The Serpent&#39;s Wisdom

The Passion narrative in the Gospel of John is RAW anti-Semitism--especially when you consider all of the archaelogical, linguistic and historical evidence that most of it is PURE FABRICATION--meant to exculpate Pilate and the Roman administrators and damn the "Jews." (And, yes, I know of the evidence that its provenance may be closer to the time of Jesus than the other Evangels; that doesn't prevent it from being largely a political ploy. The other Gospels make MORE SENSE, and are truer to the norms of Roman governance of conquered peoples.)

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Baseless claims.

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sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com

He just wrote that there is "archaelogical, linguistic and historical evidence" to back them up. That makes them far from BASELESS.

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Let's see the archaeological, linguistic and historical evicdence, then.

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How can YOU, of all people say this, Scott, when the Gospel of John is the most Hellenic--the least Judaic--in philosophic tone? When it provides the clearest evidence of what you seem to be talking about, always--a betrayal, by the early Church, of the Hebraic elements of Christianity? It's the Gospel that BEGINS the "paganizing" of Christ--the turning of Him into a "dying god"--rather than the legitimate consummation of the teachings and prophecies of the Jews? Just how much critical exegitical scholarship have you engaged in?

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Is the 'paganizing' of Christianity anti-Semitic?

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sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com

The paganizing of Christianity took place in a context of growing animosity between Christians and Jews. It is not inherently anti-Semitic, but there is a correlation.

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We're back to my distinction between accidental and constitutive characteristics, I think.

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sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com

Yes, an area I am just beginning to explore, actually. So I hope you will be patient with me as I work through the possible implications of things.

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In the "etiology" of Scriptural anti-Semitism, it is the very SOURCE, intellectually.

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But is 'paganized' Christianity, itself, anti-Semitic?

Or has it 'merely' been used by anti-Semites?

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Come on, if the Hebraic nature of Christ's thought had not been so radically and systematically re-made by Hellenists during the first Christian epochs, would it even have been POSSIBLE to conduct intellectual and ideological, and, then, very REAL war upon Judaism? You are very, very "Jesuitical," in your reasoning, do you know that?

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No, I didn't know that. I'm not very familiar with the Jesuits.

I'm just trying to find out if 'paganized' Christianity itself is anti-Semitic.

Analogously, the industrial revolution was used as a source of Eurocentric imperialism, in the same way that you suggest 'paganized' Christianity was used as a source of anti-Semitism.

But technology is not itself Eurocentric. Is 'paganized' Christianity itself anti-Semitic?

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OK--no, except to the degree that it is reactive to the scorn in which Judaism was held, in ancient times by the pagan thinkers and philosophers,particularly before Philo went to work, to make it "respectable."
However I do think that anti-semitism of many strands of pagan thought was the vehicle used by the early Church to establish, through invidious comparisons with Judaism, Christianity's uniqueness and, therefore, its superiority. Except for the presence of the REAL MESSIAH in it, and His original--as opposed to ascribed--sayings, I share Scott Neibarger's (

yahvah's) belief that "Christianity" has NO inherent superiority over Judaism. I believe that Jesus's mission was primarily to the Jews, that the gentiles (us) are only involved in it indirectly, and that WE "queered" the message of Jesus, and "ruined" it for His people. And I say that as somebody who was raised Catholic and who still has tremendous residual affection and respect for Catholicism--which in temper and spirit I find to be much closer to Judaism than Protestantism. Protestantism as a religious culture I DESPISE. (So you can see I'm NOT insulting you, by calling your thinking "Jesuitical"--just saying you "equivocate" un peu, with the finer distinctions.)

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Would it be anti-Semitic to believe Christianity is 'unique and therefore superior'? I'm supposing 'superior' here means something along the lines of 'more closely describes an objective religious truth.'

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Ah, Fundamentalism rears its little head! I suppose I'm too much of (egads!) a "post modernist" (and an admirer of Kierkegaard) to believe that there's ANY SUCH THING as an "objective religious truth." "Religious truth" isn't "objective"; it's "subjective" (and, therefore, of infinitely greater value; I think YOUR thought has been infected by modernist veneration for so-called "scientific truth" to the point you're unable to understand that SCIENCE IS AS MUCH A FIELD OF SUPERSTITION AS MEDIEVAL SCHOLASTICISM WAS!)
It's amazing how many Fundos there are at LiveJournal--makes me think that John Updike was right, in that satiric novel he wrote a decade ago (about the geek who aspired to use his computer, to communicate with God), that there's an incredible correspondence between "computer geekery" and Fundamentalism!

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I think you're inferring an awful lot into my comments.

You're the one who introduced the judgement of superior, I am merely trying to understand what you mean by it.

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Enough to know that anyone who claims that the gospel of John isn't Jewish is full of shit.

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Sorry, but it's full of GREEK ideas about the nature of God. Some have even argued that PLATO is the greatest influence on it.

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badsede.livejournal.com

Many have also argued that it is simultaneously the most hellenistic *and* the most Jewish of the Gospels. Miller et al (The Complete Gospels) argue that it shows that greatest level of intimacy with first century Judaic theology of any of the canonical Gospels. However, at the same time, it shows the highest level of the use of Hellenistic equivalencies to relate Christ - the whole ode to the logos in John 1:1. Interestingly enough, it bears many marks of measures taken to stem the tide of hellenization of Christianity already occuring in the late 1st c. (Pagels goes into this quite a bit).

What it comes down to is that it is the most theological of the 4 canoncial Gospels and that it draws heavily on both Judaic theology and Hellenistic philosophy/theology.

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You know, I have too much respect for your admirable--and at times, fiery--interest in this subject which is so important to you, to try to be tendentious or "brainwashing" in any kind of reply to you, Scott. So I'm just going to give you two citations, to show you how much DEEPER into this subject you could go, if YOU'D GET THE RIGHT, BALANCED KIND OF EDUCATION. But here's the kind of course you should be taking, in some non-Fundamentalist theology school:

http://www.milligan.edu/Administrative/MMatson/johnesr.htm

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And here is something that seems to be arguing precisely what you believe:

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1214

How can we KNOW these things, though? Ultimately, it IS a question of "faith," and my "faith" (largely formed by my liberal Catholic education, I'll admit) is that these people who reduce Jesus's teachings to a series of intellectual tricks, involving a great deal of rationality, and little existential CHOICE and ACTION are failing to be anything but hypocritical and tepid in their religion. What I admire most about Judaism--and you--is the passion for following God's "ways."

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If I were to go deeper, I'd actually rather take the time to study the Aramaic versions of the gospels that the 4th century church father Epiphanius mentioned in this (http://www.nazarene.net/nazareneh.htm?) quotation. New Testament scholarship in this day and age should absolutely be understood from a Hebraic perspective, not a Hellenistic Greek perspective.

Incidentally, I've before said that I see the remnant of which Epiphanius speaks in that quote as being the very same remnant mentioned in Revelation 12:17.

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