"The time of the persecution by Antiochus IV was crucial in Jewish history. The Jews of the Dispersion were, at this time, becoming more and more hellenized; the Jews of Judea were few; and even among them the rich and powerful were inclined to acquiesce in Greek innovations.
But for the heroic resistance of the Hasidim, the Jewish religion might easily have died out. If this had happened, neither Christianity nor Islam could have existed in anything like the form they actually took.
Townsend, in his Introduction to the translation of the Fourth Book of Maccabees, says:
"It has been finely said that if Judaism as a religion had perished under Antiochus, the seed-bed of Christianity would have been lacking; and thus the blood of the Maccabean martyrs, who saved Judaism, ultimately became the seed of the Church. Therefore as not only Christendom but also Islam derive their monotheism from a Jewish source, it may well be that the world to-day owes the very existence of monotheism both in the East and in the West to the Maccabees.
(from “Russell on Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell (Russell on…)”
I think the Maccabees victories were a bad thing in as much as they were a triumph of narrow Hasidic Judaism over the more secular and enlightened Hellenized Judaism.
Orthodox Judaism may well indeed have died out, and thus there would have been no Christianity or Islam.
This seems to be Russell’s view, and I believe Christopher Hitchens thought the same.
It’s interesting to speculate how history would have been different if that hadn’t happened.
If Greek and Roman culture and philosophy had dominated, instead, maybe the Enlightenment would have happened sooner.
But who knows, if it wasn’t one religion it probably would have been another…
In my view, Christian theology derives from two sources. The first is Judaism. Then, to make their views more palatable to the more polished and sophisticated Greeks and Romans, they added a good helping of Platonism, Neo- Platonism, and a soupçon of Stoicism. A witches’ brew to be sure, but has been very successful…until the Enlightenment. I believe Christianity has been in decline since then.
I do not think that you are wrong broadly speaking, Cogito, but I think Russell (and apparently Hitchens) are wrong in asserting that Christianity arose because orthodox Judaism survived.
The big thing that the author of Christianity - “St. Paul” - took from the Jewish religion was the idea of the Messiah (so that the Books which contained prophecies of such a figure were needed by the new religion) - but he utterly transformed the idea, changing the meaning of the word "messiah’ from an anointed king who would restore to the Jews the glory days of David and Solomon, to a divine Savior from “original sin”. The “Son of God” or the same as God? - an argument within the Church that, despite resolutions at solemn gatherings of clerics through the ages, has never been settled, and cannot be settled as long as Christianity insists that it is a monotheistic religion. Paul heard how Jesus’s followers believed he had risen bodily from the dead, and on that ground he laid the foundation stones of the immense structure of the Universal Church. The old stories - the myth of Eden etc. - were retained. (That “original sin” had to have been committed.) Later, a small part of the Jewish Law - the Ten Commandments - was accepted by the Church Fathers as retaining validity, though Paul had wanted all of it to be abandoned, claiming that it had been superseded by the “sacrifice” of the Savior. Hence the “Old Testament” became an introductory part of the Christian Bible.
Everything else held as Christian belief, no matter which denomination teaches it, derives from non-Jewish sources. (An important example: the eucharist. Paul invented it, claimed it as a revelation.)
“In the beginning was the Word” - the opening of the Gospel According to John. The Word? The Logos. Greek philosophy.
Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures were appearing during the lifetime of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BCE) [“Epiphanes” meaning God Manifest; God in human form; Zeus incarnated], the Greek king against whom the Maccabees arose and defeated in battle. The writings of Philo, in which he worked at reconciling the Hebrew holy books with Greek philosophy, were in circulation before Paul wrote his first Epistles. Though the first 2 books of the Maccabees were written in Hebrew (lost now, only the Greek translations surviving) the third and fourth were written in Greek. The Hellenization of Judaism could be said to have been well underway by the time Jesus lived and is reputed to have preached love, forgiveness, and tolerance of evil. All the books of the “New Testament” except one were written in Greek - a common, daily-chat, demotic Greek.
Paul was a Greek-speaking subject of the Roman Empire. There are many good reasons to doubt that he was a Jew.
My description of the parentage of the religion Paul began is this: Christianity was begotten by a vulgarized Hellenism upon a sentimentalized Judaism.
Jillian, your description of the parentage of Christianity is marvellous.
I cannot argue with your erudite exposition of the Pauline origins of Christianity, But, I think what Russell is saying is that if Antiochus had successfully put down the Hasidic revolt, there may never have been a Jesus and without Jesus, no Christianity.
Yes, there are good reasons to suspect that Paul was not a Jew, but all of Jesus’s followers were Jews as were all the Gospel writers (with the possible exception of Luke).
As you say, the Christian view of the Hebrew Bible is merely a stepping stone or foreshadowing of the Christian epoch. Aside from Genesis, Deutero-Isaiah especially comes to mind.
