The Collision with Paganism
Conspicuous by their absence at the great Roman civic festivals, early Christians were
often viewed with suspicion and mistrust.
Wayne A, Meeks:
Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University
BEYOND PALEST!
How would this rather unusual claim [of a resurrected Messiah] or message
have fallen on the average pagan ear?
That's the most difficult question of all. This is obviously an interpretation which
begins within a Jewish framework, which is based upon Jewish scriptures ... which are
understood within Jewish institutions and Jewish traditions, Now, the really difficult
thing is, to explain that great jump that takes place when Christianity moves out of
the villages of Palestine into the urban centers of the Eastern Roman provinces, and
very quickly crosses the boundary between the local Jewish community, which doesn't
respond terribly well to this message, to those outside, the ordinary members of these
multi-cultural Greco-Roman cities, who don't have any concept of Messiah, couldn't be
less interested in a King of the Jews, who find the notion of resurrection from the dead
a very odd concept, at best. How did they make that transition, how did they
transform their message to make sense of it to those people?
IMMIGRANTS IN THE GRECO-ROMAN CITIES
One of the characteristics of the Roman Empire [in] this period from the end of the
Republic, right on down to the decline of the Roman Empire, is that there is suddenly
great freedom of movement, more so than any period before that and in some ways,
more free that any period that will happen again, until the invention of the steamship.
This means that in every city in those Eastern Roman provinces there will be a variety
of people who have immigrated there from other places, so that you will have many
ethnic groups who have had to adapt to a larger culture and they do this in two ways.
One by assimilating to a pattern, which has been imposed upon this by things Greek
and things Roman - the powers of culture and the powers of politics. And the other
way is by trying to maintain their identity by importing things from their homelands,
and those things which they import, which establish identity, are more often than not,
a religio[n]..
DELOS
For example, if [you]... go to the ancient island of Delos and just look at the
archaeological remains of the various immigrant groups, you will see here a place
where the Italians have established an association, over there you will find a great
clubhouse, which is built by the immigrants from Beirut, who have established there a
cult center for their god, whom they now name Neptune and Poseidon, because that's
understood in the larger culture. Up on the hills you'll find shrines of the Egyptian
gods, and so on. On the back side of the Island, we will find within 100 yards of each
other, the location of the Samaritan group and of the Jewish Synagogue
So, how did these people establish themselves with some identify of their own, within
this culture? And, the answer, I think, is to be found ultimately in the peculiarities of
the Greco-Roman family, the household. Again and again, you will find that a grouphas come in, they have settled in a certain area, with
people from similar homelands and similar beliefs and
similar identity. They will have formed an association
around their native gods, and they will have found some
patron, who may be a member of the group, maybe
from outside the group, but someone who has means
enough, to provide a place for them to meet - invites them into his home or her
home, for often times the patron will be a woman, ... and there provides them a
place, some security and a kind of bridge... to the larger society. The Jews have
followed the same procedure
DURA-EUROPAS,
Another place that is very helpful to see this [is] a little town on the banks of the
Euphrates River, called Dura-Europas, which had the good fortune to be destroyed in
the year 256, good fortune, from the point of view of the archaeologists, so that the
remains are there, untouched until 1935, when [excavations] started up. And here, we
find along one wall of that street, buried under sand, we find a place, which was once
a former house, a private residence, that has been made into the shrine of the
god Mithras. We find another private home which has been converted into a
synagogue, with magnificent paintings on the wall, and we find another small house,
which has been converted into a Christian meeting place, with a baptistery, also with
paintings on the wall. This rather graphically illustrates this procedure by which the
private household, can be become a kind of bridge head for a new group, establishing
its identity, enabling it at the same time to fit into the larger society of the city but
also to maintain its own customs and its own special identity.
CHRISTIANS -- A NEW FAMILY
How did Christian groups relate to this [phenomenon]?
