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
