Loading...I am (also) this semester teaching one of my favorite undergraduate courses, The Birth of Christianity, which more or less covers the history and literature of Christianity from just after the New Testament period up to the mid to end of the 4th century, focusing mainly on issues of the second and third centuries. For that class students have a short writing assignment every week; they come up with a 2-page response to a set of prompts usually based on reading they’ve done of ancient texts, and then we discuss their views in class.
I’ve always had students do “position papers,” as I call them, in which they have to take a stand on a somewhat controversial issue connected with a topic, as a way to get them to THINK about the issue ahead of time. For these papers I’m not looking for “the right answer,” and simply mark them Satisfactory (if they’ve clearly thought about the issue and established some views about it) or Unsatisfactory (if they more or less blew it off). Students almost never complain about doing this, and it’s a huge benefit for discussions. If I were simply to say “read this text and we’ll talk about it,” some (lots?) of them wouldn’t read it, or at least just skim it, and have no opinions about much of anything, and the discussions would be like pulling teeth. But with the position papers, they’ve read, thought, written, and are prepared to discuss. Works really well.
Here are the paper assignments I’m using for this term. Have at it yourself! But I ain’t gradin’ yours. 🙂
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“The triumph of Christianity over the other religions of the ancient world is one of the greatest disasters civilization has ever seen.”
How do you respond? “That’s the gospel truth”
All this stuff is amazing and fascinating but it makes me want to learn the Greek so that I can translate it for myself and see how I feel about the interpretations. For me, everything hinges on what Paul means by “brothers”.
What a course it is going to be! Wish I could take it.
What a resource! This is like a fly on the wall degree! Any way you would be willing to give the selections from Documents for the Study of the Gospels?
The book is available on the web, I’m sure, and may even be dirt cheap; it’s much more satisfying than an enormously large blog post!
Thanks for responding! I found the revised and enlarged version on Amazon for less than $20.
“Who escapes the punishments, and why?” is a pretty tough question for the Apocalypse of Peter! Checking, Beck’s translation just has “But each of the elect who have done well, they will come to
me and they will not see death by the devouring fire.” Not a whole lot to go on here, although it does seem closer to a “salvation by works” theology given the passages about each according to their deeds. So maybe some hope for non-Christians, even those who don’t get prayed in by Christians…
I have a question for Position #1:
How much were people in the first centuries joining Christianity, based on faith-based and or spiritual-based experiences, as opposed to word-based, either textual or verbal experiences?
For much of this time, the books of the NT hadn’t even been written yet, never mind compiled or canonized. As they did become written, how many people actually had a copy of a given text, as well as be able to read it or have someone who could read it to them?
The NT seems to show people converting to Christianity rather quickly. That is, they heard a few words, they heard the “good news,” and then rather quickly, sometimes with just that much of an amount of information, they became believers. The apostles seem to have just heard Jesus say “Come with me”, and just like that, they dropped everything and followed him.
So my question is, how many Christians were having faith-based experiences as opposed to word-based verbal experiences, that inspired them to join the movement?
It seems to me that there is something going on here besides a lot of verbal and or textual communication.
One thing I’d say to the person in Position #13 is that all that horrible stuff is not Christianity. People have done those things in the name of Christianity, but it’s not Christianity. A good piece of that stuff is not in the bible, in fact the bible speaks against it, and in the places where it is there, I’d still say it is not Chrsitianity. The bible has been mucked with, and forged, and people have quite probably added things to it for alterior and very negative motives.
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I’d also say that the Roman empire was not all that wonderful and peace loving. They murdered people in the arena for entertainment. They went around conquering and subduing as much territory and as many people as they could. They had horrid penalties for people who disagreed or posed a challange to them such as torture and crucifixtion.
Alot of horrid things have been done in the “name” of Christianity, but the Roman empire and pre-Christianity wasn’t any better.
Part 1_of_ 2.
Here’s my current thinking on the birth of Christianity. And probably I’m not the first to postulate this rough scenario: the resurrection doctrine started it, the alleged appearances happened in Galilee weeks or months after Jesus’ death (per Mark/Matthew, not a few days or hours later in Jerusalem/Judea as in Luke/John/Acts). After several weeks or months, Peter was the first to think he encountered Jesus and then over a few weeks or months he influenced some or all of the others into thinking Jesus was alive. Sometime after that, Peter and some of the others decided to establish a commune in Jerusalem. Peter ruled the commune with an iron fist, requiring everybody to give up all their money in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.
