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For 10/13-14 |
Assignment 6
Remember to "REFRESH."
Rome pt. 3 and Christianity Emerges
Rome at its Territorial Height
For Tuesday: (which is Monday in the
universe of Stevens):
Read Davies: pp. 192-212
Read: The Jewish Revolt in 66
AD. JewishRevoltAgainstRome66AD.htm
Read: The Story of Masada in 70
AD. Josephus_OnMasada.htm
Be aware that there is a homework
assignment for Wed. that all of you must do. You might want to read about it now and get a head start as
it will require more than just a few minutes to do well.
[Note to self -
Show Ben Hur clip in class if you didn't last Wed.]
For Wednesday:
Homework assignment that
everyone must do for Wed. Look at this map. PeutingerMap-detail
[1.1MB] It is a small section
from Peutinger's Map. [I had an
optional link to this map last week. PeutingerMapLectureNotes.htm] Find as many recognizable things as you
can. [You might find it helpful to
just type names into Google or Wiki and see what comes up.] Then look at this map, JudeaMap-HHS.jpg [471KB]
[and/or use this map First_century_palestine.gif],
and find as many correlations between the two maps as you can. As homework, print out both maps and
write on them the information from the other. [Hint: First thing might be to figure out north and find
"Palestina" and maybe the Jordan River on both maps.] Make the maps
cross reference each other. If you
would rather, this can be done as an image file and then submitted in an
email. If you have a better idea
for presenting this cross referencing information, feel free to do it. [E.g. If you could make one map morph
into the other... that would be cool or you could redraw both maps into one
map... superimpose one on the other in some way.] Feel free to use a better map of Judea if you find one. Write up any useful commentary that
will help me understand what you did.
I will grade harshly if I don't understand what you are doing so
explanations and presentation count.
If you send me this in an email, please don't send me anything bigger
than 1.5MB without warning.
![PeutingerMap-detail [1.1MB]](http://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/Peutinger-Nile-Palestine-Antioch.jpg){kind=link}
![JudeaMap-HHS.jpg [471KB]](http://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/JudeaMap-HHS.jpg){kind=link}
Starting on about p200 in
Davies, he mentions the Gnostics.
It is an oversimplification that I think should be addressed in more
detail, so we will read a few things this week and next week on Gnosticism that
should hopefully give a more complex impression.
Read Gladiatorial Games
Read this PDF from Pagels's Gnostic
Gospels on the early martyrs. Pagels_GnGspChIV-3.1MB.pdf. This chapter mentions a variety of
early Christian texts that will be unfamiliar to you. We will look into these next week in more detail.
Read the short outline posted below
called, "Arius, Arianism, Anti-Trinitarianism, and Orthodox
Trinitarianism."
Read this short article: Counting
Coins to Count Rome's Population
Essay: Write something on the
readings. Perhaps relate what you
read in this assignment to your understanding of Christianity or expand on
something you read about in Davies.
...or... Martyrs are an interesting phenomenon. How do the early Christian martyrs compare
to modern day suicide bombers? How
might their thought process be similar or different?
Arius,
Arianism, Anti-Trinitarianism, and Orthodox Trinitarianism
or
The
Struggle over the Church in Nicaea in 325 AD.
In the following I am attempting to summarize the difference between Anti-Trinitarianism (in the form of Arianism) and Orthodox Trinitarianism, which became the dominant form of Christianity following the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. These issues are extremely subtle and it is a bit difficult to understand why it was all such a big deal, but it was a big deal. It may have had more to do with power than the actual content of the debate. Perhaps the debate was just a proxy for an underlying power struggle over the leadership of Christianity. As with all things having to do with Christianity, it is nearly impossible to get a straight answer for any historical question. There are too many interested parties and the sources have been edited, forged, and generally messed with over the centuries. Historical truth and religion are impossible to reconcile.
Arianism [not to be confused with Aryianism, of Nazi fame]
Arius, (ca. 250-336), priest from Alexandria
Only God, the Father, is identifiable with the divine
Oneness. [very Platonic] The Son
and the Holy Spirit are discreet entities and do not share the divine essence.
Because God is the Oneness, the concept of "Threeness in oneness" is self-contradictory and
violates the principle of a monotheism. [How can you have one God and three
gods at the same time?] God is
eternal, exists without a starting point or an end point. He has always existed. Whereas the Son, Jesus, starts at some
point in time. He was created by
God at a particular time, and as such is not similarly eternal. The Son is to be venerated as a
pseudo-divine entity, but not as God.
