Christianity

An Introduction

Philip Kennedy

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857737885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

The Christian faith has the allegiance of one third of the human race. It has succeeded in influencing civilization to such a degree that we now take its existence almost for granted. Yet it might all have been so different. Christianity began with the words and deeds of an obscure village carpenter's son who died a shameful criminal's death at the hands of the Roman occupiers of his country: itself an insignificant outpost of the powerful ruling Empire. The feverish land of biblical Palestine, awash with apocalyptic expectations of deliverance from its foreign overlords, was hardly short of seers and prophets who claimed to be sent visions from God. Yet the followers of this man thought he was different: so different, in fact, that some years after his death and asserted resurrection they scandalously insisted not only that he was sent by God, but that he 'was' God. How a provincial sect, with its seemingly outrageous ideas, became first the sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire and then, over the course of 2000 years, the creed of billions of people, is the improbable story that this book tells.
It is a story of freethinkers, friars, fanatics and firebrands; and of the lay people (not just the clerical or the powerful) who have made up the great mass of Christians over the centuries. Many introductions to Christianity are written by Christians, for Christians. This elegant textbook, by contrast, shows that the history of the religion, while often glorious, is not one of unimpeded progress, but something still more remarkable, flawed and human.

Part 1

Origins and Growth

Chapter I

Jesus and the Mediterranean World

‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’

John 1: 46

‘ … not much happened while Tiberius was emperor’

Tacitus

Christianity takes its name from a Semite – Jesus Christ – who lived 20 centuries ago. As a boy, he was known simply as Jesus rather than Jesus Christ. The second part of his name as it is now remembered comes from the Greek word, christos, a title for someone who is especially favoured by God. ‘Christ’ has the same meaning in Greek as a messiah does in Hebrew or Aramaic. ‘Jesus’ is originally an Aramaic term meaning ‘God (Yahweh) saves’. The very combination of two languages in Jesus’ name and honorific designation (Aramaic and Greek) is a symptom that this man, who came to be remembered as one of the greatest figures in human history, lived in, and was formed by, a cultural amalgam of very different cultures and peoples. The more that is known of the amalgam, the more can be ascertained about Jesus and the origins of Christianity. This chapter sets out to introduce his life considered in its setting, and in view of a particular history that formed him. It does so in two stages. First, it sketches aspects of the Eastern Mediterranean world before either Jesus or Christianity made their presences felt there; second, it focuses on the historical figure and fortunes of Jesus. The second stage is crucial: if Jesus is mischaracterized or caricatured in any way, all that is subsequently said about Christianity is skewed; if discourses about God (theologies) are composed with Jesus at their centre, and major historical characteristics of Jesus’ life are misconstrued or ignored, the discourses more easily turn into legends or mythical flights of fancy. The next chapter considers how the Christian religion grew and diversified in the wake of Jesus. It outlines the way groups of Jesus’ enthusiasts began to disperse in the Roman Empire beyond Palestine, where Jesus spent his entire life. The first chapter contains a good deal of historical detail which may seem a tedious distraction. For anyone wishing to understand Jesus it is indispensable at best, and an advisable hurdle at worst, because the religious idea that dominated his life, the kingdom of God, is incomprehensible in abstraction from the human kingdoms of which Jesus was acutely aware.

With regard to Christianity, it needs to be said at the outset that Jesus was not a Christian. The religion of his allegiance, from his childhood to his death, was Judaism as it was practised in Galilee and Judaea of the first century CE. He was a Nazarene and a manual worker, and hence known for a life spent among agrarian labourers in the small village of Nazareth, in Lower Galilee of the Roman imperial province of Syria–Palestine. While Christianity would never have arisen without him, he was not its devisor or founder. None of the people who met him while he was alive was a Christian, unless one means by ‘a Christian’ a person who knew, liked and believed in his goodness. A Christianity familiar to later centuries began to take shape in the closing years of the first century, once enthusiasts of Jesus, decades after his death, finally stopped attending synagogues.

One of the greatest historical puzzles concerning Jesus’ life was not the issue of whether he founded Christianity. It lies with the manner of his death. He was executed by torture and crucifixion on the order of a Roman prefect. The word ‘prefect’ (Latin: Praefectus) was a Roman military title. Why would a soldier–governor of the Roman Equestrian Order crucify a manual-working Nazarene?¹ Any attempt to answer that question needs to consider Jesus’ times, life and locality.

