2015-09-27

New Testament in the Greek Literary Matrix

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by Neil Godfrey

Dionysus -- From Wikipedia Commons
Dionysus — From Wikipedia Commons

Recently an interesting collation of observations on thematic and literary similarities between New Testament narratives and wider Greek literature was posted by commenter John MacDonald. I’ve set his points out again here (with only slight editing) for those interested. (John’s more complete comment can be read here.) Some of the parallels are actually less to do with the Biblical narrative itself than the subsequent Christian tradition — something I am looking forward to addressing in a future post (from a perspective I have not read elsewhere, by the way). Reference is made to haggadic midrash — which Jewish scholars themselves note is a feature of the Gospels — but in relation to Greek texts I think it might be more correct to speak of intertextuality and mimesis.

It’s interesting to ponder the relationship between the Bible and the Greeks.

To take even one example, the parallels between Jesus and the dying-rising Greek god born of a god and a mortal woman, Dionysus, have long been posited, either in traditional myth or in places like Euripides’ ancient play ‘The Bacchae,’ with work ranging from scholars like Bultmann and others in the 19th century, to the more recent studies of scholars like Martin Hengel, Barrie Powell, Dennis MacDonald, Robert M. Price, and even popular writers like Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.  Parallels, for example, in the play ‘The Bacchae’ can be drawn as to general overarching themes, as well as to specific details of the New Testament Narratives.  In ‘The Jesus Mysteries,’ several striking parallels are drawn out between The New Testament and the ‘Bacchae,’ the latter being a much earlier work.  To begin with, Freke and Gandy in Jesus Mysteries write: 

According to the gospels, Jesus is an innocent and just man who, at the instigation of the Jewish high priests, is hauled before the Roman Governor Pilate and condemned to die on spurious charges.  Exactly the same mythological motif is found five centuries earlier in Euripides’ play The Bacchae, about Dionysus.  Like Jesus in Jerusalem, Dionysus is a quiet stranger with long hair and a beard who brings a new religion.  In the gospels, the Jewish high priests don’t believe in Jesus and allege that ‘His teachings are causing disaffections amongst the people.’  They plot to bring about his death.  In The Bacchae, King Pentheus is a tyrannical ruler who does not believe in Dionysus.  He berates him for bringing ‘this new disease to the land’ and sends out his men to capture the innocent godman …

Like the Jewish high priests who are appalled at Jesus’ blasphemous claim to be the Son of God, King Pentheus rants in anger at stories of Dionysus’ divine parentage … Like Jesus, Dionysus passively allows himself to be caught and imprisoned …

The guard relates the wondrous things he had witnessed Dionysus perform and warns King Pentheus: ‘Master, this man has come here with a load of miracles.’  The king, however, proceeds to interrogate Dionysus who, like Jesus before Pilate, will not bow to his authority.  When Pilate reminds Jesus that he has the power to crucify him, Jesus replies, ‘You would have no authority at all over me, had it not been granted you from above.’  Likewise Dionysus answers the threats of Pentheus with: ‘Nothing can touch me that is not ordained.’  Like Jesus, who said of his persecutors, ‘They know not what they are doing,’ Dionysus tells Pentheus, ‘You know not what you are doing, nor what you are saying, nor who you are.’ …

As Jesus is led away to crucifixion, he warns the crowd not to weep for him, but for themselves and their children, who will suffer for the crime of his execution (cf. Luke 23 v 28-30) … As he is led away, Dionysus, likewise, threatens divine vengeance. (pp. 45-46)

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Before his death, Jesus celebrates a symbolic ‘Last supper’ of bread and wine. . . . In The Bacchae, Euripides calls bread and wine the ‘two powers which are supreme in human affairs,’ the one substantial and preserving the body, the other liquid and intoxicating the mind.  The ancients credited the Mystery godman with bringing to humanity the arts of cultivating grain and the vine to produce bread and wine. (p. 48)

