Word Magazine # 24: Review: Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason"

I recorded and uploaded a new Word Magazine (episode # 24) today. The topic is a review of Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason:  How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" (Random House, 2005).

Also below is the first of four Templeton Research lectures Stark did in 2006 at Vanderbilt University which present some of his ideas on religious marketplaces (all four lectures are worth viewing):

The claim that Jesus of Nazareth was illiterate: A snide assertion that flies in the face of the evidence

Blog note:  I’ll be taking a break from blogging this week, including the Tuesday Word Magazine and the Thursday Vision article, so this will be the lone post for the week.  Stylos will resume next week (starting August 11).

Was Jesus “an illiterate Jewish peasant from the hill country of Galilee”?  This is the evaluation put forward by Reza Aslan in interviews and in his book Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, reviving a less that flattering view of the intellectual background of Jesus and correspondingly arguing that the sophisticated doctrinal aspects of the Christian faith were fabricated by later Christian preachers and apologists (like Paul).

Aslan’s assessment of Jesus as “illiterate,” however, is extremely suspect if the Gospels hold any historical credibility at all.  Here is the frank assessment of “Jesus as illiterate” theory from Rodney Stark, Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, in his book The Triumph of Christianity:  How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (Harper One , 2011):

Finally comes the persistent claim that Jesus was illiterate:  This snide assertion flies in the face of immense familiarity with Jewish Scriptures displayed by Jesus throughout the Gospels and the near certainty that he was a well trained rabbi.  It also ignores statements such as in Luke 4:16-17:  “and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day.  And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah.  He opened the book and found the place where it was written.”  In addition is the frequency with which Jesus prefaces an exchange with the rhetorical question, “have you not read?”  Granted this evidence comes only from the Gospels; but this is true of everything we know about Jesus (pp. 99-100).

What about evaluating the evidence of the likelihood of Jesus’ literacy purely on the basis of what scholars know about the first century Palestinian Jewish environment, an approach which Aslan claims he prefers to do rather than starting with the Gospels.  Here is the assessment offered in the college level textbook The New Testament in Antiquity (Zondervan, 2009) edited by Gary M. Burge of Wheaton University (from pp. 128-129):

Jesus was probably educated in the local synagogue each morning from age five or six and each afternoon worked at his father’s trade [JTR note:  by referring to Joseph as Jesus’ “father” Burge is not necessarily denying the virginal conception but addressing Joseph as a custodial parent of Jesus]…..

Like other boys in his village, from the age of six to ten Jesus became literate in Hebrew through the study of the Torah in the Nazareth synagogue, and he memorized vast quantities of Scripture.  From ages ten to twelve he became acquainted with the oral laws under the direction of the synagogue teacher and custodian, the hazzan.  At this point he ended his schooling and began working full time with his father…..

From the age of thirteen until the beginning of his public ministry (about thirty), Jesus worked in Nazareth and joined the village men at the synagogue for discussion and debate.  These exclusively male gatherings sharpened understanding of the law and were as raucous as they were inspiring.  Thus, Jesus had almost twenty years experience debating in the local synagogue before teaching in the synagogues of Galilee.  By the time he was an adult, he was a skilled craftsman, literate, knowledgeable in the traditions and history of his people, and adept at public discourse.

Thus, based on both the Gospel evidence and our knowledge of the first century Palestinian Jewish environment, we must conclude that the charge that Jesus was “illiterate” is a snide assertion that flies in the face of the evidence.

JTR

The Vision (7/11/13): God is Love

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16).

“We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Here is one more gleaning from Rodney Stark’s book The Rise of Early Christianity, subtitled “How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.”  Stark notes that the Christian teaching that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that love is the proper response to God and also to one’s neighbor would have puzzled pagans who only knew gods that were impersonal, capricious, or cruel:

The simple phrase “For God so loved the world…” would have puzzled an educated pagan.  And the notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd.

From the pagan viewpoint, there was nothing new in the Jewish or Christian teachings that God makes behavioral demands upon humans—the gods have always demanded sacrifice and worship.  Nor was there anything new in the idea that God will respond to human desires—that the gods can be induced to exchange services for sacrifices.  But … the idea that God loves those who love him was entirely new (p. 211).

