Early On

Joel S. Dryer

December 9, 2013

For almost three millennia central Asia was alternately controlled by the Assyrians and Babylonians, who were constantly at war with each other. As the Assyrian empire began to crumble through a series of civil wars, the Babylonians came to control the region in 605 B.C.E., and asserted assiduous control throughout wide swaths of central Asia from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and north and northeast towards the Black and Caspian Seas. Egypt remained independent. But among the revolting peoples under Babylonian dominion were those of Judah, home of the Jewish people. King Nebuchadnezzar the second conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and utterly destroying the Holy Temple that had stood there for some five hundred years. This sole tragedy, set off a series of events, as we shall see, that culminated in the founding of the Christian religion. The subject of this paper is that founding and early history.

The King forcibly took the Jewish population with him back to Babylon, where the Jews created what would be the first Diaspora. Those remaining behind were either people of different lands who stayed to collect the spoils of war, or the lowest class of poor Jewish peoples who did not interest the Babylonians. The Babylonian empire fell to the Persians and their King Cyrus in 539 B.C.E. The prevalent Persian Zoroastrian religion held that there was one universal god representing truth, wisdom and order. The counter to this god was the destructive spirit “Angra Mainyu.” Little acknowledged is the influence of this religion on the Western religions of today.

One of the first acts of King Cyrus was to issue a proclamation that returned the Jews to Jerusalem. He financed the rebuilding of the great Temple. Without the foresight of Cyrus to create an outpost with people loyal to him for his kind deeds, there would be virtually no Jerusalem, no Jews to speak of in the kingdom of Judea, or Israel, no Jesus, and no Christianity. In effect it is to King Cyrus Christians should be thankful for their religion.

When the Jews returned to Israel, they found the ragged remnants of their lower class, the poor, and the non-believers, as well as the rapacious horde that had plundered the land after the Babylonians. These people were together roundly despised by the returning Jewish populace, and they fled and built their own temple on Mount Gerizim in the land known as Samaria, which we will come back to later. One should note however that today Samaritans still exist and worship Mount Gerizim as the site of their holy temple. Ninety percent of them live in close proximity to the mount.

Those praying in the rebuilt Jewish Temple, consecrated in 516 B.C.E., came to look for a reason why their G_d would have allowed its destruction in the first place. To make a place for this they conceived of an adversary known as “Hassatan.” This figure eventually took on minor significance within the religion but would later become an important concept in a new sect of Judaism, and came to be known as Satan; similar in most respects to the Zoroastrian concept of a negative force.

Religion has meaning within a context of philosophy, and some of course would maintain religion IS a form of philosophy. In the West the Greek empire was expanding. They formed a series of city states with a Tyrannos (think “tyrant”) at the head. Eventually this power was wrested into the hands of the Polis, a democracy that overtook the Tyrannos and led to civil war that ended in 510 B.C.E. This was the beginning of the Classical period that was to include the birth of Socrates in 469, Plato in 428 and Aristotle in 384. Incredibly, three philosophers born within an 85 year time span were responsible for virtually all of Western thought regarding the self and the world at large. Plato, who was the pupil of Socrates, espoused alternate realities other than the one in which we live in present state. He also taught that the world had oneness that could be described as goodness, whereas previously the Greek gods were all spiteful, cruel, incestuous, or mean spirited. Aristotle, who was the student of Plato, focused on the world at hand, its order, the symbiotic relationships among all life, and thoughts on existence in general and the order of all things. Discussion on an orderly creation and order among life is a favorite contemporary topic in our society today.

Classical Greece gave way to the third and final iteration of their culture termed Hellenism. This period that included Alexander the Great, and a massive expansion of the Greek empire to the East, fostered such common contemporary precepts as “the pursuit of happiness.” Zero taught in the Stoa, where the focus was on mastering the constant barrage of daily miseries, and bearing these travails with inner peace. These students were known as “Stoics.” This was the age of the self, for both its pleasures and challenges. By 333 B.C.E. Alexander the Great had conquered all of central Asia. He died in 332 in Babylon of all places.

After the death of Alexander, Israel and the Jews were subject to the Ptolemaic Empire to the South and the Seleucid Empire to the North. Seleucid King Antiochus prevailed and aggressively sought to Hellenize Israel and its capital Jerusalem. Laws were passed that among others made possession of the Torah an offense punishable by death; he burned all the copies his soldiers could find. He banned many Jewish religious practices such as sacrifice in the Temple, honoring the Sabbath, and most of the feasts and holidays. Most egregiously he outlawed circumcision, punishable by putting to death both the mother and child.

