The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (22 page)

Paganism

People in the ancient world were profoundly religious whether they embraced the religion of Israel or Christianity.
⁸⁴
Thus when Paul healed a lame man in Lystra, the crowds exclaimed,

“The gods have come down to us in the form of men!” And they started to call Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the main speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought oxen and garlands to the gates. He, with the crowds, intended to offer sacrifice (Acts 14:11–13).

Greek mythology featured Zeus as the head of the hierarchy of gods. Apollos, son of Zeus, was cast as one who inspired poets and prophets. Roman religion appropriated much of the Greek pantheon, identifying Roman gods with Greek ones (Jupiter = Zeus, Venus = Aphrodite, etc.). The Roman emperor himself served as high priest
(pontifex maximus)
, merging the political and religious realms.

Emperor Worship

Following the common practice of ascribing divinity to rulers,
⁸⁵
the Roman Senate instituted the emperor cult by deifying Augustus (31 BC–AD 14) and subsequent emperors after his death. Caligula (37–41), Nero (54–68), and Domitian (81–96) claimed divinity while still living. Vespasian (69–79) treated the emperor cult lightly and even joked when dying, “I think I am becoming a god” (Suetonius,
Vespasian
23).
⁸⁶
Domitian, on the other hand, claimed the title
dominus et deus
(“lord and god”), to which the fourth evangelist may allude in his citation of Thomas's confession of Jesus as “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
⁸⁷
Emperor worship provides especially important background to the book of Revelation, which in all likelihood was written during the persecution of Christians under Nero or Domitian.
⁸⁸

Mystery Religions

The ancient world in the first few centuries of the Christian era was replete with “mystery religions,” various cults that conceived of the heart of religion as mystical union with the divine.
⁸⁹
There were Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental mystery religions, including the cults of Eleusis, Mithra, Isis, Dionysus, Cybele, and other local cults. Secret initiatory rites involved ceremonial washings, sacred meals, intoxication, and emotional frenzies. The purpose of these rites was to enter into union with the deity. One such worshipper was Apuleius, a convert to the Mithras cult. The following excerpt illustrates the nature of these ancient mystery cults:

In a dark night she appeared to me in a vision, declaring in words not dark that the day was come which I had wished for so long.…When I had heard these and the other divine commandments of the high goddess, I greatly rejoiced, and arose before day to speak with the great priest, whom I fortuned to espy coming out of his chamber.…

Thereupon the old man took me by the hand, and led me courteously to the gate of the great temple, where, after that it was religiously opened, he made a solemn celebration, and after the morning sacrifice was ended, he brought out of the secret place of the temple certain books written with unknown characters.…Then he brought me, when he found that the time was at hand, to the next baths, accompanied with all the religious sort, and demanding pardon of the gods, washed me and purified my body according to the custom; after this, when two parts of the day was gone, he brought me back again to the temple and presented me before the feet of the goddess, giving me a charge of certain secret things unlawful to be uttered.…

When morning came and that the solemnities were finished, I came forth sanctified with twelve stoles and in a religious habit.…In my right hand I carried a lighted torch, and a garland of flowers was upon my head, with white palm-leaves sprouting out on every side like rays; thus I was adorned like unto the sun, and made in fashion of an image, when the curtains were drawn aside and all the people compassed about to behold me.…[After this the initiate recites a lengthy prayer to the goddess.]