So, among these immigrant groups... a group who would be Christians shows
up,...but there's something strange about this. They're not an immigrant group. They
didn't come from anywhere. They begin, doubtless, as an offshoot of the local Jewish
community, but they came from all over. Their ethnic composition is varied and yet
they behave as if they were immigrants from somewhere. They have all the trappings
of an immigrant group, and this is a peculiarity. How did they get to be different
enough that they preserve a certain identity, by their practices and by their beliefs,
over against the surrounding culture? And I suppose the answer has to be that they
are what modern sociologists would call a "conversionist group." [This] means that, if
you belong to this group, you don't belong to any other. The process of initiation,
which makes one a member of this group, at the same time cuts one off from the
other groups that one had belonged to before, even perhaps one's family, and that is
the side of it that makes one look like an immigrant. The very language that they use,
calling one another brothers and sisters, children of God, and so forth, implies this
kind of re-socialization, in which they have become a different kind of family, a
different kind of community.
EARLY CHRISTIAN RITUALS
Among the things that make the Christians different are a couple of rituals which they
developed, early on before the very earliest sources that we have about them. One of
these is an initiation ceremony, which they call baptism, which is simply a Greek word
that means dunking. It's interesting that if you go to the little town of Dura-Europas
and that 3rd century Christian building... precisely where one would expect to find thestatute of one's god in any of the normal shrines of a religious group, you find what
we would think of as a bathtub, with some interesting paintings on the wall behind it.
This is the Baptistery. This is the place where people are initiated into this new cult.
Why is that the center? Why is that the focal point? Clearly something happens here
which is fundamental to the establishing of identity of a group, which at the same time
binds them together so that they speak of themselves with family terms but also
separates them, in some sense, from the society around them.
A second major ritual which they developed is a meal, a
common meal, which they have together, which is designed
as a memorial of The Last Supper which Jesus had with his
disciplines. This is recorded already in one of the letters of
the Apostle Paul, and he presents this as a tradition which
he has received and handed on to the people in Corinth. So,
it's a very, very early thing and has various interpretations,
but as a ritual, clearly this is an ongoing way in which the
community has gathered and reasserts their unity with one another and their
difference from others.
In the long run, it was Christianity in Rome that kind of emerged at the top of
the heap. Why you think that happened?
At least as far as Western Christianity is concerned, Rome finally emerges as the
center of things and as the broker of power. In one sense, it's perfectly natural. We're
talking about a movement which develops in the Roman Empire, after all, and Rome is
the capital... Obviously, this political center and cultural center carries over into
ecclesiastical politics and ecclesiastical culture, as Christianity emerges as a group,
more and more at home in the culture of the Roman Empire.
It sounds as if Christianity was able to sort of spread and succeed and
survive, partly because it more and more took on - it kind of imitated, in a
sense perhaps, some of the practices of the Empire.
The relationship between the Christian groups and the largest society around them,
the culture, around them, is ambiguous and ambivalent, from the very beginning, On
the one hand, one of the sources [of] their power, is [that] they're different. They
behave like a group of immigrants, even though they're not immigrants. They mark
themselves off from the culture around them. They're different, they're seen as
different, by outsiders and by themselves. On the other hand, they depend upon
things which are utterly common in that culture. They interpret themselves with the
symbols and the language and the expectations that are common to many, many
groups, both religious and otherwise, in that culture. On the one hand, they want to
set themselves apart. On the other hand, they want to attract everybody, and this
ambivalence, this paradox between the in-group and the culture outside, persists, I
think, through alll of Christian history....
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin
PAGAN VIE}
OF CHRISTIANS:
What did the neighbors think about the member of this new cult, these so-
called Christians?By the early part of the second century it appears that the = Tjie Romans don't really know
Christians, because they're no longer being viewed as a sect qui what fo male of them
of Judaism, are really being considered by their pagan Hee They sort ita
neighbors as another one of these foreign cults that have _—‘Her Jews. The Christians dont
crept into the Roman world, and clearly in some cases it's don't know what they believe
causing a great deal of concern and consternation on the part ae whee chy stan fr and
of their neighbors. They don't know quite what to make of yh Gite
them. They don't know quite what they're teaching or what
they're saying or what they're doing so some questions begin to come up.
