Loading...What would other deep thinkers in the ancient world have thought of Paul’s teachings? Short answer: not much.
Earlier this year I posted on one of my favorite Greek philosophers, Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE). Epicurus acquired a bad reputation already in antiquity, and still has one among many people today, mainly because his views are widely misunderstood and often simply misrepresented. As it turns out, he advocated views that have widely become dominant in our world, and for good reasons. For that reason I’ve always read him as remarkably prescient, entertaining ideas that would not become popular for two thousand years.
And they stand precisely at odds with the views of the apostle Paul. I’ve recently begun to think about this more deeply — especially since they talk about the same *topics* but take completely different stands on them..
Unfortunately, we do not have very many of Epicurus’s writings. In fact, the most important sources we have are simply three long letters, quoted in toto by a significant but little-read author named Diogenes Laertius, writing around the year 200 CE or so, in his book called “Lives of Eminent Philosophers.” In this book he discusses the lives, writings, and views of major philosophers down to his own day, and he often quotes their writings. Diogenes’ work comes to us in ten “books,”, and the entire tenth book is devoted to Epicurus. That’s where we find
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Epicurus reminds me of Ecclesiastes, which I’ve come to view as one of the best books of the Bible
Yes, it is commonly held that the author of Ecclesiastes (who was not Solomon, despite the author’s claim!) was heavily influenced by Epicurean philosophy.
A great post – thankyou very much. It beats me how Bible literalists / inerrentists can square the two sides you have described. Do you know how & when Ecclesiastes (& Proverbs too) got to be in the OT to start with, since they are more about worldly wisdom & “life learning for yourself” rather than an interventionist God dominating affairs? I reckon they are both a thorn in the side for cons evang. & fundamentalists hence only scant attention given to these books.
That is thought provoking. It is also helpful, though the help it offers Christians will so often be shut down by preconditioning that causes immediate rejection of anything that contradicts what a writer of a Christian canonical work has written. This is because the writer’s work is considered “God’s work”, so it simply cannot be wrong, or fall short of the mark. When the preconditioning is triggered, the desire to “think it through” is internally squashed in fear of “offending God”. It’s like a light switch: The light is on while the discussion conforms to Christian doctrine. The light switch is flicked to “off” as soon as a suggestion to “think outside the Christian box” is made. And the irony that touches me is the cognitive dissonance that occurs when two canonical works stand in harsh contradiction to eachother, yet are both accepted as “right” because they are both considered God’s work (compare Ecclesiastes to the Gospel of John, or compare Proverbs to Job). What do you think is most helpful for someone under such conditioning so that they become open to non-biblical wisdom?
I’d say it’s very very hard. I don’t think you can force someone to think outside of their small box if they are bound and determined not to do so. At least that’s been my experience over the many decades I’ve talked with conservative Christians….
“Pleasure for Epicurus was not wild, excessive, extreme bodily pleasure at all costs. He was accused of thinking that (and still is),,,”
Why was he accused of this thinking? I am sure he was being misread but it seems odd that he could be misread to the opposite of what he thought.
Yeah, he found it extremely frustrating himself. But once you say that “pleasure” is the ultimate goal we strive for, it’s very easy for people either to misunderstand you or to caracterize you. It’s kinda like if someone today says they believed in socialized medicine their opponents will say they are Communists. To those who don’t understand the discussoin, it’s pretty convincing they ARE Communists….
Despite no longer being a Christian I still have a soft spot for CS Lewis & just adored The Screwtape Letters for many years, with its many grand explanations of why things are the way they are. (And I loved the John Cleese reading of it) Screwtape laments that it was the Enemy (God) who invented the pleasures so there can be nothing inherently bad in them – unless distorted & corrupted Screwtape & Co.
I noticed a typo you might want to fix: “…very much concerned with precisely [t]he same things as…”
Great article Bart! You mentioned Epicureans very briefly in your recent book The Triumph of Christianity. Piqued my interest as it apparently did yours.
Ah, my interest has been piqued since I started teaching Lucretius to grad students in 1988. Alwasy been fascinated, but just recently started digging deeper and deeper.
There has always been a strong ascetic component to Christianity, which I argue stems from its focus on life after death and on the insistence that the world is about to end any moment now. Both lead to the idea that the most important thing in this life is to prepare for the next one. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that this necessarily means “living the life of a crucified victim” but it is definitely used to excuse, ignore and even celebrate suffering (as when Cardinal O’Connor once said the Jews had a special gift of suffering to give the world).
So here is another way to describe the difference between Paul and Epicurus: Paul thought suffering was a virtue, Epicurus thought it was abhorrent.
Yup, good way to put it!