Altars to Greek gods were erected, and the idol of Zeus was placed on the main altar of the Temple. To imagine the affront this caused the people one needs to realize that only the High Priest ever entered the holy of holies, the main altar, and only on one day a year, Yom Kippur. Mind you Jews were those of the “Book” and commandments such as “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” Having an idol of Zeus at the holiest of holy altars was the most tragic and extreme act any ruler could have instituted.

In 166 B.C.E. the Jews, led by Judah Maccabee, began a revolt culminating in the defeat of the Seleucids in 164 and establishing the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty. Having recently witnessed the holiday of Chanukah, you may have wondered how this ancient holiday came into being. Chanukah celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following Judah Maccabee’s victory. They could only find a small amount of uncontaminated oil, enough to keep the holy Menorah lit for one day. The oil miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time enough oil could be procured to keep the eternal flame burning. Today the Roman Catholic Church includes the First and Second Book of Maccabees in its canon. Historically, martyred Maccabees were even mentioned at Mass during the feast of Saint Peter in Chains, a practice that ceased in 1960.

Of course the Greeks were followed by the Romans whose empire further expanded Greek territory. The Romans created far flung political city-states and made travel through broad reaches of land safe to citizens and traders alike. Jews had dispersed throughout the Mediterranean and formed congregations in all of the major cities, their focal point being a synagogue, from the Greek word meaning “assembly.” These synagogues took on broader importance as a house of worship and study, where all Jews could come to the assembly places to learn, and that provided the strong moral undertones of the religion. Judaism provided both a foundation of philosophy on how one should live life as well as a means and methodology for approaching the divine spirit, both rare to non-existent in other religions of the time. The Temples of the Greeks and Romans were places where sacrifice was made and one particular god was worshiped. A concept quite different from synagogues, and of course much later on, churches, which grew out of the concept of a synagogue or assembly place.

En route to subduing the Egyptians and Seleucids, in 63 B.C.E. the Romans invaded Jerusalem. Deportees of this invasion joined Jewish traders in Rome to create a rather large community there. The Romans installed a king who was Jewish by marriage named Herod. He embarked on a major building campaign, evident today throughout the land of Israel. Upon his death, his inept sons split up the Roman held territory. By this time there were four major sects of Jews and several minor ones as well. The largest and most noted sects were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots.

The Sadducees were the elite who ran the Temple and controlled all aspects of worship within its massive structure. They had prospered under various regimes and were therefore the most tolerant of the political environment as long as they could operate the Temple, a prosperous enterprise. Pharisee life was much more stringent and held to stricter orthodoxy of the religion. Both Jesus and Paul were most closely aligned with this sect. The Essenes were the most orthodox of all, and lived apart in their own communities well away from others, a decidedly ascetic life. They did not, however, write the Dead Sea scrolls, a now very well debunked myth promulgated by the French priests who first interpreted the fragments. For a fascinating account of these scrolls you should read Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Norman Golb, the Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

During the tumultuous period between King Herod and the inept rule of his sons, which was supplanted by strict Roman control, came the birth of Jesus. Luke and Matthew both describe Jesus being born in Bethlehem, to a virgin mother. In the Gospel of Luke however, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census, and Jesus is born there in a manger. Scholars have centered this birth between the year 6 and 4 B.C.E. It was around this time and shortly afterward, the Inter-Testamental period that the first mention of a resurrected soul began to appear in Jewish text. While controversial among the various sects, the concept was both well known and widely debated, meaning that a large portion of Jews believed in the idea, which would be somewhat closely aligned to salvation during a very difficult period under Roman rule. Jesus died somewhere between 30 to 36 A.C.E.

The last of the four main Jewish sect, the Zealots, were militant, and while maintaining a lifestyle more similar to the Essenes, they sought a violent overthrow of the Roman yolk and what they saw as corruption in the Temple. Their efforts against the Romans led to a series of disastrous campaigns ending in the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.C.E. The victory is commemorated in the Roman arch of Titus, viewable today that was constructed in the year 82, and depicts the Roman army carrying away the holy golden menorah and spoils from their sack of Jerusalem.

Jewish daily life had been utterly shattered. The Temple was destroyed, all that remains today is the Western wall, the ancient cardo and ritual baths, some steps along the southern edge, and the giant stone blocks pushed off the walls by the Romans that still lie in the ancient street below the wall. The second Temple had been extant some six hundred years. Imagine the impact of its destruction on these ancient peoples. It was at this time of despondency that the Jewish people were searching for their identity. That a Messiah would rise into their consciousness is no surprise. The Jewish sect that followed Jesus borrowed heavily from the Tanakh, comprised of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. Christian history and most deeply its Christian ethic and New Testament were thoroughly shaped by these more ancient texts. Their new belief system stood on the foundation of the old. It is critical to remember that all of these followers were, and considered themselves, Jewish. This would later change, but during this time it was near impossible to be a Christian per se and not also be a Jew.