In the new paganism of our own times, perhaps this proclamation will be just as novel. Let us be faithful in our generation to hold forth these basic truths:  God is love.  He delights in the love of his people.  He calls on us to love our brethren and to have that love spill over to our neighbor.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

An ancient letter on infanticide

Here’s another snippet from Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity, which includes an oft-cited ancient letter from a husband (Hilarion) to his expecting wife (Alis):

For now, consider a letter written by one Hilarion to his pregnant wife Alis, which has been reported by many authors because of the quite extraordinary contrast between his deep concern for his wife and his hoped-for son, and his utter callousness toward a possible daughter:

Know that I am still in Alexandria.  I do not worry if they all come back and I remain in Alexandria.  I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I receive payment I shall send it up to you.  If you are delivered of a child [before I come home], if it is a boy keep it, if it is a girl discard it.  You have sent me word, “Don’t forget me.”  How can I forget you.  I beg you not to worry…. (p. 98).

Stark, Infanticide, and Loving One's Neighbor

Note:  I preached Sunday on Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  In the applications, I drew from Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Early Christianity to illustrate how early Christians followed the teaching of Jesus on loving their neighbors by rejecting infanticide.

“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:36-37).

 

Christians took care of the weakest and most vulnerable.  This included the fact that they would not practice abortion and infanticide.  They saw this as an integral part of loving one’s neighbor.

Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity (Harper One, 1996) is insightful on this subject.  He notes in particular how in the pre-Christian world infanticide was common among pagans:  “Seneca regarded the drowning of children at birth as both reasonable and commonplace” (this and other quotes below from p. 118).  The Roman historian Tacitus condemned the “Jewish” teaching that it was sinful to kill an unwanted child as but another of their “sinister and revolting” practices.

He notes that it was common for pagans to expose unwanted children out of doors where anyone who wanted could take the child and rear it or, if unwanted, the child would fall victim to the elements or to animals and birds.  This practice was justified by society including its leading philosophers:

Both Plato and Aristotle recommended infanticide as legitimate state policy.  The Twelve Tables—the earliest known legal code, written about 450 B. C. E.—permitted a father to expose any female infant and any deformed or weak male infant.

Stark describes a recent archaeological excavation in the ancient city of Ashkelon in which the researchers reported making “a gruesome discovery in the sewer that ran under the bathhouse…the sewer had been clogged with refuse sometime in the sixth century A. D.  When we excavated and dry-sieved the desiccated sewage, we found [the] bones … of nearly 100 little babies apparently murdered and thrown into the sewer.”

It is assumed that nearly all those little bodies were girls.

It was the Christian view of the sanctity of life but also their view of loving their weakest and most defenseless neighbors that led them to reject pagan practices and to influence the cultures in which they lived, likewise, to see such practices as vile and reprehensible.

JTR

The Vision (6/6/13): They will know we are Christians...

 

 

I’ve recently been reading a book titled The Rise of Christianity (Princeton University Press/HarperOne, 1996) by Rodney Stark.  The book is a series of sociological studies on early Christianity.  The book’s subtitle is:  How the Obscure Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.

In one chapter Stark contrasts how Christians and pagans responded during times of plague and how this difference affected the growth of the Christian movement.  Stark examines in particular a major epidemic that struck the Roman Empire in the year 260 AD.  At the plague’s height over 5,000 persons per day died in the city of Rome alone.

Once the plague passed, a Christian pastor in Alexandria, Egypt named Dionysius wrote a letter describing how the believers had cared for the sick and dying and how many had sacrificed their own lives in such service.  He wrote:

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.  Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.  Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead….  The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters [elders], deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.

In contrast, Dionysius also described how the pagans responded to the same crisis:

The heathen behaved in the very opposite way.  At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.

Stark concludes that it was the compassionate response of Christians to the members of their own communities, as well as to strangers, that significantly contributed to the spread of the Christian movement during that time.

Reading the chapter I was reminded of the words of the old hymn, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”  As with the church of old, may the Lord gives to his church today a heart of compassion, self-sacrifice, and service that will become an effective witness to our community.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle