masses--particularly the ancient naturalists and their sympathizers. It just so happens that those naturalists turned out to be on the right track, and the mystics on the wrong one. Hence a modern scientific thinker has far more right to call early Christian beliefs "absurd" than even the ancient critics did. But our charge of absurdity comes from knowledge--knowledge the ancients didn't have.
Furthermore, the word "sucker" implies being duped by a con-man, but there is no need to suppose they were being "conned." I'll bet those who started the movement really believed their dreams and visions and interpretations of scripture. But even at worst they concocted these things for a noble moral purpose, not for material gain, nor in some scheme to "steal souls" or any such nonsense. Later Christians are a different story. But I am sure the first Christians were sincere. They really thought they had a Good Idea for Saving the World. And that feeling is a powerful drug. It has fueled every zealot, every fanatic, every passionate revolutionary in history. Likewise, to say someone would believe "anything, no matter how absurd," implies they would believe it even knowing it was absurd. But that isn't the case here. Early Christian beliefs were not seen as absurd by converts, only by critics--because converts and critics embraced very different worldviews right from the start. No Christian would have believed anything they felt was absurd--and they didn't. For example, to a Christian it was absurd even to think that a courageous and morally upright man who could heal the sick and expel demons was not an emissary of God's will. Of course, this means their definition of absurdity was very different from ours.
What we have seen throughout all these chapters is that Christianity was indeed repulsive or absurd or just plain false from the point of view of most people of the time, pretty much as Holding says. But Christianity never attracted most people--by honest argument and evidence, that is, since the use of force and political and social pressure was ultimately necessary to win the majority, centuries after the mission began. It is quite true that had Christianity made itself more attractive to more people, it would have been more successful than it was, more quickly, and with far less effort. But the end result was the same: over time Christianity changed to become more attractive to more people, by developing more appealing doctrines and incorporating popular festivals and superstitions. That was the only way it really could succeed--and that was the only way it actually did. Just imagine how horrified Paul would have been at the Cult of Saints, for example, which was really just polytheism in disguise, complete with revering statues and artifacts and praying to specific "deities" who had power over specific aspects of life. With that system in place, the average pagan could hardly tell the difference between his beliefs and a Christian's. And even today, only by making itself "more popular" has any branch of Christianity managed to succeed in the modern free world.[21]
But in the beginning, Christianity was a radical idea to most, and so was not successful by any objective standard--except within a very small cross-section of the population, primarily those disgruntled with or oppressed by the values and institutions of the dominant society. And from the point of view of those few Christianity was an attractive idea whose time had come. This minority did not need "irrefutable" evidence that Jesus rose from the grave, because they had "irrefutable" evidence that the Christian message had the backing of God: in the moral superiority of believers, their ability to work miracles, interpret scripture with surprising insight, and speak of God's will with charismatic inspiration. This is hardly "irrefutable" evidence for us--because we know a lot more than they did about human nature and the workings of the body, mind, and universe. We know that none of their "evidences" entails the conclusion, or even so much as strongly implies it. But that's us. We have the advantage of hindsight, and of scientific reason and understanding. They didn't. That doesn't make them "suckers." It just makes them wrong. Nor does it mean their beliefs were "absurd." It just means they were false.
[1] Acts 13:46-48, 18:6, 28:24-31.
[2] Scholars agree Christianity was always more successful in cities than in the countryside, and targetted its mission in the first century to urban populations (as exemplified in Acts). Therefore, Christians would be disproportionately represented in cities. If the urban population amounted to as much as 10 million out of the total 60 million (a reasonable estimate), and at least half of all conversions were urban (in the first century it was probably even more than that), then the percentage of any major city's population that would be Christian in 64 A.D. would be 0.0224 if the percentage of the entire population at that time was 0.0037. Therefore the Stark model (discussed later) predicts that over 150 Christians would be in Rome to face Nero's witchhunt, even though the total number of Christians empire-wide would barely top 2300. By the third century, the Christian mission would have expanded into the country and small towns. But in the first century, there could easily have been a hundred or more Christians in Rome for Nero to round up.
[3] Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25.4.
See "Suetonius" in Jeffery Jay Lowder, "Josh
McDowell's 'Evidence' for Jesus: Is It Reliable?" (2000).
