Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (173 page)

16
C. Kahn,
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History
(Indianapolis and Cambridge, 2001), 6-10.

17
H. N. Fowler and W. R. M. Lamb (ed.),
Plato with an English Translation I: Euthrypo; Apology; Crito; Phaedo; Phaedrus
(Loeb edn, London and Cambridge, 1953), 132-3 [
Apology,
38a]. A good recent treatment of Socrates's trial and death is E. Wilson,
The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint
(London, 2007).

18
P. Shorey (ed.),
Plato: The Republic
(2 vols., Loeb, London, 1930), II, 118-41 [VII, 514a-519e].

19
R. G. Bury (ed.),
Plato: With an English Translation VII: Timaeus; Critias; Cleitophon; Menexenus; Epistles
(Loeb, London and Cambridge, MA, 1961), 50-53, 176-9 [
Timaeus
XXVIIIa-XXIXd; LXVIIIe-LXIXc].

20
M. Schofield,
Plato: Political Philosophy
(Oxford, 2006), esp. 40-42, 88-9.

21
H. Rackham (ed.),
Aristotle XX: The Athenian Constitution; The Eudemian Ethics; On Virtues and Vices
(Loeb edn, Harvard and London, 1971), 1-181.

22
A. D. Godley (ed.),
Herodotus, with an English Translation
(4 vols., Loeb edn, 1920-31). For Plutarch's attack, F. H. Sandbach (ed.),
Plutarch's Moralia
(17 vols., Loeb edn, London and Cambridge, 1927-2004), XI, 1-129 [
On the malice of Herodotus
]. Cicero coined the title 'Father of History': J. L. Myres,
Herodotus: Father of History
(Oxford, 1933), 19. A useful introductory discussion is J. Burrow,
A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century
(London, 2007), 11-28.

23
For an introduction to Sparta, see Lane Fox,
The Classical World
, Ch. 6.

24
C. Forster Smith,
Thucydides, with an English translation
(4 vols., Loeb edn, London and Cambridge, 1920). Introductory discussion in Burrow,
A History of Histories
, 29-51.

25
Two good recent introductions to Alexander are P. Cartledge,
Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past
(Basingstoke and Oxford, 2004), and C. Mosse,
Alexander: Destiny and Myth
(Edinburgh, 2004).

26
H. Maehler, 'Alexandria, the Mouseion, and Cultural Identity', in A. Hirst and M. Silk (eds.),
Alexandria: Real and Imagined
(Aldershot, 2004), 1-14.

27
The pioneer was the Prussian historian J.-G. Droysen: see good summary discussion on his thesis on the relationship between Christianity and the Hellenistic world in P. Cartledge, 'Introduction', in P. Cartledge, P. Garnsey and E. S. Gruen (eds.),
Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History and Historiography
(Berkeley, 1997), 1-19, at 2-6.

28
Cartledge,
Alexander the Great
, 215-27.

29
This thesis has been contested in recent years, without being decisively controverted: see Cartledge, 'Introduction', 6-10.

30
Goodman, 43, 45, 50.

31
D. Feeney,
Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History
(Berkeley, 2007), 86-91.

32
Goodman, 164-5.

33
R. Rushton Fairclough (ed.),
Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica
(Loeb edn, London and Cambridge, 1970), 408-9 [
Epistles
II.1.156-7].

34
The standard (and brilliant) account of these events is still R. Syme,
The Roman Revolution
(Oxford, 1939).

35
R. H. A. Jenkyns,
Virgil's Experience: Nature and History, Times, Names, and Places
(Oxford, 1998), 643-53.

36
H.-J. Klauck, 'The Roman Empire', in Mitchell and Young (eds.), 69-83, at 72.

37
In these remarks, I am aware of the rather different thrust in the long-influential arguments of E. R. Dodds, eloquently presented in his
Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
(Cambridge, 1965), esp. Ch. 1 and 132, that Christianity entered a vacuum in which traditional Roman religion was being emptied of emotional power and also becoming otherworldly, so that 'paganism' easily collapsed after the withdrawal of imperial favour. Dodds's theses are reaffirmed in R. Stark,
The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History
(Princeton, 1996), esp. 196-201. For an imaginative presentation of different perspectives, see K. Hopkins,
A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire
(London, 1999), esp. 22-31, 44-5, 78-88, and for other works stressing the vigour of traditional or non-Christian religious belief and practice persisting into the third century CE see, e.g., G. Fowden, 'The World View', in A. K. Bowman, P. Garnsey and A. Cameron (eds.),
The Cambridge Ancient History XII: The Crisis of Empire,
A.D.
193-337
(2nd edn, Cambridge, 2005), 521-37, and R. Lane Fox,
Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century
AD
to the Conversion of Constantine
(London, 1986), esp. 669-81.

