More often coerced than tricked, but some of both.
I'm responding to the entire section proceeding this. First, we don't have to keep this debate going. I'm not expecting a response. So far this has been somewhat 'long form', and we are quite deep in the thread at this point. Second, the history of the spread of Christianity through pagan Europe is an area of knowledge where I'm admittedly lacking. I'll take you at your word here, for the most part. If nothing else, it's motivating me to do more research in this area since philosophy and theology itself have been my main area of focus now for years.
With that said, I sensed a tension in your history. First you say that paganism is not intrinsically evangelical. You say that pagan rulers, like Alexander the Great, conquered many foreign lands, while preserving the native ruling class's powers to maintain a native religious system. Then you say that European Christians effectively paraded across Europe, over the course of centuries, coercing and torturing pagan groups into compliance (and conversion). This is very strange, Nat. Why? Because the only way to maintain this story is if the conversion to Christianity itself turns pagan groups into violent, imperial machines for spreading their newfound religion in a trail of bitterness and blood.
What? Now this quote:
Constantine oppressed the Pagans to make room for christianity.
I think you need to devote a bit of time to reflecting on whether the 'conversion' of Constantine (the Catholic story) is at all true. Constantine, the pagan and Apollo worshipper, converts to Christianity because of a special vision he receives before the final battle against Maxentius, and Constantine's victory is a sign of Yahweh's favor? Then Constantine radically transforms the whole of the Roman empire by enforcing a Hebraic belief system on it? This is nonsense, and the evidence doesn't support it. None of Constantine's documented actions/behaviors supports this story. The arch he built to commemorate the victory features zero Christian symbolism (literally none), but is rife with pagan symbology. The iconography of Jesus that devlops in the wake of this turns Jesus into a warrior-king in the visual imagery of Jesus-as-centurion. We see the development of Jesus icongraphy with the halo around his head, a pre-Christian symbol of Apollo (and Mithras).
Let's consider what we know about Jesus's ministry and Paul's. And you'd not be surprised to hear the skeptic Bart Ehrman confirming this. Both men were certainly evangelists, but Jesus knew nothing of converting Rome. What did Jesus instruct His followers to do about Roman taxes? He said to pay them. He said to honor the prevailing rule of Rome: give unto Cesar what is his. There is no evidence for Jesus instigating revolt against Roman occupiers. Instead, Jesus revolts against the Jewish authorities, and the Jewish authorities convince the Roman prefect that Jesus's behaviors are destabilizing broadly. On to Paul, do we find Paul spreading Christianity with a sword? Not at all. He travels and preaches. He writes letters. Where is the violence and torture here?
No, the violence and torture, if true, came about when ROME became Christianized. And the reality of that process has (probably) nothing to do with a top-down conversion experience of Constantine. Rather, the intermingling of the Roman military with early Christians in Palestine and Syria and Anatolia resulted in a non-trivial number of Rome's soldiers becoming Christian (more likely, adopting a syncretization of Apollonian and Christic belief, becoming something *new). Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of Rome for military reasons; he needed to preserve the loyalty of an army that was increasingly becoming Christian, especially in the regions that counted, where the Jews themselves were starting to get pretty rowdy about mid-first-century.
I think it is likelier that European Christianity is a Romanized (pagan-ized) form of belief, and therefore, it IS pagan in the relevant sense. Take, for example, the centrality of the Trinity to Catholic Christianity (and the history of the debates about this doctrine that marked the first several centuries of Christian apologetics). Do you really think the Trinity has anything to do with Jesus or Hebraic belief? The Jesus of the gospels knew nothing of a Trinity. The Trinity is a Greco-Egyptian product.
Yet, you want to say this is the result of the Jews who were absolutely crushed within decades of Jesus (in their homeland). To be sure, the earliest Christian converst in Rome's territories were displaced Jews. And there was already an established Jewish intellectual presence (maybe a hegemony) in Alexandria (Egypt). If you want to say the eventual Christianization of Rome was the work of Philo, alright, we can have that discussion. But it's hard to say whether the end product is either (a) the pagan's hijacking of Christian concepts/imagery to create a new syncretistic religious system that maintained military unity or (b) the attempt of Jewish intellectuals in Egypt to legitimize themselves by Hellenizing Jesus Christ (let's make a permanent place for ourselves in the Roman empire).
There is a fucking huge difference between a useful idiot believing in the golem movement he belongs to and the leaders believing in the golem movement they puppeteer. It's like thinking that George Soros is legitimately a democrat, or that Sheldon Adelson was legitimately a Republican, and not just string pullers paying politicians off to support the things jews need each party to do.
So, is your story that the Jews who became Christians - at least their leadership - were conspiring to 'take over' Rome with Christianity as their golem? I think that's a big story, man. I think it requires serious support. I say this because it was clearly the case that Rome, not an expanding band of Jews converted Europe to Christianity.
Or, is there something less than a self-conscious conspiracy going on here? Just Jews being Jews and pagan religion became corrupted from the comingling?