We turn now to history as found in the Gospel, from the Anglo-Saxon word “Godspell,” which was Latinized from the Greek word for “Good News.” And that Good News is exactly what the Gospel offered these Jewish believers, new hope, or new life after the Romans had utterly destroyed the old.

In the beginning, as it were, there was the birth of Jesus. Among the four accepted Gospels there is considerable disagreement upon this: Parents coming to Bethlehem because of a Roman census, yet no census ever took place; descended from the house of David, yet one genealogy is filled with non-Jews and both diverge whether it was from Mary or Joseph’s side of the family, and the date of his birth from Julius was incorrect.

Considered from perspective and conditions, the Gospels are four biographies of Jesus from the downtrodden point of view. The wealthy and prosperous are bystanders in the common man’s experiences with G_d and with a Messiah. This extremely demoralized state represented the condition of the vast, vast majority of the populous, and their desire for a Savior. The Gospels were their good news. It is easy to conceive how appealing a coming kingdom of heaven on earth would be to the downtrodden, where as stated in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Those who were spiritually adrift, especially in view of the loss of the Temple, would be in dire need of answers and more importantly guidance.

The story of the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is instructive in understanding the new religion, and draws together conditions as they were at the time. I remind you the Samaritans were despised by the Jews as they had been Jews themselves, but chose to not only remain after the Babylonian conquest, but to worship G_d on their own mount, outside of Jerusalem. That the Gospel of John gives a poignant reference between this despised people and Jesus is, in and of itself, a type of proselytizing showing that all peoples should come to believe in the messiah. It was a story written for Jews, a parable of sorts, with the deeper meaning that even hated peoples would join with the new followers of Jesus.

John Four begins: “Jesus came to a town in Samaria… near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well…” This reference to Jacob’s well, and to the Jewish past is a strong example of the attempts to tie the old religion to the new. “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) When the woman demurred, Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Theses verses in John four lay out for the believers a new method of religious practice, not tied to the Temple and its priests, nor to Jerusalem itself. In a sense, especially since this gospel was written while the Temple was yet extant, and then harmonized shortly after the destruction of the Temple, this Gospel is marking a clear break from the religious practice of Jews in that time. And is a form of protest against the Sadducees who controlled Temple practice that the Pharisees saw as corrupted. In many respects it is not unlike the protestant break from the Roman Catholic Church. One might imagine from this story how dangerous a prophet could be viewed; the man Jesus.

The hated Samaritans appear again in the Gospel of Luke 10:30. In this story, only the “Good Samaritan” comes to the aid of a beaten and robbed traveler while a Jewish Priest and a Jewish Levite, both functionaries of the Temple in Jerusalem, merely pass by the beaten man. In verse 36 Jesus said: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” There is an unmistakable demarcation between the Temple and its clergy and the new religion in this story. It is only really in the context of history that we can understand how the new religion sect of Jews was breaking from the bonds of old religious functionaries.

The Gospels are a critical foundation in the religion of the followers of Jesus as Jesus himself left no writings, none known extant today. That Jesus was resurrected from a death on “Good” Friday to a rebirth on “Easter” Sunday is nowhere mentioned in the good news, the Gospels. However, that Jesus was met at Emmaus, a town seven miles northwest of Jerusalem, holds great significance. Over two hundred years earlier, but virtually unknown today, is that the Maccabees began their redemption of Israel with a victory in this tiny village.

The word Easter itself has quite an interesting background and for this I will quote Wikipedia as this section of that website is thoroughly documented with excellent footnotes. “In both Greek and Latin, the 2nd-century Christian celebration was called Pascha, derived, through Aramaic, from the Hebrew term Pesach, known in English as Passover, the Jewish festival commemorating the story of the Exodus. In most of the non-English speaking world, the [Easter] feast today is known by the name Pascha and words derived from it. The modern English term Easter, a cognate with modern German Ostern, developed from the Old English word Ēostre. This is generally held to have originally referred to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Ēostre, a form of the widely attested Indo-European dawn goddess. The evidence for the Anglo-Saxon goddess, however, has not been universally accepted, and some have proposed that Ēostre may have meant “the month of opening.” End quote. By the way, Christians widely continued the feast of the Passover until the council of Nicaea in 325. And thereafter less so.

By the end of the first century, the Christian sect of Jews had made a decisive step away from Judaism itself by focusing their worship specifically on Jesus, a very near step away from, or close to, G_d. Most significantly the Christians began to center life on the Roman pagan named “Sun-day” as their Sabbath because it coincided with the resurrection. During this period the Christian sect was split between a holy day on Sunday and on the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday. This Saturday Sabbath practice was outlawed by the Council of Laodicea some two hundred and fifty years later.