The last sentence does not make any sense. Are you saying that most people think only of themselves and their happiness (“We should live for our own happiness and fulfillment, focused on contentment in this life”) and do not care about others (“People should not seek out their own happiness but the welfare of others, serving others”)? Which one do you think serves the humanity better, in which world would you like to live? Who should do politics then, or worry about the climate, social justice, etc.? Some ideals are too nice to be true… Your “comparison” might look like an interesting intellectual experiment (back to origins nostalgia?), but is meaningless. You cannot compare a superficial, simplistic thinking with a deep spiritual one which led to the modern world (e.g., you cannot think of death like that if you have a family or simply care and realize that you have an influence beyond your lifetime). Epicurus might be appropriate for his world/society, but definitely not for our complex world. Which was built on Paul’s teachings, so that should tell you which”approach” proved to be realistic, practical and beneficial (to you and those two billion people you probably talked to…)
I think you mean the last sentence of the second to last paragraph? I’m not stating my view. This is what Epicurus said: our personal happiness is what really matters. He was not interested in being involved with societal or political issues and urged that people seek their own pleasure in small communities. At the time, most people thought he wasn’t appropriate for *his* world either.
Thank you Dr Ehrman. That was brilliant. I too have been attracted to Epicurus. I think a villa in Herculaneum was discovered with large numbers of papyri containing works that may contain texts relating to Epicurean philosophy, although they have been badly damaged by the effects of the eruption of Vesuvius and so recovering information therefrom will be a slow and laborious process. I think Epicurus, broadly speaking, wasn’t too far off the mark when it comes to his ideas on Science, although I believe he derived some of his ideas from others. But, although I do get his point about the pointlessness of fearing death, I’m not sure it will actually prevent many of us from fearing death. Thanks again.
Villa Dei Papiri
An Epicurus haiku by chatGPT: Epicurus, sage,
Pleasures in simplicity,
Ataraxia’s grace.
Ah, ataraxia. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. A lot to be said for it!
Why do we have to be bound by the dichotomy at all? Many people would appear to be enslaved to a consumeristic capitalism, that is marked by excess and not the conservative life of Epicurus. People are excessively identified with political imaginaries that have very little direct effect on their quotidian existence and hate other people because of their differences, real and imagined. Both Greek and Christian signifiers live within us, but I find it doubtful that, as a civilization, we follow either of these paths very consistently in our actions.
Thanks for that Bart. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and agree with your conclusion.
Ken
This is really interesting and it’s great work on your behalf to cite and distinguish with such clarity and straightforward way their views.
I have a question. During your research for the next book, have you come across any thinker who would qualify as being an atheist in the modern sense? I mean, we would call Epicurus a deist, I guess? But have you found anyone whom we would ascribe to atheism?
There were some philosophers who literally believed there was no God, but they didn’t have much of a following.
Epicurus was very similar to Buddhism in philosophy of finding a balanced and content life.
I think one place where Christianity and Epicurus overlapped is in the Christian monastic tradition where monks live simple lives away from the craziness of the outside world. But I suspect Epicurus would not have endorsed quite the level of isolation from the world as monks endure.
Do you think there are many parallels between Epicurus and the cynics? I know these thinkers also believed in living as simple a life possible – in a sense like Thoreau
From the get-go, the backstory of Paul makes me very distrusting of anything he says or preaches. This guy supposedly hunted down Christians, and then after that became the most zealous Christian? Immediately that sounds weird to me because why would I want to trust someone who previously hunted and killed other people for their faith? Ironically, after that , it’s Paul’s supposed “faith” that becomes his new mission. Then after that he belittles the other friends and disciples and family of the SAME Jesus who was crucified, that Paul preached about. This guy just sounds like a toxic personality and a troublemaker and definitely someone who should be distrusted.
Are you aware of and can you recommend any 20th/21st Century Epicureans or books (both non-fiction and fiction), ie, Epicurean in the original sense as you describe? I think Thomas Jefferson was thought to have Epicurean tendencies but that’s more than 200 years ago.
There seems to be a lot of interest in Stoicism these days, ie, books, conferences, web sites, blogs. In Milwaukee where I live I think there’s a Meet Up group that gets together regularly. At least at one time there was even a Stoic week in Britain. Is there anything similar for Epicureans? (I know they’re not the same thing.)
Contemporary Stoics see similarities with contemporary Cognitive Behavioral Therapy but I think CBT also has similarities to Epicureanism. I think David Burns, in either “Feeling Good” or the “Feeling Good Handbook,” used the Epicurean idea you mention about death, though as I recall without identifying it as such.
You also might be interested to know Milwaukee either has or had a Meet Up group called “Philosophy Eats.”
Well, apart from me I don’t know too many modern Epicureans — or people who identify as such. My sense though is that lots of people are.
Do you know of and can you recommend any 20th/21st Century books (fiction or non-fiction) about someone who has tried, over a period of years, to closely follow Jesus and Christian ethics (eg, loving self-sacrifice, poverty, serious efforts to reduce suffering, pacifism, humility, forgiveness, deep faith, etc) but concluded that Christian ethics were not the most perfect ethics, not the “highest good”?