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As [Joseph Campbell] writes, ‘To drink wine in the rites of Dionysus is to commune with the god and take his power and physical presence into one’s body.’  In the Christian rites of the Eucharist Jesus is said to symbolically become the wine drunk by the participant in the ritual.  Likewise, Euripides tells us that Dionysus becomes the wine and is himself ‘poured out’ as an offering.  In some vase representations, bread and wine are shown before the idol of Dionysus.  Just as in the Eucharist a Christian is given ‘redemption’ in the symbolic form of a wafer biscuit, in the Mysteries of Dionysus the initiate was presented with makaria (‘blessedness’) in the form of a cake. (p. 50)

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In Euripides’ The Bacchae, King Pentheus tries to insult Dionysus by describing him as ‘the god who frees his worshipers from every law [cf. St. Paul],’ but Dionysus replies, ‘Your insult to Dionysus is a compliment.’ (p. 107)

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A Letter To Philip explains that although from the time of the incarnation Jesus suffered, yet he suffered as one who was ‘a stanger to this suffering.’  This teaches that the incarnate Higher Self (represented by Jesus) seems to suffer when the eidolon suffers, but in reality is always the untouched witness.  In The Acts of John Jesus explains

‘You heard that I suffered, but I suffered not.
An unsuffering one was I, yet suffered.
One pierced was I, yet I was not abused.
One hanged was I, yet not hanged.
Blood flowed from me, yet did not flow.’ …  (p. 119)

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Five hundred years previously Euripides portrayed King Pentheus as binding Dionysus, while actually he was not.  As Dionysus says: …

‘He thought he was binding me; But he neither held nor touched me, save in his deluded mind.’ (p. 120)

 

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We also find striking parallels to ‘The Bacchae’ indicated in Robert Price’s article New Testament Narrative As Old Testament Midrash (2004).  In terms of Dionysus in general, we read from Price

Water into Wine (John 2:1-11)

Though the central feature of this miracle story, the transformation of one liquid into another, no doubt comes from the lore of Dionysus, the basic outline of the story owes much to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17:8-24 LXX. The widow of Zarephath, whose son has just died, upbraids the prophet: “What have I to do with you, O man of God?” (Ti emoi kai soi, 17:18). John has transferred this brusque address to the mouth of Jesus, rebuking his mother (2:4, Ti emoi kai soi, gunai). Jesus and Elijah both tell people in need of provisions to take empty pitchers (udria in 1 Kings 17:12, udriai in John 2:6-7), from which sustenance miraculously emerges. And just as this feat causes the woman to declare her faith in Elijah (“I know that you are a man of God,” v. 24), so does Jesus’ wine miracle cause his disciples to put their faith in him (v. 11).

In terms of The Bacchae, Price writes

Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4ff)

The whole scene comes, obviously, from the descent of the Mosaic spirit upon the seventy elders in Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25, with an assist from Euripides’ The Bacchae, where we read “Flames flickered in their curls and did not burn them” (757-758), just as tongues of fire blazed harmlessly above the heads of the apostles (Acts 2:3). Ecstatic speech caused some bystanders to question the sobriety of the disciples, but Peter defends them (“These are not drunk as you suppose” Acts 2:15a), as does Pentheus’ messenger: “Not, as you think, drunk with wine” (686-687).

Paul’s Conversion (Acts 9:1-21)

As the great Tübingen critics already saw, the story of Paul’s visionary encounter with the risen Jesus not only has no real basis in the Pauline epistles but has been derived by Luke more or less directly from 2 Maccabees 3’s story of Heliodorus. In it one Benjaminite named Simon (3:4) tells Apollonius of Tarsus, governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia (3:5), that the Jerusalem Temple houses unimaginable wealth that the Seleucid king might want to appropriate for himself. Once the king learns of this, he sends his agent Heliodorus to confiscate the loot. The prospect of such a violation of the Temple causes universal wailing and praying among the Jews. But Heliodorus is miraculously turned back when a shining warrior angel appears on horseback. The stallion’s hooves knock Heliodorus to the ground, where two more angels lash him with whips (25-26). He is blinded and is unable to help himself, carried to safety on a stretcher. Pious Jews pray for his recovery, lest the people be held responsible for his condition. The angels reappear to Heliodorus, in answer to these prayers, and they announce God’s grace to him: Heliodorus will live and must henceforth proclaim the majesty of the true God. Heliodorus offers sacrifice to his Saviour (3:35) and departs again for Syria, where he reports all this to the king. In Acts the plunder of the Temple has become the persecution of the church by Saul (also called Paulus, an abbreviated form of Apollonius), a Benjaminite from Tarsus. Heliodorus’ appointed journey to Jerusalem from Syria has become Saul’s journey from Jerusalem to Syria. Saul is stopped in his tracks by a heavenly visitant, goes blind and must be taken into the city, where the prayers of his former enemies avail to raise him up. Just as Heliodorus offers sacrifice, Saul undergoes baptism. Then he is told henceforth to proclaim the risen Christ, which he does.