(I realize you said a lot more, but this message is already long. I'd like to see what your thoughts are about what I've said above. I'm still considering the dialectical stuff you were saying in the latter half of your post.)
CHIRO 0 points 10 months ago
I'm responding to the entire section proceeding this. First, we don't have to keep this debate going. I'm not expecting a response. So far this has been somewhat 'long form', and we are quite deep in the thread at this point. Second, the history of the spread of Christianity through pagan Europe is an area of knowledge where I'm admittedly lacking. I'll take you at your word here, for the most part. If nothing else, it's motivating me to do more research in this area since philosophy and theology itself have been my main area of focus now for years.
With that said, I sensed a tension in your history. First you say that paganism is not intrinsically evangelical. You say that pagan rulers, like Alexander the Great, conquered many foreign lands, while preserving the native ruling class's powers to maintain a native religious system. Then you say that European Christians effectively paraded across Europe, over the course of centuries, coercing and torturing pagan groups into compliance (and conversion). This is very strange, Nat. Why? Because the only way to maintain this story is if the conversion to Christianity itself turns pagan groups into violent, imperial machines for spreading their newfound religion in a trail of bitterness and blood.
What? Now this quote:
I think you need to devote a bit of time to reflecting on whether the 'conversion' of Constantine (the Catholic story) is at all true. Constantine, the pagan and Apollo worshipper, converts to Christianity because of a special vision he receives before the final battle against Maxentius, and Constantine's victory is a sign of Yahweh's favor? Then Constantine radically transforms the whole of the Roman empire by enforcing a Hebraic belief system on it? This is nonsense, and the evidence doesn't support it. None of Constantine's documented actions/behaviors supports this story. The arch he built to commemorate the victory features zero Christian symbolism (literally none), but is rife with pagan symbology. The iconography of Jesus that devlops in the wake of this turns Jesus into a warrior-king in the visual imagery of Jesus-as-centurion. We see the development of Jesus icongraphy with the halo around his head, a pre-Christian symbol of Apollo (and Mithras).
Let's consider what we know about Jesus's ministry and Paul's. And you'd not be surprised to hear the skeptic Bart Ehrman confirming this. Both men were certainly evangelists, but Jesus knew nothing of converting Rome. What did Jesus instruct His followers to do about Roman taxes? He said to pay them. He said to honor the prevailing rule of Rome: give unto Cesar what is his. There is no evidence for Jesus instigating revolt against Roman occupiers. Instead, Jesus revolts against the Jewish authorities, and the Jewish authorities convince the Roman prefect that Jesus's behaviors are destabilizing broadly. On to Paul, do we find Paul spreading Christianity with a sword? Not at all. He travels and preaches. He writes letters. Where is the violence and torture here?
No, the violence and torture, if true, came about when ROME became Christianized. And the reality of that process has (probably) nothing to do with a top-down conversion experience of Constantine. Rather, the intermingling of the Roman military with early Christians in Palestine and Syria and Anatolia resulted in a non-trivial number of Rome's soldiers becoming Christian (more likely, adopting a syncretization of Apollonian and Christic belief, becoming something *new). Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of Rome for military reasons; he needed to preserve the loyalty of an army that was increasingly becoming Christian, especially in the regions that counted, where the Jews themselves were starting to get pretty rowdy about mid-first-century.
I think it is likelier that European Christianity is a Romanized (pagan-ized) form of belief, and therefore, it IS pagan in the relevant sense. Take, for example, the centrality of the Trinity to Catholic Christianity (and the history of the debates about this doctrine that marked the first several centuries of Christian apologetics). Do you really think the Trinity has anything to do with Jesus or Hebraic belief? The Jesus of the gospels knew nothing of a Trinity. The Trinity is a Greco-Egyptian product.
Yet, you want to say this is the result of the Jews who were absolutely crushed within decades of Jesus (in their homeland). To be sure, the earliest Christian converst in Rome's territories were displaced Jews. And there was already an established Jewish intellectual presence (maybe a hegemony) in Alexandria (Egypt). If you want to say the eventual Christianization of Rome was the work of Philo, alright, we can have that discussion. But it's hard to say whether the end product is either (a) the pagan's hijacking of Christian concepts/imagery to create a new syncretistic religious system that maintained military unity or (b) the attempt of Jewish intellectuals in Egypt to legitimize themselves by Hellenizing Jesus Christ (let's make a permanent place for ourselves in the Roman empire).
So, is your story that the Jews who became Christians - at least their leadership - were conspiring to 'take over' Rome with Christianity as their golem? I think that's a big story, man. I think it requires serious support. I say this because it was clearly the case that Rome, not an expanding band of Jews converted Europe to Christianity.
Or, is there something less than a self-conscious conspiracy going on here? Just Jews being Jews and pagan religion became corrupted from the comingling?
(I realize you said a lot more, but this message is already long. I'd like to see what your thoughts are about what I've said above. I'm still considering the dialectical stuff you were saying in the latter half of your post.)