Early Christians had ample political reasons to separate from the old religion especially when the Romans instituted a punitive tax on Jews, whom they meticulously separated in accounting from non-Jews. The distinction between Christians and Jews was recognized by the Roman emperor around the year 98, when the Christians were granted an exemption from paying the annual tax upon the Jews. It is interesting to note that one of the reasons for the continuation of the Jewish peoples after the Temple destruction was that by paying taxes they were accorded an officially recognized status by Rome, thereby insuring they remained separate as a people, yet with certain rights and protections.

It was the right climate for the break from recognition as Jews. The Christians had been Jews, but their Temple was destroyed, ritual slaughter had been eliminated, their religion was in chaos, and the economic reasons to be disassociated were compelling.

The word “Christ” comes from the Greek word “Christós,” meaning “anointed” or the “anointed one,” which is itself a translation of the Hebrew “מָשִׁיחַ (Māšîaḥ), the Messiah.” Their brethren the Jews did not accept Jesus as their Messiah, and were (are) still awaiting the Messiah’s first coming. The Christians awaited the Second Coming of the Messiah, when they believed he would fulfill the rest of Messianic prophecy, and then the meek truly would inherit the earth.

With the end to most piracy in the Roman Empire and the spread of citizen travel there was a swell of various religions, one of which was the new and therefore expanding Christian sect. Had travel been as dangerous as in earlier times, rife with thievery and murder, it is likely the religion would not have had its freedom of movement through those who traveled to proselytize. That Rome would become the center of this religion, when it was the Romans who executed their Lord as well as his two most important disciples, is hard to reconcile, until one considers there existed a large Jewish Diaspora in Rome who had long been separated from their Temple and were ready converts to a new way.

A wealth of sources accessible today make reference to a wide range of second century Christian texts, however scant few of these texts themselves survive to this day. How did all of these texts disappear? What happened? One has to wonder how so much important history has gone missing. It is expedient however to understand that the crafting of dogma requires a heavy dose of editing, which is what we have today; a canonized liturgy that bears resemblance to centuries ago crafters, but leaves out some very important Christian texts such as: the Gospel of Mary, the Apocryphon of John, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of Thomas, to name just a few.

As mentioned earlier, for the most part the unification of Christian dogma had at its foundation the Jewish Tanakh. “Tanakh” is a Hebrew acronym for the Law, or Torah, or Old Testament; plus the Prophesies or Prophets plus the Writings that include such Proverbs or lessons like those found in the Book of Job. The four most widely accepted Gospels disagreed with each other on many important topics yet around the fifth century a melodious combination of the four could be found in regular use. The words were codified and the institution itself needed a similar organizing. The lasting catholic universal church, from the Greek word “Katholikosle,” was formed at the start of the third century with the establishment of the titles of deacon, priest and bishop. The church of St. Peter has its founding as a shrine built in Rome along the roadside to honor him around 160 coinciding with the one hundredth anniversary of this death. Peter is considered the first bishop. Some two hundred years later this shrine was expanded significantly and today is occupied by the holder of the bishop throne of Peter, namely the Pope.

As the years passed, and the imminent return of the Christ did not materialize, the leaders of the new religion had to found a more lasting institution that would carry through time until the messiah was here back on earth. This structural organization developed into the church we fairly well know today including the codification of beliefs and practices. There is considerable disagreement on the derivation of the word “church,” and we’ll leave that discussion alone, sufficing to say this divergence on the word has some fairly ardent, almost militant camps behind what they believe to be its true meaning. However, the church as an institution would be of no use whatsoever if Jesus were to return to earth today, there would just be no need, what with heaven on earth. Hence, the end or the second coming was not in fact at hand, it was merely just the beginning.

As the religion grew and spread it moved out of homes and into purpose built structures, permanent bases, churches. Converts could become Christians through a statement of belief and a simple baptism in water. No longer would their conversion to monotheism require the cutting off of the foreskin of the most sensitive part of their body, a terribly painful experience.

Beliefs among the bishops, who began to meet on a more regular basis, started to homogenize and unify. The central authority sent out the blessed components of the Eucharist, yet those churches that did not fall in line with the codified beliefs were left out as the components were no longer sent to them; a powerful motivation for centralization of belief. Hence a church could be cut off from the central church for diverging views.

The turning point for Christianity was February 27^th, 380. On this date the Roman Emperor Theodosius declared the Catholic Church was the only religion of the empire, which was based upon the holy trinity. From this date onward the various persecutions of Christians ceased, the religion flourished, and grew into what we know today as that which serves over 2.2 billion people in 200 countries, or one-third of the entire world population.