Since 1Cor15 is the only reliable document as to what the original appearances were said to be, it takes precedence over the four gospels and Acts. 1Corinthians suggests that the appearances to the eleven happened piecemeal since the phrase “at one time” in 15:6 is absent in 15:5. The temporal spacing of the appearances suggests 15:5 happened in Galilee and 15:6-8 happened at unknown locations. But I don’t think they saw Jesus physically.
Part 2_of_2.
My current thinking is that on the day Jesus was killed, his followers fled Jerusalem, went back to their normal lives in Galilee, and totally abandoned the movement Jesus started. And they abandoned the idea he was the Davidic messiah and then the movement totally died. They went back to their ordinary lives as Galilean handworkers for weeks, maybe even months, until Peter thought he had encountered Jesus. Then, over a period of a few weeks or months, Peter influenced the others into thinking Jesus was alive.
I also think that this scenario was commonly known among the earliest Christians, and they accounted for it by claiming it was prophesied. And that is what Mark means in 14:26-28: `I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered’. The striking of the shepherd is the crucifixion of Jesus and the sheep being scattered is the disciples returning to Galilee and ending the Jesus movement. In other words, Mark is explaining to the reader why the Christian movement died.
Prophecy was being used to explain embarrassing facts. Judas betraying Jesus was also elevated to a prophetic happening by using Zechariah 11:12-13. Peter birthed the movement “Christianity”.
Position Paper #1
1. What were the principal Christological views in the 2nd & 3rd centuries, and how did they anticipate both Arianism & Nicene Trinitarianism?
2. What was the influence of Greek philosophy on the development of Christianity in the 2nd & 3rd centuries?
3. What were the principal attitudes towards the Jews (as well as Jewish Christianity) as Gentile dominated Christianity developed in the 2nd & 3rd centuries?
“This reading is not an excerpt but is the entire Gospel [of Mary] as it has survived (it is found in only one manuscript that is missing chs. 1-6 and 11-15).” If we only have one copy of this gospel, and early Christian writings (e.g., canonical gospels) weren’t divided into chapters, how do we know how much is missing?
How is it that James ” the Just”, the brother of Jesus, who allegedly was in charge of the earliest church in Jerusalem for some 20 years, became so massively ignored , except for his documented death and the letter, not his own, and instead, Peter is assumed to have been the head of the church? The original church, the one closest to Jesus, who presumably lived communally as ” the Way” as mentioned three times in Acts ( ” Urkha” according to the Peshitta. I don’t mean the Evionim) , leaves no traces. Why? They have left no history. Even with the turmoils of 70 and 135 AD , what’s the reason for their complete disappearance? Communities of Judeo-Christians could have survived to this day. Groups of voluntary socialism ruled self-sustaining workers. Like ” kibbutzim”. Or would they have been obligated to be mendicants?Any books?
I’d say he plays an important role in both Galatians and the book of Acts, and after the New Testament period he continues to play a significant role — the Gospel of Thomas indicates that heaven and earth came into existence because of him! And there are a number of legendary accounts about him (he comes to be called “camel-kneed” because he prayed so much that his knees became fully calloused. there are records of this early church in a number of non-canonical texts, including the Gosple of the Hebrews and the Pseudo-Clementine literature.
Just curious – do students ever need to go to the campus bookstore to get physical books for their classes anymore? In my day you had to get them all from the campus bookstore and then attempt to haul the precariously balanced stack back to your dorm room (which, if you were lucky, was on the first floor).
Yes, but it’s less common. These days students prefer e-books. OK then….
Are you familiar with Fideler’s “Jesus Christ Sun of God Ancient Cosmology & Early Christian Symbolism”?
It was an eye opener for me and it helped me to better understand the Birth of Christianity from an archaeologist/philosopher point of view.
I can’t recall if I read it when I wrote my book on how Jesus was not understood to be a Sun God in ealry Christianity (My book is called “Did Jesus Exist”)