Suetonius writes Iudaeos
impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit, "He expelled
the Jews from Rome who were constantly raising a tumult because of the
instigator Chrestus." This could not refer to Christians for several
reasons, among them: (1) Suetonius makes no such mistake elsewhere,
where he knows who the Christians are and how to refer to them--so if
he meant Christians here, he would have said something like "because of
the Christians" and not "because of the instigator Christ." (2)
Suetonius did not write "because of the instigator Christ" but "because
of the instigator Chrestus" and Chrestus was a common Greek name (and a
common nickname, which meant Handy, Happy, or Goodfellow), and though a
misspelling is possible (either by a later scribe or Suetonius'
source), that would be groundless speculation. (3) Claudius would not
expel "the Jews raising a tumult" rather than the Christians, since the
Jews had a protected legal status and the Christians did not. For
example, neither Gallio nor the Asiarchs of Ephesus expelled the
rioters in their towns--they expelled the Christians whose presence
provoked the riots--and if it was the Christians whom Claudius
expelled, Suetonius would have said so. (4) The phrase "because of the
instigator Chrestus" makes no sense as a reference to a dead man or a
god. The word instigator very specifically means a man who
performs the act, not the idea of a man, nor does it ever refer to the
abstract idea of "instigation" or "cause." Therefore, Suetonius plainly
meant some actual person was actively instigating the riots, someone
whose name was Chrestus. He would not refer to what was in his view a
nonexistent God with such a phrase, nor could he have meant "because of
Christ" in any other sense of the word.
[4] Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.30.6-8. The strongest advocate for Tacitean authorship is Eric Laupot in "Tacitus' Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans," Vigiliae Christianae 54.3 (2000): pp. 233-47. Laupot's arguments are multiply flawed, but there is no need to argue the point here. I will point out the substantial flaws in a forthcoming rebuttal, but chief among them is the fact that Severus plainly appears to be quoting or paraphrasing a source that credited God with ensuring the temple's destruction, something Tacitus would never do--while another author who clearly used the same source makes no mention of Titus having Christianity in mind (compare Severus, above, with Orosius, History Against the Pagans 7.9.4-6).
[5] See evidence presented in: Richard Carrier, "The Plausibility of Theft," in Jeff Lowder & Bob Price, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (2005), as well as: Richard Carrier, "The Nazareth Inscription" (2000).
[6] Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Tacitus
says the charge of arson was probably a bogus accusation that merely
served to shift blame for the burning of Rome off Nero and onto a hated
minority--which entails that Christianity was otherwise not illegal at
the time, since false charges were needed to kill them.
In case anyone might question
the point, that the formal charge was arson is clear from what Tacitus
says, which consciously employs formal legal terminology: (1) "In order
to get rid of the rumor" that he had burned Rome, "Nero invented
culprits," where reus (culprit) is the formal term for a
defendant at trial--it is the standard word for a person charged with a
crime or tort--and since the very purpose for "inventing" defendants is
to shift the blame for arson, clearly arson had to be the charge. (2)
"Therefore, at first those were seized who confessed," where fateor
is also the formal term for admitting guilt--and the context makes
clear they had to be confessing to arson, since that was the offense
"invented" for which they became "defendants." (3) "Then, from evidence
they provided, a huge number were convicted" (indicio,
"evidence," is another legal term, and convinco, "proved
guilty," is a formal term for winning a conviction at trial). (4)
Tacitus then says they were convicted "not as much for the crime of
arson as because of the hatred of the human race," thus outright
saying that the real, formal "crime" (crimen) was "arson" (incendium),
while the ulterior motive that led to "inventing" this charge against
them was "hatred of the human race" (which can mean either that the
human race hated them or that the Christians hated the human race--but
the former is more likely, since it directly states what is
grammatically expected: the motive of their accusers--here "hatred," as
opposed to, e.g., jealousy, bloodlust, envy, or greed). (5) Tacitus
does say that as a result of their treatment, "although it was against
those who were guilty and deserved the most extreme deterrents,
sympathy for them arose, as they were destroyed not so much for the
public good, but to serve the savagery of one man," but here Tacitus
drops the formal legal vocabulary, and is thus issuing a personal
judgment against Christians.
[7] Pliny, Letters 10.97.1. In Roman law, when someone went to trial the relevant law stated how the judge was to apply a "formula" to the case, which simply made it a matter of satisfying the formula with adequate evidence. Trajan is saying there is no such formula. Therefore, there was no law. What's more, Trajan specifically rejects the opportunity to make one. He could have "established" a formula, but instead says it is impossible to do so. On the legal status of Christians as well as the crime of illegal association, see: Naphtali Lewis & Meyer Reinhold, Roman Civilization: Selected Readings, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (1990): § 51-52 (see also § 169 and n. 37 in § 68); Timothy Barnes, "Legislation Against the Christians," Journal of Roman Studies 58 (1968): pp. 32-50; W. H. C. Frend, "Martyrdom and Political Oppression," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 815-39.