The Arians imagine a traditional family of sorts where God is the father
and Jesus the subordinate son. The
Holy Spirit is an emanation from God, an expression of God, but not the divine
essence per se. [Thy Holy Spirit has serious
similarities to some Stoic concepts of pneuma, or spiritus in Latin.] The Arians might argue that the standard Trinitarian view of
"threeness as oneness" was virtually pagan.
The following are some supposed quotes from Arius, recorded
by Athanasius:
'God was not always a Father;' but 'once God was alone, and
not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.' 'The Son was not always;'
for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all existing creatures
and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was 'made out of nothing,' and
'once He was not,' and 'He was not before His origination,' but He as others
'had an origin of creation.' 'For God,' he says, 'was alone, and the Word as
yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to form us , thereupon He made a
certain one, and named Him Word and Wisdom and Son, that He might form us by
means of Him'....Moreover he has dared to say, that 'the Word is not the very
God;' 'though He is called God, yet He is not very God,' but 'by participation
of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.' And, whereas all beings are
foreign and different from God in essence, so too is 'the Word alien and unlike
in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,' but belongs to things
originated and created, and is one of these (C. Ar. I.2.5,6).
Arianism was basically erased from the world in the 4th
century, but it cropped up in a most interesting place... many of the big names
in the Scientific Revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries were closet-Arians
of sorts. People like Newton,
Boyle, and Locke were extremely interested in non-Orthodox forms of
Christianity, but were careful not to discuss their views in public.
On the other side of the argument
that culminated in the 4th century were the Church Fathers who promoted
Orthodox Trinitarianism
Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 293-373) was a principal
adherent to this trinitarian view, the view which ultimately won. Other prominent adherents include:
Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,
Luther, Calvin, and most all Contemporary orthodox Christianity, the Jehovah's
Witnesses being a prominent exception.
Ironically much of what we know about Arius comes from the attacks
written against him by Athanasius.
The one divine essence is manifested in common by God, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. The
three are cosubstantial, coinherent, co-equal, and co-eternal. The Holy Trinity is just three modes of
the same divine Oneness. The
"threeness in oneness" issue is not a problem of theology, but a
problem of human mental limitations and limitations of language.
How these conflicting ideas about
the Trinity might cause some conflict...
How human was Jesus?
How did he suffer on the cross?
Did he suffer on the cross?
How does that affect the meaning of his significance? If he was fully
human, he made a huge and painful sacrifice. If he was fully divine, what's the big deal of dying. It is meaningless to die if you are
fully divine. If he doesn't really die, how could he die for our sins? Other alternatives: Jesus could be some
sort of hybrid human/divine being having some but not all attributes from both
designations or he could be divine sometimes and human at other times or even
more complicated, he could be both fully divine and fully human at the same
time. This defies logic, but
religions like to defy logic.
Arius vs. Athanasius at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
This meeting was
sponsored by Constantine I, the Emperor of Rome. Arius lost and was exiled. Christ was declared a fully divine entity. The result was the Nicene Creed. Here is the relevant passage: " We believe in one God, the
Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, Light of Light, very God
of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father..." It goes on to mention the divinity of
the Holy Spirit although later versions are a bit more explicit on this
matter. [See Nicene Creed.]
Citations to the above readings
and some optional things: [These optional readings can be used any way you
want. They could add to a regular essay or could be used as a source for your
larger project or could looked over just to see what sort of stuff is out
there.]
Josephus- figure out a citation
for these readings. The editor is me.
Koestler, Helmut.
"Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels." The Harvard Theological Review 73, no.
1/2 (1980): 105-130. Koestler,Helumt_ApocryphasAndCanonicalGospels.pdf
[2.2MB]
Pagels, Elaine H. The Gnostic
Gospels. Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Pagels, Elaine H. Beyond Belief :
The Secret Gospel of Thomas. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2003.
Yamauchi, Edwin M. "Pre-Christian Gnosticism in the Nag Hamadi Texts?" Chruch History 48, no. 2 (1979): 129-141. Yamauchi_PreChristGnosticWriters.pdf [1.3MB]
Back to
Syllabus
[EuroHist-HHS123-F09]
My
email – HHS123F09@mifami.org
Priapic cults and images
Special Presentation by ....
Eliot on violence, martyrdom, Colosseum,
etc...
Here is the starter kit: ColosseumBibliography_for_presentation.htm
Exam Review: 10/18/09