At the core of the argument that our Living the Questions scholars make about the radical nature of the earliest Christian movement is this notion: Roman authorities in the time of Jesus saw as a probable and potentially potent threat, any claim of authority that seemed to deviate from the authority and power of the emperor. And because the followers of Jesus, beginning with the Apostle Paul (remember, Paul is dead for almost a decade by the time the earliest "Gospel" is written) and running through the next couple centuries, described Jesus with the same language as the Romans described particularly Augustus, but to some degree, all of the emperors from Augustus through at least Hadrian (about 170 years worth of emperors), the followers of Jesus were almost by definition seen as threats to the rule of law.
Augustus, who was born 6 decades before Jesus and died while Jesus was a teenager, had these things written on his tombs and monuments. The titles of the pieces were "The Acts of Augustus (compare to what Luke called the second half of his writing, "The Acts of the Apostles") and they said they were carved in stone (literally) to share the "Gospel" or "good news" (the same word used for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) of the mighty deeds of the Emperor, who was said to have been born of a virgin mother and sired by a Roman god, and who was called Divine, the Son of God, God, very God from very God, Prince of Peace, Lord, Redeemer, and Savior of the World. All these names, these titles which seem second nature to 2 millenia worth of Christians were all first used for Augustus especially, but also for virtually all of the other emperors in the first couple of centuries of the Christian movement.
By taking on those names, those titles, it's pretty easy to imagine why the Roman authorities saw at least the earliest Christian communities as seditious and trouble makers, and why for so long, at least when times were troubled, individuals and individual communities of Christians were seen as defiant, oppositional, and enemies of the state.
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I ran across a discussion between Crossan and the Journal of Philosophy and Scripture. Talking about literal and metaphorical meanings.
"...I have no idea if anyone had gone up to Augustus at the start of the first century and said, you must understand, your imperial highness, that you are just a metaphor. All this stuff about being divine, being the son of god, the savior of the world, that's just metaphor. If he managed to say alive, Augustus would have simply said in response: but I am running the world and that's what being divine means."
http://www.philosophyandscripture.org/Issue2-1/JD_Crossan/jd_crossan.html
Another interesting discussion on titles can be found concerning "The Son of Man". In Aramaic, it means a human being. Or, depending on the context, it could just be a reference to the speaker them self.
This would alter one's interpretation of Luke 9:58 - The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head - if Son of Man is replaced by "humans".
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=965&letter=S
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