When I ended my oration to the great goddess, I went to embrace the great priest Mithras, now my spiritual father, clinging upon his neck and kissing him often, and demanding his pardon, considering I was unable to recompense the good which he had done me: and after much talk and great greetings and thanks I departed from him straight to visit my parents and friends, after that I had
been so long absent.…[The initiate voyages to Rome.] And the greatest desire which I had there was daily to make my prayers to the sovereign goddess Isis, who, by reason of the place where her temple was built, was called Campensis, and continually is adored of the people of Rome: her minister and worshipper was I, a stranger to her church, but not unknown to her religion.
⁹⁰

In the early part of the twentieth century, the history-of-religions school sought to establish parallels between these mystery cults and early Christianity, claiming that the latter borrowed key elements of its religion from the larger Greco-Roman world.
⁹¹
For example, some argued that baptism was a Christian initiatory rite patterned after pagan initiation ceremonies, and that the Lord's Supper was the equivalent of pagan sacred meals. Also, Christian beliefs at times appear to resemble elements found in pagan religions. However, there is little if any evidence that Christian practices are derived from other religions.
⁹²

Superstition and Syncretism

The ancient world was filled with superstition and syncretism, an eclectic mix of religious practices.
⁹³
These practices included magic, horoscopes, oracles, and augury (the prediction of future events by observing birds' flight patterns). Many homes had household idols with images of gods. A letter addressed by a distressed father to an oracle illustrates the superstitutious climate of this period (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, first century AD):

O Lord Sarapis Helios, beneficent one. [Say] whether it is fitting that Phanias my son and his wife should not agree now with his father, but oppose him and not make a contract. Tell me this truly. Goodbye.
⁹⁴

The book of Acts features numerous examples of superstition and syncretism in the first-century world. In Samaria, Simon the sorcerer, who had practiced magic, offered the apostles money so he could confer the Holy Spirit on others too (Acts 8:9–24). On the island of Cyprus, Elymas the magician opposed Barnabas and Paul (Acts 13:7). In Ephesus some who had practiced magical arts publicly burned their books (Acts 19:19). In Malta, when people saw a viper hanging on Paul's hand, they speculated that he was a murderer, but when he shook the snake into the fire and was unharmed, they changed their minds and concluded that he was a god (Acts 28:3–6).

SIDEBAR 2.4: MYSTERY RELIGIONS AND
THE HISTORY-OF-RELIGIONS APPROACH

The history-of-religions approach is predicated upon an evolutionary model that views history primarily as the development of human religious consciousness rather than as the human response to actual divine revelation. If the possibility of divine revelation is ruled out at the very outset on a presuppositional level, it is no wonder that Christianity is construed in horizontal terms on a comparative religions scale. What is more, the question is not merely whether certain surface parallels exist between Christianity and non-Christian religions but in which direction the borrowing likely took place.

Caution with regard to apparent parallels is also needed since similarities are often more apparent than real. For example, while there are myths of dying and rising gods in pagan religions that may seem to resemble the NT teaching that Jesus died and rose from the dead, only Jesus brought redemption; only he was a recent historical figure; and only he died on a cross and rose bodily. Also, mystery religions were highly syncretistic and eclectic, incorporating a variety of elements from surrounding religions, while Christianity was exclusivistic, so that it is much more likely that mystery religions incorporated certain Christian features than that Christianity adapted pagan ones.

For reasons such as these it is much more likely that Christianity was grounded in the soil of Israel's religion as witnessed to in the OT, not in Hellenistic mystery religions.
¹
This is strongly suggested by the extensive use of the OT by Jesus and many of the NT writers (including Paul), both in terms of explicit quotations and with regard to OT allusions and echoes.
²
What is more, the entire message of Jesus and the theology of the NT are built on the substructure of OT theology, binding the Testaments together along a salvation-historical continuum in which Jesus serves as the pivotal point of connection as the Messiah and fulfillment of OT predictions and typologies.

__________________________

¹
See further the discussion of Judaism below.

²
See especially Beale and Carson,
Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testamen
t
;
see also Longenecker,
Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Perio
d
;
and D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson, eds.,
It Is Written: Scripture Citing Scriptur
e
(Cambridge: University Press, 1988). On echoes, see R. B. Hays,
Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Pau
l
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989).