2: Israel (
c
. 1000 BCE-100 CE)

1
A brilliant introduction to the city is A. Elon,
Jerusalem: City of Mirrors
(rev. edn, London, 1996).

2
Revelation 16.16.

3
Another presentation of broadly similar conclusions, lively and comprehensive, though perhaps more abrasive than this, is R. Lane Fox,
The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible
(London, 1991).

4
Genesis 13.14-17; Ch. 15; 17.5-6.

5
Genesis 32.28.

6
There is one exception to the silence, the eighth-century prophet Hosea's use of the story of Jacob's punishment, Hosea 12 - but this is the exception that proves the rule.

7
Genesis 22.20-24.

8
T. L. Thompson,
The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives
(New York, 1974), 75-88, 299-307, 325; J. van Seters,
Abraham in History and Tradition
(London, 1975), 29-34.

9
H. Jagersma,
History of Israel
(London, 1982), 37.

10
M. G. Hasel, '
Israel
in the Merneptah Stela',
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
, 296 (1994), 45-61.

11
N. Naaman, '
Habiru
and Hebrews: The Transfer of a Social Term to the Literary Sphere',
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
, 45 (1986), 271-88.

12
This obscure figure who has provoked much Christian fascination over the centuries is otherwise mentioned in the Bible only at Psalm 110.4.

13
A. Alt, 'The God of the Fathers', in Alt,
Essays on Old Testament History and Religion
(Oxford, 1966), 3-65.

14
Exodus 3.14, often rendered 'I am who I am'; cf. Exodus 3.4, 15. The vocalization of 'Yahweh' around its consonants is a modern conjectural reconstruction of the original. Hebrew did not note vowel sounds in its alphabet until the medieval Massoretic scholars added them. By that time, Jews had out of reverence long ceased to pronounce the word 'YHWH', so all reconstructions of the vowel sounds in the word are conjectural and are based on transcriptions of it in the writings of early Christians. The form of Yahweh familiar to some Christians, 'Jehovah', is a mistaken late medieval Christian attempt to fill in vowel sounds to the consonants of YHWH in Hebrew. This misunderstood a convention in Jewish texts that those consonants should be completed with the vowels of an entirely different word substituted in reverence,
Adonai
, 'Lord'.

15
Exodus 6.3.

16
Alt, 'The God of the Fathers', 42-3.

17
See, e.g., the disapproving tone in the account of the people's importunate demand for a king, and Samuel's warning to them, I Samuel 8.10-20, or Samuel's open rebuke of them, I Samuel 12.17. For major later implications for seventeenth-century Europe in this material, see E. Nelson, ' "Talmudical Commonwealthsmen" and the Rise of Republican Exclusivism',
HJ
, 50 (2007), 809-36.

18
The most consistently attested contents were the original tablets of the Ten Commandments given to Moses (see pp. 61 and 1019-20): see I Kings 8.9.

19
There are too many references to this claim in the New Testament to list in summary form, but key examples are Matthew 12.23; 21.9, 15; Luke 1.27; 2.4; John 7.42; Romans 1.3.

20
For a lively treatment of possibilities, see W. G. Dever,
Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel
(Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2005), and see also J. M. Hadley,
The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess
(Cambridge, 2000).

21
II Kings 17-18.

22
For a useful collection of essays giving a comparative overview, see M. Nissinen,
Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical and Arabian Perspectives
(Atlanta, 2000), esp. H. B. Huffman, 'A Company of Prophets: Mari, Assyria, Israel', 47-70.

