Wednesday 29 April 2020

The Flavian Hypothesis



Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus (30 December 39 AD – 13 September 81 AD)


John,
 ...

I’m going to freewheel through this, which is often a good way of developing a frame for a more detailed discussion. Hard to know where to start, since there are several possible starting points.

I’ll start with Eusebius. You suggested to me that we did not know why Eusebius wrote his works. But we do know why he wrote what he did, since the texts contain the motive and purpose of his writings, from his own pen. The title of his Preparation for the Gospel says exactly what it is for. It is based on the idea that all ancient peoples, and all ancient religions, were in darkness, and struggling for the light before the arrival of Christianity. And the Christian gospels (and other related writings) represent the final arrival of the human race at a point where their engagement with God is soundly based. Christianity is a religion in which it is possible to live a good and moral life, unlike former religions, which embraced barbarity and sin, on a daily basis.

Few now read Eusebius apart from historians of Christianity, since most of the quotations and summaries of earlier works have been extracted, and collected together elsewhere (Isaac Preston Cory was one of the first to produce a collection of ancient fragments in the early nineteenth century). We have evidence however that he was not making these earlier documents up (He quoted from the Babyloniaka, a three volume work by the former high priest of Bel in Babylon, who moved to Athens in the fourth century BCE. These quotations are consistent with what we find in the tablets from Mesopotamia. So Eusebius had access to either the Babyloniaka itself, or summaries of its contents, as late as the early fourth century CE), though the use to which he put them was to suggest that Christianity was on the way, and that these earlier works were foreshadowings of the gospels, and of the Christian church. That interpretation of the worth of earlier documents was something which Eusebius (and other scholars)  constructed, and which was used as a frame  to select the relevant evidence.

I came across the detail of the Flavian hypothesis relatively recently, but I find the concept that the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus were written by Roman and Greek scholars credible, and that they were written in order to counter messianic Judaism, which was almost out of control at the time the gospels were composed. And that this was to be achieved by creating a messianic figure who urged peace, ‘turning the other cheek’, and ‘rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar’s’. And furthermore, one who had already lived, rather than one who was yet to arrive.

Joseph Atwill’s paralleling of Titus’s campaign’s in Judaea (which appear in the writings of Josephus, who was an adopted son of the Flavian family) with the movements of Jesus is particularly compelling.
   
So it can be understood as a very sophisticated piece of propaganda to further the ends of the Imperial family, and of Rome. The Flavian propaganda used techniques similar to those familiar to religious scholars and priests, particularly in Judaea, where later compositions used earlier writings and stories as their basis. The earlier writings, when paired with the later ‘types’ in the later writings, communicated information about the meaning of the more recent texts (if you have a polyglot Bible, you can see the lengths to which this procedure can be taken). That’s what the authors of the Gospels and other New Testament books were doing. And in a sense, that is also what Eusebius was doing, but without much reverence for the pagan past.

 Stepping a little sideways for a moment, when I was fifteen I attempted to read Isaac Asiimov’s Foundation trilogy. I got the general idea of the human race experiencing a cultural crisis from which they needed to be shielded, but it was hard to understand why the psychohistorians did this by restructuring history and culture. And why Asimov had written these books. Asimov is known mainly for his science fiction, but he also wrote many books on history. I did not find that out until recently also. And then I came across a quotation from him, concerning the writing of the trilogy. He said that at the time he was ‘cribbin’ Gibbon.’

Suddenly everything lit up. Asimov had read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and understood that Gibbon’s account of the interaction between the Roman Empire and Christianity (in particular) contained materials which suggested a sophisticated set of fabrications, and literary and cultural manipulation. A historical fraud of immense proportions.

I haven’t read the entirety of Gibbon’s epic work ,so I don’t know whether Asimov figured this out himself from Gibbon’s account, or whether Gibbon himself knew. I suspect that the latter is the case, since his account portrays the rise of Christianity in negative terms (He regarded all forms of religion as contrary to reason).

The point here is that the idea that there is fabrication at the root of Christianity is not a new one. The Flavian hypothesis puts a lot more flesh on the bones however. If Gibbon did know (and he read all of the relevant materials, including Josephus) it would have been difficult or even impossible for him to publish his book. There is a Ph.D thesis in it for someone to critically examine Gibbon’s text for clues as to whether or not he was writing around something that he dare not say.

I will write a little later about ‘chrest’ and Roman imperial ideas of the divine.

Hope you are well,

Best,

Thomas