Gnosticism

Gnosticism (from Gr.
gnōsis
, “knowledge”) is rooted in the Platonic dualism that sharply distinguished between the invisible world of ideas and the visible world of matter.
⁹⁵
Generally, this worldview equated matter with evil and viewed only the spirit realm as good. It is important to note that the NT era only documents an incipient form of Gnosticism.
Full-fl edged Gnosticism did not emerge until the second century and thus postdates the NT period.
⁹⁶

Gnostic thought, which is best attested in the Nag Hammadi Library (including the Gospel of Thomas) discovered in the 1940s in Egypt, led to the following opposing phenomena: (1)
asceticism
, the suppression of bodily passions because of their connection with evil matter; (2)
libertinism
, the indulgence of bodily passions because of the insignificance of matter. Some argued that if things done in the body do not matter, then the implication is that the body and its activities should be suppressed while the life of the spirit is nurtured. Others, on the other end of the spectrum, thought that an immoral lifestyle could be pursued while a person claimed to be spiritual at the same time.

From its inception Gnosticism constituted the first serious heretical threat to Christianity. As a result of the gnostic dichotomization between matter and spirit, the notion of a
bodily resurrection
was abhorrent to the gnostics since matter was regarded as evil. Instead, the immortality of the soul was more desirable and was pursued through the knowledge and practice of secret religious activities. Also, as a result of this dichotomization,
human sinfulness
was denied, and thus the need for
redemption
became moot.

Although what is commonly called Gnosticism today did not exist in the first century, traces of an incipient Gnosticism are possibly found in the later NT. In a possible reference to gnostic-type thought, Paul warned Timothy to avoid “irreverent, empty speech and contradictions from the ‘knowledge’ [
gnōsis
] that falsely bears that name” (1 Tim 6:20). Paul also denounced false teachers who forbade marriage and demanded abstinence from certain foods, maintaining that, to the contrary, everything God created was good (1 Tim 4:1–5; see 1 Tim 2:15). He also condemned the Colossian heresy that advocated false asceticism and legalism (Col 2:4–23; see 1 Tim 4:7–8), though this may have been a unique form of syncretism.

Philosophy

Greek philosophy pervaded the first-century Mediterranean world as well.
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The three most popular philosophies were (1) Epicureanism, (2) Stoicism, and (3) Cynicism. Epicureanism taught that pleasure (in the sense of happiness, not necessarily sensual pleasure) was the chief good in life.
⁹⁸
This led to an advocacy of “hedonism,” the pursuit of pleasure as a matter of ethical principle: “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor 15:32; see Isa 22:13).

Stoicism taught the dutiful acceptance of one's fate—a form of fatalism—as determined by impersonal reason ruling the universe.
⁹⁹
People were enjoined to face their destiny “stoically,” that is, without emotion. Paul encountered both Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:18), who arrogantly considered him to be a pseudo-intellectual. These philosophers mistakenly thought that Paul believed “resurrection” to be a “foreign deity,” indicating how foreign the Christian teaching of Jesus' bodily resurrection sounded to those steeped in Greek philosophy.

Advocates of Cynicism
¹⁰⁰
were itinerant preachers who had forsaken worldly pursuits. They taught that simplisticity was life's supreme virtue and that people ought to cultivate it instead of popular pursuits. In essence they advocated a renewed appreciation for life's simple pleasures, though in reality superstition and syncretism largely prevailed among the masses.
¹⁰¹
Some, such as John Dominic Crossan and proponents of the “Jesus Seminar,” maintained on the basis of superficial similarities (such as Jesus' simple lifestyle and his itinerant ministry) that Jesus was a Cynic.
¹⁰²
Yet this is unlikely if for no other reason than that Cynicism is not attested in first-century Palestine.

The preceding discussion illustrates that people in the first century adhered to various worldviews that the early Christians sought to engage. Similarly, many still adhere to these views today, though in modified forms. A basic knowledge of these philosophies and insights into how the early Christians confronted them with the gospel is therefore helpful not only for interpreting the NT documents but also for ways in which the church might engage modern “Epicureans,” “Stoics,” and “Cynics.”