It was not the orthodox religion that bred the “Jesus” type sentimentality. (Very little that “Jesus” is reported to have said by the gospel writers is plausibly attributable to a devout Jew of the period.) The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John were written (in Greek) by many hands. (Internal contradiction is one indication of that.) They were written many years after the crucifixion of “Jesus”. Luke was the doctor friend of Paul. He often contradicts Paul’s testimony. He was also the author of Acts - an implausible work of fiction, a novel. All the writers were converts of Paul’s, in his time or after. Some of them were apparently diaspora Jews. None of them seem to have had any knowledge of Judea and little of Jewish orthodoxy. They were Hellenes.
The Jewish followers of the crucified “Jesus”, those who had been his disciples, were not Christians. They never believed Jesus was divine. (“Peter” was an invention, a pretend-disciple who could be used to say that eg. the dietary laws were no longer in force.) The sad survivors of the little “Jesus” band were the Ebionites, “The Poor”.
When Paul’s “Christ Jesus” is seen as a fictitious invention, much becomes clear. Christianity is a Greek story spun out of Jewish literature, translated, processed, and packaged by Greeks.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to destroy the Jews’ religion totally. He wanted them to worship him. He put a statue of himself in the Temple as an aid to the facilitation of that end. If Russell means that Christianity would not have been born had there been no orthodox Judaism in Paul’s day, he must have forgotten that by then the Greek version of Judaism had become quite popular in the Eastern Roman Empire, and even in Rome itself - and that that version had been up and toddling, if not yet running, decades before Antiochus IV himself was even born.
Antiochus IV was a very vain and very cruel man. He delighted in torture and slaughter. He had an immense army - including hundreds of “armored elephants”. The small forces led by the Maccabees defeated it - astonishingly - by cunning. I think the battle scenes with elephants in “The Lord of the Rings” film may have been inspired by that piece of history.
I am certainly not defending orthodox Judaism as such. I defend no religion. I am only trying to correct a misunderstanding of that piece of history by the very great Bertrand Russell.
Fair enough, but I think you are too kind and forgiving to the Jewish influence on Christianity. Having said this, what are your thoughts, Jillian, on the Jewish origins of Islam? Russell also posits the view that no Judaism, no Islam.
Thank you for your thoughts, Jillian. I agree that Antiochus was a monster. I agree that the followers of Jesus after his deification by Paul, were no longer, ipso facto, Jews. It is astonishing that, to this very day, so many Christians still do not realize that Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jew, that his mother and step-father were Jews, that all his followers (while he lived) were Jews.
As far as I can make out, there was nothing in the teachings of Jesus that were radically out of line with mainstream orthodox thinking - except two. These two are pacifism and the injunction against judging others. I have been unable to find any reference to these nonsensical notions in the Hebrew Bible. I may be wrong, of course.
Yes, whoever it was who launched the religion of submission, “Islam”, took the idea of One God from Judaism. They call the inventor “Muhammad”, so let it be Muhammad. Historians tell us that Muhammad expected the Jews to follow him, and when they didn’t, he declared them his enemies and slaughtered as many as his band could reach. Christians also failed to accept him as the final prophet, his teaching as incontrovertible truth. So though he took what he wanted from Jewish and Christian doctrine, he taught hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. In Islamic teaching, they are better than polytheists, so if they pay to survive their lives may be spared. They are “People of the Book”. Muhammad (it is widely agreed) was illiterate. The revelations that came to him from Allah through the Archangel Gabriel had to be repeated by him to others who could write them down. Hence - the tale goes - the Koran.
As Russell says: no Judaism, no Islam.
In the progressive spirit of our time, should we not therefore blame all living Jews for Muslim terrorism, cruelty, injustice, oppression?
It is very unlikely that the living man around whom the fictitious biography of “Christ Jesus” was woven, ever preached anything out of line with Jewish orthodoxy. Pacifism and refraining from judgment are obvious Christian inventions. There are some statements in the gospels which are obviously Jewish and do not fit with Christian dogma - such as the preacher’s saying that his mission is to reclaim “the lost sheep of Israel”, not to have anything to do with gentiles - yet somehow got stuck among the legends. Some, like that one, strongly contradict the Christian message. Perhaps this happened because a few sayings of the real man were too well known to be omitted. It needs to be remembered that the gospel writers, telling the stories of the earthly life of their Christ decades after the execution of Jesus, were not historians, not seekers of facts, just recorders of tales told of the Christ’s sojourn on earth - the authorized versions.
Apart from a few statements, the teaching of the Jesus of the gospels is generally not Jewish. “Resist not evil” - for instance - is the opposite of orthodox teaching. Praise for not working (“Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not …”) is a hippie-type notion, not compatible with “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread”. And - as Slavoj Zizek likes to say - so on and on.
Pacifism? The Christ Jesus is reported as saying that he “came not to bring peace but a sword”. That’s one of the bits that contradict the Christian message.
Christianity was not born in Judea. It was born in Hellenized Syria, in the mind of Paul when he was journeying through Syria on his way to Damascus. At that time he was calling himself Saul. He was a born fictionist. He claimed (to the gentiles to whom he preached his new religion), that he was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, like King Saul. But there was no such tribe in Saul/Paul’s time.