Luke has again added details from Euripides. In The Bacchae, in a sequence Luke has elsewhere rewritten into the story of Paul in Philippi, Dionysus has appeared in Thebes as an apparently mortal missionary for his own sect. He runs afoul of his cousin, King Pentheus who wants the licentious cult (as he views it) to be driven out of the country. He arrests and threatens Dionysus, only to find him freed from prison by an earthquake. Dionysus determines revenge against the proud and foolish king by magically compelling Pentheus to undergo conversion to faith in him (“Though hostile formerly, he now declares a truce and goes with us. You see what you could not when you were blind,” 922-924) and sending Pentheus, in woman’s guise, to spy upon the Maenads, his female revelers. He does so, is discovered, and is torn limb from limb by the women, led by his own mother. As the hapless Pentheus leaves, unwittingly, to meet his doom, Dionysus comments, “Punish this man. But first distract his wits; bewilder him with madness… After those threats with which he was so fierce, I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes” (850-851, 854-855). “He shall come to know Dionysus, son of Zeus, consummate god, most terrible, and yet most gentle, to mankind” (859-861). Pentheus must be made an example, as must poor Saul, despite himself. His conversion is a punishment, meting out to the persecutor his own medicine. Do we not detect a hint of ironic malice in Christ’s words to Ananias about Saul? “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

Some like R. Joseph Hoffmann have struck back against reductionists like Price, MacDonald, Brodie, Helms, Miller, Freke/Gandy, etc.  One of the most popular apologetical books currently in circulation is Paul Rhodes Eddy and Greg Boyd, ‘The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition,’ primarily arguing that there would not have been a paganizing influence on the  Jews of Jesus’ time.  In his review of this book, entitled the Jesus Mirage, Price makes the very poignant counterpoint that  

Another egregious case of Janus apologetics, facing both ways at once, is Boyd’s and Eddy’s argument that the resurrection of Jesus cannot have been borrowed from polytheistic mythemes. Their first step is to circumscribe a magic zone from about 165 BCE to 70 CE when there was no Jewish inclination, but rather the reverse, to accept Hellenistic influence. They figure that the Hasmonean victory over the Seleucid Hellenizers put an end once and for all to the temptation to Hellenize. Hellenization began to rear its ugly head again only after the Roman victory over Jews. This strikes me as a gratuitous assumption. Indeed, the fact that there is during their magic period much evidence of Jewish anti-Hellenistic Zealotry surely means the “danger” of influence continued. You don’t strengthen the fortifications when there is no enemy at the door. And no evidence of Hellenization? What about the astrology of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Ah, er, it’s not what it looks like! The presence of horoscopes at Qumran doesn’t mean the sectarians actually used or believed in them, say the apologists. Perish the thought! It was probably because they needed them to write scholarly refutations of them! And second- to third-century synagogues with mosaics of Hercules, Dionysus and the Zodiac? Purely decorative, that’s all. Come on! Obviously, you don’t decorate your house of worship with images of gods you find abhorrent! And this was just at the time Yavneh Judaism was getting stronger and stronger! Judaism just was not a solid monolith even at this time, much less in Jesus’ time.

Our authors find it necessary to misrepresent Margaret Barker, too. She argues very powerfully (in The Older Testament and The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God) that popular Judaism had not embraced the monotheism of the Exilic prophets yet, even in spite of priestly indoctrination and interdiction. She ventures that Jesus as the resurrected Son of God was a direct survival of Israelite polytheism. Boyd and Eddy cannot seem to get through their learned heads that Barker is not talking about a Jewish embrace of pagan mythemes. Her point is that mythemes the rabbis later reinterpreted (explained away) as pagan were always indigenously Israelite, shared with Canaanite neighbors, not borrowed from them. Thus there is no need to posit some repulsive borrowing from hated paganism to account for easy Jewish familiarity with dying and rising gods. Ezekiel knew the daughters of Jerusalem were engaged in ritual mourning of the slain god Tammuz even in the days of the Exile. Baal and Osiris were well known in Israel, too.  

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The evidence suggests, then, that the reductionists do have a prima facie case that a paganizing / Jewish midrashic influence was present.  This possibility then allows for the stronger assertion a la Price, Freke/Gandy, Robert Alter, John Bowman, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, J. Duncan M. Derrett, Earl Doherty, C.F. Evans, Randel Helms, Frank Kermode, Dennis R. MacDonald, Dale Miller and Patricia Miller. Liliann Portefaix, Wolfgang Roth, William R. Stegner, Rikki E. Watts, and many others that there is ample evidence that ‘haggadic midrash’ was rampant in the writing of the New Testament.

Thanks, John.

 

 

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Neil Godfrey

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13 thoughts on “New Testament in the Greek Literary Matrix”

  1. Yes, the Jesus story was going round the Mediterranean 1000 years before Christ was actually born. Krishna was a carpenter, born of a virgin, baptized in a river. The Persian God Muthra, 600 years BC. Born on December 25th, performed miracles, resurrected on the third day known as the Lamb, the Way, the Truth, the Light, the Savior, Messiah. Many of the gods were born on December 25th.
    In 1280 BC the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus who is the son of god Osiris born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, blind, cast out demons & walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. Asar translates to Lazarus. He also had 12 disciples. Horus was crucified first & after 3 days 2 women announced Horus was savior of humanity had been resurrected.

    1. There are a number of similarities between the narratives of pagan gods and those of Jesus, but they may not be quite as extensive or as close or as linked as sometimes claimed. Some of these sentences here seem to be lifted in intact from an interview dialogue without double checking any primary sources. The date of Christmas is not in the gospels but was adopted much later for ecclesiastical convenience. What are the original sources (not Massey) of the statement that Krishna was a carpenter and the resurrection of Horus three days after crucifixion?

  2. re: Boyd and eddy’s attempt to to argue that no hellenization could have occurred between 160 and 70 AD: even if this is the case, religious syncretism that occurred before 160 Bc would not have vanished overnight, and people of that would have long forgotten the origins of those ideas. Besides that, people can borrow and rationalize their borrowing, as when Philo borrowed from Platonism but said that Plato had stolen his ideas from Moses. On top that, Boyd and eddys a priori argument is undercut by massive evidence that syncretism did indeed occur, as miller, McDonald and others have shown.

    1. While Maccabees does write up the civil war in Judaea as between Hellenisers and Judaisers this is partial – in most ways the Hasmoneans were a typical Hellenistic monarchy.

  3. The entire Old Testament is a Hellenized document influenced by Herodotus, Homer, and others. The scholarly consensus of a hermetically sealed “Israel” is a ridiculously outdated, untenable apologetic construct completely removed from historical reality.

    “Paganism” is an anachronistic term when discussing pre-Christian religions. Was “Biblical” Judaism influenced by Greek literature and religious ideas? Yes. Was the New Testament influenced by Greek literature and religious ideas? Yes. Repeating the empty apologetics of Josephus and Eusebius, especially when the premises of their apologetics (Moses wrote the Torah in the 15th Century!) have been demolished, is an embarrassment to scholarship.