We tend to think of Christianity over against paganism in the Roman empire but we
have to be a little bit cautious about what we mean by paganism. First of all paganism
itself is really not a religion. There is no such thing as the doctrine of paganism. In
fact we have to remember that it's the Christians who use the term pagan to define
those people who are not Christians. It's a Christian term for another group or the
other people and so really it's a Christian's way of thinking...
How do my neighbors know that I'm a Christian? It sounds terribly personal.
In many respects we probably have to assume that Christians on the whole wouldn't
have looked all that different from their neighbors. In many places and at many times
they would have fit in very nicely with their larger social environment. They would
have just blended in. With a few key exceptions, and this is where the Christians
become more noticeable to their pagan neighbors. They don't go to the temples, On
important feast days when it would be customary to offer sacrifices on behalf of the
health of the emperor and on behalf of the health of the state. The Christians probably
would have viewed these ritual performances as incompatible with their belief in the
one true God. So Christians would have been on those occasions conspicuous by their
absence.
When the Christians really do become much more prominent in the social arena of
Greek and Roman cities, the pagans start to take note of their absence from important
festival days and they're unwillingness to participate in certain aspects of social life...
[O]nly when there becomes a large enough proportion of Christians in the empire as a
whole and in the cities in particular that their neighbors can really start taking notice
of them [do] persecutions commence.
ALEXAMENOS WORSHIPS HIS GOD
Could you describe the graffiti of Alexamenos and its significance? What does
it suggest about how Christians were seen?
One of the major implications that we get from this material in the
early second century such as the letters of Plinydescribing the
Christians is that the Christians at this stage are still something new,
something novel from the perspective of the Romans. The Romans
don't really know quite what to make of them. They're odd. They sort
of look like Jews. The Christians don't do certain things but they
really don't know what they believe and what they stand for and why
they're different. They're just different, They're foreign. [W]e have a
good example of this kind of pagan perspective on Christians froma
little graffiti found in Rome from the Palatine Hill. It shows a man
hanging on a cross and below it is an inscription scratched very crudely into the
wall.... It's quite literally graffiti in the modern sense of the term and it says
Alexamenos worships his god. In the picture we see Alexamenos bowing down before
the man on the cross, but the unusual thing is that the man on the cross has the headof a donkey. From the perspective of these pagans there was this unusual belief
attached to Christianity. They're worshipping a crucified man, that in of itself is
probably something that they would have thought odd, and secondly the identity of
this crucified man is somehow confused with animal deities... some sort of peculiar
half animal, half man person. The pagans really don't know quite what to do with all
this.
As pagans saw it, was Chri ity kind of a stupid religion?
Even if we hear a fair amount of pagan attack on Christianity as stupid or criminal and
we do know that some persecutions occur, we shouldn't necessarily assume that all
Christians were against the Roman government, were marginal parts of society. In
many cases, Christians did participate in social activities and were good citizens.
Indeed the Christians often claim, "We are the most ethical part of your empire. We
behave better than the rest of you. Why would you want to persecute us?"
CHRISTIAN PARTICIPATION IN PAGAN CULTURE,
When we hear of pagans claiming that Christians are kind of antisocial -- "haters of
humanity" is the terminology that the pagans themselves would have used -- what
they're really referring to is the unwillingness of Christians at various times to
participate in some of the most common aspects of the religious life of cities. We have
to remember that religion in the ancient world is very much a part of public life. They
had no idea of a separation of religion and state. Indeed quite the opposite, Religion
was one of the most important features of the maintenance of the state. One offered
sacrifices on certain days as a part of the celebration of the founding of the state. One
offered sacrifices on the birthday of the emperor. Cities very often mounted these
enormous celebrations to celebrate the emperors and all the populace would have
been expected to come and join in and for most people you wanted to join in. After
all, this would have been a public celebration. A great festival... Better yet, the
aristocracy was paying for it. The city magistrates were the ones who were paying for
the food and the celebrations and if you were a common member of the city, you
could just go and enjoy yourself. For a lot of the lower classes it's probably the case
that this was the only time that they got to eat certain kinds of food. The sacrifices
that were offered in the temples were often then distributed as picnic baskets for the
people. So on these kinds of festival days to go and participate was one of the
important things to do.