[8] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1996): pp. 4-13. I have seen estimates as high as 120 million for the total population of the whole Empire, but never lower than 60 as Stark says, and of course the population no doubt fluctuated, especially during famines and plagues, of which there were a few catastrophic examples in the first three centuries. I will assume the figure of 60 million is more or less correct.
[9] Or roughly 3.42% per year--so if there was one missionary for every hundred members, he would convince less than 4 more people to join each year, which is not remarkable. Note that in models like Stark's, growth stops when "market saturation" is achieved (i.e. when all customers who want the product have bought the product), and there is no telling when Christianity actually hit that ceiling. But in order not to bias his results with contrary assumptions, Stark assumes there was no such ceiling (i.e. that everyone could be convinced the product was desirable), which suits Holding, but probably not reality. In reality, Christianity probably never could have gained a majority until it became favored by Rome, and then required by Rome, two conditions that each would have expanded the attractiveness of the product and thus raised the ceiling for market saturation. This was especially true when Christians started killing those who didn't buy it, thus gaining 100% saturation only by outright eliminating non-buyers--by analogy, picture Microsoft actually murdering all Mac users and then boasting "Everyone uses Windows!"
[10] "Pliny (2) the Younger," The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996): p. 1198.
[11] Keith Hopkins, "Christian Number and Its Implications," Journal of Early Christian Studies 6.2 (1998): pp. 185-226. In case readers expect disclosure, Hopkins is a close friend of my dissertation advisor (William Harris) at Columbia University, and also wrote a very clever and fascinating work of historical fiction on ancient religion and the means Christianity used to exploit popular religious culture to its own advantage (Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity, 2001). I also studied papyrology for an entire year at Columbia under Roger Bagnall, who is also one of the world's leading experts on ancient demography, especially the evidence for Christian growth in surviving Egyptian documents. And I am a personal friend of Alan Segal, whose critically-acclaimed book on ancient afterlife beliefs I have cited in previous chapters.
[12] Thomas Finn, "Mission and Expansion," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 295-315; Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1987): pp. 268-69 (later centuries: 314-17).
[13] Origen, Against Celsus 8.69.
[14] Eusebius, History of the Church 6.43.11.
[15] John Polhill, Acts: The New American Commentary 1992: pp. 49-50.
[16] Richard Rohrbaugh, "The Jesus Tradition: The Gospel Writers' Strategies of Persuasion," The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Esler, vol. 1 (2000): pp. 218-19, pp. 211-14, pp. 209-10.
[17] On the scant few first-century conversions among the elite claimed in the sources, see Note 10 in Chapter 1 and Note 25 in Chapter 7.
[18] Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (1998): p. 55. The word kratistos (Greek for both egregius or clarissimus in the Latin) could denote an Equestrian or a Senator. However, before the 2nd century it is unlikely a Senator would have, or be addressed by, a non-Roman name like Theophilus. Even if he had that name, a Senator's formal Roman name would take priority in a proper address.
[19] Robin Lane Fox accomplishes a superb survey of the social marketing of early Christianity in Pagans and Christians (1987): esp. pp. 293-96, 299-304, 308-11, 317-18, 330. Fox also defends the same theory I do, e.g. pp. 334-35. On god-fearers and Jews as main targets: pp. 318-19. It is worth noting that the evidence for god-fearers (pagan converts or quasi-converts to Judaism) is significant in the first two centuries, unlike the evidence for Christians--which suggests that this class outnumbered Christians for at least a good hundred years or more. See: Margaret Williams, "VII.2. Pagans Sympathetic to Judaism" and "VII.3. Pagan Converts to Judaism," The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans: A Diasporan Sourcebook, 1998: pp. 163-79.
[20] For quick surveys of everything that follows: "The Crisis of the Empire in the Third Century," M. Cary & H. Scullard, A History of Rome down to the Reign of Constantine, 3rd ed. (1975): pp. 507-16; and the introduction to Averil Cameron's The Later Roman Empire: A.D. 284-430 (1993): pp. 1-12 (and see the works listed there on pp. 209-10). For more detail: Stephen Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery (1997); Pat Southern, The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001); and Michael Grant, The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire (1999). On the collapse of the economy, see: Dominic Rathbone, "Prices and Price Formation in Roman Egypt," Economie Antique: Prix et Formation Des Prix Dans Les Economies Antiques, eds. Jean Andreau, Pierre Briant and Raymond Descat (1997): pp. 183-244.
[21] See, for example: Roger Finke &
Rodney Stark, The
Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious
Economy (1993).