I’m not thinking so much of someone who found Christian ethics too difficult or someone who lost their Christian faith but more of someone who, after giving Christian ethics a reasonable “trial,” simply concluded that there were better ways to live.
Nothing comes to mind. But if you want an analogous book that’s very funny, check out Bruce (?) Feiler, A Year of Living Biblically (it’s about the OT law)
The library discovered in a villa in Herculaneum contains a great many writings by Philodemus, who was an Epicurean philosopher from the first century BCE. Most of the scrolls are carbonized and early attempts to unroll them were mostly unsuccessful (and destroyed some of them), but recent work has been done with x-ray tomography, among other things, and a lot of the scrolls can now be read. For philosophers, this is a gold mine. As a literary scholar, I can’t help wishing the owner of that villa had been interested in Greek literature instead of philosophy — Sophocles, for instance, wrote 120 plays but we only have seven of them, and I’d love to get some more back!! But the Philodemus scrolls are a wonderful find.
Here’s an article from 2015–I’m sure there’s more recent information out there as well:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls-blackened-vesuvius-are-readable-last-herculaneum-papyri-180953950/
Currently, I side with Epicurus regarding what is most important to me. I do not currently believe that Jesus was/is the Son of Yahweh, whose life and message are essential for the salvation of creation, including myself. I believe that this world, including my own life, is complex and confusing and deserves to be studied intensely with the intention of learning and living according to what is true about it.
I am not as certain as Epicurus that death shouldn’t be feared and a primary motivator for an individual to contemplate and search for truth and wisdom. This presumes the falsity of the existence of a life after death and/or the impact of one’s beliefs/choices in this life on the next life.
Epicurus’ recommendations for living sound similar to those given in Ecclesiastes from the Hebrew Bible. However, Ecclesiastes closes with a firm statement of the reality of divine judgment and a call to live one’s live in light of that reality. So, perhaps Ecclesiastes represents a marriage of the views of Paul (and the Hebrew Bible more generally) and Epicurus.
There’s a great new book out about Epicurus called LIVING FOR PLEASURE by Emily Austin. Check it out. I really enjoyed it.
I’m curious to hear how you’d evaluate this argument by Christine Hayes from Yale. I find it rather compelling.
“I’d argue that Paul’s characterization of the Mosaic law was a strategic accommodation to his audience in service of his eschatological goal. Paul’s goal was to hasten the kingdom of God by bringing Gentiles to the recognition of the god of Israel. He relied on biblical prophecies that described the Messianic era as a time when the nations would join with Israel in the worship of God but not in the observance of the law which in Paul’s view is the privilege and reserve of God’s covenant partner Israel. To persuade his Gentile audience to join with Israel without joining Israel, Paul drew on the distinction between divine law and human law that would have been familiar to his Gentile audience. If the Mosaic law is the particular legislation of the Jewish people then it need not obligate Gentiles—whose entry into God’s Community required if the end time visions of the prophets are to be fulfilled—is affected through faith alone.
In line with recent scholarship from the Paul within Judaism school a school that’s flourished particularly at the at Lund University, I’ve argued that Paul’s escalogical vision is a paradoxical blend of inclusivism and exclusivism. Gentiles are included in the Messianic era as per the biblical prophecies but they are excluded from the law observance that in Paul’s view was proper to Israel alone. So to discourage Gentiles from adopting the law to which he believed they had no right Paul characterized Torah as particular temporary legislation conducive to obedience alone not true moral virtue or salvation from sin.
Paul’s strategic but nevertheless negative characterization of the law as it pertains to Gentiles would later be misunderstood as an outright rejection of the law for both Gentiles and Jews this would then set the stage for a more full-throated Christian denigration and delegitimization of the Mosaic law and for the antinomian law-spirit dichotomy at the heart of early Christianity”
Yup, I pretty much agree. I”m not sure about Paul drawing a clear distinction of natural law for gentiles and mosaic law for Jews (that’s a riff on Romans 2): he still insists that gentiles “fulfill the law” by loving their neighbors as themselves (Gal. 5:14)….
Hey Dr. Ehrman,
I have found a very content life through critical thinking methods which you inspired in me. I recently heard someone discussing that scholars are, or implicitly should be, backing off from challenging Christianity due to the fear of what belief system could take its place. The obvious “new belief” they were referring to was the “cancel culture movement”. While I don’t want to be irrelevant to this thread, I am curious what your thoughts are. I felt a little fearful and, for better or worse, manipulated as I heard their words. I want to embrace the critical thinking that has led to my content life, but certainly don’t want to make room for worse oppression for innocent people. Thank you so much for your excellent work!
I don’t see any reason to think a critical challenge to traditional Christian belief would necessarily lead to one political position or another in the modern context. Most of our political positions that are championed by one side or another may be *claimed* to be rooted in a literal reading of the Bible has accurate, but very, very few of them are.