It's in this context in all probability that some of the antipathy toward Christianity
began to develop, precisely because the Christians wouldn't go and participate. They
didn't want to go to the temples and celebrate the birthday of the emperor. They
didn't want to take the food that had been sacrificed to the pagan Gods home and eat
it at their dinner tables because to do so might have put them in the position of
participating in the very idolatry that their religion could not condone.
CHRIS
TAN APPROPRIATION OF PAGAN S
BOLS
The integration of Christian intellectual and religious life into the Roman world can be
seen in a number of different ways: their participation in social life, their participation
increasingly in public activities, but it can also be seen in some of the smaller and
more intimate symbols of Christian identity that one begins to find in the Roman
world. Two of the most important artistic symbols that we find are the good shepherd
and the orans or the standing figure in the position of prayer that we see so
prominently in the catacombs. ...[W]hat is very important to recognize is that both of
these symbols are actually old pagan symbols that had been around in the Roman
world for quite some time, and in fact even within the catacombs it's very difficult totell sometimes when one of these paintings is Christian or
pagan, so that while we have this figure of the shepherd with
the sheep draped over his shoulders or standing dutifully at
his feet, we now may tend to think of that as reflecting the
gospel stories of Jesus of the lost sheep or Jesus as the good
shepherd from the Gospel of John. In point of fact, from
Roman perspective, this is the virtue of philanthropy, of love
of humanity, and it's one of the most important virtues of
Roman civic and public life. The Christians seem to take it
over very readily and apply it to the gospel virtues as well. In
the case of the orans figure..., this is the old pagan virtue of piety, of loyalty to the
state, and so the person standing with eyes up cast toward heaven and hands in a
gesture of appeal to the gods could have been seen by a pagan as a sign of loyalty to
the state, loyalty to the old gods. To the Christians it becomes loyalty to the God of
Jesus Christ.
“Grane = praying figure from catacombs
Harold W. Attridge:
The Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament Yale Divinity Schoo!
PAGANS' RESPONSE TO PAUL
Who was Paul?
Paul, who apparently started his life as Saul, was a Jew from
the Diaspora, from Tarsus, who according to his own account in his
Epistle to the Philippians was a Pharisee, by training. And someone
who tried to abide by the Torah, the way of life of the scriptures.
Paul had an encounter with the resurrected Christ, which is
something reported in the Book of Acts as the Damascus Road
experience. That's a dramatization clearly, but Paul himself in
his Epistle to the Galatians talks about a revelation of Christ that
he had. And through that revelation he became convinced that the
person who had died on the cross as a political criminal was, in
fact, God's anointed Messiah. And the essence of his gospel, what he preached
through the Mediterranean world, revolved around the significance of those two
events, the death and resurrection of Christ...
‘he Good Shepherd
Paul's famous for taking his message to the gentile world out to the Diaspora
and then beyond the Diaspora, so how would his message have struck
Hellenized Jews and Greeks themselves?
There's one simple phrase in Paul's letter to the Corinthians that summarizes it, that
what he was preaching was folly to the Greeks. And there's an episode in the Book of
Acts that exemplifies that folly, when on the hill of the Areopagus in Athens, Paul
preaches to the philosophers assembled there and tells them about the death and
resurrection of Christ. They're all ears until he comes to resurrection, and then they
dismiss him as making a claim that's quite preposterous. They would have understood
claims about the immortality of the soul, but the notion that the dead body could be
resurrected was viewed as ridiculous.