    1. Dr. Dennis R. MacDonald has made a compelling case that The New Testament imitates Homer. For example, as Price points out regarding MacDonald’s analysis:

      The Origin Of The Pericope About The Gerasene Demoniac (Mark 5:1-20)

      Again, Mark has mixed together materials from scripture and from the Odyssey. Clearly, as MacDonald shows, the core of the story derives from Odyssey 9:101-565. Odysseus and his men come to shore in the land of the hulking Cyclopes, just as Jesus and his disciples arrive by boat in the land of the Gerasenes (or Gergesenes, supposedly the remnant of the ancient Girgashites, hence possibly associated with the mythical Anakim/Rephaim, Derrett, p. 102, who were giants). Goats graze in one landscape, pigs in the other. Leaving their boats, each group immediately encounters a savage man-monster who dwells in a cave. The demoniac is naked, and Polyphemus was usually depicted naked, too. The Cyclops asks Odysseus if he has come with intent to harm him, just as the Gerasene demoniac begs Jesus not to torment him. Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name, and the latter replies “Noman,” while Jesus asks the demoniac his name, “Legion,” a name reminiscent of the fact that Odysseus’ men were soldiers. Jesus expels the legion of demons, sending them into the grazing swine, recalling Circe’s earlier transformation of Odysseus’ troops into swine. Odysseus contrives to blind the Cyclops, escaping his cave. The heroes depart, and the gloating Odysseus bids Polyphemus to tell others how he has blinded him, just as Jesus tells the cured demoniac to tell how he has exorcised him. As Odysseus’ boat retreats, Polyphemus cries out for him to return, but he refuses. As Jesus is about to depart, the man he cured asks to accompany him, but he refuses. As MacDonald notes, sheer copying from the source is about the only way to explain why Jesus should be shown refusing a would-be disciple. Psalm 107, whence details of the stilling of the storm were borrowed, has also made minor contributions to this story as well. The detail of the demoniac having been chained up seem to come from Psalm 107’s description of “prisoners in irons” (v. 10), who “wandered in desert wastes” (v. 4) and “cried to the LORD in their trouble” (v. 6), who “broke their chains asunder” (v. 14). It is also possible that Mark had in mind the Exodus sequence, and that he has placed the story here to correspond to the drowning of the Egyptian hosts in the Sea.

      1. Wow, I am sorry I missed this conversation when it came out. That was the day I left for a month long trip to Asia.

        New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash by Robert M. Price is the heart of his book, The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems.

        Isaiah 65:4 brings in the tombs mentioned in Mark 5:3, 5 and the swine.

        In Mark 9:5, the demonaic introduces himself. The Textus Receptus says, ” καὶ ἐπηρώτα αὐτόν Τί σοι ὄνομά καὶ ἀπεκρίθη λέγων, Λεγεὼν ὄνομά μοι ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν”. “Λέγων” is translated as “said” and “Λεγεὼν” to “Legion”. This seems to me to be a visual bilingual pun that points to the name of the Cyclops, “Polyphemus”. The Greek “λέγων” for “said” is juxtaposed with the Latin “λεγεὼν” which implies many soldiers. “Polyphemus” means “famous” or “many speak of” because its parts are “poly,” as in polygon and “phemus,” as in blasphemy. It seems to me that Mark chose the Latin-based word “λεγεὼν” because it implies “many” and looks (and probably sounded) like the Greek word for “speak”. It’s like he was winking at his readers.

  4. Perhaps a little late to the discussion, but speaking of Bacchantes and Jesus, here is something interesting; the table does suggest that whoever wrote the TF was familiar with Livy, and was therefore bilingual in Greek and Latin.

    https://rogerviklund.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/livy-bacchanalia-vs-josephus-rabble-rousers-and-tf.pdf

    https://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/a-proposed-literary-parallel-between-livys-history-of-the-bacchanalian-conspiracy-and-the-stories-about-rabble-rousers-and-religious-charlatans-in-the-works-of-flavius-josephus/

    1. Hi William,

      Thanks for commenting on my guest post here on Vridar! Great links.

      I did a follow up post to this one on justified lying in the ancient world on my blog here: http://palpatinesway.blogspot.com/2018/03/examining-easter-peering-behind-veil-of.html

      Neil has done some interesting posts on lying in history, today for instance:

      https://vridar.org/2018/12/21/lying-eyewitnesses-always-with-us/

      and here:

      https://vridar.org/2017/12/10/the-evidence-of-ancient-historians/

      Carrier also touches on the topic, as I outline in my blog post

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