The Near East

Jesus spent his life in the hinterland of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. He and his friends were conquered people. They spent all of their existence under the heel of the Roman Empire. Jesus lived under two emperors: Octavian, who took the name ‘Augustus’, and Tiberius. He was born under the first, and killed during the reign of the second. His ancestors over many generations had endured the hardship of political subjugation, stymied by a succession of imperial dynasties that had conquered their lands.

The geographical setting of Jesus’ life and the later emergence of Christianity was the ancient Near East. Referring to the East, Near (Middle) East or Far East belies a European perspective, but even so, it has become a commonplace in historical studies. In such a view, Europe enjoys a globally central position, and all other regions are labelled according to points of the compass, with the Near East regarded as those regions to the south or south-east of Europe, including Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Iraq, Iran and Egypt.

It all Began in Iraq

The story of Christianity begins with the story of Jesus, and the story of Jesus begins with the story of Iraq. One way of charting the historical emergence of Christianity is to focus on the ancient city of the Near East called Babylon, and its surrounding territories of Mesopotamia. There is still a city in Iraq called Babylon. It was once an imperially powerful site, and is remembered as the hub of the Babylonian Empire. It was in Babylon that many of the most important Hebrew texts of the Bible were edited in their final form. The Bible begins with two stories of creation (in the Book of Genesis) that were joined together by editors in Babylon around 2600 years ago. A primary point of these narratives, which are focused on God, not cosmology or biological evolution, is to reassure exiled Jews from Judaea that despite their current circumstances, God will remain faithful to them. Hebrew texts redacted in Babylon and regarded as sacred by Jews, ancient and contemporary, are writings that heavily influenced the mind and life of Jesus. They are also venerated by Christians. Of the historically remote origin of Christianity, it is not misleading to conclude that ‘it all began in Iraq’. Christianity issued from Judaism, and the Judaism familiar to Jesus was forged in Babylon. What is now called Iraq provided the setting which helped form the Temple-centred religion known to Jesus, commonly called Second Temple Judaism. The Temple at the hub of his religion was destroyed by the Fretensis (Xth) Roman legion in the year 70 CE. It has never been rebuilt.

Map 1: The ancient Near East

The Judaism of Jesus

Jesus lived nearly all of his life in Galilee, a northern territory of Palestine. By far the majority of Galileans of his time were Jews. Before describing the regions in which he grew up and that moulded his religious outlook, the larger issue of considering the religion to which he gave his life presents itself.

Jesus lived in a land that has been named differently in successive stages of history. It has been variously called Canaan, Israel, Judaea (Roman spelling), Judah or Palestine. When Jesus was alive, his land was known in the Roman Empire as Palestine. This word was coined by the ancient Greek writer, Herodotus (fifth century BCE), and designates the territories of the people called Philistines. In the time of Jesus, Palestine included three major territories: Galilee to its north, Judaea in the south, and Samaria in between. It hugged the eastern Mediterranean Sea on its west, had Syria to its north, bordered the Syrian desert in its east, with the Negeb desert on its most southern region. The Jordan River flows through it on a north– south axis.²

Palestine has long been a region of chronic tribal conflict, and its inhabitants have lived under the control of many dynastic empires. The Palestinians known to Jesus, whether they were Galilean, Samaritan or Judaean, were all Jews who worshipped according to the laws and customs of Judaism. Jews of Jesus’ Palestine had a vivid memory of their people’s suffering under an extensive line of imperial rulers. Their history was not exclusively a tale of woes, for they enjoyed benefits of Hellenism, a form of exported Greek culture that was spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean by the young Macedonian king, Alexander the Great.

The word ‘Jew’ is modern.³ It derives from the Greek, ioudaios, and Latin, judaeus, which translate the Hebrew term, yĕhûdî, meaning ‘Judaean’. So, formerly, a Jew was an inhabitant of the land of Judah. The first textual reference to such a person is found in the Second Book of Kings (16: 6). Whereas ‘Jew’ describes a specific individual, Judaism connotes a more general feature of several people: Judaism means ‘Jewishness’ or, more strictly, ‘Judaeanness’. It is now used to name the religion of Jews. The original coinage of the term ‘Judaism’ seems to have been in the Second Book of Maccabees (2: 21).