23
I Kings 18.19, 22, 40-45.

24
Amos 1.1; Ch. 5; 7.14-16; Hosea 1.2; 3.1.

25
Isaiah 1.11; Ch. 6.

26
Isaiah 7.3.

27
Isaiah 2.3-4. The importance of this passage was such that it was also attributed to the contemporary prophet Micah, and so it can be found in slightly varied form at Micah 4.2 - 3.

28
II Kings 22.1-13; II Chronicles 34.1-12.

29
Deuteronomy 13.9.

30
Cf., e.g., Genesis 17.11-14, 24; 21.4.

31
J. Barton and J. Muddiman (eds.),
The Oxford Bible Commentary
(Oxford, 2001), 136.

32
Psalm 137.1. An account of these events from the point of view of the exiles is to be found in Ezra 4.

33
Luke 10.29-37; John 4.1-45.

34
T. J. Wray and G. Mobley,
The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots
(Basingstoke, 2005), esp. 51-2, 66-8, 75-148.

35
Ecclesiastes 1.8-9, 18; 12.7-8.

36
Goodman, 168-71.

37
Luke 1.46-55, 68-79, and see G. Vermes,
The Nativity: History and Legend
(London, 2006), 148.

38
S. Freyne, 'Galilee and Judaea in the First Century', in Mitchell and Young (eds.), 37-51, at 39.

39
W. Horbury and D. Noy (eds.),
Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt, with an Index of the Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt and Cyrenaica
(Cambridge, 1992), e.g. 13-14, 47-9, and index of examples at 276.

40
Doig, 2; Goodman, 283-5. See also Barrett (ed.), 55-7.

41
II Esdras 14.45-6. R. A. Kraft, 'Scripture and Canon in Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha', and S. Mason with R. A. Kraft, 'Josephus on Canon and Scriptures', in M. Saebo (ed.),
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation
(3 vols., Gottingen, 1996), I, Pt I, 199-235, esp. 220-21, 228-31.

42
On the canon, see pp. 127-9.

43
A useful wider selection is given in Barrett (ed.), 316-49.

44
See this quotation of I Enoch in Jude 14; on Ethiopia, see p. 279.

45
B. Sundkler and C. Steed,
A History of the Church in Africa
(Cambridge, 2000), 8.

46
Barrett (ed.), 292-8.

47
See ibid., 251-62.

48
II Maccabees 7.28: G. O'Collins and M. Farrugia,
Catholicism: The Story of Catholic Christianity
(Oxford, 2003), 167-8.

49
W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Judaism II: The Hellenistic Age
(Cambridge, 1989), 226, 294, 302, 422, 485. For vigorous arguments for an earlier date for widespread ideas of resurrection, perhaps dangerously overstretching the argument for the literary and historical precedents, see J. D. Levenson,
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life
(New Haven and London, 2006), esp. 191-200.

50
Good summary discussion in Goodman, 254-60.

51
Daniel 12.2-3.

52
Goodman, 311.

53
M. Goodman, 'The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism', in H. Cancik et al. (eds.),
Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift fur Martin Hengel zum 70.Geburtstag
(3 vols., Tubingen, 1996), I, 501-10, esp. 501-2.

54
Matthew 22.23-40; on Paul, Acts 23.6-8.

55
The remote community which lived in the Dead Sea settlement discovered near the modern Wadi Qumran, and which probably hoarded the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, has often been seen as Essene. There is no conclusive evidence for this: Goodman, 240, though see a more positive view in G. Vermes,
Scrolls, Scriptures and Early Christianity
(London and New York, 2005), esp. 18-30. Nor is there good evidence of direct links between the Scrolls and early Christianity: G. J. Brooke,
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament: Essays in Mutual Illumination
(London, 2005), esp. xviii, 8-10, 13, 19-26, 261-71. For samples from the Qumran literature, see Barrett (ed.), 218-51.

PART II: ONE CHURCH, ONE FAITH, ONE LORD? (4 BCE-451 CE)

3: A Crucified Messiah (4 BCE-100 CE)

1
The 'down-market' phrase is from R. A. Burridge,
What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography
(Cambridge, 1992), 217. Burridge nevertheless throughout stresses the Gospels' features shared with other ancient lives (
bioi
).