The historical origins of ancient Jews are remote and obscure, and are traced by contemporary Jews to the figure of Abraham, who features prominently in the opening stages of the Bible (Gen 12–25). Judaism, Christianity and Islam are often called Abrahamic religions because they trace their views of God to Abraham as a common ancestor. Not much is known assuredly of Abraham, but he is often thought to have originated in the territory of Ur in the Fertile Crescent (broadly the eastern Mediterranean) around 39 centuries ago. It is difficult to ascertain the origins and identity of the figure remembered as Abraham because there was no written form of Hebrew in the age during which he is said to have lived. Prophets in Israel before roughly the sixth century BCE collectively show no knowledge of him. The personage of Abraham in the history of Israel became prominent in written sources among Jews especially during the sixth century.⁴

More approximate origins to the Judaism known to Jesus can be traced to a period late in the thirteenth century BCE, when tribes of Semites made Canaan their home. Semites are people believed to have been descended from Shem, the son of Noah (Gen 10: 21ff.). Semites included Arabs, Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians and Phoenicians. Canaan was the coastal plain between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that was later included in Palestine by Herodotus. Philistines and Ammonites were neighbours to Canaanites. Some of the original tribes who settled in Canaan, not without armed conflict, appear to have spent time in Egypt. Their experiences inspired the great biblical saga of Moses, who is described in the Bible as an enslaved man in Egypt who led his people in escaping from the fetters of an Egyptian Pharaoh. To this day, Jews celebrate the Passover – the night which commemorates escape from Egyptian subjugation. Moses was arguably more an historical figure than Abraham. ‘Moses’ is an Egyptian name, which lends credence to a Moses who was known to Egyptians and who led captive tribes in escaping vassalage under Egypt’s Pharaoh.⁵

The life-blood of Judaism is the belief that God delivered a series of instructions (Torah) to Moses while he was staying on Mt Sinai. The Hebrew word for this divine teaching is tôrâ, which has come to be rendered in English as ‘law’, or ‘the Torah’. In discussions of Judaism it is often simply designated as ‘the Mosaic Law’. Included in the Torah are admonitions not to kill or steal, and to have no other Gods apart from the God of the Israelites.

As traced thus far, the history of Judaism involved violent subjugation in Egypt and violent conflict in Canaan. The Bible recounts that Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, led his family into Egypt. God so favoured Jacob, the Book of Genesis declares, that God gave him the new name of Israel (Gen 32: 28). The biblical narrative also records that Jacob had 12 sons who generated what became known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It was these tribes that Moses is described as leading from bondage and into a wilderness east of the Jordan River. The next plot in the story concerns Joshua, who was well known to Moses and is said to have led the tribes from wandering in wilderness into Canaan.

After incessant struggles with local and neighbouring tribes, the clans of Israel agreed to unite. The mechanism for their unification was a monarchy. The first of their kings was Saul (c. 1020–1000 BCE). He was followed by David (c. 1000–961), who was succeeded by Solomon (c. 961–922). When Solomon was king, he decided to build a temple in Jerusalem, which was to be the centre of the religious cult of the Israelites. The Temple (spelled hereafter with a capital letter to distinguish it from all other temples) was so pivotal in the life of Israelites that any region located beyond its threshold was called profane (pro-fano).⁶ The primary purpose of the Temple was to serve as a place in which Jews could worship the God of Israel.

As an act of reverence, many Jews – ancient and modern – will not vocalize their God’s name. They spell it by omitting vowels. It thus becomes YHWH. Others dare to pronounce the name by including the letter ‘A’ between ‘Y’ and ‘H’, and ‘E’ between ‘W’ and the second ‘H’. In English, this produces ‘YAHWEH’. The abbreviated form, ‘YHWH’, is called the Tetragrammaton (‘word of four letters’). Pronouncing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the author
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• An X-ray of Christianity’s Evolution
• Time-frame for Christianity
• Quick Guide to Common Terms
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Origins and Growth
• Part 2: Medieval Christianity
• Part 3: Discovery and Diversity
• Part 4: Enlightenment and Modernity
• Conclusion
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index
• eCopyright